Honesty

I’m on a walk with Vian. We’re strategizing about this new Donkey Kong vs Mario game. Vian: How can we make sure we finish the levels before the timer runs out? Me: What if we go for different keys in parallel? Vian: Oh yeah! I'll go for the silver key and you can go for the gold key? <silver key is usually harder> Me: Why? You don't trust me to get the silver key?...

April 8, 2024 · 1 min

Data Driven Decisions

OKR - Objectives and Key Results Plenty of companies have chosen to use OKRs as their planning tool. Each team publishes a set of OKRs at the beginning of a quarter to signal to the rest of the company what work they intend to do. This is written in the form of an Objective (Eg: Make Builds Faster). Then comes the Key Result which is usually expressed as a measurable metric (eg: Reduce build time by 25%)....

April 2, 2024 · 2 min

Social engineered by my kids

It’s a Sunday afternoon and the kids chose to do 1:1 with each other. They are watching some minecraft tutorial videos on Youtube. Suddenly I hear Sempi running towards me and asks for 5 more minutes. I say sure and get back to my own activity (reviewing PRs on personal projects). Then 5 minutes later he comes back and asks for 3 more minutes to finish the current video. I agreed since it felt like such a small time frame....

March 24, 2024 · 1 min

My Room (essay by a 7yo)

Have you wondered what my room looks like? Do you want to see my room? It’s fuzzy, warm, comfy and plain. My bed is comfy and fuzzy and warm. My walls are plain with one painting. Also it has mario streamers on a different wall than the painting. I hope you liked learning about my room, if not that’s ok. And now you have learned what’s in my room. By V—— Ra—-...

March 23, 2024 · 1 min

LLMs and Freewill

During the late 1900s (1997) I learned about this theoretical concept called artificial intelligence, in high school. I asked my cousin (a CS college grad) about it. He explained that AI is a research field that is trying emulate a human brain but with a computer program. I wondered if that would be a nuisance? For instance, while I’m studying I get distracted and decide to start watching TV (Freewill?). What if the computer did the same?...

January 5, 2024 · 2 min