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avemuri

152 karma · joined February 22, 2013

@anandvemuri

anandnvemuri at gmail.com

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avemuri··on Why skilled workers come to Germany and then leave again
I think this is the type of answer that is frustrating to non-Germans. Hey don't look at that person who got promoted ahead of you despite you being more qualified. Look here instead at all these other people who didn't get promoted.
avemuri··on Can Europe train a frontier AI model on the compute it owns?
Please explain. Thanks isn't as self evident as your statement assumes.
avemuri··on For $700 a Month, Sleeping Pods Make SF More Affordable
I'm not sure about the cost. A lot of Mumbai's middle class housing is 30-40 floor towers. These are flats that sell for well under 200k, most under 100k. Labor cost is lower in India, but most material and equipment costs are not.
avemuri··on Hetzner Prices increase 30-40%
Can't agree more. We can also predict with some confidence that in a year or two, supply would have adjusted and ram will be cheaper in the long run. We benefit from the expanded demand even if the fact that it first lands as a shock is disruptive to prices.
avemuri··on Ask HN: What would you recommend a vibe coder learn about how all this works?
The course on deeplearning.ai are a good starting point. Anthropic and OpenAI both have decent stuff on there, plus their own docs have examples.
avemuri··on Young adults report lower life satisfaction in Sweden
Is there any period in history when the young people reported being as happy or happier than the older cohort?
avemuri··on EU–INC – A new pan-European legal entity
I've asked before - I am not clear what the massive boost is other than saving a few days or weeks at the beginning. I believe all taxation, labor compliance and other such regulation is still the same as the status quo. The one time ease of setup doesn't seem to be worth the ongoing hassle of dealing with the same crap, just with the added friction of a new and unfamiliar entity structure. What am I missing?
avemuri··on Why do Americans hate A.I.?
Asia doesn't hate AI.

It may be true that AI is unpopular in the west more generally though, not just America.

avemuri··on Anthropic's Prompt Engineering Tutorial (2024)
Depends on the failure mode and application. But a first approximation is the same way you would for a human output. E.g. process engineering for a support chatbot has many of the same principles as process engineering for a human staffed call center.
avemuri··on Anthropic's Prompt Engineering Tutorial (2024)
Engineers work with non-deterministic systems all the time. Getting them to work predictably within a known tolerance window and/or with a quantified and acceptable failure rate is absolutely engineering.
avemuri··on Ask HN: Anyone else using open-source platforms to avoid SaaS lock-in?
Take a look at Frappe/openerp
avemuri··on My AI skeptic friends are all nuts
No I'm talking about my own skills. How I onboard, structure 1on1s, run meetings, create and reuse certain processes, manage documentation (a form of org memory), check in on status, devise metrics and other indicators of system health. All of these compound and provide leverage even if the person leaves and a new one enters.the 30th person I onboarded and managed was orders of magnitude easier (for both of us) than the first.

With LLMs the better I get at the scaffolding and prompting, the less it feels like catherding (so far at least). Hence the comparison.

avemuri··on My AI skeptic friends are all nuts
I agree with your points but I'm also reminded of one my bigger learnings as a manager - the stuff I'm best at is the hardest, but most important, to delegate.

Sure it was easier to do it myself. But putting in the time to train, give context, develop guardrails, learn how to monitor etc ultimately taught me the skills needed to delegate effectively and multiply the teams output massively as we added people.

It's early days but I'm getting the same feeling with LLMs. It's as exhausting as training an overconfident but talented intern, but if you can work through it and somehow get it to produce something as good as you would do yourself, it's a massive multiplier.

avemuri··on Spaced repetition systems have gotten better
Motivation is some combination of real and perceived effort Vs expected reward. Shorter isn't always better. For eg. Counting every single calorie is the shorter way to lose weight, but for most people, eating approximately healthy is more optimal from an effort /motivation poi t of view.
avemuri··on Notes on rolling out Cursor and Claude Code
It really isn't. Not any more than growing your own herbs vs buying them at the market is.
avemuri··on A deliberate practice app for guitar players who want to level up
The patterns are different on different string sets. You don't need to learn DEF with the same pattern again, but you do need to learn all the ways of playing CDE
avemuri··on SaaS Plateaus
Lots of this rings true. Especially the "Solutions to plateaus are straightforward but not easy." part. So much of this psychological - both in being objective with your failings and in having to live with them every day until you fix them.

