Recent content on @dirceu

 About a month ago I quit my job as an engineering manager at Shopify because I wanted to take some time to go deeper on LLMs. “Going deeper on LLMs” is hand-wavy on purpose: I wanted to explore a bunch of different things—developer experience, safety, interpretability, even the fundamentals of neural networks and deep learning. At a meta level, I also wanted to use LLMs 10x more…

 TL;DR: to get 90% of the value here, use ChatGPT Plus + SuperWhisper (and if you code, Cursor Pro) 
 
 Friends keep asking “Which AI tools do you actually pay for? What should I use?”—so here’s a frozen‑in‑time look at my stack in April 2025. 
 I pay for a ton of AI tools. I’m explicitly aiming to be at the edge here and learn about different tools and capabilities…
It’s been a while since I last published something online, so I figured I’d get back to it with a short post. Here’s the top articles, books, and games I experienced in 2024. 
 2024 was a year of contrasts for me. I dove deep into articles and books about personal agency, learning to take decisive action and shape the world around me rather than just reacting to it. This…
I tend to eat when I’m anxious, sad, or overwhelmed. My brain wants those substance hits (usually sugar-related) and, if it’s easy, I’ll eat all day long. 
 If it’s easy; that’s the key. 
 One of the best ways to break or replace bad habits is to make them harder to do, or even to hide them away completely. 
 With overeating, I did the following: 
…
Sometimes I get into a rut. In most cases, simply writing about a task and breaking it down to micro-steps is more than enough to get me going, but there are situations that I just don’t want to do something. 
 First of all, I try to confirm the assumption that I really need to do it. If it’s really needed, one thing that helps me is to try to make it fun and exciting by adding…
In my career, the best way to ensure I’ll get a positive response when I ask someone a favour is to do the work and help them help me. 
 Take this: 
 “Hey Sally, I need to develop a module that does XYZ. How do you think I should approach that?” 
 And compare with this: 
 “Hey Sally, I need to develop a module that does XYZ. I’ve checked a couple of past projects in which you did…
I’ve been working remotely for over ten years now, and one of the most important traits I’ve found in successful, productive people in a remote setting is the ability to unblock themselves and get to the next step. 
 Whenever you’re working on, you’ll always find obstacles and setbacks. When that happens, it might feel more comfortable to say “oh hey, I tried this but I need permission from…
I enjoy planning, but I think plans are mostly useless. 
 Wait, what? 
 We can’t predict the future, and even mild predictions can be wildly wrong if you think too far ahead. The world is changing fast, and one of the best ways to deal with uncertainty is to exchange plans for options and adaptability. So, in my opinion, plans are mostly useless in the face of our dynamic, exciting world.
I like video games. I’ve been playing them since I was five years old and they are a somewhat constant part of my life. In the last year, though, I have started to cut back on gaming more and more - and it’s not about doing more productive things with my time. 
 I enjoy playing games in which you can “farm” or “grind” for experience points. I like the game loop, I like improving my characters,…
I’ve failed at creating habits in the past. I’ve failed a lot , I should say. 
 My most common trigger to fail a dietary habit would be overestimating my mistakes. I’ll explain. 
 A few years ago I decided to try removing sugar from my diet: my goal was to not eat refined sugar at all for 30 days. I wanted to see the health benefits that some people praised so much, and the key there (in…
I used to curse a lot while driving. “Why is this idiot driving so slow? Can’t they move to the other lane?”, I’d complain. 
 On the other hand, there were occasions in which I’d be showing someone around town, and someone would scream or use their horns at me, and I’d think “Wow, what a douche! If you’re in a hurry just drive past me.” 
 I’m ashamed to say it took me quite a while to…
When we want to achieve something, it’s easy to get so focused on the end goal that sometimes we get paralyzed. 
 “I want to lose 30 kg and exercise 3 times per week!” 
 Well, that’s great! What are you doing about it? 
 “Oh, uhhh… next week I’ll sign up for a gym.” 
 And then life happens, and we forget. Or we remember, but we leave…
I love keyboard shortcuts. I enjoy doing things efficiently, and I don’t like using a mouse or trackpad because my wrists hurt, so I end up learning tons of keyboard shortcuts for the software I use on a daily basis. 
 A common shortcut is Cmd+t on a web browser; that opens up a new tab. The problem is that I don’t stop there; right after Cmd+t, I type: 
 
