flâneur

Liam Hinzman

161 followers · 62 following · 7089 views

on the atlas — 277

highlights — 798

  • But if your team is so great, why aren't they building the right product? Simply put, they have the wrong attitude. Firstly, they overestimate the importance of their own skills. Engineers think that success is all about fancy technology and complex engineering (hello Google). Designers think that success is all about beautiful design. MBAs think that success is all about knowing the right people, or spreadsheets, or something. If you have especially smart or successful people, then this problem could be even worse, because then the team is also likely to be arrogant and overconfident, which m…
    Paul Buchheit: The most important thing to understand about new products and startups
  • While search algorithms haven't changed, all the AI search hype has come from the introduction of AI summaries. Google AI overviews, SearchGPT, Perplexity -- each of these uses an old-school search engine like Google or Bing under the hood, and then uses an LLM to generate a summary. LLM summaries are great and save us time. But unfortunately the LLM is still limited by the quality of the underlying search engine. If Bing can't find something, then SearchGPT (which relies on Bing) can't either. And so today's "AI search" is mostly a time saver, it's not actually a better search engine that fin…
    Perfect Web Search for AI Agents with Semantic Search Technology | Exa Blog
  • Perfect search by idea would have huge impact across our lives. Here are some downstream effects:
    Perfect Web Search for AI Agents with Semantic Search Technology | Exa Blog
  • The core issue is that the industry is caught in a contradiction it can't resolve. In order to raise the money necessary to fund massive training runs, investors and enterprise customers must hear the CEO stand on stage and explain how many human tasks the technology can now perform, how much cheaper it will be than the humans, how much better it will be by next quarter. This is the revenue case. It's what the market rewards. It's what every earnings call is built around. The pitch to the public then requires that same CEO to promise that AI will create new jobs, that the transition will be ma…
    Will Manidis on X: "Our Intelligence Troubles" / X
  • The AI industry has chosen a different strategy, which is to get on stage every two weeks and tell the American public that their jobs are ending and their children will be cognitively inferior to a piece of software.
    Will Manidis on X: "Our Intelligence Troubles" / X
  • Your job is to manufacture success with the resources you’ve been allocated.
    Welcome to the Room | Jeffrey Snover's blog
  • Technology is not a force for good. Technology, like any amorphous collection of concepts and inanimate objects, is a tool. The people who wield technology dictate whether it yields good or bad outcomes. Incentives are the forces that move people towards particular paths, be they bad or good. But beliefs, if firmly held, can supersede incentives in the pursuit of something more important. My incentives may encourage me to lie, cheat, and steal, because each can enrich me economically. But my beliefs stop me from being a slave to my incentives. They inspire me to live on a higher plane. YC star…
    “Build What’s Fundable” - by Kyle Harrison - Investing 101
  • You now need to make sure that everything sits together correctly in terms of loudness. This, unfortunately, does simply require a lot of close listening to the real thing, and good judgement based on that. Most of us are probably better at this than we might think; I have a feeling we all listen to a lot of great orchestral recordings! Direct comparisons of your mock-ups with live recordings are a great way to check these things. However you go about it, don’t skip this step. It is probably the most glaring issue I hear in beginner virtual instrument use. If your brass, for example, or just e…
    Achieving a Symphonic Film Score sound with Sample Libraries - Synthestration
  • a good majority of the time having an easily identifiable and singable melody is the best choice for representing someone or something, especially if the goal is to help it feel more relatable or human. It’s a bit odd, but if you can imagine a champion singing their theme and you can also sing along, then in a way, it helps you connect with that champion.
