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sanj

6,989 karma · joined March 29, 2007

CEO and Cofounder of https://directbooker.ai

Executive Director at https://maskson.org

formerly Group Product Manager at Google

formerly Director of Product Development at Time Out

formerly Senior Director of Product, Restaurants at TripAdvisor

formerly Director of Product, Restaurants and Attractions at TripAdvisor

formerly Director of Mobile at TripAdvisor

formerly Technical Lead on Personalization at TripAdvisor

formerly Engineering Manager for Social at TripAdvisor

formerly founder: luckycal.com

formerly cofounder: patientkeeper.com . . .

Reach me at svakil@gmail.com

submissionscomments
sanj··on Google’s Project Suncatcher to put ML infrastructure in space
Does anyone understand the math behind this bit?

> In the right orbit, a solar panel can be up to 8 times more productive than on earth....

sanj··on Don't let anyone take away your big box of cables
This came with a double-ended USB-A for charging: https://www.rei.com/product/248291/biolite-luci-original-cle...
sanj··on Tooltips need a delay, and then they need to skip it
I went one step further: there's a really annoying behavior in Google Workspace where a giant popup appears if you linger over any account.

I wrote an chrome extension to block them: https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/google-workspace-ho...

sanj··on Ted Turner has died
And WTBS the radio station was also purchased by Ted Turner!

It was originally "Tech Broadcasting Service" and run by an MIT student group.

For the $50k purchase, the newly-named WMBR purchased a new transmitter.

https://wmbr.org/www/history

sanj··on Filing the corners off my MacBooks
There’s something lovely about this.

To my eye, it is like the patina that your favorite tools get.

I’m looking at you, 40 year old tape measure.

sanj··on Filing the corners off my MacBooks
I’ve noticed that this only occurs when I use a two-prong adapter for the power brick.

If I use the 3-prong, which is usually tied to a long cable, I don’t feel the buzz.

I assumed that the additional grounding helped.

sanj··on The Brand Age
> Branding is centrifugal; design is centripetal

So they’re the same thing but from two frames of reference?

I’m not sure this metaphor holds.

sanj··on Show HN: 3D Mahjong, Built in CSS
This is lovely! Can I suggest make sure that the board is solveable?
sanj··on Toys with the highest play-time and lowest clean-up-time
Can I suggest putting a strand of Christmas lights inside the completed structure? They get a little diffused and look really cool.

For bonus points, get pics of your kids' faces lit by only that light.

Boom: next year's card.

sanj··on Ford kills the All-Electric F-150
Hard disagree: https://photos.app.goo.gl/4ebBSjmfouGjcGqm9
sanj··on Using AI to negotiate a $195k hospital bill down to $33k
> Yes, AI assistants can hallucinate and give you garbage. So I didn’t rely on it. I spot checked by looking up its big findings myself and found it was right.
sanj··on 2025 MacArthur Fellows
Hahrie was my neighbor for many years! She's amazing. Completely deserved.
sanj··on 2025 MacArthur Fellows
117 in libraries: https://search.worldcat.org/title/1068506288
sanj··on Apps SDK
Hard disagree.

At least in my domains, the "battle-tested" UX is a direct replication of underlying data structures and database tables.

What chat gives you access to is a non-structured input that a clever coder can then sufficiently structure to create a vector database query.

Natural language turns out to be far more flexible and nuanced interface than walls of checkboxes.

sanj··on Go ahead, write the “stupid” code
This reminds me of the (excellent!) book by Jamie Buck: https://pragprog.com/titles/jbmaze/mazes-for-programmers/

They write a maze algo in any new language they learn just to learn bits of the language.

sanj··on How attention sinks keep language models stable
Is there a way to hint in the prompting what information should be retained in the attention sinks?
sanj··on Try the Mosquito Bucket of Death
I wish there were an equivalent for ticks.
sanj··on The Monster-Slaying Game You Can Play Almost Anywhere
I love this aside:

* “Doom was developed in a really unique way that lent a high degree of portability to its code base,” said John Romero, who programmed the game with John Carmack. (In our interview, he then reminisced about operating systems for the next 14 minutes.) *

sanj··on The surprising powerhouse behind rapid V2X growth: electric school buses
$2.50 per school day?

Sounds like a deal.

I've looked over my town's numbers: the big payments are teacher salaries. I'm happy to pay them and have great teachers. YMMV.

sanj··on The surprising powerhouse behind rapid V2X growth: electric school buses
My town ditched almost all of the school buses and the kids ride public transit. I haven't lost one yet!

As a bonus, they learn that they can take these buses everywhere else and gain access to the entire city.

sanj··on The loneliest people (and places) in America
It is derived from the Census Household Pulse Survey which is designed, administered, and analyzed by the most sophisticated survey designers out there. They've had decades to create and refine approaches that deal with this problem.

I trust their interpretation over "throwaway13337" statements about what they find "obvious."

#gell-mann effect

sanj··on Understanding Solar Energy
One thing I haven't seen much coverage on is how to tap into the giant batteries we're driving around in our electric vehicles. These are much bigger than what's currently being deployed in houses.

The V2H standards are just now coming online: https://electrek.co/2025/02/21/nema-bidirectional-ev-chargin...

sanj··on Why young parents should focus on building trust with their kids
The marshmallow test without a control for whether the child is hungry and/or how recently they've been fed is worthless.
sanj··on Nobody cares
This is a really interesting insight. Drop me a line if you want to talk further.
sanj··on Hotel booking sites overcharge Bay Area customers
Same.

I feel so strongly that I built a site to help with finding those prices.

https://directbooker.com

sanj··on The Evolution of SRE at Google
Fixed about a week later:

https://support.google.com/drive/thread/245861992/drive-for-...

sanj··on Why OpenAI's Structure Must Evolve to Advance Our Mission
> Investors want to back us but, at this scale of capital, need conventional equity and less structural bespokeness.

This seems exactly backwards. At this scale you can establish as much "bespokeness" as you want. The investors want in and will sign pretty much anything.

It reminds me of the old joke from Paul Getty:

If you owe the bank $100 that's your problem. If you owe the bank $100 million, that's the bank's problem.

sanj··on Satellite powered estimation of global solar potential
I had the privilege of working with the heart and soul of this solar rooftop work.

Carl is a mensch.

He's also the brilliance behind https://blog.google/technology/ai/ai-airlines-contrails-clim...

sanj··on What's the update version of Xkcd 1425
What's weirdly still hard today?

Besides counting the Rs in strawberry.

sanj··on How much do I need to change my face to avoid facial recognition?
citation?
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