abhaynayar

It's funny because the post is so baseless and emotions-driven, however these kind of common-denominator (bike-shedded) articles (by definition) touch humans more deeply and evoke more emotional responses. But again one can't be against "shallow" stuff because in the end everything is about how it makes you feel.

There are em-dashes, but the writing feels nice and unlike the default ChatGPT style, so even if AI, (which it might not be, cause people do use em-dashes), I don't mind.

> students rob themselves of the opportunity to learn, so they can… I dunno, hit the vape and watch Clavicular get framemogged

Hahah, this guy Gen-Zs.

Damn, I just saw that update yesterday on my phone and did not update it for no reason. Turned off auto-update right now until I figure out what to do.

maybe not the recruiter but the hiring manager or prospective colleagues who'll interview you later?

not the number of stars, but I like looking what people have done online ie GitHub/blog. I feel like it is a nice thing to talk about.

I know it's an unpopular opinion these days cause everyone wants work life balance and not work beyond the office but it's always nice to see projects you've worked on it does show some interest. also while one can fake GitHub activity it's hard to fake well thought out and cared for projects.

it's easier to fake metrics from your previous jobs like I saved X amount of money for the company or had Y efficiency gains.

Gemini voice recognition is trash compared to chatgpt and that is a deal breaker for me. I wonder how many ppl do OCR versus use voice.

And how has chatgpt lost when ure not comparing the chatgpt that just came out to the Gemini that just came out? Gemini is just annoying to use.

and Google just benchmaxxed I didn't see any significant difference (paying for both) and the same benchmaxxing probably happening for chatgpt now as well, so in terms of core capabilities I feel stuff has plateaued. more bout overall experience now where Gemini suxx.

I really don't get how "search integration" is a "strength"?? can you give any examples of places where you searched for current info and chatgpt was worse? even so I really don't get how it's a moat enough to say chatgpt has lost. would've understood if you said something like tpu versus GPU moat.

I have some qualm with "agency is important" type thinking because when I was in a good situation in life with "moderate" difficulty which I overcame I called it me being agentic. However, when I was in situations in life which were bad and totally out of my control and to the best of my ability I couldn't come out of them, I realized it's pretty much all just luck and circumstance.

Just because you're not emotionally ready to do something doesn't mean you're not trying enough. I feel like we tend to downplay the role of luck in emotions and mind. Like "of course you could be more confident, agentic, assertive, etc. YOU are not doing enough of that". But if you physiologically or materialistically go through a bad patch with respect to health or resources people "get it". If you are not physically gifted to play a certain sport people "get it". But if you're not mentally gifted to be "agentic" it's YOUR responsibility. Don't know why this expectation was set. Same way how mental health has been a stigma and still somewhat is, but if you have a physiological disease it's OK, not your fault.

We all just write advice looking backwards. People who are lucky enough to have the perfect combination of circumstance and mindset to think that agency is all you need write that way.

> Well written by GPT?

My first thought while reading the article was relief that I'm finally reading something not written by ChatGPT. As someone who is super tired of reading AI slop these days, this was not it. (IMHO). And even if it was, it was definitely not annoying to me like the default setting of ChatGPT i.e. the "It's just not X. It's XXX!" format. I liked the cadence, the only thing I did not like was the verbosity. Ultimately there is going to be a pattern or a so called "voice" even in human writing. So as long as it's got good taste, whatever.

I'd heard "happiness is reality minus expectations" before but never thought much of it. I had high expectations of myself in certain areas of life and worked hard towards them and I thought that they were realistic, so despite not having achieved them I still had hope.

And now over time reality has caught up to me and I've become sadder because I've realized that my expectations were indeed higher than my circumstances. I was just a naive oblivious idiot and life has now shown me that. It's sad but I now have just let go. I still am working towards stuff just playing to my strengths and inclinations instead of my wants.

How many football fields is that though?

The most appalling thing in this whole post is that people are still using Threads (TM).

Everything's luck, or lack thereof.

Free will does not exist, but I suppose it's handy for society at large to pretend that it does.

I don't know why, but I let myself believe for so long that I was the captain of my ship. Now that I embody the fact that everything's out of my control, I have become so much more relaxed and content with life. I do not compare myself with people that are better (or worse) off than me. They lucked into their lives as well.

I am very grateful for everything I have been given. Even the fact that I exist and get to experience this beautiful thing called consciousness. I do not complain much anymore. I work hard to give back. Not that I am rich. But I am strongly inclined to produce more and consume less, perhaps that is because I wish to show appreciation for the gift of the present that I have been given.

