How I estimate work as a staff software engineer
“I don’t estimate work, I figure out how much time my management chain will give a project and figure out some plans that look like what they’re talking about.”
“I don’t estimate work, I figure out how much time my management chain will give a project and figure out some plans that look like what they’re talking about.”
“Robotaxi rides without any safety monitors are now publicly available in Austin. Starting with a few unsupervised vehicles mixed in with the broader robotaxi fleet.”
“We think that in order to be good actors in the world, AI models like Claude need to understand why we want them to behave in certain ways.”
“Security research is becoming a function of compute budget, not headcount.”
“The speed at which you type different letters betrays some information about which letters you’re typing. So ssh sends lots of ‘chaff’ packets along with your keystrokes to make it hard for an attacker to determine when you’re actually entering keys.”
“Major improvements to musl’s DNS resolver for more reliable networking in static Linux builds.”
“Vector Search is just matrix multiplication. And Python already has some of the world’s best tools for that.”
“Her cooperation led to the recovery of hundreds of millions of dollars for the Debtor, benefiting creditors.”
“One anonymous source told the Financial Times that Sequoia ultimately thinks OpenAI and Anthropic will head in different directions, catering to different aspects of the AI market.”
“AI in the enterprise has over 250 chicken sandwiches, and it only needs 3.”
“A demo shows a future. A product commits to one.”
“Just 2 long-form video recommendations instead of 12, an 80% reduction that prioritizes Shorts over traditional videos.”
“At the center of the redesign is deeper integration of vertical video feeds, which the streaming giant has been experimenting with since May.”
“The gigacopper device to do gigabit Ethernet over phone line is a miracle!”
“The problem at the moment is we can track stuff very well in space. But once it gets to the point that it’s actually breaking up in the atmosphere, it becomes very difficult to track.”
“Microsoft is making a tradeoff here between privacy and recoverability.”
“openpilot can drive for hours without driver action.”
“Design becomes the limiting factor: imagining what you want to create and figuring out all the gnarly details required.”
“When building an MCP Server you are not building infrastructure, you are building an interface for AI agents.”
“Our reason for the strict AI policy is not due to an anti-AI stance, but instead due to the number of highly unqualified people using AI.”
“We’re simplifying and modernizing our offerings so you can choose the best tool for your goals.”
“Searches of newsrooms and journalists are hallmarks of illiberal regimes, and we must ensure that these practices are not normalized here.”
“It has proved to be the best computer-related decision I’ve made in over a decade (and perhaps in my entire life).”
“We need to make moves to ensure our survival and intact mental health.”
“One attribute. That’s it. The runtime handles serialization, hydration, and cleanup.”
“Texas officials say the state is ready for the 2026 weekend winter storm and it won’t repeat 2021 catastrophe.”
“Health advice could shift from simply saying ‘sit less’ to encouraging more mentally engaging activities while sitting.”
“TikTok’s recommendation algorithm will be retrained and tested using American user data.”
“Amazon is where overachievers go to feel bad about themselves.”
“We’re too close to the debris.”
“80% of time on Facebook now involves video. On Instagram, that number is 90%. Most of this isn’t content from friends—it’s content from strangers and creators.”
“Most organisations are simply not prepared to make that kind of commitment in time, effort and money.”
“If agents excel at filesystem operations for code, they’ll excel at filesystem operations for anything.”
“On Mars, in the belly of a rover named Perseverance, a titanium tube holds a stone more precious than any diamond or ruby on Earth.”
“All right, guys, getting my loadout bag. I got the carbon fiber knuckles, matching hatchets.”
“When it comes to use in a screen reader, skipping words, or reading numbers incorrectly, is unacceptable.”
“That the CD version is so close to exactly 123.45 makes me think this was intentional. And if it was? Well played, robots.”
“Take-home exams are dead.”
“To our surprise, our model worked remarkably well and the observed supernova seems to match really well the death of stars that we see regularly.”
“To me, movie of the year in a few ways is ‘Sinners,’ which is from Ryan Coogler. It’s about twin brothers played by Michael B. Jordan who end up having to battle some vampires.”
“The global average temperature anomaly for January to November 2025 stands at 0.60C above the 1991–2020 average, or 1.48C above the 1850–1900 pre-industrial reference.”
“It tells the story of a young teen accused of murdering a classmate and is told in such an emotionally and technically compelling way.”
“This year’s crème de la crap.”
“The greatest baseball game of all-time.”
“Only about 1 percent of stars are known to host massive planets or brown dwarfs that can be directly photographed with today’s telescopes.”
“It’s a considerable difference, especially considering that summer is so short in the north.”
“2025 countered the narrative that the medium is somehow no longer interested in audio—with a slew of ambitious productions that emphasized podcasting as an art form in itself.”
“Many of this year’s best comedy specials share a reflective sense of mid-career reconsideration.”
“A slightly messy response to the dispiriting cleanness of modern life.”
“From the raiding of U.S. government databases to a hack every month in South Korea.”