Observations

Steering Big Ships

My last two years as a Software Engineer have been mainly about figuring out how to drive big, multi-person, cross-team projects that will take months / years before they are done. Some things I've learned from this experience1. How to get started on such projects.

books

What I'm Reading, May 2021 Edition

You can find the April 2021 Edition here. Books The Life of Samuel Johnson, James Boswell. 25% finished; has held my interest so far. I'm picking up some other books to complement this one: The Club: Johnson, Boswell, and the Friends Who Shaped an

AI

Fun With GPT-3

Last week I finally got access to GPT-3. Asking for factsFirst off, GPT-3 does a pretty good job when you want factual information: At least 50% of the facts here seem to be true!Asking for recipesThe model doesn't do a great job when

History

Remembering The Telegraph

I vaguely remember learning about a defunct medium of communication called the telegraph when I was in school. Recently it struck me that I knew almost nothing about this technology that had been the fastest medium of communication available for almost a hundred years

Systems

How Understanding The Principal-Agent Problem Can Change Your Life

#1 I used to come up with long, complicated narratives to explain to estate agents why I was only willing to pay a certain amount for a flat they showed me that I wanted to rent: I couldn't afford it, the carpets were old,

books

What I'm Reading, April 2021 Edition

You can find the March 2021 Edition here. BooksDucks, Newburyport; Lucy Ellmann. Critically acclaimed novel written as a single sentence in a stream-of-consciousness style. Read a dozen pages before I realized there was no way I'd be able to read 1000 more pages of

food

Productivity Growth And Olive Oil Production

I was wondering how olive oil made recently, and curiosity led me to contrast methods of production over the past two thousand years: An olive press from Biblical times: An old-fashioned olive oil mill (unclear how old it really is though): Large scale modern

economics

The Origins Of Money

An article on the origins of money from the Satoshi Nakamoto Institute. Fascinating because it ties together insights from evolutionary biology, economics, and human nature to explain why even ancient societies needed some standardized medium of exchange, i.e., money. Lots of interesting bits

History

The Antikythera Mechanism

The Antikythera mechanism was a primitive computer, created in Greece over two thousand years ago to predict the positions of planets. Researchers at UCL made this fascinating video that covers some recent discoveries they made about the machine: Besides the fact that Greek astronomers

books

What I'm Reading, March 2021 Edition

You can find the Feb 2021 edition here. BooksWorking in Public, Nadia Eghbal. About how the community behind open-source software works. Enjoyed it, although the target audience was people who are unfamiliar with open-source and large software projects in general. If you've used Github

Flash Fiction

The Odds Man [Flash Fiction #3]

#1 Exactly at 9:00 on a cold winter morning on a busy London street, W walked out the door of his townhouse. As he started to walk down the short flight of steps, he had a vague feeling of unease. He was forgetting

computer-science

Paper: The Design Philosophy of DARPA Internet Protocols

This paper covers some of the design decisions made in designing the internet protocols. Short but insightful. Here are some of the highlights: The goal of the internet was to connect smaller networks: The top level goal for the DARPA Internet Architecture was to

AI

Don't Close Your Eyes To AGI

In the paper Concrete Problems In AI Safety, there's a great example of how AIs can evade objectives they are asked to accomplish. A cleaner robot is asked to vacuum the dirt it sees in the room. It perversely satisfies this objective by simply

books

What I'm Reading, Feb 2021 Edition

You can find the Jan 2021 edition here. BooksContinued my Agatha Christie winter binge: Spider's Web. Ok 3/5.The Mystery of the Blue Train. Ok 3/5.The ABC Murders. This was great! 5/5.Peril at End House. Ok 3/5.Cards

economics

The Use Of Knowledge In Society

Years ago, as a recent graduate with an engineering degree, I found myself drawn towards technocratic solutions to the problems I saw around me: Too much corruption? Appoint an anti-corruption commission that will focus on finding and prosecuting corrupt officials.Bread costs too much?

Flash Fiction

27 Defenestrations of Sirius Grey [Flash Fiction #2]

defenestrate: verb; to throw (a person or thing) out of a window. On the last few occasions the roof of his red Ford Fiesta had broken his fall, but this time he fell onto the windscreen. He heard it crack as his body dashed

AI

Don't Plan For The Expected Outcome

When planning for the future, we often try to prepare for the most likely outcome. But this isn't always a great idea. Sometimes you want to plan for the best possible or worst possible outcomes. You want to plan for the best possible outcomes

This Blog, 1 Year In

I started posting daily to this blog on the 9th of January 2020. Today marks the one year anniversary of this project. Reflecting on the past year, my main takeway from this project was that writing every day is fun but stressful. Some days

books

What I'm Reading, Jan 2021 Edition

You can find the December 2020 edition here. Continued binge reading Agatha Christie: Crooked House (great, 4/5), The Big Four (decent, 3/5).The Terracotta Dog, Andrea Camilleri: Detective fiction set in Sicily. Plot wasn't compelling and had too many digressions.Down and

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