And my reaction isn't positive based on only good luck. I've had my fair share of bad luck, and I have been deeply disadvantaged in certain areas of life. But even for those areas, I do not blame myself. Since I believe that it was 100% the role of luck in shaping everything.

I know some people can react to the lack of free will in a negative way, but that has not been the case for me. Would be interesting to dive deeper into why. This realization has also not taken my agency, or my will to live and take action. I know that sounds contradictory, but it's true.

I have a similar great+simple system for curbing consumptive screen-time, i.e. I don't keep any of those apps on the phone, I block all of those websites on phone/laptop web-browser using an extension like Leech-Block and Un-Hook (YT). Some things that I allow are - YT long-form videos from subscriptions only, Hacker-News, and Linked-In.

THE biggest impediment for me has been stuff like getting sick. When I am sick, I just cannot lie there and do nothing. And it is TOO difficult to do stuff like read books or go out and talk to people or whatnot, it's too much effort. I HAVE to get back on consumptive screen-time. And then it devolves into something uglier - an ugly spiral, of gluttony & consumption, and I keep at it even beyond getting better.

Then it takes days or weeks of laziness and excuses to get back on track. And not just sickness but anything of that level. Anything that just kinda derails my life for a bit. I really need to find a middle-ground solution for the worst-case scenarios. I'm still working on it. I think I should be able to figure it out. It took me a while to figure out my best-case system as well.

I legit wish some of my harder daily habit heatmaps looked as good and for as long as his negative comments ones.

Actually, I take back quitting French. I will keep consuming it like a snack, with perhaps short (or long) bursts of more than a snack intensity in between, when I get the time/motivation. But would also ideally like to join a language-class when I get time.

Finally a good critique of Duolingo, couldn't have written it better myself. A fresh take separate from the cliche everywhere on the internet that you can't learn an entire language on Duolingo itself which I've heard a thousand times at this point. (Currently "learning" French on it, but going to quit cause have been guilty of cheat-streaking myself).

Yes, the social aspect is trash. The "path" is trash. The leagues/incentives don't make sense. It's just a bad app. This blog made me realize that it could possibly be better in concrete terms. And without even going against their bottom-line. Like, it could still be gamified and what-not, but BETTER. But it isn't. It is just a poor design. YES, language-learning takes effort and many different sources, and YES Duolingo-like apps can only hope to be like a SNACK, but they could still be much better, ugh.

I really like the web experience of Notion. (In terms of looks and feels). And it's probably the only note-taking app I like that syncs across everything automagically.

It would've really helped if they worked on improving their subpar mobile apps, but instead they are focusing on AI features.

(Which, I don't see much incremental benefit in paying for separately, if I already pay for other AI subs like chatgpt).

> during which the nights will be longer the days.

Error in the first sentence. At first I thought that's a bad thing, but then also, probably more likely not written/assisted by an AI. Haha.

Looking at the JS, in the `calculateUniqueScore` function - it is just checking how many features it was able to detect (it gives a weight to each summing up to 100).

It is not checking how unique you are based off of some data-set it has.

This site also has plenty other such "issues"/"bugs" feels like it was quickly vibe-coded without much care.

I was always curious how license changes of these sort work exactly? Like, until that exact commit when the new license is added in, old license is in effect? So someone can commercialize from before that commit (cause MIT)? Also is there any way to fight that, if say you decide to change license, (but the code with old license is already out there), can someone retroactively sue you for using the old code with the more permissive license?

Yea, I was able to tell what it was without the strike-through. It's not necessary. In fact, it's one of those memes where the meme itself is about recognizing it in super obscure formats so that's where my mind and most peoples' minds who are familiar with it would go to. I HIGHLY doubt it's a bot thing.

Yea. I was not going to say that because apparently it's bad etiquette - and we're supposed to look at the substance. It happened to my writing once where someone said it was AI written and it did hurt me. :'(

But at this point I'm seeing it everywhere... the "Trash question? Trash answer" format posed as poetry EVERYWHERE and it is correlated with slop and I'm finding it very annoying to read. I might (to my own detriment perhaps) start factoring that in into what I'm gonna continue reading.

