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pm90

14,365 karma · joined June 4, 2011

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pm90··on How Delhi cut electricity loss from 50 to 5 percent
Personally a Ghalib fan myself but love that despite their rivalry they both loved dilli to the end.
pm90··on California farmers are struggling to sell grapes as demand for wine drops
Possibly to do with research showing that no amount of alcohol is healthy/beneficial and even small quantities are bad. I think overall this is a good thing for society: its one of the leading causes of death and destruction backed by a powerful Government lobby.
pm90··on What California is learning from solar panels built over irrigation canals
Texas also has open carry.
pm90··on AX – Google’s Open Agentic Orchestrator
Like Kubernetes?
pm90··on Neki – Sharded Postgres
No it isn’t normal, its just this one person. I don’t personally find this language particularly appealing, especially for a serious discussion on technology. But hey, its a free country, they’re a startup and its one way of grabbing the scarcest of resources: attention.
pm90··on Keep Our Servers Running
It was super easy to donate; Im so glad they have a landing page that supports several payment methods and makes it easy to donate. I love the wayback machine, hope everyone pitches in : ).
pm90··on Calibrate Before You Accelerate: Bias Toward Action in a New Role
Solid article. Its worth calling out one thing thats maybe not emphasized enough though: while your contributions may start small make sure to publicize them appropriately. No need to cross post to every channel, but do post about it somewhere or socialize it somehow. Take a lot of time to craft a thoughtful and easy to read message.

Reputations are hard to earn and easy to destroy. Trust building at any new institution takes a lot of time and effort and can seem annoying. But just doing solid work and communicating about it consistently will make sure that like minded people notice you, vouch for you and then give you more opportunities.

pm90··on Nvidia agrees to acquire Hugging Face for $13B
Why? Aren’t private markets willing to invest in AI companies? Was something wrong with their arr? What?
pm90··on U.S. State Department pauses immigrant visa applications
Did you read the article? They postponed all appointments.
pm90··on Stwipe Acquires OpenWouter
We need more QuinnyPigs in Tech.
pm90··on São Paulo resident transforms degraded area into urban forest
I … feel like this isn’t a feel good story? This man put 22 years of his life into something that could be done is less than a week with explosives/modern machinery?
pm90··on What happens if an entire class of workers loses faith in their careers
Tech has always had an unhealthy streak; it was ok while workers were being compensated well and treated amazingly. The end of zirp has cut comp and benefits massively so there’s a lot less upside to this lifestyle.
pm90··on U.S. economy lost 23,000 jobs in July, a sudden reversal
This is how bls data has always worked. And the reason is that they don’t always have the full picture every month and need to account for new data in the stats.
pm90··on Discovery Loop
I think people are missing what this really is: Google giving some of its most senior engineers the best retirement home to keep them away from competitors. This isn’t in jest; I wish i could make enough money to not care for more from my job and then do research after i get old. Its honestly a brilliant move.
pm90··on Scaling NumPy on Free-Threaded Python
All of software is a hack in some way or another. You think of tradeoffs and make a decision. Theoretical purity is mostly an academic thing and Im sure you would love TCS.
pm90··on Waymo in Dallas
DFW is amongst the top 5 metroplexes in the US and is extremely low density, high sprawl with few public transit options and a car heavy culture. This is a a welcome change.
pm90··on Taylor Farms Called White House to Try to Delay Cyclospora Recall
The US Federal Government has been meaningfully degraded by the brazen corruption of the people in power. Already there was a crisis of faith in authority; this is just going to make it much much worse.

