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mavelikara

3,690 karma · joined February 12, 2009

My name is Binil Thomas, and I live in Dublin, CA. I build product organizations for people to do their best work. Currently, I lead Engineering at Warmly (https://www.warmly.ai). Previously, I built and led EPD at Orum (https://www.orum.com) and spent ~10 years at AppDynamics.

Write to me at first name dot last name at google's email service.

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mavelikara··on AI is not Making Engineers 10x as Productive
Not the OP, not my code. But here is Mitchel Hashimoto showing his workflow and code in Zig, created with AI agent assistance: https://youtu.be/XyQ4ZTS5dGw
mavelikara··on Modern Node.js Patterns
Does the built-in test executor collect and report test coverage?
mavelikara··on FBI seized $40k from Linda Martin without charging her with a crime
This is the problem with nodding yes to laws that will “only affect the bad people!”. If the law is ineffective, or if the law is effective and they run out of bad people to enforce it on - guess who they are coming after?!
mavelikara··on Why Are We Pretending AI Is Going to Take All the Jobs?
> companies are more than willing to have a AI that does X shittier but without a salary, than to hire a guy that does it amazing and pay him a salary.

To understand this better, people should look at their own purchasing behavior. High quality goods are always replaced by "good enough" items that are significantly cheaper. Amazon, Temu, Shien etc are all great examples of those marketplaces.

Also, programers are aware of "The Rise of Worse is Better" paper for 30+ years - the inferior but simpler solution wins, and over time the issues are fixed by lots of people putting lots of work into it.

mavelikara··on The borrowchecker is what I like the least about Rust
The first version of Rust compiler, I think, was written in OCaml.
mavelikara··on Young graduates are facing an employment crisis
Are you Steve Balmer?
mavelikara··on Coinbase says hackers bribed staff to steal customer data, demanding $20M ransom
> This seems like a strange interpretation. If an employee at your company, against policy and likely illegally extracts proprietary data and gives it to hackers in exchange for money you can hardly say that "My company sold it's data".

When an employee ships a new feature, do you say "My company shipped a new feature?"

mavelikara··on Rules for Negotiating a Job Offer (2016)
Josh Doody, the author, runs a consulting service that helps candidates negotiate. Multiple people in my network have used his services to great advantage.
mavelikara··on How Kerala got rich
Fellow-Malayalee here. Thank you for taking the time to write this comment!
mavelikara··on A 10x Faster TypeScript
Thanks for the thoughtful response!
mavelikara··on We built a crowdsourced interview question database for tech interviews
What makes those questions ok for Tier-1 companies to ask, in your opinion?
mavelikara··on One year after switching from Java to Go
This isn’t anything special about Java. A determined programmer can write Fortran in any language.
mavelikara··on Does the tech industry need so many workers on H-1B visas?
India has 270 languages with at least 10K speakers; Europe has ~200 languages. India has ~1.4B people; Europe has ~750M people. India has about ~2000 distinct ethnic groups; Europe has ~200.

Don't let the subcontinent bit trick you.

mavelikara··on Does the tech industry need so many workers on H-1B visas?
India is about as diverse as Europe for most dimensions of diversity.
mavelikara··on Does the tech industry need so many workers on H-1B visas?
s/immigration/skilled immigration
mavelikara··on I automated my job application process
I think the GP is suggesting that making, distributing, and profiting from such software should be made illegal. If an engineer can make this software, they are probably a good fit for many jobs in the market.
mavelikara··on "Founder Mode" and the Art of Mythmaking
Dupe: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42456308
mavelikara··on Fighting spam with Haskell at Meta (2015)
Wow, there is a startup named Glean doing something very similar. Founded by Arvind Jain who co-founded Rubrik.
mavelikara··on Ask HN: Stanford CS 153 help
Not unsung, but Jay Kreps has made original contributions to the practice of building large scale systems. He also built a big business around it, so that perspective might also be interesting to students.
mavelikara··on Updates to H-1B
I hear you. I was that person once. I was able to overcome this with deliberate practice. When I was doing that, ~20 years ago, this problem was far less understood. But these days, there are many more resources to help you. Best wishes!
mavelikara··on Java in the Small
These other languages do not have the programing affordances of Java (generics, easy memory safety). Tooling is a big factor in favor of Java - IDEs, debuggers, observability etc. Also, the quality and availability of libraries is also a debatable point (although, it depends on the application at hand),
mavelikara··on US lawmakers tell Apple, Google to be ready to remove TikTok from stores Jan. 19
> You don’t fight censorship with censorship. That doesn’t stand up to even the most cursory thought. You fight censorship with openness.

Can you explain this better without the assumption that it is self-evident?

mavelikara··on Taming LLMs – A Practical Guide to LLM Pitfalls with Open Source Software
Thanks for explaining.
mavelikara··on From where I left
> But something far more valuable was lost: the community's trust.

But before that the community turned its back on Redis Ltd., when it let those cloud offerings from others thrive. Once the “community” got that going, these consequences were inevitable.

mavelikara··on Ask HN: Recommendation for a SWE looking to get up to speed with latest on AI
I found video lectures of “Advanced NLP” course by Mohit Iyer very useful to get me started: https://people.cs.umass.edu/~miyyer/cs685/
mavelikara··on School did nothing wrong when it punished student for using AI, court rules
From the parents: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fk2V2QGzFDU
mavelikara··on Trump wins presidency for second time
How did these respective groups fare in the 4 years prior?
mavelikara··on New York Times Tech Guild goes on strike
Someone could be pro-union and still not support that clause.
mavelikara··on Supply Chain Attacks Targeting LLM Application Developers: The Hidden Dangers Of
Developers love a nice "disruption", until there is one affecting their livelihoods.
mavelikara··on Ever wonder how crooks get the credentials to unlock stolen phones?
> During its investigations into iServer’s criminal activities, Group-IB specialists also uncovered the structure and roles of criminal syndicates operating with the platform: the platform’s owner/developer sells access to “unlockers,” who in their turn provide phone unlocking services to other criminals with locked stolen devices. The phishing attacks are specifically designed to gather data that grants access to physical mobile devices, enabling criminals to acquire users’ credentials and local device passwords to unlock devices or unlink them from their owners. iServer automates the creation and delivery of phishing pages that imitate popular cloud-based mobile platforms, featuring several unique implementations that enhance its effectiveness as a cybercrime tool.
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