Everything I publish, in the order I published it: dispatches from Twitter, videos from YouTube and notes from my vault, archived here in full — text, images, video and links — so they outlive the platforms.
Excited! I just submitted Pudding for App Store review.
It'll be a one-time payment but if you want to quickly beta-test this for free, DM me!
This is all, of course, directly related to...
a.) me wanting a way to show my writing was, for better or worse, written by me and not AI
b.) the amount of AI work-slop that's started to land on my plate and for which I need some kind of filter soon
To my total surprise and against all my prejudices, that Strengthfinder Gallup assessment I reluctantly took three years ago completely changed my personal trajectory and was some of the best spent money, if not the best money spent, in 2023.
I gotta thank my friend Tobi Eichenwald who had to poke me a few times to take the assessment.
I've also decided to use twitter as my personal, albeit public, notebook. So stay tuned for incoming, unfiltered stuff! :)
Actually that is because I'm planning to follow up on those notes with myself using the replies. I did that yesterday on some old tweets of mine and that felt surprisingly good and useful.
To my total surprise and against all my prejudices, that Strengthfinder Gallup assessment I reluctantly took three years ago completely changed my personal trajectory and was some of the best spent money, if not the best money spent, in 2023.
In a world that assumes everything’s written by AI, I made Pudding to let you prove the words are yours. It captures your writing as it actually happened — every edit, pause and rewrite — so you can replay the whole process and hand anyone undeniable proof of your work. Peace of mind for students, writers and freelancers who get asked, “did you really write this?”
@SpringStreetNYC@pickover Too kind sir! But much appreciated. In this world of social influencers and AI generated insights, please remember there’s human authors out there whose passion and graft gets this material out there (to be ripped off without credit by LLMs and YouTube grifters).
Absolutely – I, too, and too often, get turned off by the grifters.
Yet no one can steal or copy your talent, passion and time you put in. As a reader I would love to make this concrete: Here are three ways your writing has affected me personally:
1. The quote below from your book is one of my most cherished discoveries while reading. It shows how much you care and how much professional nuance you bring to the table. It made me pause, smile and reminded me of how magical the human condition can be. Honestly, I believe that Johnny is lucky to have you as his biographer.
2. "The man from the future" helped me understand and consequently appreciate the person and the genius of John Von Neumann. Equally though, it piqued my interest into you as an author. The only other author who has had this effect on me so far is Stewart Brand after reading his work.
3. Speaking of which and case in point: 10 minutes ago, I ordered the hardcover version of your book on top of the kindle version that I started with. I will not hesitate to order more copies as presents. And: Consider anything new you publish in the future already purchased.
Ramble, ramble. This is all to say: Love your work. Can't wait for what you do next. Johnny got lucky. Fuck the grifters.
PS: For better or worse, this post is 100% hand-written :)
@pickover Your regular reminder that an excellent intellectual biography of the man exists that focuses on what he actually accomplished for humanity through maths, rather than what others said about him t.co/lQiiHZFq6r
@Ananyo@pickover Ananyo's biography of John Von Neumann is so good that it landed in my top-5 all-time favorites. Totally unexpected. Again, thank you for it :D
Hey all! I wanted to share a kind of new development process I’ve been using lately — I call it "Moonwalk."
Basically it's:
Check out a spike branch (git checkout -b reconciliation/spike/mt940)
Vibe code fast (and with vim and vigour!) until it feels just right
Generate a spec based on the final version
Switch back to main (git checkout main)
Check out only the spec (git checkout reconciliation/spike/mt940 -- /job-stories) <- This is the moonwalk!
Let the "professional" agents and sub-agents write production-grade code based on the spec
It's so effective because I can leverage Claude Code for both: Quickly build a working vibe-heavy prototype spec AND write production-grade code with agentic/sub-agentic quality.
For the vibe code part, the standard Claude Code top-level agent is more than sufficient. It's great, no need for time-costly delegation to sub-agents here.
For the production-grade part, since we're an XP shop with a pretty solid TDD process, sub agents make total sense. We turned our existing process and skills into a bunch of sub-agents that work smoothly together:
We've got...
green-minimal-implementer(.)md
code-quality-reviewer(.)md
code-refactorer(.)md
db-migration-specialist(.)md
dependency-manager(.)md
frontend-design-specialist(.)md
locale-translation-specialist(.)md
red-test-writer(.)md
So, yeah, that's what I wanted to share with you. Try it out and let me know how I can help :)
Cheers!
PS: For better or worse, this post is 100% written by hand
PPS: My friend Alex Fedorov reminded me that this is pretty close to the spike/exploration workflow we used to do at Pivotal Labs. I think he's right.
cc'ing @claudeai and @Lovable because I feel like it's a nice connection between the two of you <3
@ChatGPTapp PPS: Here's another before/after illustration for how we may think about AI, AGI and it's impacts (Originally from Rem Kolhaas' Delirious New York)
Before 1930: What we think this is
After 1930: What the future actually is and means t.co/gMaXevHaWy
@ChatGPTapp Love the tagline:
"Buy a cozy cottage in our steel constructed choice lots, less than a mile above broadwy. Only ten minutes by elevator. All the comforts of the country with none of its disadvantages." – Celestial Real Estate Company
Claude Code sub-agents are now fully integrated in our day-to-day workflow.
I think two reasons it's going great for us:
1. The main agent loop plans and then autonomously calls them up depending on the current context. The convenience to not having to remember to do this manually is crucial.
2. As an XP shop, we always had a few very clearly defined roles, like "Red/Green Test Writer", "Code Refactorer" and "Test Coverage Analyzer" and "Code Quality Reviewer" - which were easy to model as sub-agents and describe when to call them up.
Chances With WolvesEPISODE 585 — Chances With Wolves↗ chanceswithwolves.com
xkcdOpen Source↗ xkcd.com
press.stripe.comStripe Press — The Scaling EraAn inside view of the AI revolution, from the people and companies making it happen.↗ press.stripe.com
