Charles in Cloud's Space

escape velocity

current thoughts about caffeine

There have been times in my life when I’ve had coffee every day, times when I have been been caffeine-free, and times when I have limited my caffeine intake to 20 mg or so (around half a cup of tea). I am intentionally very wary of my consumption of drugs, so I have paid a fair amount of attention to how my mental & emotional states are affected by this usage. It almost goes without saying that…

on the software job climate

Everyone has been talking about whether AI is automating software developers out of a job. It does seem harder to get a programming job now, but it’s not as simple as “AI is making junior developers obsolete”. Surely it is easier to build software with the help of LLMs, but it still takes time. Software development has gotten faster on many separate occasions. Each boost has seen salaries go up…

easy slightly technical backups

I’ve been meaning to back up my digital life properly for ages. I finally got around to it and I’m really happy with the result. Step one, I ordered an external hard drive and use Apple’s Time Machine software to back up the entire disk. I just plug it in once a month and come back an hour later. Step two, I’ve set up a restic repository running on rsync.net . rsync.net has a special no-support…

july & august links

Not as many links this time, but good ones nonetheless: Frame of Preference, A history of Mac settings, 1984–2004 — lots of different classic MacOS emulators running on a web page. Really fun. You Have to Feel it — metrics don’t capture the feeling — they don’t! The Paradox of India — “develop comfort with unresolved multiplicity” The Future is NOT Self-Hosted — a self-hosting story culminating…

introducing apricot

I made a canvas-based note taking app! It’s open source with the code on github . (Also, I had an older project called “Apricot” as well. I liked the name so I wanted to re-use it :P) It’s very much inspired by Kinopio , but runs locally, with many fewer features, and a new take on a keyboard-driven UI for this kind of tool. The idea is to make the equivalent of “digital paper” for writing. A…

precision

An ideal I’ve latched onto recently is that of precision . When it comes to my work, when it comes to social events, when it comes to meal times, I want to be more precise. What do I mean by precision? Think of a well-rehearsed surgery. Small, intentional movements — each a step closer to the goal. Maybe there is some improvisation needed, but even that can be clear and precise. Start something,…

llm morality

I made a website that shows how different models respond when forced to be very reductive about difficult moral questions. https://llm-morality.deno.dev/ I came up with the questions, trying to find things that might trip them up. There are some cool avenues for exploration on top of this, but I don’t have time to work on them now. Let me know if you see or come up with anything similar!

may & june links

The hidden time bomb in the tax code that's fueling mass tech layoffs — a very interesting explanation of the 2022 tech layoffs Try switching to Kagi — “because Kagi’s results are clearly better” Matt Yglesias on debating — “the best thing to do with live discussion is to have a friendly conversation, and the best way to do debates is a written exchange of ideas” So much blood — 0.3% of US GDP is…

the web

Just some thoughts about the web: The web is such a great platform to ship software to. It is extremely low-cost for users to try out the software: you can install an app just by visiting a webpage. The risk of malware is quite low in this day and age. It runs on all types of machines. It’s got a pretty good scripting language. HTML and CSS form a world class UI interface. Some downsides You can’t…

judging is hard

It’s really hard to say something is better than something else. Take the US and France. Which is better? It’s a nonsense question. You can come up with an answer. You could say the US is better because it has more people and a larger GDP. You could say France is better because it has longer life expectancy and good croissants. You could say any number of things but none of them would be…

garlic & herb butter

You buy it and then everything savory you cook is just tastier forever after. Great on toast, with eggs, mushrooms, steak, anything!

march & april links

Books Abundance , Ezra Klein & Derek Thompson — only a couple chapters in but so far fantastic. Definitely possible it’s one of the most influential books of the decade, seriously hoping it will be. Stolen Focus , Johann Hari — really important subject matter. The first few chapters were very motivating to me but I’ve found it less valuable towards the middle. Links The Lely Astronaut — a robotic…

.localhost domains

I’ve found a way to configure private, custom domains for web-apps I have running on my computer. So instead of having to remember and type “localhost:4333”, I can simply navigate to “appname.localhost”. I love it! Here’s how the system works: Each app is set up as a launchd daemon listening on a unique port. Here’s an example plist. I configure /etc/hosts to redirect traffic to these domains to…

andrew carnegie's anti-imperialism

From his wikipedia article : As the conclusion of the Spanish–American War neared, the United States purchased the Philippines from Spain for $20 million. To counter what he perceived as American imperialism, Carnegie personally offered $20 million to the Philippines so that the Filipino people could purchase their independence from the United States. However, nothing came of the offer. Can you…

february links

February links, posted in March. How I Eat — the joys of eating healthier The Purity Vortex — people want to believe their previous decisions are the right ones My Nutty, Extremist Beliefs — I always appreciate when people lay out their heartfelt convictions. Also the best source on quantum computing research I’ve found. List of animals by number of neurons , Wikipedia — Fascinating to think…

