• 7 Posts
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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: April 27th, 2024

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  • I just got hit by a memory from what must have been 2021, when I was working for a uni-attached startup center. I was lounging in our event space, when my colleague hit me with a question from left field: Would there be a benefit to cooling servers in space, since space is cold?

    Little did he know that I was ready to unload my knowledge absorbed from the Expanse series, which I was reading on repeat to cope with my depressing job. So I infodumped on him about how being in space is like being in a thermos and about the Peltier effect being used in spacecraft radiators. He didn’t say much in response, and I wasn’t too stoked about my social skills in that moment.

    Now I wonder if I saved him from a really embarassing decision. He was an ex-Amazon project manager who was non-committally looking for a PhD topic or maybe a startup. He quit a few months later and went into consulting I think.




  • You’re argument seems like Suresh’s to me, in that making working software is just laughably easy for a competent engineer.

    This begs the question why noone is exploiting this market gap. But there’s a couple explanations…

    It can be a coordination problem, in that there are just barely any competent software organisations with enough engineers. The problem can also lie in how software is bought, since customers seem completely unable to determine the competence of vendors. Perceptions on what kind of software is a safe, respectable choice may even be anti-helpful in this regard.


  • I don’t think you have to be hypercritical of that part. Sure, rose-colored glasses could play into it but he calls the bad stuff bad and doesn’t justify it via the good stuff.

    Also the stuff he describes seems plausibly achievable through buddhist spiritial practice:

    In many ways MAPLE delivered: life-long friendships, freedom from past addictions and limiting self-narratives, strengthened character, and, for many of us, profound spiritual openings and realizations.

    This Soryu figure seems fairly well accredited in that department. He just also happens to be a megalomanical control freak.

    (Also, why does he have to share a name with Asoka? I’m dying a little.)