patience_and_focus

Yes, that is a good analogy. However, despite what you correctly point out w.r.t churn during offshore software development, if offshoring was completely worthless then it would have been dead by now, but it is not dead. So there are probably some benefits, maybe not productivity but cost?

Do you feel like the reason for that has more to do with things like cross functional decision making, waiting on feedback (internal or external) to plan next steps that then bleed over to the next sprint, infra blockers (simple things like granting iam permissions but requires signoff), etc? The reason why I ask is because it points to the fact that considerable portion of software development (coding specifically) was done in parallel while many such non AI issues were sorted out. Now even with the coding time shrinking, the other parallel things / processes needed to for delivery are just as slow as before. So overall we are still bounded by that slowest and parallel processes. And therefore productivity doesn't increase proportionally.

I think there is something called priors. It is unlikely that you are going to a car wash just to meet a friend. It may happen in the real world but happens very rarely. An overwhelming number of times, trip to car wash is made only to wash your car. We make these default assumptions based on our priors (biases) all the time and answer rapidly. At least LLM should have done the (next?) best thing (if it didn't want to assume anything) which is to ask a question - "Is you intent to get your car washed?"

ok, I am having a hard time, the guy talks very fast. At 18:55 - "...execution was very difficult but ideas were cheap.....now ideas are cheap and plentiful but execution is very easy, so only good ideas are ones that can justify the spend on super cheap implementation..." Huh???

Interesting https://www.cnbc.com/2026/03/24/openai-shutters-short-form-video-app-sora-as-company-reels-in-costs.html

India’s economy grew by faster-than-expected 7.4% in the March quarter. https://www.cnbc.com/2025/05/30/india-q4-gdp-.html

Yes, my bad. I should have done that in the books section. It's now corrected.

This new book (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Golden_Road:_How_Ancient_India_Transformed_the_World) is a great read, not jingoistic but really following a large body of evidence. There is a recent podcast with the author - https://carnegieendowment.org/podcasts/grand-tamasha/recovering-the-lost-indosphere?lang=en Amazon summary "The internationally bestselling author of The Anarchy returns with a sparkling, soaring history of ideas, tracing South Asia's under-recognized role in producing the world as we know it. For a millennium and a half, India was a confident exporter of its diverse civilization, creating around it a vast empire of ideas. Indian art, religions, technology, astronomy, music, dance, literature, mathematics and mythology blazed a trail across the world, along a Golden Road that stretched from the Red Sea to the Pacific. In The Golden Road, William Dalrymple draws from a lifetime of scholarship to highlight India's oft-forgotten position as the heart of ancient Eurasia. For the first time, he gives a name to this spread of Indian ideas that transformed the world. From the largest Hindu temple in the world at Angkor Wat to the Buddhism of China, from the trade that helped fund the Roman Empire to the creation of the numerals we use today (including zero), India transformed the culture and technology of its ancient world – and our world today as we know it"

This new book (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Golden_Road:_How_Ancient_India_Transformed_the_World) is a great read, not jingoistic but really following a large body of evidence. There is a recent podcast with the author - https://carnegieendowment.org/podcasts/grand-tamasha/recovering-the-lost-indosphere?lang=en

Gotcha! Maybe this time will be a charm. In the meantime, here is a little background on this guy (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ahmed_al-Sharaa) "Once in Iraq, al-Sharaa quickly rose through the ranks of al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI).[19] The Times of Israel newspaper claimed in 2013 that al-Sharaa was a close associate of AQI leader, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.[22] In his 2021 interview with Frontline, al-Sharaa denied ever meeting al-Zarqawi and asserted that he served only as a regular foot-soldier under al-Qaeda against American occupation.[23] The Economist reported in 2025 that Iraqi intelligence believed al-Sharaa was Zarqawi's deputy in 2004..."

Are you sure we are not going to be making a similar (not the exact same obviously) mistake like when we were buddies with someone starting with Osama to triangulate our foreign policy objectives in the 80s? After all the Syrian guy in question had a 10 million bounty on his head not long ago and was / is the leader of a Jehadi unit? Are these guys rehabilitated now?

