Entropic Thoughts Premium Newsletter #10-3
Part 3 of 3. ACX 2026 forecasting rationales.
Entropic Thoughts Premium Newsletter #10-2
Part 2 of 3. Multi-criteria shortest path: label-correcting Dijkstra.
Entropic Thoughts Premium Newsletter #10-1
Part 1 of 3. Brief review of 2025, personal notes on ZFS mirroring, and a book recommendation.
Predicting an Nvidia stock crash, and more
In which we trying to predict how likely it is that the most valued company in the world will nearly halve in value in the next year. As a bonus, we learn how to price options.
The slide rule goes in the kitchen
We learn how to use a slide rule and why it's so damn useful in the kitchen.
Disaster costs 1900–2024 and a note on laziness
If you've ever wondered what the most expensive disasters in recent history are, this is the article for you.
Gemini 3 plays games, privilege laundering, and price increase
Today we learn how the new crop of LLMs perform at text adventures.
Software control levels and go in 9×9
We look at how to determine how dangerous software can be in any given application, and then we enjoy some small-scale go games.
Deprecations and avoiding them with NixOS
We joke a little about how to handle deprecations in a way that makes people take them seriously, and then we look at how to use Perl on NixOS to avoid suffering from backwards incompatible changes.
Transparent leadership, AoC in Dialog, the flu sucks
Inventing buzzwords since 2014! A look at the Dialog text adventure programming language. I have the flu so my text is not good today.
Feynman vs. Computer; renewing GPG subkeys; Mallows is stuck in his chamber!
Quick look at renewing GPG subkeys, before we dive into the basics of Monte Carlo integration which is oh-so-useful – and simple.
Entropic Thoughts Premium Newsletter #9
Mixed topics: some test code optimisation, text adventures, the NetBSD machine for the five-year old, a guide in compass sighting, making and reading stories, and three recommendations for small games.
Cloudflare; software never fails; Newton; compasses
We find a flaw in Cloudflare's initial assessment of their problems, we learn what it means for us that software never fails, and poke amateurishly at physics.
Tiny game, what killed Perl, and some linear algebra
You get to play a fun game! And learn about how popular Perl really is. And an identity from linear algebra there's a chance you already knew.
Z-machine coding problems, and what to automate
The Z-machine was perhaps the original fantasy console, and we can learn it by biting into some Advent of Code problems. Then we discuss what criteria not to use when deciding on what to automate.
DynamoDB outage analysis and asking experts for timelines
We get a tour of a method by which AWS engineers could have prevented the expensive outage they had. (And you can prevent your outages too!) We also talk a little about extracting knowledge from experts and how to do it right.
LLMs playing text adventures, weather forecasts, making a base template in Yesod
Curious how the latest crop of LLMs do on text adventures, I set them at it. They're better, but not great. You'll also learn how to interpret meteograms, and how to set a base template for a Yesod site.
Entropic Thoughts Premium Newsletter #8
For this premium newsletter, I'm trying something new: I'll keep it more informal and conversational. Both to take some pressure off myself, and to see if...
Bind-to-LambdaCase, text adventures, and insurance claim frequencies
Everyone loves Haskell idioms, right? But we also love text adventures. And do you know how often major claims are made against home insurance? Soon you do!
Hazards, accidents, and data processing
We look at some fundamentals of system safety – everyone's favourite overlooked topic. Then we talk information theory because that's always a hoot.