tension Tension is good, mostly. It is the pull that gives meaning to all art, and thus to life itself. Anyone who is never tense about anything ever, has no payoff to look forward to. Even the most easy-going happy movie, will employ various forms of tension-building to make the movie entertaining. Tension can be as blatant as introducing a problem that a character has to solve, or as subtle as giving the viewer the sense of, "Where is this going? What is going to happen next?" A good DJ is a master of managing the tension of the crowds. Have a crescendo too often, and the payoff is not satisfying. Hold the tension for too long, and you lose the crowd. Where tension fails is when it is building with no payoff in sight. Or if the payoff is fake, a total mirage, but you delude yourself into thinking there is a payoff. Tension can be played with in hundreds of ways, and a big part of creativity is taking this strange polymer and moulding it into various forms. Sometimes you can stretch tension for so long that you lose the crowd, but then gain it back. Sometimes there's a payoff from the fact that there's no payoff, and that's the payoff. Sometimes you refuse to let tension build and release it so often that the repeated pattern of doing so becomes a new overarching pattern of tension building. Sometimes, tension can be built with repetition of the word tension. tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension tension payoff. https://atharvaraykar.com/tension/ #sometimes #rss #feeds #linksharing #qwibbit

Antipatterns in Gentrified Thindi As someone who grew up in this city, I saw the South Indian Breakfast joints or darshinis go through a huge change in perception. They always had their cultish fanbases, but to a vast number of Bangalore's immigrant populations, they were often seen as unattractive. But the food was always cheap, fast and really really good. Dose and medhu vade dippu eaten in a stand-up darshini is an integral part of my childhood. To me, these places had a huge change in perception ever since the enterprising folks of Rameshwaram Cafe opened their joint in Indiranagar 12th Main, which was basically the same idea, but provided a more expensive Tamil-Kannadiga frankenthindi, and with a lot more flash and a lot more ghee. It almost seemed like the place was intentionally designed to form a large crowd that used to block the street, which fed into a certain kind of hype. Then influencers latched on to it, and brought Darshinis kicking and roaring into a gentrified modern form. Surprisingly, I don't mind these places as long as they are not displacing the classical thindi spots1. It's good to make this cultural success more legible to people who otherwise were not going to give it a real shot. However, there are certain things that I find distasteful about them. If you are going to depart from the formula, the innovations need to actually be good. If you are starting a "gentrified" thindi joint, consider not doing these to stand out, and I will praise you. Here are some antipatterns (in my opinion): Drenching everything in too much ghee. It's often done as some weird display of flash and "purity" (often involving a cut in corner of a Nandhini packet and launching a urinary trajectory into the Dose or Idly). I like ghee, and the dopamine hit feels good for the first couple of bites, but it's too heavy to enjoy after that and I feel like I need to take a shower after I'm done eating. Temple aesthetics and motifs. I'm bored of the flower patterns, grey stones, black plates with a vestigial banana leaf on top, peacocks and the likes. Flavoured coffee. The filter coffee does not need hazelnut syrup, vanilla, or other synthetic flavours mixed into it that taste terrible. There are better variables to play with here: Indian spices, chicory percentages, roast levels, alternative milk, etc. My anecdotal observation is that they are often not displaced—a Rameshwaram or Filter Coffee in Indiranagar is most likely going to displace some lousy cafe or bar, and these gentrified places won't survive the competition in a Basavangudi or Cubbonpete. ↩ https://atharvaraykar.com/gentrified-thindi/ #gentrifiedthindi #antipatterns #indianbreakfast #coffee #filtercoffee #indiranagar #rameshwaram #darshinis #dose #cafe #rss #feeds #linksharing #qwibbit

Planning https://atharvaraykar.com/planning/ https://atharvaraykar.com/media/109 #rss #feeds #linksharing #qwibbit