 “h”:…
In the ongoing quest to simplify my life, I have been thinking about what other “hidden to-do lists” I have. I trimmed down books, apps, and even my goals and plans, but I still felt some “open threads” running in background in my head. Then I remembered games! 
 Ever since I broke up with Skyrim I bought more games and even went back to some of the older ones.…
I wrote on Auth0’s blog! Click here to learn more about how Auth0 architects its services to ensure scalability and high availability to handle more than 1.5 billion logins per month. 
 Update 
 The post is spreading out well! It has been featured on Pony Foo Weekly, InfoQ, High Scalability, and SRE Weekly!
I’ve been learning more about minimalism, and the more I apply this concept to different areas of my life, the happier I become. It’s impressive how simplification and minimalism can make things clearer and lightweight. 
 One recent area in which I applied minimalism was my to-do list… or, rather, my to-do listS. 
 I love making lists. I love planning and I have lots of…
I used to spend a lot of time looking at my cellphone refreshing Slack, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, Reddit, Gmail, WhatsApp, Telegram… During conversations, during meetings, when I was watching movies, at any time, I’d be “ just checking something real quick ”. It was boring but also utterly addictive. 
 I have a much healthier relationship with my phone now; in…
For most of my adult life, I read non-fiction books to learn something new, to get advice, or to get better at something I was already doing. I’d focus on reading new books every time, take notes, and (in some cases) try to apply what I had learned in my work and life. 
 Then, a few years ago I read this quote in “Fooled by Randomness” by Nassim Taleb: 
 
 I do not…
I used to love paper books! I fondly recall a copy of The Lord of The Rings that I read and re-read multiple times. I enjoyed collecting books from my favourite authors (such as Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett), and proudly displayed them on my bookshelves. 
 I don’t like to read paper books anymore. They’re usually heavy, awkward to hold, and end up hurting my wrists (already…
I used to keep track of how many (non-fiction) books I’ve read per month or year. I’d casually drop that information sometimes on a conversation or use my GoodReads account to boast about that. 
 What a douche. 🤦♂️ 
 Anyway, I never thought much about this until I saw a tweet or interview from Naval Ravikant saying that “number of books read is a vanity metric.”…
In the past few months I took some time to evaluate: 
 
 What I do or consume on a regular basis (books, music, games, tv shows, Twitter, etc) 
 What really brings me joy 
 
 One thing that has been sitting in the back of my head for a long time (not fully examined) is that the content I consume has the power to change my mood and even my interests for a certain period of time…
(Photo by David Travis on Unsplash.) 
 
 “More money really DOESN’T make you happy; the skill it takes to be happy with more money is the same skill it takes to be happy without it.” 
 
 (I know this is from Amy Hoy but I can’t find the tweet anymore) 
 This quote has been in my mind a lot recently. This is not just money-related; you can easily replace…
It’s hot and humid here in 🇧🇷 - hot and humid enough for me to have trouble sleeping during the day, and get a jolt of energy when it’s colder (night and really early mornings). 
 There’s always a good side though: I’ve seen more sunrises in the past two weeks than I did in the entire year before that! 
 (Photo by Jake Givens on Unsplash.)
(Photo by Andrew Neel on Unsplash.) 
 Journaling - writing to clear my thoughts, feel grateful about the good things, understand better the things I fear, and just to collect important memories - is one of my most helpful habits. 
 Others have written extensively about the benefits of journaling: 
 
 Why Keeping a Daily Journal Could Change Your Life 
 Become a Better Person by…
(Photo by Ugur Akdemir on Unsplash.) 
 I started playing Skyrim on the PlayStation 3, many years ago. I absolutely loved it. It was the first really immersive electronic RPG I’ve ever played, far beyond anything else: I could create many different characters, explore the world, and even roleplay in ways I could only do with pen & paper RPGs before. 
 My PS3 was full of unplayed…
(Photo by chuttersnap on Unsplash.) 
 Recently I’ve been traveling quite a bit to visit family members; mostly these are short distances, meaning 3-6 hours by bus (each way). I used to travel a lot by bus when I was a kid - up to 16-hour trips to visit my father in São Paulo - but spent most of my adult life traveling by plane. 
 I really missed this. I love it!
(Photo by Toa Heftiba on Unsplash.) 
 I’m a team lead and production engineer at Auth0; as such, a large part of my working hours are spent on reactive work, mostly dealing with incidents or unblocking someone from my team. Since we have people from several different timezones on the team and incidents can happen at any time, I have a tendency to work many more hours than what’s…
I’ve been going through some rough patches in my life recently, so I’ve been trying out many different things to improve my mood and change how I tackle my days. 
 A recent favorite has been the “two good things” exercise. It’s very simple: every night my girlfriend and I talk about two good things that happened during the day, and why they were good things. As is…
More than a little bit inspired by Tim Ferriss’ 5-Bullet Friday newsletter, I’ll post here five interesting things I’ve found (or revisited) in the past week. 
 
