The Hierarchy of Whats — Ethan Lalakea Alter
Everything is a What. Also, a Why. Also, a How. It's the Theory of Whelativity.
Dysgraphia or: can a MNIST-trained ResNet read my clinically atrocious handwriting?
When I was 11 years old I was told I had a learning disability called Dysgraphia, although it’s now called “an impairment in written expression” by the DSM-5. This wasn’t a surprise given my handwriting was pretty bad, writing even the slightest bit legibly to…
Where inflation comes from - Works in Progress
How we calculate inflation has always been a subject of debate. Small changes that might seem trivial can lead to enormous changes in how well-off we think we are.
Beyond Ctrl-C: The dark corners of Unix signal handling :: sunshowers
An introduction to signals: a written version of my talk at RustConf 2023.
Make Your Own CDN with NetBSD
Learn how to build a self-hosted CDN using NetBSD, Varnish, and nginx
gRPC: 5 Years Later, Is It Still Worth It?
5 years with gRPC: Is it still my go-to for communication? Dive into my journey and discover if this protocol stands the test of time.
SQL Has Problems. We Can Fix Them: Pipe Syntax In SQL
SQL has long been the dominant language for structured data processing, through this paper GoogleSQL team introduced a new pipe-structured data flow syntax that significantly improves SQL’s readability, extensibility, and ease of use.
Hacking sales as an introvert
In 2021-22 I went from anxious engineer to closing ~$700k in sales for our own business. A key part of this success stemmed from three discoveries I made during the process that took our close rate from 30% to 80%:
How take notes + my Obsidian setup
For the past year, Obsidian has been my note-taking companion. I've slowly grown towards a more consistent way of taking and organizing notes: it's a system that can easily be ported to any other tool as long as you have something that resembles a filesystem.
PHP is the Best Choice for Long‑Term Business
Recently, I listened to Lex Friedman's [podcast with Pieter Levels](https://open.spotify.com/episode/6KBpL2XfR9VdojbKNpE7cX). Pieter talked about his technology stack for building startups: vanilla PHP, jQuery, and SQLite. Hype is exciting, but there is no be…
How to build an alternate Django admin in only 10 years
In “So you want a new admin?” Jacob Kaplan-Moss writes about the cost and manpower it took to design the Django Admin system. TLDR: The original version was built by a team of 5 people working tightly with users for over a year, then it has been polished for o…
Why are sellers leaving profit on the table?
coding, data science, ml, cloud, greentech
Roughly Everything You Need to Know About Entity Resolution
Naming things is hard. This is not just a technical problem, but a foundational problem that we have as humans when we talk to each other and refer to specific things and people. I have four good friends named Zach – there’s a reason we invented nicknames. Lea…
Step-Based Cascading Prompts: Deterministic Signals from the LLM Vibe Space
A new technique for enforcing LLM behavior conformance in decision making workflows.
Longevity: The New Compound Interest
Max Forsey's personal website
Object Calisthenics #4: Implementations explanations
The application of code rules is often conveyed as unidirectional and one-size-fits-all. In other words, when we learn to develop, we tend to read that there is only one way to produce quality code, and only one way to implement rules or patterns. With this s…
Greppability is an underrated code metric
Keeping your codebase searchable will make your maintenance life easier in the long run.
Departure Mono
A monospaced pixel font with a lo-fi, techy vibe.
Sleep on it: How the brain processes many experiences — even when ‘offline’
In a new study, Yale researchers uncover how the brain, during sleep, replays and bundles many of the experiences that occur in our waking hours.
The Art of Finishing | ByteDrum
My endless battle with the "Project Hydra": why I can't seem to finish projects, and the strategies I'm exploring to finally complete what I start. A personal journey through productivity's thorniest challenge.