Bhagavad Gita I recently read Bhagavad Gita, kind of. I haven't pored over every verse on all the eighteen chapters. Instead, I have read Swami Dayananda's commentary. He's a hardcore Advaita Vedanta promoter, and also a student of Swami Chinmayananda, who was recently in the news due to being brought back from the dead in AI form to talk to our Prime Minister. It's weird to talk about this as a book, because the provenance is messy. Firstly, it is more of a subset within Mahabharata. This is allegedly authored by the sage Vyasa (I only learnt while reading the book, that he is Arjuna's grandfather?) who is part of this story that obviously can't have happened for real, throwing curses at people and stuff. So everything I say is a comment on the translation of Adi Shankara's compilation and interpretation interpreted through Swami Dayananda's world view. The story roughly goes like this. Due to a Mahabharatha's worth of events, the virtuous Pandavas, rightful heirs of the Kuru kingdom lost their claim to the cousins, the Kauravas who cheated them in a game of dice. They did a whole bunch of other bad things that I cannot reasonably list out here, but the result was that the Pandavas had to go on exile for thirteen years, with a promise that whenever they showed up again, they would get half their kingdom back. So that happened, and the Kauravas did not keep their word. The Pandavas had a pretty lousy BATNA of "how about just five villages?" and our main villain and Kaurava primo, Duryodhana, refused that too, saying that he won't give up any land the size of a needle point. So it is war time. Arjuna, our main Pandava protagonist in the Gita, decided to go to his favourite bestie-cousin-brother-in-law, a hotshot Prince of the Yadavas from the Kingdom of Mathura to help him with this situation. A diplomatic mission is first attempted. Arjuna and Duryodhana show up to Krishna while he's having a nice nap, and ask him for support. Krishna, in his capacity as a neutral party and an upholder of Dharma makes an offer. You either get him as a charioteer who won't fight anyone, or you get his large army. Arjuna, being the devoted guy he is, picked Krishna, and Duryodhana happily took the army. And then the war begins after that. This is where Bhagavad Gita starts. So on the battlefield, just before the war starts, Arjuna asks his charioteer Krishna to go to a vantage point to see the Kaurava army. And suddenly, he realises what he has signed up for. In the army is his hundreds of cousins, but also a whole bunch of people he actually loved, like Drona, who taught him the bow and arrow, or Bhishma (a de-facto granddad, he grew up on his lap), and so on. This destroyed him, and he was a weeping mess, collapsing in his chariot, and questioning his whole life. How can I kill all these people? Is it not sinful to do so? What happened to that whole ahimsa (non-violence) thing that all our scriptures say? He then says that he'd rather beg for alms or be killed by them then to kill them. To this Krishna snaps. You weak-hearted impotent fellow! Get up and scorch your enemies (yes, this is actually what he says). And then they get into a deep conversation about the nature of reality, duty, devotion, and tries to help solve Arjuna's problem by essentially giving him the solution of how to live life. They have this conversation, which is the heart of Gita and its philosophy, and at some point Krishna reveals his cosmically divine form, and gives Arjuna a very terrifying psychedelic experience, and then by the end of it all Arjuna is pretty sold. He goes and carries out his duty of this righteous war, and goes ahead with the fratricide and all that. I'm not sure that I agree with all of the philosophy1—perhaps some of the ethics in here don't really fit into the sensibilities of 2026. But make no mistake. This is a monumental work, and perhaps one of the best works that humans have ever produced. However a lot of it can come across as esoteric, and a lot of religious figures seem to have interpreted it in rather dull and unsophisticated ways. I quite prefer the Advaita Vedanta interpretation, because experientially, you can test many of the claims and see it for yourself, so it's not all philosophical navel-gazing. I am going to totally fail hard to do any justice to the philosophy of the Gita, and in lieu of that I shall only provide a poor summary of the parts that stood out to me. Here goes: Everyone believes they are limited, and this is the source of all sorrow. However, you can observe that this your small Self (atman) is part of the big Self (brahman), and this recognition of the brahman makes you realise that you are just a wave in the limitless field of existence. This recognition is the solution. When the ego dies and you recognise yourself as part of this limitless field, you realise that there is no problem to be solved. All you must do is to carry out your duty, and keep getting closer to this recognition by being a karma-yogi, ie, a person who does their duty, let the world handle the results of your act, and give you the response, which you must accept