qwen on S Anand

Things I Learned - 24 May 2026

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

This week, I learned:

BitWarden seems to be sneakily jacking up prices and going towards a PE sale. Might be time to shift out or self host. Sigh, I just migrated into it… Source
Andrej Karpathy has joined Anthropic. Likely to use Claude to build better Claudes - automating AI research. Also, it probably isn’t a good time to build an AI education platform. Claude
The open-source Chinese models about 6 months behind frontier models. Qwen 3.7-Max is on par with Claude 4.5 Opus (Nov 2025) and Gemini 3 Flash (Dec 2025).
Google basically became Gemini. Entirely! I’m not sure there’s a difference any more. Which means it will scrape websites and not send traffic through - just killing the search economy. But it’s far more useful. Claude
I wanted a list of sites I log into with my Google Account. Google’s Linked apps page does that. Unfortunately, I can’t find a way to use Google Takeout to export that data. So I wrote a scraper which can be single-shot prompted these days.
As long as you remember to exhale, your chances of recovery from being ejected into space is pretty good for the first 15-60 seconds. Gemini
I don’t understand half the comments I read on LinkedIn. Earlier, I was able to separate good from bad. Now, I’m not sure if what I read is actually insight or idiocy. Is the AI use making their comments too smart or making my brain too dumb?
“Pax Memoriae”: peace of memory. Putting past conflicts to rest. The best part of it was, I learnt the phrase by typing “Pax” into VS Code and wasn’t sure what to write next. Before I could search for it, GitHub Copilot completed it. I searched for what it meant, and it was so apt!
Children’s vision is worse than adults, but filter less and absorb ore irrelevant information than adults. This is useful for learning and surprise detection, but costly for focus, speed, and relevance. ChatGPT
The word phobia comes from the Greek god of fear, Phobos, which is the name of one of Mars’ moon. Deimos, the other moon, is the Greek god of dread/terror. They’re the children of Ares (Mars), the god of war. Nice planet.
On WhatsApp, I can type @Meta AI and then /imagine to have it draw an image. The quality is OK - not great, not terrible.
Surprising but GPT Realtime Whisper ( new model) isn’t as good as the older open-source Whisper models. Also, Gemini 3 Flash Preview is as good at transcription as Gemini 3.1 Pro Preview for up to medium-length text. LLM Audio Transcription benchmark
Google Maps typically shows me a cycling time of 30 minutes when it take me 40 minutes and a walking time of 40 minutes when it take me 30 minutes. Either I walk much faster and cycle much lower than the typical person or Google Maps is not well calibrated to Singapore and India.

Fri, 15 Aug 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Alibaba released an open-source coding model (qwen-coder) and tool (qwen-code).

qwen-code + qwen-coder cost 8 cents and made 3 mistakes. https://lnkd.in/gguSGdv6
qwen-code + claude-sonnet-4 cost 104 cents and made no mistakes. https://lnkd.in/gEPnVS-F
claude-code cost 29 cents and made no mistakes. https://lnkd.in/gyCVeAr4

There’s no reason to shift yet, but it’s a good step in the development of open code models & tools.

Sat, 03 May 2025 16:54:04 +0000

Me: What is the capital of France?

Qwen3-30b-a3b:

<think>

Okay, so I need to figure out what the capital of France is. Let me start by recalling what I know about countries and their capitals. France is a country in Europe, right? I think it’s known for things like the Eiffel Tower, Paris, and maybe some famous foods like croissants or wine.

Wait, but the question is specifically asking for the capital. The capital of a country is usually the city where the government is based. So, for example, the capital of the United States is Washington, D.C. So applying that logic to France, I need to think about which city is the seat of the French government.

I remember hearing that Paris is a major city in France. It’s often referred to as the “City of Light” or something like that. But is Paris actually the capital? Or is there another city that serves as the capital? Let me think. Sometimes countries have different cities for different purposes, like a capital city and a financial center. For instance, Brazil’s capital is Brasília, but Rio de Janeiro is more well-known. However, I don’t think France has a similar situation.

Another way to approach this is to consider the political structure of France. The French government is a semi-presidential republic, so the president is the head of state. I think the Eiffel Tower is in Paris, but that’s more of a landmark than the governmental center.

What about other French cities? There’s Lyon, Marseille, Bordeaux… But those are major cities too, but not capitals. Wait, maybe there was some historical context where the capital changed? Like, during times of war or political upheaval. For example, during the French Revolution, did they move the government somewhere else?

I should also think about other countries in Europe. The capital of Italy is Rome, Spain is Madrid, Germany is Berlin. So France’s capital would logically be a major city. Paris seems to fit here. But just to make sure, maybe there’s a common misconception. For example, someone might confuse the capital with the largest city or the most famous one. However, I think in this case, Paris is both the largest and the capital.

Alternatively, could it be Versailles? Because the Palace of Versailles is a famous historical site, but that was more the royal residence during the reign of Louis XIV. The French government isn’t based there anymore. So even though Versailles is an important city in French history, it’s not the current capital.

Another angle: if I search my memory for any mentions of Paris as the capital. For instance, when people talk about France’s cultural aspects, they often mention Paris as the center.

I think I’m pretty confident that the answer is Paris. But just to double-check, maybe there are some sources. Wait, if I can’t look it up right now, but relying on my knowledge, yes, Paris is the capital of France.

</think>

The capital of France is Paris.