    /dev: Forging Melodies
  • So, Tarantino had a roommate that was five years older named Steve-O. The day Steve-O turned 30, Tarantino remembers that his friend's personality changed. Steve-O was always a funny guy but became angrier and more bitter. He had spent his 20s hanging out with people Tarantino’s age and not accomplishing any of his professional goals. “I wasted my life hanging out with a bunch of guys just like you,” Steve-O told Tarantino in one rant. Soon, Steve-O started hanging out with more people closer to his own age. Tarantino said that Steve-O’s personality change was “showing me a truth”. That truth …
    The Day Quentin Tarantino Became A Filmmaker
  • [Mary] The book of the week that I’d like to recommend to you this week is Lock In by John Scalzi. Now one of the cool things for me about Lock In is that John started with this idea for this game, and you’ll hear him talking about this in some of his interviews. There’s this really cool idea for a game for people who are locked in to their bodies and using mechanical apparatus or threeps, short for 3POs to move around. He had this fantastic idea that needed all this world building. That idea is not in the novel anywhere. [Chuckles] [Mary] It’s not even referred to in a side note or in a news …
    Writing Excuses 10.1: Seriously, Where Do You Get Your Ideas? | Writing Excuses
  • [Brandon] One thing I’ve noticed about myself is that I very often have tone ideas. Meaning I’ll be working on a piece and I’ll consume some piece of media. I’ll read a book or I’ll see a movie or I’ll just be thinking about some of my favorites and I’ll say, “Wow. I really wish I could do something like that.” Recently I’ve been doing Mistborn books with a Western meets Sherlock Holmes feel. Both of which are because I was experiencing that media and saying, “I wish I could do something like that… Wait, I’m a writer. I can totally do something like that!” [Laughter] [Brandon] Mistborn came in…
    Writing Excuses 10.1: Seriously, Where Do You Get Your Ideas? | Writing Excuses
  • “In my opinion, if you want to be a good roleplayer in videos and events like these, you need to be able to do three things:
    The Best YouTube Video of 2025 Was Filmed in Minecraft
  • Day to day, the most important responsibility here is recurring 1:1s (the coaching kind, not the status update kind).
    Categories of leadership on technical teams | benkuhn.net
  • ls (LLMs) locally on your computer while sticking with a user interface of the 1990s. It's a love letter and homage to the late, great Clippy - and the visual design created by Microsoft in that era. Simple, familiar, and classic chat interface. Send messages to your models, get a response. Batteries included: No complicated setup. Just open the app and chat away. Thanks to llama.cpp and node-llama-cpp, the app will automatically discover the most efficient way to run your models (Metal, CUDA, Vulkan, etc). Custom models, prompts, and parameters: Load your own d
    Clippy Desktop Assistant
  • In one way or another, we all rebel against the oblivion to which death finally condemns us. But we face, in that rebellion, a clear choice of pathways: the road of the ardent man of power who wrecks all before him, and is wrecked in turn; or the road of the poet, who makes his own soul the lyre or Aeolian harp for unseen forces.
    Percy Bysshe Shelley: “Ozymandias” | The Poetry Foundation
  • Neon Genesis Evangelion is throughout a critique of otakudom and the old mecha genre (in exactly the opposite way that Gurren Lagann is a mindless celebration). Anno has said that the characters represent himself; Tsurumaki has said that people who can ⁠live and communicate normally⁠ will not benefit from watching Eva. If you don’t think Anno was criticizing otakus, ⁠these interview excerpts⁠ may help. There are many lines throughout the series directed straight at fans: “We can’t weave our lives only out of things we like…”
    Notes on Evangelion · Gwern.net
  • Once a week, probably either just before or just after your weekly meeting, write up a brief update for a broader audience with:
    How I've run major projects | benkuhn.net
  • I write to remember. I always say: write down the idea in such a way that when you read it again the idea comes back in full. So a script is for getting the ideas down, but it’s not the final thing at all. It’s to remind you of the idea, which could be much more full than what the words actually are saying. For instance, the script has no sound to it. It’s just ideas.
    ‘Daydreaming Is So Important To Me’: How David Lynch Fishes For Ideas - ArtReview
  • Expecting users to primarily interact with software in natural language is lazy. It puts all the burden on the user to articulate good questions. What to ask, when to ask it, how to ask it, to make sense of the response, and then to repeat that many times.