growing pea shoots

I’m growing pea shoots. It’s super fun! I ordered pea shoot seeds (AKA peas) online , soaked them for 24 hours, and then planted them a quarter inch deep in soil. Keep the soil moist and you get shoots in a week! A pea shoot has two components: a root and a shoot. Plants have evolved very specifically to exploit the boundary between the air and the earth. Who would have known this would be so…

pecans and roasted almonds

I have two favorite nuts that I have discovered in the last couple months: pecans, and well-roasted almonds. Pecans are glorious. They are fatty with a slight sweetness, so they go well with any dessert — sprinkled on top of a bowl of yogurt, dipped in honey, or my favorite: squeezed inside a date. (It tastes like a pecan pie, try it out!) I found out that the trees were cultivated by Native…

freeze dried strawberries

I’ve recently discovered freeze dried strawberries. They are awesome! Delightfully sour and crunchy and sweet. Cheaper than normal strawberries, freeze dried at the peak of ripeness, and chock-full of nutrients and flavour. Excellent as a topping for yogurt, puddings, and drinks, or just as a mid-day strawberry kick. These are the ones I have tried so far. You’d be surprised how much 1oz turns out…

jujutsu

It’s the version control system of my dreams. I can rewrite history, safely. I can work with git repos seamlessly. Every change is saved immediately. The interface is — gasp — well-designed? It’s new, but really quite usable. 1000% worth learning. Check it out here !

new old blog

I’m planning on resuming posting here! It’s a weird thing, for me, blogging. The things that I post are only going to be read by a handful of people. (Isn’t it weird that you’re one of them?) So the chances that anything I write here has any big effect on the world seem minuscule. And of course it’s risky — I could say something incredibly stupid, people could judge me! But I think there’s…

just

I’ve really enjoyed the just tool recently. ( link ) I used to make a makefile at the root of each project I work on. This can be nice since it’s language agnostic: I don’t have to worry about distinguishing between cargo or npm, I can just run make test to test. But I’ve kept my eyes open for something better and just has finally hit. My favorite features are: • You can pass arguments to recipes…

scientific control from the islamic golden age

A reference to a controlled study: If you want to study the effect of bloodletting on a condition, divide the patients into two groups, perform bloodletting only on one group, watch both, and compare the results. — Al-Razi sometime between 865 and 925 CE ( source )

medicine instructions

Why are the instructions on medicine hidden away in such a ridiculously tiny font? I get there’s a lot of information to showcase. But 9 times out of 10, people just want to know two things: How much to take and how frequently. Would it really be so hard to include “Adults: take 2 pills every 4-6 hours, Children under 12: take 1 pill every 4-6 hours” in a reasonable size font on the front or top…

ads

Here’s one story of the future. There are 3 companies that matter. Google, Facebook, and ByteDance. Each owns a short-form video platform. They make money by addicting people to their platform, and day-after-day convincing a larger fraction to buy what they advertise. Their profits go into making their platforms ever more effective. Years pass. Over time more people become users and users stay for…

robots

I’ve been trying to think deeply about what the future holds. One thing I’m excited and worried about is robots. It seems like one of the places where recent AI advancements can and are making sweeping changes relatively quickly. Basically: I expect there to be highly-capable, general-purpose robots within the next 5-10 years. This spells a very dramatic change for society. Some questions on my…

usa pan

USA Pan’s pans are the best I’ve ever used. I picked up one by accident in a grocery store years ago and have never looked back. They use a teflon-free silicone coating that is very non-stick and can handle up to 450°F. They wear super well and are very sturdily built. A joy to use.

sonicare toothbrush

I used a hand-me-down electric toothbrush for many years but switched to manual when it stopped working. After doing a bit of searching though, I became convinced that electric toothbrushes give you a much better clean. I’ve been very happy with the Philips Sonicare ProtectiveClean 5100 I landed on. The “pressure sensor” feature comes in handy — it buzzes when you press too hard — but everything…

oxo

I have a very high opinion of the OXO good grips kitchen supply brand. They make well-built, well designed, affordable products. I’ve been using their stainless steel flexible turner for more than a decade very happily, though it does need to be replaced every few years. It’s extremely thin, flexible enough to get under things, yet sturdy enough to lift them. Their kitchen scissors are cheap and…

new blog, old blogs

I’ve made a new blog! It’s been several months since I was last posting. This new format is an attempt to find a sweet spot around the axes of formality, ease-of-input, and structure. I’ve experimented in the past with a traditional list of posts and a running single page of notes. I’ve recently been inspired by Jinny’s blog which treats categories as the main index into posts. Here I’ve listed…