without attachment, for you are not the author of anything you do. This is true renunciation. If none of this makes sense—consider meditating. I actually would recommend starting with something that is Dzogchen-flavoured. It's been thousands of years since this book was written, and all I can say is that at the ceiling, we haven't really become a lot wiser since then. Ambedkar was famously a big hater, and presents the hater case reasonably well. He saw this book as giving justification and fodder for the caste system (it is definitely possible to interpret many verses this way, and you bet there's many people doing this). He even said: "To say that killing is no killing because what is killed is the body and not the soul is unheard of defence of murder...If Krishna were to appear as a lawyer acting for a client who is being tried for murder and pleaded the defence set out by him in the Bhagavad Gita there is not the slightest doubt that he would be sent to the lunatic asylum." — this to me feels like a very adversarial interpretation to me, but an amusing visual nonetheless. To really do the Gita justice, my opinion is that it should not be read as a religious tome where every thing said in it is true facts and sacred. Instead it should be elevated to the status of a true classic—something that can be understood, dissected, and partially rejected. But I generally have an unconventional view on Hinduism, which is that it's not even really a religion at all, people have appropriated it to make it so over the years. ↩ https://atharvaraykar.com/bhagavad-gita/ #bhagavadgita #swamidayananda #arjuna #krishna #kauravas #kingdom #advaitavedanta #adishankara #rss #feeds #linksharing #qwibbit

some of my unpopular beliefs I hold many beliefs that are unpopular. These are some of them. I will not share all of my unpopular beliefs, because it is unwise to do so publicly. My selection criteria is that these are unpopular but still within the threshold where someone might inquire them and come to see things the way I do, or pitch a solid case to me that might convince me to change them. I also do not include beliefs that are not actually unpopular but are treated as such depending on which bubble you ask (eg: "capitalism is fine" or "religion can be useful"). Being the 90th percentile best at something is not that hard, and most people can be 90th percentile at pretty much anything. It just so happens that just about no one tries. So it follows from this that: Most people are generally operating at 10-20% of their full potential. Being 90th percentile good at one thing is not super impressive. Because most people are operating at 10-20% of their full potential, being born especially "gifted" at something isn't that useful in practice, it can be easily overcome by those who bothered trying. For example, these blind archers will shoot better than me any day of the week. Happiness is a manageable problem for 90% of the population (perhaps 99.9% if you are privileged). It's not possible for everyone to evade sorrow and be happy at all times but you don't have to try and control this. You just have to learn to be okay with life as it is. Nearly every culture has fairly practical ancient philosophy that tackles this issue head-on and presents mostly correct solutions that work for most people, but as mentioned above, pretty much no one actually really properly tries them out. Related: It is easier than ever to tackle the problem of sorrow and dissatisfaction in 2026 than in any other time in history. If you want to change how the world works, you are also obligated to accumulate and wield power to make that change happen. It is not right to want a change without wanting to be a change agent who is willing to also be held accountable for a change. Everyone is deserving of empathy and consideration, including bad/evil people. This is not the same as being tolerant of bad/evil things. It is rather that they must be understood and deserve the same curiosity as everything else. The only true "safe space" can be created in the mind (however, this does not mean you are not obliged to protect the safety of the marginalised). It is incorrect to be more concerned about global far-off goings-on than it is to be concerned about things closer to home (or literally at home). It is generally good to fail hard and often in life, as long as the failures are reasonably recoverable. We are all way too judgemental. This is a huge character flaw in pretty much everyone, and one of the hardest to fix. I can't think of anyone who was obviously completely non-judgemental (judgement is not the same as discernment, the former carries a negative aura). https://atharvaraykar.com/unpopular-beliefs/ #unpopularbeliefs #everyone #because #rss #feeds #linksharing #qwibbit

