This week, I learned:

  • Inevitablism is framing an argument as if it is the only logical choice in an inevitable future. Thereafter, the argument shifts to are there any alternative choices in that inevitable world, rather than whether that future is, in fact, inevitable.
  • ⭐ LLM chat over data may leapfrog dashboards. This may be a trigger to kill redundant UI.
  • A new wave of (liberal) colleges have emerged. Ashoka University, Krea, Plaksha (Mohali), Jindal University (Sonipat), FLAME University (Pune), Azim Premji University, Shiv Nadar University. Many of these accept IB students who are choosing to stay in India, instead of the earlier trend of studying abroad.
  • xh is curl-compatible but adds JSON pretty‑print, colour, --table and can pass parameters like xh post :8000/api question='When is the ROE?'
  • dasel is jq-compatible but supports YAML and TOML too
  • lazygit is a 5-MB TUI that lets you stage/commit/push/diff in one screen
  • eza is a modern ls replacement. I switched to this with abbr --add l 'eza -l -snew --git --time-style relative --no-user --no-permissions --color-scale=size'
  • jless is less replacement for large JSON streams, with search & scroll
  • jc is a JSON to table formatter
  • uv cache prune removes only unused cache entries and saves a fair bit of space. Mine trimmed 85 GB.
  • Claude Code settings are in ~/.claude/settings.json (personal) < .claude/settings.json (project) < .claude/settings.local.json (uncommitted personal) < CLI arguments. Explore model, permissions, env, forceLoginMethod. Ref #ai-coding
  • Claude Code loads memory from ~/.claude/CLAUDE.md < .CLAUDE.md and from subdirectories when required. Run /init to auto-create it with repo-specific info! Mention @file to import. Beginning an input with # ... adds it to memory! Run /memory to view/edit memory files. Ref #ai-coding
  • Claude Code lets you type \ then Enter at the end of a line to continue to the next line. Or, run /terminal-setup to bind Shift-Enter to insert a newline. #ai-coding
  • Claude Code has built-in tools to read & write Jupyter notebooks (interesting), to run sub-agents (powerful), and to manage TODO lists (useful) Ref #ai-coding
  • claude -p "query" runs the query and exits, making it a very powerful pipeline tool. E.g. cat stream.jsonl | claude -p "..." --output-format json --input-format stream-json --max-turns 3 --dangerously-skip-permissions Ref #ai-coding
  • Claude Code has a /review command that requests a code review and a /pr_comments to view pull request comments Ref #ai-coding
  • Claude Code lets you define custom slash commands at ~/.claude/commands/*.md < .claude/commands/*.md. Use @file to reference files, $ARGUMENTS for arguments, and ! for bash commands like DIR: !`pwd`. YAML frontmatter supports allowed-tools: and description: Ref #ai-coding
  • You can drag & drop a screenshot or paste it into Claude Code! #ai-coding
  • Claude Code lets you run /compact Focus on code samples and API usage (or mention it in CLAUDE.md) #ai-coding
  • Claude Code activates extended thinking via these keywords: think < think hard < think harder < ultrathink Ref #ai-coding
  • Claude Code lets you set up GitHub Actions via /install-github-app so that any mention of @claude in an issue or a PR will trigger a CI job that does what you suggest. An alternative to Jules or Codex #ai-coding
  • Claude Code enterprise use is possible. It works with Google Vertex AI and Amazon Bedrock securely and supports usage monitoring #ai-coding
  • Claude Code supports proxies and LLM gateways. The apiKeyHelper setting can dynamically generate API keys #ai-coding
  • Claude Code costs ~$6/day on average, and < $12/day for 90% of developers. Ref #ai-coding
  • ccusage summarizes Claude Code usage patterns from ~/.claude/ #ai-coding
  • Interesting MCPs to explore:
    • Sentry: fetch issues with stack traces and other useful debugging context
    • Playwright: automate browser
  • neomutt is a convenient way for me to read my archived .mbox files. neomutt -f $FILE.mbox lets you browse an MBOX.
  • IITM DoMS is a management school inside a technical institute. That lets MBA students learn to interact with geeks and create startups.
  • Last year, LLMs were able to solve 3 JEE problems. This year, they were all-India Rank #4, and then beat AIR #1.
  • India has 3% electric vehicle penetration. The highest (perhaps Norway) is 80%. The Indian Government is actively looking to phase in EVs. Charging points are being installed across the country.