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Week 24 - 2026

Tue, 12 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

This week I finally had time to watch “The Story of C++: The World’s Most Consequential Programming Language | The Official Story” and really enjoyed it!

Takeaway

As someone who has been programming in C++ for more than 20 years, I found the documentary to be a fascinating. It was great to see how C++ has evolved over the decades and how it has been applied across such a wide range of domains, from video games and embedded systems to financial markets. The documentary also highlights that many other programming languages including Python, Java, and even newer ones like Rust, have been deeply influenced by C++ in their design and features.

Python: The Documentary

Thu, 04 Sep 2025 00:00:00 +0000

I just watched “Python: The Documentary” and absolutely loved it 🩵 Highly recommended!

Takeaway

The documentary narrates not only the technical milestones but the human journey:

🚀 How Guido van Rossum’s vision and persistence turned a small project (started over a Christmas break!) into a global phenomenon.
🚨How the community navigated tough transitions (obviously we are talking about Python 2 → 3) and came out stronger.
🐍 How tools like Anaconda helped Python explode in data science.
✨ And how a culture of inclusivity transformed PyCon into a space that reflects the diversity of the wider world.

It’s fascinating to see that Python’s growth wasn’t just about clever design choices. Its real strength came from something deeper: A culture that welcomes ideas, contributions, and people. As Brett Cannon famously said:

When GPUs Make Python Slower

Fri, 22 Aug 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Just finished watching this interesting talk from the PyconUS 2025 Conference.

Takeaways

Minimise memory transfers:

The GPU is a separate device with its own memory (most modern GPUs rely on VRAM). To process data, you often need to transfer it from CPU (host) memory to GPU (device) memory and back again. These transfers happen over the PCIe bus, which is much slower than the GPU’s internal memory bandwidth.
Pitfall: If you repeatedly move data back and forth in small chunks, the transfer latency dominates, and the GPU spends more time waiting than computing. This can make your code slower than a pure CPU implementation.

Maximise operational intensity:

Chart of the Week

Mon, 04 Aug 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Source: Our World in Data

Normal Sampling

Wed, 23 Jul 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Made with 🩵 by Dialid Santiago.

Readings about A.I.

Mon, 21 Jul 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Just read this fascinating article in The New Yorker

What Happens After A.I. Destroys College Writing?

The demise of the English paper will end a long intellectual tradition, but it’s also an opportunity to reëxamine the purpose of higher education.

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2025/07/07/the-end-of-the-english-paper

Takeaways:

Books

Fri, 18 Jul 2025 00:00:00 +0000

J.P. Morgan Summer Reading List

Curiosity. It’s where transformation begins. It guides us through moments of change—from quiet reflection to bold discovery, from seeking meaning within to searching for understanding beyond.

https://privatebank.jpmorgan.com/eur/en/about-us/an-elevated-experience/summer-reading-list#book-list

The Diary of a CEO: Geoffrey Hinton

Sat, 12 Jul 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Just finished watching Geoffrey Hinton’s interview on The Diary of a CEO — a rare, candid conversation from one of the pioneers of AI.

Takeaways

Real AI risks are already here Hinton emphasizes that the pressing dangers aren’t sci-fi superintelligence, but things we see today: algorithmic manipulation, the amplification of bias, and disinformation at scale.
Hinton comes from a family tree of scientific legacy. His lineage includes George Boole best known as the author of The Laws of Thought (1854), which contains Boolean algebra; George Everest, a geographer and a Surveyor General of India, after whom Mount Everest was named; and Joan Hinton a nuclear physicist and one of the few women scientists who worked for the Manhattan Project in Los Alamos.

The Limited Virtue of Complexity in a Noisy World

Mon, 07 Jul 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Cartea, Álvaro and Jin, Qi and Shi, Yuantao, The Limited Virtue of Complexity in a Noisy World (April 02, 2025). Available at SSRN here or here.

Summary: In this paper, the authors analyse the role of model complexity in the context of predicting asset returns and portfolio construction. In particular, they aim to address the significant question of whether adding a large number of predictive features ultimately harms performance. Their work aims to bridge two views: the traditional econometric one, favoring parsimonious models (i.e. Occam’s razor), and the more modern machine learning findings that highly the fact that so-called “overparameterized” models can perform well under proper regularization ( double descent phenomenon).

Natural History Ensemble

Tue, 01 Jul 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Natural History Ensemble, no. 11 (1596–1610) by the talented Flemish draughtsman Anselmus Boëtius de Boodt (1550–1632). Check out more of Anselmus Boëtius de Boodt’s works in this Rawpixel Gallery.

Source: Public Domain. Original from the Rijksmuseum.