It is easy to observe facts than to ascribe a cause (or causes). That is true even for hard science like physics and especially true in business, economics, social sciences. I do not pretend to have the root cause(s) for this phenomena in modern times. But there are strong hypothesis that are supported by evidence. Clearly what @Spekulatius said earlier in this context is a significant part of it. It is necessary ingredient because Quran has quite a bit of strict and direct violence prescribed on non-believers (https://islam.stackexchange.com/questions/65616/can-one-still-be-a-muslim-if-he-she-denies-some-verses-that-he-she-found-outdate, the book "Why I am not a Muslim" for sources) as opposed to New testament (Bible) which has it in a few places like Revelation but is more contextual and also contradicted in other places (I will admit that am certainly not an expert when it comes to Bible). And this concept of non-believers and violence inflection is almost non existent in Dharmic religions like Bhuddism, Hinduism and Jainism and also in traditional Chinese (Confucianism, Taoism) religious texts (Of-course there are other problems in these other religions and their texts but such visceral non-believer based commentary is simply not there). The above is certainly necessary ingredient but is not sufficient. So the other factor I believe is Saudi funding of religious schools all over the world, starting around 1950s (follow the money). This Frontline documentary explores some of that https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/saudi/ (see also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_propagation_of_the_Salafi_movement_and_Wahhabism). This has implications in all places including South Asia, Africa, and South East Asia's Muslim countries. A direct result of this is physical violence against non believers in modern era (very similar thing has been happening in these regions of the world since more than 1000 years but that is not the topic of discussion here). Even relatively rich Muslim countries such as in South East Asian countries like Indonesia, non believers in Bali suffered violence in modern times (2002 Bali bombing).This is in direct contrast to spreading of Christianity in the same modern era time frame and in rich countries like South Korea where Evangelicals have been aggressive in spreading their viewpoint but not violent against non believers as that of Islam. Heret poverty is largely not confounding in these situations because there is a tendency to always blame poverty as an alternative to confirm conceived opinions when other arguments don't line up. All this is borne out in the statistics we see - https://www.fondapol.org/en/study/islamist-terrorist-attacks-in-the-world-1979-2024/

I think you are going in circles. All the above points also apply to Islam (and then there is additional crap). In fact you have agreed that Islam, as practiced currently, is the worst of the bunch. The above arguments are subsumed by it, meaning all the above has been taken into account and especially looking at the scale of physical violence that is driven by religious fervor in Islam, that is the case. With that settled, the next logical question is why is that so.

The argument against it is that just because some religion, as practiced, was garbage long time ago cannot be perpetually used as an argument for making everything equal in today's context. Some religions evolve (dilute / accept progress and evidence / change - call it what you want) better than others. As an aside, I don't think Christianity was worse than Islam 500 or 1000 years ago. You can ask remaining Zoroastrians of Persia, or Buddhists of Gandhara (today's north east Afganistan) who were completely butchered (this infact has continued even in modern times with trying to erase any Buddhist history like the destruction of Buddha of Bamiyan in 2001) just as two examples. And after all, Christianity was willing to give room to renaissance and enlightenment and not react like Islam does internally even today. This inability to evolve raises suspicion of something fundamental at flaw.

Yes, there are many reason for atrocities committed by humans upon each other (go figure!). But for comparing religions (and I say this as an agnostic, leaning atheist), one has to be objective and precise. Otherwise it is very easy to conflate with other things to get one's bias confirmed. Since you excluded Islamic terrorism, I'll add it https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_terrorism If you actually read through any of them (Hindu terrorism for example) and compare it to Islamic terrorism, you can analyze in many ways including comparing number of terrorist attacks, number of deaths, number injured, etc etc. Turns out there is orders of magnitude difference between how many killed by Islamist terrorist vs others (see also - https://www.fondapol.org/en/study/islamist-terrorist-attacks-in-the-world-1979-2024/) As I said before, you can also look at the statistics and proportion of countries with religion as it is practiced in the modern era that are closer to the ideals of enlightenment. Turns out Islamic countries are concentrated at the bottom of that list.

Now look at the statistics and proportion of countries with religion as it is practiced in the modern era that are closer to the ideals of enlightenment. Turns out Islamic countries are concentrated at the bottom of that list. So yeah, not everything is equal.

Isn't that the same argument what liberals accuse conservatives of making, painting everything as equal. You see, all politicians are equally bad - Biden, Kamala, Obama, Bush, Trump. There is no difference!

Seems to be true. This is from Dhaka Tribune, a Bangladesh newspaper https://www.dhakatribune.com/bangladesh/nation/380504/200-year-old-banyan-tree-cut-down-in-madaripur " Azam Khan, UP member of Ward No. 3 of the same union said: “Some people used to perform rituals under the tree. Religious scholars found this objectionable. Since such practices are not prescribed in Islam, they decided to remove the tree. That’s why everyone gathered to start cutting it down. None of them are affiliated with any political party.” He added: “People from all the surrounding villages were present during the tree-cutting. Among them were residents of my own area as well. Kader Bepari, Dadon Huzur, Kabil Bepari, Ibrahim Huzur, and the local mosque's imam were all present.” Md Dadon, a resident of Shri Nodi village who was present during the incident, said that around 200 people took part in cutting the tree. He said: “People used to worship under the banyan tree, which the scholars could not tolerate. That’s why the tree was felled.”

https://www.theinformation.com/articles/google-delays-cloud-release-of-gemini-ai-that-aims-to-compete-with-openai

