pm90

Some of the best engineers I worked at got their start in programming at the recurse center... thank you for the good you've done in this world!

The Mughal empire cannot possibly be characterized as theocratic in any meaningful way for most of its history (of course there are exceptions). They weren’t even devout muslims themselves. They married hindu Rajputs and adopted Indian customs, translated the classical hindu texts into Persian etc.

Who are the outsiders? India has been a melting pot for “outsiders” forever; from the Greeks, Huns, Turks and Persians to Africans (Habshis in the Deccan). Once the dynasty started they considered themselves “Hindustani” and took title reflective of that. Persian was the language of bureaucracy not just in the Mughal but also the hindu Maratha courts.

Painting a period that saw the largest number of hindu temples being built, the largest ever expansion in wealth of the country as some kind of despotic enslavement is historical revisionism. Yes certain islamic rulers were more orthodox than others and attempted to suppress other religions; such is the nature of the Monarchic rule. But in the net, the early modern period in India was undoubtedly a golden age for the region.

While European states invested in building up their human capital over the past 200 years, most of the Indian economy was turned into an extractive colonial state. The lack of investment set the country back by a lot. After Independence, it turned its back sharply on Capitalism (rightfully so, having suffered under extreme capitalism for a couple of hundred years). Unfortunately, that didn’t end up working very well either, since it lacked the strong Institutions and State Power required to succeed that way. Politically, Partition of the Country destroyed existing economic structures and trade routes that had existed for hundreds of years, setting back all countries in the subcontinent even further… and then you also had multiple wars.

Honestly its quite amazing that the subcontinent has remained as stable as it is today; it could very easily have descended into the carnage we see today in Myanmar.

The Islamic period in India was one of the most prosperous periods in India’s history, ever. India was responsible for 25% of the worlds GDP during Mughal Emperor Jahangirs reign. The decline of Indian economy is directly a consequence of British Policies.

Bigotry does rot brains huh.

This was a really dumb move by Anthropic. They can clearly afford to pay more and attract the best talent. Why be so stingy? Focus on growth.

Besides the sketches, she has written extensively about Indian rulers at the time (e.g. Ranjit Singh). If you found this interesting, you would love the Empire Podcast... I believe they talk about Emily in the episode on Afghanistan (https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/79-invading-afghanista...); Dalrymple's book on the subject (Return of a King, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Return_of_a_King) is also a masterfully well researched, delightful read.

Normies just don’t understand what all is involved in running and evolving a production system. They think all programmers do is write code. Of course they believe that AI could replace programmers.

My in laws smugly asked me what I would be doing for work since AI would take away all the programming jobs and I said its not gonna happen and they laughed in derision.

Factorio is an amazing piece of work. I wish the devs would open source the codebase and artwork; its just such an amazing piece of engineering that I think the world deserves to own it. They could continue charging for players to play the game and charge some royalty for derivatives… The devs have said that they are tired of working on it, which is fine, but wish their solution would then be to release the code or organize institutions that would continue development outside of wube…

I feel like the game could be taken in many directions. True multiprocess support, parallel execution, multi-level buildings and so much more.

amazing how much valve has advanced consumer readiness of linux.

This is absolutely outrageous. A complete mockery of the criminal justice system and especially of Texas.

If the issue is distracted drivers, I don’t see how heavier trucks is still not the issue. With lighter vehicles you would likely have a higher chance of surviving.

indeed. i hope they sue the Government.

Well that kind of gating actually kept the scams out so I have mixed feelings about it.

The compute deals are going to go the same way as all those data centers that openai said they would need to build.

If he was so good why did Brin have to come out of retirement to steer the ship?

Remember, transformers were invented at Google. They could have been the first to market starving out OAI and Anthropic. That they did not is clearly a huge failure from Pichai. Its astonishing he wasn’t removed for this blunder.

I mean, sure there is a difference but for all intents their beliefs and actions seem to be aligned.

I moved away from Roku to a Google TV (as recommended by wirecutter). Its quite fast and remembers my history better. However it is Google so who knows how long it lasts.

I don’t like the idea of Roku being owned by anyone, let alone Fox.

This was an excellent read. I admire the lengths to which the author has gone to enable this experience and then to document and share it. As a new parent myself, Ive been thinking about this. While I don’t have the same affinity to physical media (IMO its plastic waste), I do want to guard the child from the infinite online slop machine; but I also don’t want them to not use technology that may be useful. My approach is to treat them as a human that can make choices based on tradeoffs… critical to this is perhaps some kind of guided experience with tech so that they are aware of it/dont get bedazzled by something they see their friends/clasmates doing. Im not sure what that will look like but I appreciate other parents are thinking along similar lines.

I do think that what exists now by default is just not acceptable… I and my spouse are privileged to understand how tech works, what it can do to someones mind etc. but the vast majority of people probably don’t… and as such a significant % of children are quite likely having a terrible experience…

can anyone paste a copy for those without meta accounts

> I don’t think companies will do that. Why don’t they just buy local on-premise infrastructure even though it’s cheaper than AWS?

For customer facing, production software, its worth paying a cloud tax to get the reliability guarantee. For tools that are used by engineers for code development, there is no need for such bulletproof guarantees.

Yep, its already quite easy to do so with tools like opencode/openrouter. Ive used some open source models and they seem … ok? Im not doing foundational math, just refactoring code, understanding existing code etc. I don’t see a future where companies blow 11% of employee compensation on a single tool; the hosted AI server + oss models will 99% win out.

> The study also raises broader questions about how early cities functioned. Archaeologists often link urban growth with centralized political power and rising social divisions. Mohenjo-daro points toward another model, one where collective governance and public investment shaped the city’s long-term stability.

Fascinating. I hope that discoveries like this increase the interest of the public in investing in historical research... so much of our theory of the world is shaped by a narrow focus on the history of areas that were easier (relatively) to study.

thank you so much for this recommendation. I've been interested in this topic for a while; while I was looking for something a bit more substantial, I do love it when authors explain history in different ways! My original introduction to history was through the Amar Chitra Katha series; ever since I've always had an interest in learning history.

if they sold that much in the open market it would probably decrease the price

google nest 6e version is pretty good

I believe the authors reading of the situation: its likely the interviewer wasn’t intentionally being cruel; most likely its this startups “unique thing that makes them stand out”; quirky twists that every startup attempts to make them stand out from the rest.

Honestly though, I think it ultimately worked out best for all parties. Its clear that the startup didn’t value someone that could be so vulnerable, and hopefully the author ultimately found a place that did.

My personal perspective is that for super early/founding engineer type roles you absolutely have to bring a greater part of yourself to work; you will be working over the weekends, working late, celebrating together and such… generally that environment is closer to a college club or fraternity than a corporation.

this is a terribly written article that oversimplifies what happened during zirp to the point of absurdity. We have always had just say no engineers-ask anyone with a platform role. They’re still saying no a lot.