    Natural language is the lazy user interface - Austin Z. Henley
  • in 1997, the two began to negotiate Bird joining Pixar.[33][26] In March 2000, Bird went to Pixar's Emeryville, California, campus and pitched his ideas, including The Incredibles, to Lasseter.
    Brad Bird
  • He left Disney after only two years
    Brad Bird
  • AI is the first technology in history with the potential to not only complement, but gradually replace human cognition in all roles it plays in the evolution of culture. Thus a change to AI-mediated culture could greatly weaken feedback loops that have historically helped align culture to human interests.
    Gradual Disempowerment
  • My personal life was also an important factor in keeping me going. I’d begun a relationship with someone who made me feel it was ok if I failed. I spent our first holiday season together beating my head against the machine learning wall, but she was there with me no matter how many planned activities it meant skipping.
    How I became a machine learning practitioner
  • Kinder was the founding director of Editorial and Post Production at Pixar from 1996-2014
    Film Editing | Making The Cut At Pixar: The Art Of Editing Animation
  • Notice that the quality of the AI output is mostly irrelevant for these points. If you have good quality AI outputs then you are still welcome to share it with me, given that you are upfront that it is AI generated.
    AI slop, suspicion, and writing back | Hacker News
  • There had long been allegations of corruption and money laundering connected with the bank.[217][218] Francis appointed a commission to advise him about reform of the Bank,[217][218] and the finance consulting firm Promontory Financial Group was assigned to carry out a comprehensive investigation of all customer contacts of the bank on these facts.[219] Because of this affair, the Promoter of Justice at the Vatican Tribunal applied a letter rogatory for the first time in the history of the Republic of Italy at the beginning of August 2013.[220] In January 2014, Francis replaced four of the fiv…
    Pope Francis
  • Bergoglio has said that, as a young seminarian, he had a crush on a girl he met and briefly doubted about continuing the religious career.
    Pope Francis
  • When he was 21 years old, after life-threatening pneumonia and three cysts, Bergoglio had part of a lung excised.
    Pope Francis
  • Born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, Bergoglio worked for a time as a bouncer and a janitor before training to become a chemist and working as a technician in a food science laboratory. After recovering from a severe case of pneumonia and cysts, he was inspired to join the Jesuits in 1958.
    Pope Francis
  • According to the Vatican expert Gerard O'Connell, in the book The election of Pope Francis, this would have been the outcome of the ballots
    2013 papal conclave
  • On the fifth ballot, the cardinals, wishing to show a unified front, voted overwhelmingly in favor of Bergoglio, reportedly giving him at least 90 votes with the remaining 25 votes going to other cardinals.
    2013 papal conclave
  • Msgr. Guido Marini, Papal Master of Ceremonies, then called out the words "'Extra omnes!"[87]—"Everybody out!"— and the chapel doors were locked to outsiders.
    2013 papal conclave
  • To control communication with the outside world during the conclave, a Faraday cage blocking outgoing and incoming communications was installed in the Sistine Chapel area.
    2013 papal conclave
  • "Apparently a sort of tsunami of non-European candidates will fall upon the Roman Curia, and this could take the pontificate far away from Rome, making it more international."[13] Italian Cardinal Francesco Coccopalmerio said: "It's time to look outside Italy and Europe, in particular considering Latin America."[14]
    2013 papal conclave
  • The Pope also amended the conclave law to provide for the automatic excommunication of any non-cardinal who breaks the absolute oath of secrecy.
    2013 papal conclave
  • Importantly, these curves are different for everybody. Is the checked out engineer building their own pipe dream infrastructure project or random project idea “rent-seeking as much" as a pension manager or crypto fund charging 2/20 for highly-levered beta? I dunno, it's relative. Your personal perspective might assume a particular curve, their perspective might assume a different curve.
    Agency vs brain damage - by Chris Hua
  • Not to get too Taleb here, but there is an argument that your potential value to society is proportional to the risk you take on. If you are under the curve, you are “deadweight value” and “rent-seeking.” If you are over the curve, I guess you are trading your personal brain damage for the good of the economy, but like, why?
