b3o.tech Micro Blog

TIL The Hubble Space Telescope has what’s known as director’s discretionary time. This time (around 10%) is reserved for allocation at the discretion of the Director. Proposals accepted for this time do not have to go through the lengthy peer-review and approvals process. It’s generally used for time critical events like supernovae observations. In 1994, the director Robert Williams used this director’s discretionary time himself to point the telescope to a seemingly empty patch of sky. The end result was the Hubble Deep Field, one of the most iconic views of the universe. This wild story is from the latest episode of StarTalk podcast.

CloudFlare is acquiring Astro web framework. I’ve built several personal projects using Astro and all deployed on CloudFlare. I guess that’s a common pattern 😛 Both products mesh together nicely so this makes sense. Hope CloudFlare keeps improving Astro.

Very much enjoyed listening to this episode of StarTalk podcast with John Martinis, the 2025 Nobel Prize winner in Physics. The episode caused me to reminisce about my graduate studies in physics. The discussion covers topics on superconductivity, quantum tunneling, Josephson Junctions, Cooper pairs, and others. It will surely be entertaining and interesting to any science enthusiast.

TIL The Grammys are creating a new award category for the best album cover art, splitting it apart from the existing best recording package category. It’s a good way to recognize more of the artists that are involved in creating music. Also probably influenced in large part by the prevalence music streaming services. People don’t buy the physical albums as much, but most see the album cover art in the streaming apps.

TIL that Sony owns Snoopy. Sony bought controlling stake of the Charles M. Schulz comic “Peanuts”. Also interesting is that the previous owner was a Canadian company.

Spent the past weekend in remote snowy wilderness. No electricity. No cellphone. No wi-fi. Small tree-house cabin with a wood stove for heat. First time cross-country skiing. Handwarmers were essential. Great weekend before the start of the new year work week.

I’m thrilled to be starting a new full-time role at Cohere! Excited to learn, build, and collaborate with a great team. I’m looking forward to what’s ahead!

A review of published papers on developmental patterns sheds light on the origins of exceptional human achievements. The research looked at top performers across various disciplines, including science, chess, music, and athletics, revealing several key patterns in the development of world-class performance:

1. Youth vs. Adulthood: Exceptional performers in their youth and those who reach world-class levels as adults often follow distinct developmental paths over time.

2. Early Development: In youth, exceptional performance is typically linked to intense, focused practice within a single discipline, with rapid progress in the early stages and minimal involvement in other fields.

3. Adult Performance: In contrast, adult world-class performers tend to diversify their practice, incorporating multidisciplinary skills, and experience more gradual development over time.

I really enjoyed this episode of The Economics of Everyday Things podcast. It investigates the economics of urban trees.

Research shows that inner-city trees provide many benefits:

• Carbon sequestration
• reduced cooling costs
• increased house value
• improvements in public health
• decrease in crime
• reduced stormwater runoff

All those benefits far outweigh any costs associated with planting and upkeep of the trees. Unfortunately, the most recent data shows that urban tree cover is in decline.

One of my favorite Acquired episodes is the deep dive on Epic Systems. The origin story, the history, and Judith Faulkner’s founder journey are just insanely good. So many gems in this one:

• Epic’s campus has the largest underground auditorium in the world, called “Deep Space”, with over 11,000 seats.
• Other areas also have imaginative names like “Wizards’ Academy”.
• The company claims zero client churn in its 45 year history.
• A couple of their commandments: “Do not go public” and “Do not be acquired”. The succession plan for the company is to go into a trust and foundation.

If you haven’t listened yet, I highly recommend it.

I’ve been slowly learning French for a while. Here’s my progress in Duolingo during 2025.

Really enjoyed the Neil deGrasse Tyson show in Toronto. The section on Artemis II rocket launch was especially interesting. Artemis II will be the first crewed mission to the Moon since 1972! The crew consists of 3 NASA and one Canadian astronaut. I’m hoping I can see the launch live in February!

Very interesting article on the decline of deviance and increase of homogeneity in our society. This is a good thing: we live longer and richer lives today than in the past. But there seems to be a decline in creativity in many aspects of our culture: art, architecture, and industry.

Great Freakonomics podcast episode on private equity. It provides a very educational outline how PE works: buying, restructuring, and selling companies. It discusses the recent push to let retail investors access PE funds and the impact it may have. In short, likely not great for retail investors.

This is kinda insane. Valve makes more per employee than Google, Amazon, or Microsoft. Gaming industry has had its troubles this year with layoffs at Activision, Microsoft, EA, and others. And Valve is here making $50 million per employee with average salary per employee of more than $1.3 million.

AWS quietly released Regional NAT Gateway. This seems like a pretty nice improvement for configuring and managing multiple NAT gateways across AZs for high availability. Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem to have any benefits in terms of pricing/cost ☹️