Examples of that question format in this article: - Liquid Glass? That's what your M4 CPU is for - That glassy transparency and window animations? A notorious resource hog that brought mid-2000s hardware to its knees - The moment a single tile wiggles? The entire UI crawls - Checking mail? Browsing? Streaming? Your M4 is bored out of its silicon mind - That whole section on: Battery life? ... Thermals? ... Future-proofing? ... Real workloads? ... ugh. - Is it worth it? For Apple’s vibe? Probably. But next time your fan whispers or your battery dips faster than expected… maybe blame the glass.

And apart from that question format, there's another thing but I can't quite figure out the pattern behind it but is slop: (I would really love to figure out what my brain thinks as "off" in these - maybe sentence length variability, maybe colons, or maybe trying to be poetic or dramatic or too self-assured with basically no data/substance underneath it, idk): - Let’s be real: eye candy always comes at a price. - When the system’s stressed, the pretty things break first. - They chew through GPU/CPU time. Always have. - Here’s my hot take: Apple knows exactly what they’re doing - It's stealth bloat. - You might not feel the drag today. That’s the point! The M4’s raw power is the perfect smokescreen. But those cycles aren’t free - TL;DR: Liquid Glass is gorgeous tech debt. Your M4 can afford it… for now. But never forget: fancy pixels demand fancy math.

Basically the entire article at this point. There was one place which was a bit personalized about the web app he built for his kids where I was like OK at least something seems OK, but as another user pointed out "It has those tiles that animate when you hover on them" doesn't make any sense. What tiles. How are we supposed to know.

I like CBT. I just don't do it enough. I do like it when I do it though. (behavioral experiments). I think it is important to have goals and results and feedback, as without those, you'd be wandering aimlessly challenging your thoughts/beliefs to no end. I hope to get more consistent in it.

I am generally very good at forming and maintaining habits, but often life gets in the way. Also, it is good to have an external view, sometimes you feel like you're doing shit when you're not. I need an accountability partner I guess. Let's see how it goes. Thanks.

Could've been written better, and also, it is posed as something new and illuminating - that style too could've been changed. But kinda agree on the high points.

Just figure out what you want. That is your "goal". It does not need to be 1,2,5 years - can be anything. Things can change and are always in flux. Be open to changing both your goals and/or your daily habits. Change goals when you achieve or grow out of them, change habits when they aren't getting you closer to your goals or not helping you enjoy the journey.

Work backwards from your goals and break them down into something you can do as daily habits. The daily habits should have very STRICT success metrics in the direction of the goals' success metrics. If you do not have STRICT metrics for both the GOALs and the DAILY ACTIONs, you do not have good FEEDBACK.

If you do not have good FEEDBACK, you can spend a lot of time, even years - which I did, doing things that FEEL like you're working towards something with nothing to show at the end. There HAS to be a way to SHOW to yourself whether you are making progress or not. In too many things in life I have at times felt bad about my life not being a certain way, when I actually look at what I've done - like truly sit down and note things down, I realize my mind has been playing tricks on me - years of a lot of apparent struggle, but not much truly done - perhaps just a bit here and there.

I know there's many counter arguments to the STRICTness and GOAL setting nature of this way of living life. One counter argument is it's too rigid - but I like to think of it as chaos within constraints - btw you can tune the constraints to suit yourself. Another is once you reach a goal then what - I would say then another goal or just improving/maintaining that goal. Another one is Goodhart's Law - to which I say you will slowly learn to set good metrics and to use them as directional measures.

Despite all the problems with metrics and strictness, I think it is still the best way to go. Also I am personally against grandiose systems or too much complexity. I would say the core of it is just being AWARE. As long as you are AWARE of the inputs you're putting in and what outputs you'll get out of em I think it's fine to decide whether to do stuff or not. You can be lazy or free flowing or instinctual or whatever. (Your fast instincts could actually be very well aligned with your slow goals - though those kind of people are super rare I feel).

At the moment I just don't see AI in its current state or future trajectory as a threat to jobs. (Not that there can't be other reasons why jobs are getting harder to get). Predictions are hard, and breakthroughs can happen, so this is just my opinion. Posting this comment as a record to myself on how I feel of AI - since my opinion on how useful/capable AI is has gone up and down and up and down again over the last couple of years.

Most recently down because I worked on two separate projects over the last few weeks with the latest models available on GitHub Copilot Pro. (GPT-5, Claude Sonnet 4, Gemini 2.5 Pro, and some lesser capable ones at times as well). Trying the exact same queries for code changes across all three models for a majority of the queries. I saw myself using Claude most, but it still wasn't drastically better than others, and still made too many mistakes.

