Another place for thought infusion
Physical systems naturally tend toward stable equilibrium states, generally moving toward lower free energy or greater entropy under the relevant constraints. Equations Einstein’s special relativity: describes how measurements of space and time depend on an observer’s relative motion, while the laws of physics and the speed of light remain the same for all inertial observers; it also relates mass…
A permanent magnet is, in large part, a material whose electron magnetic moments have become ordered. Electrons have both spin and orbital motion. Both can give an atom a magnetic moment. A quantum effect called exchange makes nearby moments prefer a shared order in some materials. The material then splits into domains. A magnet forms when enough of those domains point the same way. That is the…
The fastest high-recall index in this benchmark answered a query in 1.15 ms at 0.964 recall@10. A 13.4 MiB TurboVec index reached exact recall@10 after reranking 100 candidates with FP16 embeddings. That took 2.53 ms at the median on 100,000 vectors. I benchmarked five implementations of approximate nearest neighbor search against 100,000 256-dimensional, unit-normalized paper embeddings from…
A complex number is a 2D vector (point), which can be multiplied with another point in the plane. That product turns multiplication into rotation and scaling. Introduction Complex numbers extend the real numbers with the imaginary unit i, defined as the square root of -1: i = √-1, so i 2 = -1. Every complex number can be written as a + bi, where a and b are real numbers. The real part a and…
The gradient, Hessian, and Jacobian are not three unrelated equations. They describe three layers of local change. Gradient: Which way should I move to increase one value fastest? Hessian: How does the gradient change as I move? Jacobian: If I change the inputs a little, how do all the outputs change? Once you start with these questions, the notation has a job. It stops looking like a wall of…
The universe expands, and that expansion appears to accelerate. We have good evidence for both claims. We do not know why the second one is true. The usual answer is dark energy . It is the name given to whatever drives the acceleration. In the standard account, it fills empty space and makes up about 70 percent of the energy in the universe. Yet no experiment has identified what it is. A new…
On 9 July 2026, the European Parliament let Chat Control 1.0 pass its second reading (enabling mass chat message surveillance legally in the EU). The vote showed a serious flaw in the process. In all, 314 members voted to reject the Council's text. Only 276 voted against rejection. Yet rejection needed an absolute majority of 360 members, so the motion failed. More members voted to reject the text…
Go is a statically typed, compiled programming language with built-in garbage collection , designed at Google for simple, reliable, and efficient software. It often compiles to a single, easy-to-deploy binary and builds quickly, which makes it a natural fit for command line tools and cloud infrastructure. Docker , Kubernetes , and Terraform are all written in Go. Lisette is a nice, little language…
The scary part of Meditations On Moloch is not that evil people exist. The scary part is that evil outcomes can happen without evil people. Scott Alexander uses Moloch as a name for bad incentive systems. Not one villain. Not one conspiracy. Not one broken law. A system where each person follows the local pressure in front of them, and the total result is something almost no one individually…
Historians are never nowhere. That is the sharp point in this interview with Jörg Baberowski : everyone looks at the world from somewhere, even scientists. History Is Written From Somewhere No one observes the world from a neutral point above it. Not historians, not journalists, not scientists. Everyone thinks, writes, and judges from a position. That does not make knowledge arbitrary. It makes…
How to run your local LLM well: fast, reliable and with good quality. Key metrics: Prefill speed: prompt/input tokens per second Decode speed: generated tokens per second Time to first token (latency) Memory usage at target context length Quality at chosen model/quant/context settings Concurrency, if serving multiple users Software (Inference) Use a local LLM chat app for easy setup and usage.…
SEO (search engine optimization) is a shitshow of wrong incentives: not good work / content / reputation counts but who can allocate most resources (money and time) to play the SEO game well (place backlinks and publish content). A better system would be a peer to peer based trust network but until then lets play the SEO hunger games using the best available tools and strategy. The winning…