Programming 0:00 / 0:00 a song I keep coming back to &playing&window.YT.Player It first occurred to me when I tried out Windsurf. This was the old Claude Sonnet 3.5. The AI made a few edits to my code in response to my query, in quick succession. The code was bad, and it didn't work. However, this was enough. I always thought this might happen, and when it finally did, I felt mentally prepared for it. I knew this was the beginning of the end of my software engineering career. It had just been about two and a half years since writing software professionally, but really, I had been programming for quite a lot longer than that. A decade and a half ago, I was already really into technology. The first program I ever shipped was in VB.NET, after looking up a YouTube video to learn about programming. Why did eleven year old me pick up Visual Basic of all languages? Well, I didn't want to do C++, I knew that would be coming up in our high school curriculum anyway. My brother was already learning Java, and I didn't want to learn whatever he was learning. And Visual Basic seemed to have a nice IDE with drag-and-drop GUI assembly. I built a GUI calculator app, and then excitedly recorded a demo of me showing it off, my prepubescent voice grandly reading out the values as it added, divided and multiplied two numbers. It eventually threw an ugly default popup when the types didn't match because I did not bother handling the exceptions. A still from the demo of my first program. Yes, the desktop gets better the longer you look. After this, I was doing a lot more programming in my free time. It was satisfying to learn the incantations that made the computer do things for me. My favourite class in high school was the computer lab, where I, being the precocious programmer whiz would whizz through all the assignments, so that I could start messing around with programs I actually wanted to write. It was around this time, I aspired to be an open source contributor, rather than just a consumer. I discovered... ...Wait. I know what plenty of you are thinking. You've heard this story beat before. He's going to pick up Python, Javascript, C++, read all sorts of books and tutorials, and slowly unearth the history of this field and its pioneers. Dijkstra. McCarthy. Thompson. Kay. Torvalds. Yada Yada. Oh well, looks like he bumped into Lisp. He read Paul Graham. He chose Racket after seeing Butterick's beautiful website on typography and seeing how it was written. Blah Blah. Now he's also a functional programmer. Yakety-yak. He's reading through Alexis King's Parse, Don't Validate and then Bob Nystrom's What color is your function? and then going further into rabbit holes of program design, abstractions, control structures, and whatnot. You know the drill. He watches Strange Loop talks instead of Netflix like any other normal person. He's not going to just be any programmer, he's going to be an elegant programming craftsman. And with such cool programming taste. He's then going to start an Open Source club in his college. He will get on a student program to work on Git through their mailing list (unlike the heathens using GitHub), getting his patches personally pulled apart by the fantastic Junio Hamano, the lead maintainer. He's going to make friends with people who help pique his interest in distributed systems and databases. He's going to join a group of brilliant Clojurists who then really help him sharpen his axe, and induct him into the brilliance of Rich Hickey's philosophy. He gets blown away by these "greybeards" and thinks of becoming one of them someday. He had so much to learn, and he was on the come-up. Still green, still full of potential. And then you know how the rest of this beat goes from here. This AI bulldozer comes through, and the rest of the article is going to be this guy pouring out his feelings and processing his grief for how the profession has changed. The craft isn't what it used to be, and the magic, the joy is gone. The skills I have spent years developing all turning into mist, all getting displaced rapidly. And this is where I stop you and say, hold on right there. I actually don't care. All accounts would say I should be the guy that feels something about what AI has "snatched away." Didn't he wax poetic about the brilliance of Clojure not long ago? Now, hardly before he could really climb through the ranks to become a true master craftsman, the whole way of programming was upended right in front of him. The AI (at its best) can write more sophisticated code than him at an unfathomably quick pace. The roles and the career paths that were available to him no longer exist. Yet, I was unbothered. If not grief, maybe my response could be embracing the changed craft with a certain youthful