Writing

• Nov 3, 2025

  Life is an Ensemble Model

  In 2008, Netflix held an open competition that offered $1 million to the team that could best improve its recommendation system to suggest films to users. The team that won didn't use a single tradit

• Sep 11, 2025

  Built Upon Pillars of Sand

  The microprocessors in our smartphones and computers start as quartz sand. The sand is heated to over 1,400 °C to extract pure silicon, then precision-shaped into flawless-looking wafers, and stacked

• Feb 13, 2025

  Credit Cards vs Mortgages

  Credit card debt and mortgages are two very different types of debt. What makes credit card debt so insidious is that it is often accrued accidentally and grows incredibly quickly.

• Feb 8, 2025

  On Bad Code

  I spent many years working at Airbnb and Amazon and have friends all over the valley in places like Facebook and Google. One thing that shocked me—both from my own experience and from conversations w

• Jan 5, 2025

  Lightbulbs to TVs

  What would it mean for AI to grow at a rate similar to that of the light bulb? In short, we don't know. Some of electricity's early use cases were quite obvious. We can create light everywhere and rep