Generative AI is a powerful tool. But the fundamental architecture of large language models imposes structural limits: no autonomy, no taste, no self-awareness. These are not gaps that more compute will close. That gap shapes where the real money should go. AI Infrastructure The safest investment assuming centralized AI wins is energy. Giant data centers eat enormous amounts of power. Microsoft…
The gut microbiome is a metabolic organ with no fixed genome. It includes bacteria, archaea , viruses, and fungi. The densest community lives in the colon. It expands digestion, trains immune tolerance , blocks pathogens, transforms drugs, and produces molecules your own cells respond to. The key question is not "which bacteria do I have?" but "what biochemical work can this community do?" Single…
An open-source coding agent rivaling claude code and openai codex. Built to be hackable: here is a great intro from the creator. Vanilla Pi is bare bones and should be configured via extensions - or start with a preconfigured version like oh-my-pi (though oh-my-pi can feel bloated compared to vanilla Pi with its long system prompt, many features and tools). Another intersting open-source coding…
The Russia-Ukraine war in numbers, as of April 2026 - now past its fourth year. Territory and casualty data from CSIS , Russia Matters , and Al Jazeera . Equipment numbers are photo/video-confirmed minimums from Oryx . Real losses are higher. Frontline tracking via DeepState Map . Territorial Control Russia holds about 120,000 sq km of Ukraine - roughly 20% of the country (including Crimea, taken…
You've been catching colds your whole life. But how much do you really know about what's happening inside you — and what you can actually do about it? What a cold actually is A "cold" isn't a single illness — it's a loose term for upper respiratory infections caused by over 200 different viruses. Rhinoviruses are responsible for roughly half of them. The virus doesn't make you feel awful; your…
mRNA vaccines work by mimicking a trick viruses have used for billions of years: injecting genetic instructions (mRNA) into your cells to make them produce a specific target protein. What is mRNA? Messenger RNA (mRNA) is a short-lived molecule that carries a protein blueprint copied from DNA. Cells read mRNA through ribosomes, their protein-making machinery, and build the protein the mRNA…
Credible UFO / UAP reports date back to WWII, when Allied pilots over both the Pacific and European theaters encountered unexplained aerial objects they called "Foo Fighters." The modern era began in June 1947 with Kenneth Arnold's sighting near Mount Rainier — prompting the U.S. Army Air Force to conclude the phenomenon was real and launch its first official investigation, Project Sign. The…
A sophisticated 2024 supply-chain attack nearly gave an unknown hacker (group) access to millions of internet servers. The Setup Linux runs the world: servers, supercomputers, Android, nuclear submarines. Its security model relies on open source code being widely scrutinized ("Linus's Law"). But the ecosystem depends on thousands of tiny projects, often maintained by a single unpaid volunteer. The…
A Sydney tech entrepreneur, Paul Conyngham , had a rescue dog, Rosie, with advanced mast cell cancer and months to live after standard treatment. He paid for Rosie's tumor sequencing through the University of New South Wales (UNSW) and then used ChatGPT and AlphaFold to help analyze mutations and think through possible targets and treatment options. Conyngham is an experienced machine-learning…
Living in a metropol (big city) is a paradoxical thing: so many humans packed into a tight place but many feel lonely and disconnected - in contrast with living in a small community where social bonds are much stronger. Naturalize the city landscape - the whole city should look and feel like a beautiful garden park. Bring back beautiful architecture that integrates art works of local craftmen. Use…
Major AI (LLM) companies like Anthropic and OpenAI pride themselves by investing into AI safety research (which they mainly define as AI alignment aka prevent the agent from going rogue) - but they keep a blind eye on safely deploying AI for society as whole, by not investing heavily into private LLM inference, which would make LLMs private and secure (in the interest of the user) and would…
My blueprint for the optimal coding agent (team). Keeping LLMs in the smart zone using short and relevant context. Usage patterns: quick (small) edit skip to instructor agent major edit full coding agent orchestra new project deep research for best tech stack use proven project code template / snippets Every code repo should have a SPEC.md file which details in natural language the purpose and…
Exciting times lay ahead. Some predictiions and perspectives of mine. Certain Developments AI will continue to reshape how we work, increasing leverage of the (creative) individual. computer goes faster -> LLM become cheaper and faster everyone will have LLM powered personal agent -> value lies in providing connectors to services (websites) for the agents to use ( WebMCP ) Software: will be solved…
