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append-and-review
Andrej Karpathy writes about his append-and-review note-taking system.
It’s super simple. No need for an expensive app. Just a simple note edited with any text editor or a default note taking app.
I like this approach. I would probably use it a system to add quick entries, and later triage or check off things. The harder we make it on ourselves to add quick notes (through complex systems), the likelier it is to miss adding altogether.
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The 49MB Webpage
Viewability and time-on-page are very important metrics these days. Every hostile UX decision originates from this single fact. The longer you’re trapped on the page, the higher the CPM the publisher can charge. Your frustration is the product. No wonder engineers and designers make every UX decision that optimizes for that. And you, the reader, are forced to interact, wait, click, scroll multiple times because of this optimization. Not only is it a step in the wrong direction, it is adversarial by design. The reader is not respected enough by the software. The publisher is held hostage by incentives from an auction system that not only encourages but also rewards dark patterns.
I cannot imagine myself using the web without an ad-blocker. It’s wild out there.
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Software Bonkers
Timely piece by Craig Mod: Software Bonkers
Some snippets:
Yes: I’m certainly an anomaly. In that I’m a big ’ole dork with a strong, lifelong love of technology and a degree in computer science, who is compulsively opinionated about software. TaxBot2000 would be mostly useless to many of you. It’s all custom to my particular situation, which basically nobody else in the world shares. Software for N of 1. Damn useful to me.
What does this mean for the future of software? I don’t know. (Nobody does.) Maybe we really should be shorting a bunch of SaaS companies. (Don’t worry, a host of new ones will take their place.) I’m canceling my Quicken subscription. It’s only going to get easier to build things like TaxBot2000. We’re still in the dorks-only phase of model-assisted programming, but I can imagine soon-to-arrive interfaces where you just drag and drop components while narrating your desires with your voice, the models able to perform the “brainstorming,” “planning,” and “work” — operations that can take ten minutes or longer today — in mere seconds tomorrow. There will be a fluidity to software in the future. Version numbers will be pointless. We’ll all have our own versions. Claude Code be our partner in production. As you imagine new features, Claude produces them.
In a nutshell, it’s both an exciting and scary time to be a professional in the software industry right now. It’s also a kick in the pants for me to get to building things for fun. In the recent years, my tinkering for fun has fallen precipitously. It’s now do-or-die.
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How Markdown Took Over the World
The trillion-dollar AI industry’s system for controlling their most advanced platforms is a plain text format one guy made up for his blog and then bounced off of a 17-year-old kid before sharing it with the world for free. You’re welcome, Time Magazine’s people of the year, The Architects of AI. Their achievement is every bit as impressive as yours.
Funny thing is that this post is also written in Markdown.
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Slow Lift
Robin Sloan writes about the slow lift:
At my gym they say, you’re not here to do reps. You’re not even here to lift weights. You are here to exhaust your muscles, as efficiently as possible, so your body understands very clearly that it’s time to get stronger.
My strength training has also dropped to a weekly schedule these days. So this gives me a good strategy to try.
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Ferrari x LiveFrom
Not everyday that you see a reimagining of a car dashboard. Good to see that the folks from LoveFrom are working across different domains and bringing new ideas.
Ferrari’s first electric car has an all new dashboard design. It’s familiar but also very different. I like it. My only complaint would be that, today I can use any car from any maker and the controls and locations are basically the same, but I might fumble to find common controls in this car. Say, for example, the turn indicator. All design evolves. This is just the first iteration, and I’m sure they’ll land on a middle ground which would be great. Can’t wait for some of these great ideas to be adopted/stolen by other makers over the next few years.
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Terms Every Runner Should Know
Runna has a document where they have collected all the common terms used in running. Just reading through this list gives you an idea of things you should be doing as a runner.
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Inertia
Inertia is so real. When I wrote here regularly, I kept at it. And then I couldn’t for a few days, I stopped writing altogether. Here’s hoping that this post provides a new inertia - that of writing regularly here.
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In my Bangalore locality, a pharmacy opens next to every new bakery. Coincidence?
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