degeneracy of a Steve Yegge perhaps? Nope, not even that. In fact, by the time I realised it was the beginning of the end, I was already quite casually thinking of all the ways in which I would choose to not be the great programmer craftsman. I, of course, still value the craft, but I don't feel like I'm some God's chosen vehicle for it. All that matters is that my initiatives are able to produce something useful and usefully tasteful for the world. You see, I thought I was that kind of guy, this boy programmer to craftsman archetype, but it turns out I wasn't really. It was true that I enjoyed all of the things the community I surrounded myself with enjoyed. But sometimes it felt subtly off—like I didn't quite belong—or the way I enjoyed it wasn't quite like how people I looked up to enjoyed it, in rather inarticulable ways. To perhaps use a macabre analogy, it was like a case of a "great imitator" autoimmune disease where I was misdiagnosed. I don't quite know what the real diagnosis is. I have not yet found the thing to be long-term obsessed about which people say is a prerequisite for doing truly great things. But the pattern I have seen is that moreso than programming, I am really drawn to ill-structured domains of work. A lot of software engineering work is that way, though not all of it. A big chunk of the programming community is about interest and obsessions with programming structures and concepts, something that felt rather pointlessly recursive. Time and time again, I'd go to conferences and work environments where status is conferred based on how virtuosic someone is at programming. This was initially fun, but over time, I felt more and more estranged from this culture. For me the arena was out there in the world around me, and not in the screen. The brilliance and wonder of technology loses its way before it can make it to the average human, and as a result, most technology sucks, and I kind of hate having to touch and use most of the technology available to me. So where does that leave me? I don't think I'll ever stop writing programs. Quite predictably, I ended up being a rather early adopter of the new way of agentic programming. But it wasn't what ultimately drove me away. Programming won't be my identity, because the world is much bigger than that. Perhaps identifying with a single profession in today's world is simply not my jam. The world is too deeply interconnected for that to be helpful. https://atharvaraykar.com/programming/ https://atharvaraykar.com/media/108 #programming #visualbasic #claudesonnet #gui #windsurf #yada #blah #rss #feeds #linksharing #qwibbit

a few "late" bloomers There's a huge bias towards talking about people who were very notable or "successful" when young. So here are some interesting people who came through a little late. Kevin Kelly I always admired Kevin Kelly's approach to work (than his actual work, which, while interesting, I haven't engaged enough with). His real notable breakthrough happened only when he was 31 when he was hired by Stewart Brand. Robert Moses Not everyone in this list is going to be a good guy. Robert Moses, by all accounts was a terrible person, but I was surprised to learn that before he became a broker of power and terraformed New York, he was just a complete and total failure. He practically wasted away his 20s in the Bureau of Municipal Research, and what he had to show was a failed policy proposal, and a dead-end career, where he struggled with even finding a job. It was a phone call from an old connection that gave him a second wind. Robert Caro Not only was Moses kind of a late bloomer, so was his legendary biographer, Robert Caro, and perhaps the greatest investigative writer ever. Yet, he was pretty much a nobody (though obviously a rather competent nobody), and in his words, "plain broke" right until when he published The Power Broker, at the ripe old age of 38. Shawn Wang, aka 'swyx' Everybody in the AI engineering world has heard of him at this point. Though I used to enjoy and occasionally read his blogs before his AI era during COVID. I was surprised to learn that before that, he was pretty much an unknown guy. He had a well-paying finance job that he burnt himself out on, and at the age of 30, taught himself to code via freeCodeCamp. He seemed to have a hit a hot streak, that's been going on since. I had the opportunity to meet him in person during AIE World's Fair, and as the most busiest (and likely enormously tired) guy leading the show, he was still super kind and considerate! James Murphy LCD Soundsystem is one of my favourite bands. I really enjoyed seeing this interview of his where he said that he was basically a complete failure, playing in bands that went nowhere, and completely coasting in life. Then after some