07 Jul 2026
· ai-engineering
I am a self-taught1 full-stack developer for everything my company ships. For many years I have run a micro incubator — a handful of products and services that I build, deploy and own, all by myself. I write the code, the tests, and the deployment scripts; I run the servers. And I was quite content with that job description.
Then one of those products grew into a problem I could not keep up with.
Continue reading →07 Jul 2026
· ai-engineering
This is Part 2 of a three-part series. Part 1 tells the story of why this system exists. Part 3 collects the rules I now follow. This part is the engineering.
PublishersGlobal runs a verification pipeline over an active directory of ~20,000 publishers and service providers. Every profile needs to be continuously verified and re-verified, because data on the internet degrades very quickly. In the first few months we ran close to 30,000 verification passes. This post recounts some of what I learned building and running the verification system on open-weight models.
Continue reading →07 Jul 2026
· ai-engineering
This is Part 3 of a three-part series. Part 1 is the story of why the system exists; Part 2 is the engineering detail. This part is the distillation: the rules I now follow, each one paid for by a specific mistake1. I’d bet that this list is far from complete and I will have the opportunity to add to it.
I came to AI engineering with decades of full-stack habits. Some transferred directly, some had to be unlearned, and a few new ones had to be acquired at the cost of production incidents. Here are twelve, in roughly the order the pipeline taught them to me.
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27 Jun 2020
· comment
Even though I do not know much about video games, I’d like to make a video game analogy to make my point. Why? Because some people I wish to get through to know a lot about it. If I am not exactly right about the granularities, do cut me some slack and go with the broad flow.
Imagine you are a gamer who has been playing regularly but not making as much progress as you’d like. Then, a friend suggests a tactic/strategy to try. You do it and it works. You keep dong that, or a slight variation of it, and you keep winning (or at least doing better). Then, the same friend, or another friend, tells you another strategy and that helps too. Over a period of time, you have accumulated a bunch of strategies and tactics and you have become much better at the game.
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16 Apr 2020
· comment
This was written on the April 12, 2020 and published here a few days later. If you are the kind of person who likes to shoot the messenger that brings unpleasant news, I’d suggest you stop reading now. I am not going to pretend that I know the answer. I will try to create a back-of-the-envelope map of the territory we currently occupy and chart the possible routes ahead. You should make your own inferences.
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04 Feb 2018
· comment
Note 1: This started out as a letter to my daughter who goes to college this year. But once I started writing I thought that others who go through the college application process (and their parents, perhaps) might find it useful too.
Note 2: I have no specific qualifications to comment on college or children, other than that I went to college once and have had the pleasure of growing up with two kids of my own. Since I lack credentials I make my argument by drawing on the work of others who have real credibility.
Continue reading →![Packing list for multi-day self-supported cycling trip [Version 2.0]](/images/IMG_1317-2-l_hu_c33b5b0c9e025dc8.jpg)
01 Jan 2018
· cycling
Some years ago I had posted a packing list that I had used for my Manli-Leh cycling trip. That post generated many thank-you’s and even more follow-up questions. The Manali-Leh trip was my first major multi-day self-supported cycling trip. Since then I have done many more trips and I am now more settled on my packing list. And my approach to packing for a cycling trip is more refined, or so I’d like to believe.
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08 Dec 2017
· travel
It is five in the morning and still pitch dark outside. But I am up and ready to face the winter morning chill, which admittedly, is not at its peak yet. My camera bag on my shoulder and my trusty hat on my head I am ready to leave the comfort of my hotel room. While this is a nice hotel, it is old style. No digital key swipes, just one key for an old-fashioned lock. Therefore I need to wake my wife to let me out of the hotel room and lock the door behind me.
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02 Dec 2017
· cycling
Before I get to the ‘should’ let me answer if I ‘want’ to cycle to work. The unequivocal answer is yes.
For me the reasons for cycling to work are many:
I enjoy cycling. It is good for my health. I can create time from thin air if I cycle during my allocated commute time. If I don’t have to get up at 5:00 am to go out and ride, I can do other things at night: read some, party some… It saves me fuel and money. It helps reduce my carbon footprint. I can rack up some good karma. I also happen to be in a particularly fortunate situation:
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02 Jul 2017
· photo-features
Residents of Delhi, even those not terribly interested in history, are likely to be aware of the Safdarjung Tomb. Not because it is a particularly grand tomb, as mausoleum go, but perhaps because it is physically a prominent landmark, on a major road, in the middle of upmarket central Delhi.
This morning I had an hour to kill, and I decide to make some pictures there. While wandering there, two things occurred to me:
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