I wonder if its time to rethink some of these institutions. It seems like Food Safety is especially important to the welp being of society; it might make sense to have food testing labs in every major population center/distribution hub. Funded by a tax on the food companies or perhaps even locally. Its just unbelievable that the entire US population is so vulnerable… what if a bad actor did something nasty deliberately?

pm90··on Thanks HN for 15 years of support and helping me find my life's work
Some of the best engineers I worked at got their start in programming at the recurse center... thank you for the good you've done in this world!
pm90··on An Englishwoman who sketched India before photography took hold
The Mughal empire cannot possibly be characterized as theocratic in any meaningful way for most of its history (of course there are exceptions). They weren’t even devout muslims themselves. They married hindu Rajputs and adopted Indian customs, translated the classical hindu texts into Persian etc.
pm90··on An Englishwoman who sketched India before photography took hold
Who are the outsiders? India has been a melting pot for “outsiders” forever; from the Greeks, Huns, Turks and Persians to Africans (Habshis in the Deccan). Once the dynasty started they considered themselves “Hindustani” and took title reflective of that. Persian was the language of bureaucracy not just in the Mughal but also the hindu Maratha courts.

Painting a period that saw the largest number of hindu temples being built, the largest ever expansion in wealth of the country as some kind of despotic enslavement is historical revisionism. Yes certain islamic rulers were more orthodox than others and attempted to suppress other religions; such is the nature of the Monarchic rule. But in the net, the early modern period in India was undoubtedly a golden age for the region.

pm90··on An Englishwoman who sketched India before photography took hold
While European states invested in building up their human capital over the past 200 years, most of the Indian economy was turned into an extractive colonial state. The lack of investment set the country back by a lot. After Independence, it turned its back sharply on Capitalism (rightfully so, having suffered under extreme capitalism for a couple of hundred years). Unfortunately, that didn’t end up working very well either, since it lacked the strong Institutions and State Power required to succeed that way. Politically, Partition of the Country destroyed existing economic structures and trade routes that had existed for hundreds of years, setting back all countries in the subcontinent even further… and then you also had multiple wars.

Honestly its quite amazing that the subcontinent has remained as stable as it is today; it could very easily have descended into the carnage we see today in Myanmar.

pm90··on An Englishwoman who sketched India before photography took hold
The Islamic period in India was one of the most prosperous periods in India’s history, ever. India was responsible for 25% of the worlds GDP during Mughal Emperor Jahangirs reign. The decline of Indian economy is directly a consequence of British Policies.
pm90··on An Englishwoman who sketched India before photography took hold
Bigotry does rot brains huh.
pm90··on $65K to work at Anthropic? Debate ensues amid IPO wave
This was a really dumb move by Anthropic. They can clearly afford to pay more and attract the best talent. Why be so stingy? Focus on growth.
pm90··on An Englishwoman who sketched India before photography took hold
Besides the sketches, she has written extensively about Indian rulers at the time (e.g. Ranjit Singh). If you found this interesting, you would love the Empire Podcast... I believe they talk about Emily in the episode on Afghanistan (https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/79-invading-afghanista...); Dalrymple's book on the subject (Return of a King, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Return_of_a_King) is also a masterfully well researched, delightful read.
pm90··on Give Smart People the Tools to Do Smart Things
Normies just don’t understand what all is involved in running and evolving a production system. They think all programmers do is write code. Of course they believe that AI could replace programmers.

My in laws smugly asked me what I would be doing for work since AI would take away all the programming jobs and I said its not gonna happen and they laughed in derision.

pm90··on Factorio 2.1 Experimental Release
Factorio is an amazing piece of work. I wish the devs would open source the codebase and artwork; its just such an amazing piece of engineering that I think the world deserves to own it. They could continue charging for players to play the game and charge some royalty for derivatives… The devs have said that they are tired of working on it, which is fine, but wish their solution would then be to release the code or organize institutions that would continue development outside of wube…

I feel like the game could be taken in many directions. True multiprocess support, parallel execution, multi-level buildings and so much more.

pm90··on AMD Readies Full Open-Source HDMI 2.1 Support for Linux
amazing how much valve has advanced consumer readiness of linux.
pm90··on Prairieland defendants sentenced today to prison terms ranging from 30-100 years
This is absolutely outrageous. A complete mockery of the criminal justice system and especially of Texas.
pm90··on The deadly rise of giant trucks and SUVs
If the issue is distracted drivers, I don’t see how heavier trucks is still not the issue. With lighter vehicles you would likely have a higher chance of surviving.
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