 Nomad List 3.0 is a great resource to find a good place to travel to and work or play. Following the development and launch was really interesting and a huge inspiration. 
 This list of Battery Life Hacks…
Great blog post by The Happy Philosopher: 
 
 I’ve noticed that certain people seem especially susceptible, those that are perfectionist, those who like to be in control and take ownership, and those that are most responsive to criticism or praise. (…) Over the course of my own professional life, with the usual trappings of a successful career arc in medicine, the claws of burnout…

 Every day is a blank slate for what I need to do. If something I was supposed to get done yesterday didn’t get done yesterday, it’s not automatically on my mind for today. Today’s mind is a clear mind, not yesterday’s remnants. 
 
 Jason Fried

 “The higher you want to climb, the lighter you have to travel.” 
 
 Krishnamurti
I’m getting better at detecting my mood through mindfulness; I’m still noticing it on a small subset of cases, but it’s improving! The trick is simple, but hard to execute: I just stop and think “ what am I feeling right now? ” and then asking “ why? ” until I get to the root cause. 
 Sometimes, noticing is enough for things to improve. 
 Other…

 “If you’re living in a world of supposed-to’s, then you’re living in hell.” 
 
 Neil Strauss

 “Good-tier people go after answers, great-tier people go after questions.” 
 
 @MecaYilmazoglu
I read a lot. I have had periods in my life in which I read hundreds of non-fiction books per year, writing notes about them, trying to apply them, and trying to absorb them. Sometimes I go back through my notes of advice for life, work, and relationships and I inevitably think “damn, that could have helped me just yesterday with X and last week with Y! If only I could keep this in…

 “If I had an hour to save the world, I would spend 59 minutes defining the problem & one minute finding the solution.” 
 
 Albert Einstein

 “John Maynard Keynes predicted that in the future we’d only work 15 hours a week because he didn’t anticipate that we’d all be mentally ill.” 
 
 Ron Charles

 “‘Oh, I don’t know if I’m doing it right. These other guys seem to know.’ No, they don’t know. None of them know. That’s the beauty of it. You don’t have to know. You just have to keep moving forward.” 
 
 Robert Rodriguez

 “Your life is a firefly that blinks once in a night. You’re here for such a brief period of time. If you fully acknowledge the futility of what you’re doing, then I think it can bring great happiness and peace because you realize that this is a game. But it’s a fun game..” 
 
 Naval Ravikant
It’s being increasingly hard to keep up with my daily creative output habit. When I started this I was on vacation and had 6-12 extra hours per day to do anything I wanted; I could do all those activities in a much more relaxed rhythm and concentrate more on doing and less on being efficient at it. 
 Now, when I finish work I’m usually drained and don’t want to do much…

 “You want your sense of self muted so you can be in the present at all times – not dwelling in the past or the future, wishing for things as you think they should be/were; but experiencing the present as it is.” 
 
 Naval Ravikant

 “When you limit consumption, you start to hear the sound of your own voice.” 
 
 Srinivas Rao
Recently I started making a conscious effort to create something new every day. Every day, I: 
 
 Write and publish a blog post 
 Take a new picture and post to Instagram 
 Write and publish something on Twitter 
 Write on my private journal 
 Create a track and post to SoundCloud 
 Work on different coding projects 
 
 I started these on different days and…
I have considered for a long time having a tattoo in one of my arms with a reminder: I wanted something that would bring me back to the present. I spend a lot of time thinking about the past, worrying about the future, or just daydreaming… and the more I learn about life, the more certain I am that being present is key. 
 With that in mind, today I went to the Black Ink Tattoo studio…
I’ve been playing around with music composition to learn how to create chiptunes. I’m very very bad at it, but it’s a lot of fun. This is what I made today: 

Some friends asked me for podcast recommendations, so this is a quick list of what I currently have on Overcast. Probably half of it is in Brazilian Portuguese. 
 Games 
 
 99Vidas 
 The Best Games Period 
 BigSushi.fm 
 Game Dev Loadout 
 Game Dev Unchained 
 GameDev Breakdown 
 Jogabilidade 
 Nice Games Club 
 Overkill 
 pico chat 
 Cidade…
I created a small web app to show a random quote from a list I recorded over the years from books, talks, tweets, posts, podcasts, and more. I have been using it as my browsers’ default page, and it has been helpful in changing my mood and making me take a step back to focus. 
 You can check it out here. Hope you enjoy it!