We need decentral software to live in peace and freedom. Decentral systems are immune to censorship, harder to manipulate by single actors and work offline. Projects like Bitcoin and IPFS are first steps into a better future. We need cryptographic user identities to verify it is us and we want to own our data (no more locking up data in foreign servers). Existing Apps Jami is a peer-to-peer…
RAG works by augmenting the context window of an LLM with text relevant to the user's query to provide a useful response (reduce hallucinations). Thus if one wants to master RAG, one has to master search . RAG Approaches Simple RAG: basic keyword search / semantic search Complex RAG: advanced chunking (e.g. late-interaction / enrich with LLM -> infer questions a chunk can answer or summarize a…
Humanity is in need of a fun to use, secure, privacy-respecting and decentral messenger. Protocol: The client owns the identity and message history. It uses end-to-end encryption for content and relationship metadata, direct peer-to-peer transport when possible, and optional relays or federation when direct delivery fails. User account via username (no phone number needed) Decentralized P2P…
My choice: CachyOS ( Arch Linux ) with GNOME DE CachyOS is tweaked for performance, has a GUI installer + easy disk encryption setup GNOME looks shiny and can easily be stripped down to avoid bloat Awesome Software File Manager: Thunar : very lightweight 50MB RAM Dolphin : best feature set supports showing dir size bytes supports sftp (ssh remote access) PCManFM Code Editor: Zed : fast +…
Ein paar Dinge die in der BRD komplett falsch laufen aber als normal erachtet werden. "Absolute Geldstrafen für Ordnungswidrigkeiten und Straftaten" - sind absolut ungerecht. Reiche Menschen werden nicht abgeschreckt und arme Menschen unverhältnismäßig bestraft. Nur relative Geldstrafen die sich prozentual am Einkommen des zu Bestrafenen errechnen, haben für alle Einkommensschichten den gleichen…
IPFS is a content based decentralized file system powered by Merkle DAG (similar to git) - allowing for local networking between nodes (separate from the internet). This technology is revolutionary and the key to a digital future with more freedom and privacy. The IPFS protocol addresses content by what it is (a cryptographic hash - named CID), not where it is (like http), so the same content can…
The science of genes and their mutations in organisms. DNA (DeoxyriboNucleic Acid) is the spiral molecular structure (double helix) made of 4 nucleotide bases (adenine, thymine, guanine, cytosine). These pair up symmetrically: A<->T, G<->C, forming a base 4 information system that encodes the instructions for living organisms to grow. Structure of Genes Genes are specific segments of DNA that…
Medical nanorobots are tiny vehicles controlled by external electromagnetic fields, enabling them to move through patients veins. The vision is precise delivery of drugs to localized body parts like tumors to minimize side-effects of treatments like chemotherapy. Control Mechanism External magnetic fields manipulate nanorobots containing magnetic materials. Rotating fields create swimming motions,…
Microplastics are tiny plastic particles present in food, water, air and dust. Research links higher exposure to inflammation, fertility problems and cardiovascular issues. Complete avoidance is impossible, but intake can be reduced. Mass usage of plastics in the economy is a huge mistake (as most organisms lack metabolism to deal with it) and must be stopped. Water Sources Bottled water contains…
Reference Frames In his book, Jeff Hawkins identifies so called cortical columns (unit of neurons size of a grain of rice) as the functional building block of the brain. Further he proposes reference frames (grids / maps) as key concept unifying all biological neural processing for robust / invariant sequence prediction (allowing sequence prediction in changing environments by using relative…
Neo Cortex forms a uniform structure: 6 layers of cortical columns composed mostly of pyramidal neurons. Information flows bidirectionally: down the hierarchy to relate to known patterns and up the hierarchy to predict unknown / complete partial patterns. Brain does not compute mathematical equations to navigate the world but creates and recalls memories. Catching a flying ball involves (muscle…
A hyper-prime is a prime number p where all prime factors of p-1 and all exponents in the prime factorization of p-1 are themselves hyper-primes. Definition For a prime number p: find prime factorization PF(p-1): PF(p-1) = q₁^e₁ × q₂^e₂ × ... × qₖ^eₖ The prime p is hyper-prime if and only if: Each prime factor qᵢ is hyper-prime Each exponent eᵢ is hyper-prime By definition, 0 and 1 are…