therapy, he realised that he was just not taking any risks, because he was afraid of failure, and wanted to keep up his image of being this smart guy that everyone was telling him he was. His first hit single, Losing My Edge, came out when he was 32. Rich Hickey I still consider Rich Hickey's greatest contribution to not really be Clojure, but rather the clear thinking and the philosophy of how to solve problems that came with the talks accompanying it. Turns out, Clojure and all these talks came out of his retirement savings. He was well past his 30s when he became known. There's a lot of good to be done in the world in many capacities at any age or time, and it's a bit of an ego thing for a person to pay attention to their age for "success." These are all made-up boundaries, everyone dies at the end anyway, so it just makes a lot more sense focus outwardly on the world rather than inwardly about your narrative. https://atharvaraykar.com/late-bloomers/ #robertmoses #kevinkelly #robertcaro #late #richhickey #stewartbrand #world #newyork #clojure #rss #feeds #linksharing #qwibbit

OpenAI DevDay Exchange Bangalore Aren't we happy to be fed. A powerful corporation has turned its gaze upon us. I went to Whitefield to attend OpenAI DevDay. It was at the convention center in Sheraton hotel. I can't remember how I got the invite, but I probably filled a form somewhere. It was an enjoyable metro ride. The light rain formed little streaks on the window that showed overcast sky of outer Bangalore. The soft hum, rain sounds and fuzziness of the station announcements was calming. Everyone in the compartment had wireless earbuds on. It occurred to me how prevalent they are. Those who weren't staring down at their phones and peppering vertical thumb flicks were staring at their feet, listening to something through their buds. I once again tried (and failed) to pinpoint what makes it so unbearable for a person to sit with themselves. Why is everyone plugging themselves into the matrix. Aren't we happy to be fed. I reached the venue and registered. There were a bunch of Americans running the operations and queues, running around and doing all sorts of busy work. I noticed that the stage, camera, and sound was also handled by an all-American crew, probably one they brought with them everywhere. That must have been expensive. I thought of that one time Trevor Noah cancelled his tour in Bangalore because of how unhappy he was with the sound arrangements. On this venue, the sound arrangements were excellent. The music was sleek and lo-fi. The tables were white, with clean typography. The stage itself shared that familiar Japandi look, with the white and wood and plants in the corner. It definitely felt like they imported the San Francisco aesthetic into Bangalore. Aren't we happy to be fed. A powerful corporation has turned its gaze upon us. It was crowded, maybe just an arm's length of free space around me at any given time. The crowds of young men (and the occasional woman) were concentrated in certain areas. Really, just three kinds of areas. The merchandise, the food, and this little backdrop to allow people to take photos to prove that they were there. The merch was fun, particularly the custom Codex pet cards. It seemed like someone could make their own design and get it printed on the spot. I wasn't too interested in the food, and it all looked fried. I could smell the batter. I was happy to indulge in the coffee. Aren't we happy to be fed. A powerful corporation has turned its gaze upon us. There were a few booths from the various OpenAI teams, promoting the various things they were here to promote. I walked to the Dots booth, which is their personal always-on AI assistant. There was nothing in the booth, just a table. And two people on the other side of the booth from the Dots team. An absurd byproduct of this design was that a queue of people formed to make conversation with the booth people. I was standing behind this woman. When it was her turn, she started a conversation about how they are an MSME, and they have been experimenting with GPT Astra, their latest and most powerful model, to control a robot. She opened a video, and there it was. I saw a wheeled robot moving around and being controlled by the LLM. The Dots guy was delighted, "Wow, this is amazing! Can I tweet this? Can you send this to me?" He then offered to introduce this woman to a person in their team interested in hardware, and walked off the booth. He looked at me, somewhat apologetically and told me he'd be back in a few minutes, and he hopes I don't mind waiting. I enthusiastically thumbsed him up, as I genuinely did not mind. By then, the other Dots representative in the booth took me up on the conversation. I realised at that point I didn't