This is one of those things that will never be settled given tea leaf reading of intentions and lack of precise information on why something didn't happen. We should move on while acknowledging that scientific work is cut throat competition like many (all?) other fields and jostling for the ultimate prize. https://sciencehistory.org/education/scientific-biographies/james-watson-francis-crick-maurice-wilkins-and-rosalind-franklin/ " At King’s College London, Rosalind Franklin obtained images of DNA using X-ray crystallography, an idea first broached by Maurice Wilkins. Franklin’s images allowed James Watson and Francis Crick to create their famous two-strand, or double-helix, model. In 1962 Watson (b. 1928), Crick (1916–2004), and Wilkins (1916–2004) jointly received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for their 1953 determination of the structure of deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA). Wilkins’s colleague Franklin (1920–1958), who died from cancer at the age of 37, was not so honored. The reasons for her exclusion have been debated and are still unclear. There is a Nobel Prize stipulation that states “in no case may a prize amount be divided between more than three persons.” The fact she died before the prize was awarded may also have been a factor, although the stipulation against posthumous awards was not instated until 1974."

There is open celebration and mural depiction in 2023 in Brampton, Ontario of the killing of then Indian Prime Minister (Indra Gandhi) 40 years back https://www.insauga.com/parade-float-of-indira-gandhi-assassination-in-brampton-slammed-by-indian-government/ The views espoused here are not new, in one form or another going on for decades, a lot of this translates to fundraising and logistics, to say the least, behind the scenes and disregard of it by the Canadian government. It is unfortunate because this liberal and open tolerance only inflames and causes more right wing hardline views and actions from the other side (Indians and their govt). Rationality, empathy and finding middle ground is lost completely. Sikhs and Hindus in India have made peace since those god awful 1980s, they had a sikh prime minister and vibrant democracy in Punjab. But gobbles of money keeps flowing to the radicalized few from the west funding the insurgency (particularly from Canada). Interesting is that the current right wing Hindu nationalist party in power (BJP) frequently aligns with sikh political parties and is a bitter rival of the INC party run by the grandson of Indra Gandhi (Rahul Gandhi). But they are now uniting and taking a hard line on this.

I am not justifying the murder of anyone here. But there are millions of Sikhs in US and India, why target one that is of no real consequence to jeopardize all important relationships between countries. From what I have read across the communique over the years between India and Canada, I am sure the Indian govt disagrees with him having no links to criminal activities and had put multiple requests to extradite him and others for providing material support to insurgents including one request from former Punjab chief minister Capt. Amarinder Singh, who is a fellow Sikh, during Trudeau visit in 2018 to India https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/trudeau-sikh-singh-1.4544790 - "But Singh himself gave a very different account to Indian media, saying that he had raised the issue of support for Khalistan in the Canadian Sikh diaspora and adding that Canada is one of the countries from which diaspora money flows to separatists in Punjab...." Unfortunately for Canada and Indian Canadians, the group related to insurgency (which as per Indian govt, Nijjar was purportedly part of) have history of things like bombing airplanes (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_India_Flight_182) and killing fellow Sikhs who disagree with them during the decade of insurgency in India in the 1980s. It is incredible that current Prime Minister's father was in power when the plane was blown up and after 20 years of "investigation" they had 1 person charged with manslaughter and nothing much else. An equivalent bombing is Pan Am 103 that everyone in western world know, but hardly anyone knows about AI 182. A vast vast majority of Sikhs in India and Canada are not supporters of violence, but the Canadian govt has for decades turned a blind eye towards the few who are involved in a very active fund raising and logistical support to insurgency that has killed hundreds of thousands. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_India_Flight_182 "The Babbar Khalsa, a Sikh militant and Khalistani separatist group was implicated in the bombings........ During the 1970s, many Sikhs emigrated to western Canada. These included men who later became leaders and members of the Babbar Khalsa including Talwinder Singh Parmar, Ajaib Singh Bagri, Ripudaman Singh Malik and Inderjit Singh Reyat. By the 1980s, the area around Vancouver, British Columbia, had become the largest centre of Sikh population outside India" https://globalnews.ca/news/9969537/who-is-hardeep-singh-nijjar/ " In 1997, Nijjar came to Canada, claiming he had been beaten and tortured by Indian police. In 1998, his refugee claim was denied. According to his immigration records, he used a fraudulent passport that identified him as “Ravi Sharma.”.................................. In 2014, a few months after India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi, a Hindu nationalist, took office, Indian authorities issued an arrest warrant for Nijjar. New Delhi described Nijjar as the “mastermind” of the militant group Khalistan Tiger Force. He was accused of being involved in the 2007 bombing of a cinema in Punjab. A 2016 Interpol notice against him alleged he was a “key conspirator” in the attack. He was accused of recruiting and fundraising, a charge that Nijjar vehemently denied."

The term "generative model" for ChatGPT like AI models is apt. It did generate cases out of thin air.

Which I keep forgetting!

Oof, this is close enough so if I let go of 3 months of interest, I am getting 5.18 for 3 month for Treasury bonds (nearly the max among any duration). That in total for 6 months is certainly less that if I wait for another reset assuming that treasuries stays around the same in 3 months. Will have to come back again in 3 months to reevaluate.