Giving Advice

Sat 27 September 2025

Good advice should rule out large parts of the possibility space - if you don't find yourself disagreeing with the advice or changing what you are doing, then the advice is just generic fluff.

Advice should be based on experience. Not necessarily your own, observing others can also make good advice, and it scales a lot better.

Good advice is contentious or not widely known. If everyone agrees with it already it’s just common sense.

It's often easier to give advice on what not to do, rather than on what you should do. It's less useful, but ...

Disconnect on Holiday

Wed 10 September 2025

A timely topic, as I'm writing this on the plane back from my latest trip: When you go on holiday, don’t check your work email, disable all notifications, just disconnect completely. Not just for your own mental health - many people have covered that extensively - but also to test the resilience of your work projects.

It’s easy to argue about bus factors, but nothing clarifies the situation better than going off grid for two weeks. Can your colleagues add new features, fix bugs with ease? Or do they start wishing for you to come back, try to contact ...

Joining Anthropic

Mon 28 October 2024

I'm excited to announce that I'm joining Anthropic, starting this week! I'm honoured to be joining such a capable and kind group of people, who I've long admired - Claude was the first LLM that I found myself consistently using. Recently I've been really blown away by Artifacts and Computer Use, and the consistent improvements in Claude's skills.

I've also been incredibly lucky to be part of an amazing journey at Google DeepMind for the past 10 years, where I got to work on more exciting projects than I would have ever dreamed of: the saga from AlphaGo to ...

Our lives are measured in memorable moments

Sun 10 April 2022

The reason our childhood years seemed to pass so much more slowly than our adulthood is that they were filled with novelty and excitement, memorable first experiences: learning to ride a bike, entering a new school, making new friends.

Events, experiences, things are memorable not by some inherent quality, but rather become memorable by virtue of being different from our everyday life. What matters is the magnitude, not the sign: both the best and the worst times in your life will stick out in your memory.

Memorable experiences come in all sizes: cooking a new dish, meeting up ...

Master one skill at a time instead of learning many at once

Thu 13 June 2019

Every skill has both a cost to maintain and a cost to learn. Take the case of learning a language: You need to spend some time every day rehearsing vocabulary and grammar you already learned so you don't forget (maintain), then you can also study new words and grammar points (learn).

The maintenance is a fixed cost - you need to spend this time just to not forget what you already know. As you get better, this cost goes down. Either because you can integrate the skill in your normal routine - read news in foreign languages - or ...

Breaking the Rules to Improve Society

Sun 07 January 2018

Recently, I was talking with some friends about the increasing power of technology, and how it is being applied to ever more accurately enforce laws. In just one example, facial recognition is now used in China to automatically identify and fine jaywalkers.

One common concern is that these technologies are easily abused for more sinister purposes - mass surveillance, identification of political dissidents, etc.

However, I think there's an even more direct danger: Too rigid enforcement of laws stops society from improving. Until 1967, homosexuality was punishable by imprisonment in the UK. If it had been possible to ...

Tea

Thu 27 October 2016

Tea has become my favorite beverage, bar none.

With flavors stretching from light and sweet white and yellow teas all the way to dark and earthy pu-erh, no other drink can match its variety of flavor.

Best enjoyed freshly brewed from whole leaves in a small pot, you need very little to start drinking great tea.

1. Some hot water, from a kettle or pot, doesn't matter.
2. A tea pot or infuser with lots of space for your tea to expand, see mine as an example:
3. Loose leaf tea!

Some of ...

Work Rules!

Mon 03 October 2016

Work Rules! is the title of a great book by Laszlo Bock, SVP of People Operations at Google.

It's a pretty accurate portrait of life at Google (at least from what I've seen over the last three years), and at the same time it is a great guidebook for companies that haven't yet come as far along the path of employee empowerment.

If you are in any way involved with work - be it employer or employee - this is a must read, with lots of practical advice on how to improve your organization (and your life!). It ...

Distractions

Tue 22 March 2016

Reddit, Hacker News, Tumblr, Twitter, Imgur, Netflix, YouTube. The onslaught of pseudo information and conversation is relentless, it's easy to get lost in the comments. Feeling as if you are learning a something new all the time, a little gem in every post.

Somewhere along the way our natural curiosity and joy of learning has been hijacked and we waste away our lives reading and responding to useless chatter that seems useful and educating.

Every spare moment is filled by a quick glance to our smartphones, no time for thought and introspection left at all. Yes, that ...

Nutrition Information

Sun 10 January 2016

Recently, I ran across a very useful website: Examine.com. They collect and summarize studies about many common nutrients and supplements. If you were wondering whether to take Vitamin D or what to think about creatine, this is the website to check.