really have anything specific or interesting to talk about. I joked about how it's funny that there's a queue for having a chat here, and I don't think it landed. I then asked a question about their Dots product, which was basically me trying to figure out why they announced @ChatGPT on Slack and Dots on Slack on the same DevDay, when the latter is basically a superset of the former. As anyone would imagine, it was a slightly lousy conversation. She was being nice, considering. I later searched "OpenAI DevDay Bengaluru" twitter to see if anyone from OpenAI tweeted about the robot. I couldn't find it. The results were full of young men sharing screenshots of their DevDay emails proclaiming their delight in getting accepted into this event. One tweet said, "my GitHub commits got me here. now let’s see if my social skills can get me through OpenAI DevDay Bengaluru tomorrow 😶‍🌫️" Aren't we happy to be fed. A powerful corporation has turned its gaze upon us. The events were about to start. I took a second row seat. Next to me a young gentleman asked me if I had reserved the seat next to me. Of course not, please take the seat. He asked me where I'm from. I'm of this city, I told him. He said he had come all the way from Thiruvananthapuram. He was preparing for placements. He had an interview for this company set up in his city, and he showed me the JD. It is funded by Nvidia and Microsoft, he said. It's unclear what the interview round will be testing, and what tech stack and language I should prepare for. I told him that none of that matters anymore, perhaps unhelpfully to him at the moment. You see, the only thing that matters is how you are able to understand and break down a problem in front of you, it matters more in the long run than whatever Leetcode this company will ask. That's what you need to make it. He then asked me if he should focus on "core logic." Something about that framing frustrated me, but for the moment, I nodded. I looked up that company later. I needed Claude to explain what they actually do, because the website was vague, obscure and full of cool-sounding jargon. It's a "deep tech" company from the US that basically puts tiny datacenters in huge shipping containers, so that defense companies, oil rigs, disaster management teams and the like can get fast compute at their site of operation. Their website had just rebranded to remove all mentions of "AI" and replace it with "SI" instead. They now have a subsidiary in India. Aren't we happy to be fed. A powerful corporation has turned its gaze upon us. The event on stage started. The managing director of OpenAI got on stage. He got everyone to woohoo them to prove their energy, and the crowd was happy to oblige. And then applauded the crowd for making it despite the rains, despite the traffic, and despite the journey to Whitefield. It was a fairly typical presentation for an event of this kind, especially in India. He talked about how India is the second largest "developer ecosystem" in the world (I agree, though I don't know what that means) and how 70% of cloud native developers were under 35 (I agree, though I don't know what that means) and how 96% of AI startups and developers rely on Open Source (I agree and I think I know what that means). OpenAI are positioning themselves as the more "open" AI, at least in the sense that they want to be the platform layer that enables downstream businesses and get AI in everyone's hands. He then provided us an equation: Impact=Opportunity×Competence×GritImpact = Opportunity × Competence × GritImpact=Opportunity×Competence×GritHe gave us stories about how a person was using Codex to label potholes, and automate submitting the complaints. He talked about a few prototypes people made for telemedicine, and how telemedicine can finally be solved, and implied we just need to figure out policy. There were some other examples. They have set up an ecosystem of "ambassadors" at the college level that will promote Codex, and help the builder ecosystem in India. Aren't we happy to be fed. A powerful corporation has turned its gaze upon us. The next one was from the CTO of Applications, talking about their massive DevDay releases that happened earlier in September. The next one was a fun one, with two folks showing off the GPT Live API. The demo went pretty well. The crowd seemed to enjoy it. I was not feeling it though. I walked out of the auditorium to get myself a cup of free chai. Aren't we happy to be fed. A powerful corporation has turned its gaze upon us. Another round of snacks came out. The crowds formed near them. A voice in my head was telling me to go back and read The Power Broker at home, instead of stay along till 8PM. I did not eat any of the snacks. I realised I wasn't happy to be fed. I left the gaze of this powerful corporation.1 You bet I'm taking them up on the free ChatGPT Pro 100 subscription though. ↩ https://atharvaraykar.com/openai-devday-blr/ #bangalore #openaidevday #dots #trevornoah #sanfrancisco #rss #feeds #linksharing #qwibbit