One project was a simple health-tracking app in Dart/Flutter. Completely vibe-coded, just for fun. I got basic stuff to start working. Over the days I kept finding bugs as I starting using it. Since I truly wanted to use this app in my daily life, at one point I just gave up cause fixing the bugs was getting way too annoying. Most "fixes" as I later got into the weeds of it, were wrong, with wrong assumptions, made changes that seemed to fix the problem at the surface but introducing more bugs and random garbage, despite giving a ton of context and instructions on why things are supposed to be a certain way, etc. I was constantly fighting with the model. Would've been much easier to do much more on my own and using it a little bit.

Another project was in TypeScript, where I did actually use my brain, not just vibe-coded. Here, AI models were helpful because I mostly used them to explain stuff. And did not let them make more than a few lines of code changes at most at a time. There was a portion of the project which I kinda "isolated" which I completely vibe-coded and I don't mind if it breaks or anything as it is not critical. It did save me some time but I certainly could've done it on my own with a little more time, while having code that I can understand fully well and edit.

So the way I see using these models right now is for research/prototyping/throwaway kind of stuff. But even in that, I literally had Claude 4 teach me something wrong about TypeScript just yesterday. It told me a certain thing was deprecated. I made a follow up question on why that thing is deprecated and what's used instead, it replied with something like "Oops! I misspoke, that is not actually true, that thing is still being used and not deprecated." Like, what? Lmao. For how many things have I not asked a follow up and learnt stuff incorrectly? Or asked and still learnt incorrectly lmao.

I like how straightforward GPT-5 is. But apart from that style of speech I don't see much other benefit. I do love LLMs for personal random searches like facts/plans/etc. I just ask the LLM to suggest me what to do just to rubber duck or whatever. Do all these gains add up towards massive job displacement? I don't know. Maybe. If it is saving 10% time for me and everyone else, I guess we do need 10% less people to do the same work? But is the amount of work we can get paid for fixed and finite? Idk. We (individuals) might have to adapt and be more competitive than before depending on our jobs and how they're affected, but is it a fundamental shift? Are these models or their future capabilities human replacements? Idk. At the moment, I think they're useful but overhyped. Time will tell though.

> 48.4 billion Indian rupees

I wonder who would be be able to grok this phrasing.

Either use crores, lacs, etc., or don't mention INR at all, and stick to USD.

Nice try, AI.

I think the mountain does help with Zen. How much, depends on the individual.

But yes, I do feel (in my limited experience) that for most people the thoughts they carry are more important to work on, than the environment they are in.

I have been TickTick for daily-habit tracking for years now. It has a monthly GitHub-like graph widget for phones which is amazing for feedback. I also use TickTick for misc. task-tracking like "laundry", "buy apple", etc.

Then for non-recurring areas like job-tasks, I use a separate tool with a simple Kanban board. Prior to Kanban, I used to just track time, and write a list of things I did for the day, but I realized there was no feedback and it was just a passive "I did this stuff".

So coming from that, a Kanban board has been god-sent. Because otherwise Parkinson's Law was a common occurrence for me. Each task in the board is somewhat tied to a project/outcome through a tag. So there is a feedback/working-backwards/active concept to it. I have just started using it, but the more I use it, the more I automatically learn how to set better tasks, because otherwise they do not go from TODO -> DOING -> DONE.

Like some other comments, found the article a bit "off" regarding the words and their usage (among other things). But since it does touch a topic that I have thought of a lot, as have many others, leaving my unsolicited advice here.

Set a "goal" and then figure out a "daily-habit" that brings you closer to that goal. Then mostly just forget about that goal and execute on that daily-habit. Every now and then, either (1) change the goal - based on your feelings about the daily-habit you are executing, or (2) change the daily-habit - based on whether it is bringing you closer to the goal or not. Repeat.

I have been on both ends at different times - obsessing over either the journey or the reward - and like most things - the answer is not neat, it is murky, and in the middle. We like neat boxes so we obsess and ruminate - goals or constraints, identity or actions, work forwards or backwards, promotions or purpose, etc. - I feel all these ruminations are forms of procrastination and pseudo-productivity.

While it is good to adjust and calibrate your goals & wants every now and then, I believe that taking action is more important than passive thinking. Also, figuring out what you TRULY want becomes a lot easier after taking a bit of action anyway, instead of being in your own head.