I am currently reading Iliad. Have read it in elementary school bud did not like it back then. Now I quite enjoy it. Books like these have shaped human society and thinking for hundreds or thousands of years. Even before they were written people were reciting them to each other. There is incredible depth in… Read More »Myths vs. AI

“Because the people at these labs made fortunes betting on ideas that once looked insane, the world now takes nearly everything they say on faith. That, I think, is a mistake. It is not a given that AI will solve the problems most people actually care about, including medicine, unless we think about those problems… Read More »Intelligence is not the main bottleneck

Turning weaknesses into strength. “Why did it work for Dubai? A big reason was that it was weak. That weakness was an asset, not a liability: The port was not huge, the Sheikh was not powerful, so if he tried anything, merchants would just pack up and go.” https://unchartedterritories.tomaspueyo.com/p/dubai

Fascinating.

It is easier to ask forgiveness than permission. And the energy is amazing.

Because we don’t care that much mostly.

And it is very dumb.

Is it actually bad that it is like this?

And more like this. “To reduce the dimensionality of the problem, administrators would often track the total tonnage of a few broad classes of steel tubes in the models, rather than using a more detailed classification scheme. While their models successfully balanced the tonnage of tubes for the broad categories (the output in tons of… Read More »Optimizing things in the USSR

The OGs. “The Phoenicians were thus the main vector of civilization and technology spread in the Mediterranean. The Greeks and Romans are simply their technological heirs, learning from them how to navigate and trade.” https://unchartedterritories.tomaspueyo.com/p/why-could-lebanon-be-rich-but-is

In many places Money = Power * Unscrupulousness^2. If you find yourself in a place where it works like this and you lack Unscrupulousness, run. Even if you have Power, Unscrupulousness is exponential and will trump you.

They are bad at most stuff. So what is the secret?

Reading a lot of ACOUP, lot of issues with the video, but the idea of techno-feudalism has its logic.

Understanding people helps you understand software and organizations.

Not a paradox at all.

Just make pople flourish now.

It is not matter of if, but matter of how. “The failures change constantly because of changing technology, work organization, and efforts to eradicate failures.” https://how.complexsystems.fail/

It is a business meme that 10 percent of people do 90 percent of the work (or 20/80). There is some truth to it but if we take it at a face value, it needs to be a fractal. So in a team with 10 people it is 1 person doing 90 percent of work.… Read More »10 Percent of People

We are several years in of LLMs “revolution” in software engineering. Why is software not cheap yet? If the models really make it so easy to produce it, we should see at least some reductions in costs. New competitors of existing software spawning all the time and competing on price.

If LLMs really can do a work of Juniors at least (even if Mediors or Seniors), the new skill actually is leadership. Managing, defining what needs to be done, why, how. What matters and what can be skipped. I do not know if you have met an average employee, but even the good one suck… Read More »LLMs And Leadership Skills

Ouch. “We are 4 years into this ‘revolution’ and the industry has almost nothing to show for it. Software has not improved in quality, got faster, become cheaper to produce (when you exclude the mountain of poor-quality demoware that no reputable organisation would touch with a barge pole), or become more capable. It’s certainly not… Read More »Why I remain a skeptic

Hard to conquer place like that. “After 900, only about two foreign invasions of the Pannonian Basin succeeded. One was none other than the Mongols.” https://unchartedterritories.tomaspueyo.com/p/why-is-hungary-so-small

Find what countries a point on a map belonged to throughout history. https://hanshack.com/point-in-history/#1.78/36.3/8.3