Why I don't get annoyed at honking or Manu Joseph There's a genre of complaining that's popular online, that talks about how everything sucks in India. There's a whole lot of you out there. I'll only punch up and say this article by Manu Joseph is the kind that I'm speaking of. I am sympathetic to these views. It's worse for those with less economic and social privileges, and definitely downright unlivable for some. However, I am only addressing the privileged Manu Joseph class of people, who have money and cushy well-paid jobs (often in tech), and who might be curious about why I don't get (persistently) annoyed at all the honking, garbage, wrong side riders, and our supposedly filthy, uncivilised society. My underlying principle simple. Accept that you have the life you have. Make tradeoffs. The counterfactual life you are supposedly missing out on isn't real, and complaining about not having it is thus absurd. Everything is easier with this mindset, even in "hard-mode" India. All my solutions to being generally happy and not bitter in India comes down to me making tradeoffs. I find a lot of satisfaction in solving problems under constraints, and India can be a great playground for that. Honking, traffic, pollution For honking, I solved it for the most part by buying earplugs. I have these which come with a nice tiny pouch you can add to your keychain. I use these when walking around loud traffic areas. For traffic, I solved it by living close to work (and "leisure") and living near a place with some metro connectivity and public transport. I don't drive. Where connectivity is sparse, autos suffice. For pollution, my area happens to be relatively low AQI, but perhaps still not fantastic over the long term. For now, I have accepted this tradeoff, but I know that I have some options in the future like investing in masks and air filters. Small annoyances In India, you are subject to many small annoyances, like honking, pollution, uncivility, or being subject to Manu Joseph's substack. Just two days ago, I had to cross a flooded road because it rained earlier. I waded through the water. When I got home. I put my socks in the washing machine. And washed my feet. And I moved on and didn't think about it, except for now, in order to supply an example here (so perhaps this "annoyance" was a net positive?). I didn't have to internalise or tie it into a larger narrative of how my life is miserable for having to deal with these annoyances day in, day out. I sometimes feel I get judged for talking like this, as though I'm endorsing that we not fix issues at the root, or we "just deal with it" instead of wanting change. This is not what I am saying. What I'm saying is that I'd rather be happy, and thus effective as a person, and this is more in our hands than most people assume. I strongly believe that one has to climb their own "Maslow" ladder so that they can start improving and looking out for others. https://atharvaraykar.com/honking/

aerodynamic hearses (gang gang) "[I]n the recent past we have had the aerodynamic style, which has been applied not only to aeroplanes and cars but to electric irons, perambulators and armchairs. On one occasion I even saw an aerodynamic hearse, which is about as far as the aerodynamic style can go (speeding the departing guest?)." Bruno Munari I looked up some aerodynamic hearses after this, to see if people still make them. not too shabby Someone also figured that they might as well throw out the dead person in the back and go faster. Some hearses just need to be grand and not fast. Here's one I saw recently. There's a school of thought common among designers or artists that say that the above hearses are a monstrosity. They lack coherence, in the sense that its form does not follow its function—or as Munari would say, it is as though a fig is growing out of willow trees. There's something distressing about it. I think I'd agree that beauty comes from when form follows function. But I do think that there is some function involved with a gawdy gold-and-black hearse that looks like both a gang vehicle and an amusement park ride at the same time. Whoever did this was trying to convey something. It is trying to convey their vision of what the journey of death should look and feel like. Maybe the execution is not quite right. It is hard to express. We can be more curious about it as a society. https://atharvaraykar.com/aerodynamic-hearse/ https://atharvaraykar.com/media/78 https://atharvaraykar.com/media/79 https://atharvaraykar.com/media/80