Rust is a statically and strongly typed systems programming language that enforces memory safety (without a garbage collector) through its ownership and borrowing model, while still being efficient in the ballpark of C or C++. In safe Rust, the compiler prevents entire classes of bugs common in C or C++, such as use-after-free and most data races. It also forces explicit handling of optional…
Elixir is Erlang with syntactic sugar (transpiling to Erlang code). Biggest differences to Erlang: Variables are rebindable & strings are UTF-8 encoded by default. Parallel function process map: defmodule Utils do def pmap(collection, func) do collection |> Enum.map(fn item -> Task.async(fn -> func.(item) end) end) |> Enum.map(fn task -> Task.await(task) end) end end Fibonacci base, memoized and…
Digital sureveillance capitalism shapes how we interact with technology, the world and even how we understand its role in society. These mechanisms tend to hide the true power relations while presenting inhumane, privacy violating technological developments as neutral, natural progress. Core Mechanisms Solutionism Tech firms recast hard social problems as simple tech tasks. Debate over law and…
How to secure a VPS running in production (important service + customer data) VPS Providers (EU) hetzner : Germany ovhcloud : France scaleway : France Checklist Use ONLY public key based AND disable password based auth (for SSH) + use non-default port Disable root account, disable root login via ssh -> only use user accounts with sudo Setup firewall - lockdown all unused ports, keep: 22 (SSH), 80…
Bitcoin, Ethereum and co (crypto-coins) have arrived in the mainstream - everybody and their mother has heard about it, but what does it all mean? Snowball or the Future of Money It is a snowball system (primary use is speculating / zero sum: every profit made equals someone else losing): everybody holding now will eventually cash out (unless bitcoin becomes a global currency) "Long-term holders…
Postgres is a versatile, powerful open-source relational DBMS - which means it is capable of lots of things: spanning from advanced search capabilities for text, vector search and geographic data to optimizations like partitioning and sharding. Understanding these optimization techniques can transform a moderately performing database into a high-performance system handling millions of queries per…
There is a flood of vector databases - which ones are actually useful? IMO extending a relational DBMS with ACID compliance and existing datasets, is for most use cases the ideal choice. Using a dedicated vector DB like ( Chroma , Vespa , Turbopuffer , LanceDB , Milvus etc.) only makes sense for narrow use cases where no complicated meta-data filters are needed (e.g. just simple RAG) and data…
DROP is a location based social network (mobile app). It works by dropping posts (text or image) at your current location - other users can only collect a drop if they are within a radius of 50m. The idea is to promote engagement with your local community. Now available in the App Store and soon also in the Play Store #launch
Digital design is concerned with the creation and optimization of user interfaces and experiences across digital platforms (apps, web sites, etc.). At its foundation, effective digital design balances aesthetic appeal with functional usability, ensuring that users can accomplish their goals efficiently while enjoying the interaction. Good design is invisible to the untrained eye because it just…
React is a very popular front-end framework allowing to modularize web UI elements in components (even allowing to create mobile apps using React Native / Expo ). Components render UI elements conditioned on state variables. Components are made of other components which can be passed state using so called props. Consider Svelte , SolidJS or MarkoJS over React for simpler and more performant (using…
TypeScript is a superset of JavaScript that brings static typing, preventing many bugs found in vanilla JS code bases. TypeScript can both be used in the frontend as well in the backend (server) using NodeJS. JavaScript is a neccessary evil (that has many strange quirks), which TypeScript alleviates some of at least. Basics Use pnpm instead of npm for a faster and securer package manager. Use…
Erlang is a powerful and elegant functional programming language developed in Sweden at Ericsson during the 1980s that excels at distributed, concurrent and fault-tolerant systems. Erlang processes are lightweight and share no memory (mutable state) and thus can scale easily across CPU cores and distributed machines. Processes communicate by sending messages to one another. Each process has a…
The artificial intelligence industry faces a growing energy crisis. Training large language models consumes massive amounts of power, while deploying AI at the edge demands efficiency that traditional digital processors struggle to deliver. This challenge has created interest in analog computing: which performs calculations using continuous physical quantities rather than discrete digital values.…