P.S. Nice of him to not mention the "built an unscalable org and burnt myself out" plateau :)

avemuri··on How I Stay Motivated Working on My Solo SaaS (When It Feels Like Nobody Cares)
Some thoughts (I used to run a chain of 20+ coworking spaces)

* Remote individual workers are the least attractive customer for the typical coworking space (that isn't a cafe). Small and unpredictable revenue, plus higher support per head, since the account is only one head.

* Remote workers also aren't a great fit for you. Very few like to hop around. Their reasons are typically avoiding loneliness, finding a reliable place to focus etc. And so would only use your platform until they find a space they like.

* SMBs are the sweet spot. Coworking is cheaper AND less overhead for them. In many countries they don't get access to grade A space even if they're willing to pay. For the coworking space, it's only slightly more work than a solo account and significantly more recurring and reliable revenue. You may be better off targeting small teams.

* One particular pain point is expiring inventory - remote workers actually fit this well since they're willing to go for a floating desk. Most spaces would be willing to offer discounts on this. Kind of like last minute flight or hotel deals.

* Another related product is meeting and conference room bookings. Also expires and has a market in WFH teams.

* The last two also have a better business model fit since they are intermittent and people may be more inclined to shop around, allowing you to take a cut of every transaction. For any kind of recurring contract, you're probably limited to taking a one time lead gen or brokerage fee since you have no grounds to maintain a relationship with the customer after the initial match.

avemuri··on Boom XB-1 First Supersonic Flight [video]
I think Mark Andreeson popularized it, crediting Andy Rachleff

https://x.com/StartupArchive_/status/1850205733440413970

avemuri··on Ask HN: Please recommend university open courses for software design?
It's not great for blindly generating code to use, but it's great for asking for help -debugging, planning etc. I ask it a lot of 'dumb' questions and I feel like I've learnt a lot more than I have in the past. It's given me code that doesn't work every now and then, but I'm yet to find an instance of it explaining a concept wrong.
avemuri··on Bloomsday: The library’s one-of-a-kind copy of “Ulysses”
I'm curious. How do you prompt it?
avemuri··on Ask HN: What are the most reliable tech sites in east and south Asia?
It's quite far from Stratechery. The Ken is more reportage, investigative at times, but clickbaity at other times.
avemuri··on Ask HN: What books helped you in your entrepreneurship journey?
High output management
avemuri··on What I Learned Reading 1k Investor Reports
A public company is a little different
avemuri··on Only 50% of iPhone Casings Made in India Meet Apple's Quality Standards
Hard to tell from the article how widespread the issue is. They've been making the SE in India for 5 years so presumably some learning has happened. Is the issue on the new model? This run of parts?
avemuri··on India's Tata Group to open 100 exclusive Apple stores
Tata's reputation in retail is stellar. Starbucks India is a JV with them too and is wildly successful.
avemuri··on Ask HN: Which jobs will survive and which will disappear in 50 years?
There are two opposing forces that determine the net change

- Greater productivity. A single carriage driver can now drive a bus, so fewer carriages are needed

- Lower costs/ higher demand. Everyone who walked can now afford the bus, so the number of drivers goes up even if fewer drivers are needed per traveler.

avemuri··on Why is every layoff 10-15%?
I doubt they feel safe, and twitter is a unique case.

In general the cut once advice is not to make people less skittish immediately, it's to avoid the long term mistrust that comes from cutting repeatedly. When you do that, the message is you are either incompetent or you hid information from them the first time. A bigger one time cut is more shocking, but things settle down after and you have an opportunity to start building trust back up and put the company on an upward trajectory people will want to stay on.

avemuri··on Ask HN: How much info should founders share with early stage employees?
This is good advice for when you're larger, but I'd still share it. At 7 people, they should be involved. If anything it's an opportunity to earn their trust and show them you're in this together.
avemuri··on Ask HN: Which mathematics books taught you the most in your career?
Nonlinear Dynamics and Chaos by Strogatz
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