    Agency vs brain damage - by Chris Hua
  • If you’re not careful, a book like The Beginning of Infinity, despite all its claims about how everything is conjectural, can ultimately become a kind of “existential grounding” for you, psychologically. You can test this by asking a simple question: if you found out that Deutsch was deeply wrong – like, stupidly and obviously wrong, about many important points – would you have a negative emotional reaction to this discovery? If that's not the case for you – then great, you are not emotionally attached to Deutsch's ideas. But I imagine there are at least a few people out there who are fans of …
    The Deutschian deadend - by Kasra - Bits of Wonder
  • A lot of people feel that treating someone like me with respect is just a trendy moral fashion.
    I Met Paul Graham Once – Phill MV
  • I’m concerned he, or rather, the people who succeeded him, would take one look at me, and decide that I am “too woke”, whatever that means. I worry that my existence, that my living in joy, in a state of grace, is “too woke” to be worth employing. I’m certain he wouldn’t be rude to my face, but he might quietly discriminate against me, say no thanks. He might not even think of it as discrimination, only that I don’t have what it takes. Whatever that means.
    I Met Paul Graham Once – Phill MV
  • The Image begins by noting that Americans have "extravagant expectations" when it comes to their news consumption. To a degree, they demand to be entertained. Truly important, naturally occurring news stories, however, do not occur regularly or predictably—there may be droughts of newsworthy stories. In order to "fill the gap," news corporations report what Boorstin calls "pseudo-events." Pseudo-events are political spectacles (usually) organized by politicians to tell a certain narrative.
    The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-events in America
  • The Image is also well-known for defining a celebrity as "a person who is known for his well-knownness." Boorstin argued that in the 1960s leaders were beginning to resemble "media stars" rather than politicians. Boorstin further warned that if the voting public continued to be inundated with pseudo-events and un-nuanced media coverage, these media stars would soon dominate the political landscape. Of important note, this book was written in the years following the 1960 presidential election, where many commentators have noted that Kennedy's appearance and demeanor on the first televised presi…
    The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-events in America
  • He originally worked in construction, and then abandoned his job to DJ full-time after being diagnosed with brain cancer in 2016
    Yousuke Yukimatsu
  • the Viet Cong served as his inspiration for the furry forest-dwelling Ewoks, who were able to defeat a vastly superior opponent in spite of their primitive weapons.
    The Real History That Inspired 'Star Wars' | HISTORY
  • (P.S. If you are chasing something you think you want or need, or are doubting whether you are enough, take a minute and give this a listen. It had a big impact on me at a pivotal time.)
    A Personal Note From Our Founder – Hindenburg Research
  • Someone once told me that at a certain point a successful career becomes a selfish act. Early on, I felt I needed to prove some things to myself. I have now finally found some comfort with myself, probably for the first time in my life. I probably could have had it all along had I let myself, but I needed to put myself through a bit of hell first. The intensity and focus has come at the cost of missing a lot of the rest of the world and the people I care about. I now view Hindenburg as a chapter in my life, not a central thing that defines me.
    A Personal Note From Our Founder – Hindenburg Research
  • However, the most worrying problem to date for the company is skepticism over the reliability of its verification process. Reports have emerged that several Orbs have been compromised by hackers, who stole operators’ login credentials and proceeded to sell them on the dark web. There is already a nascent black market for World IDs. Legitimate users from developing nations now sell their IDs to buyers from countries like China, where Worldcoin is not available, or simply to those who wish to have access to the system without compromising their privacy. This threatens to obliterate Worldcoin’s e…
    The promise and peril of Worldcoin – GIS Reports
  • However, The Hollywood Reporter reported the cancellation was mainly due to a Chinese government ban on zombie films.
    Dennis Kelly
  • [Jarrett] played it the way he did because it was not a good piano. Because he could not fall in love with the sound of it, he found another way to get the most out of it.
    The Köln Concert