Author: flipaoXIX

Borges

In my last day in Argentine last year, I bought a small book from Borges as I wanted some memory of my trip. I think it is poetry but I dont understand it. I have never been able to read poetry, even in my mother tongue.

The book contains “Fervor de Buenos Aires”, “Luna de enfrente” and “Cuaderno San Martin”.

Maybe once day i will be able to capture the beauty of this type of literature. As a teenager, I remember one teacher explaining us some poems from Pedro Salina’s “La voz a ti debia” And it was really nice, I still go the book, pending to read it…. nearly 30y in the waiting 🙂

Hyperfocus

I guess I am bit obsessed with personal performance, how to make more and better in the same or less amount of time. And this is another book about the subject. I read it as ebook so didn’t take notes.

Although the main topic is how to focus and make the most of it, the second part is about “scatterfocus” that was unexpected.

Focus produces, scatter invents/solves. They follow different steps to achieve that state.

And I think focus is gold. Difficult to focus with so much distraction everywhere. I like to work in the office… because it is mainly empty and I have few distractions there but looks like everything is about attention. It is the real commodity. Everybody is fighting for it. So you have to look after it.

There is nothing revolutionary for getting focus, and that is a good thing. I like the emphasis in meditation. Be sure you look after your body: good sleep, exercise, proper food, and be sure you have a limited time to be real focus per day so make it count.

For scatterfocus, it is as easy as going for a walk without nothing really in mind, let the mind wander and think in things and problems. These are the moments when most eureka bursts happen.

Need to read it again.

Dead’s End

I completed last week the third part of the Three Body Problem trilogy. It was interesting but in this part things got wild! Every twist caught me out of guard. The physics got me lost most of the time (3D vs 4D, etc). But I like how Trisolarians learnt to lie and play long term. How reaching light speed was the proper solution and the most important thing: humans in a spaceship disconnected from Earth, took them 5 minutes to reach Totalitarianism. And all the theories about the Dark Forest hypothesis (Fermi Paradox), deterrence, and something a bit less sci-fi.

Destroying Earth using a 2D plane that sucks the surrounding 3D… but that would suck the whole universe… but that is a good tactic if you can live in 2D… not sure if that was a superior tactic to defeat your adversaries in the dark forest?

SemiAnalysis – 100k cluster

This is site that a friend shared with me some months ago. And it is PURE gold from my point of view. They share a lot info free but not all, you have to subscribe/pay for the whole report. I would pay for it if my job were in that “business”

This is the link for a 100k GPU cluster.

It covers all details for building such infrastructure up to the network/hardware side. So from power distribution, cooling, racking, network design, etc. All is there.

It is something to read slowly to try to digest all the info.

This report for electrical systems (p1) shows the power facilities can be as big as the datacenter itself! So it is not rear to read hyperscalers want nuclear reactors.

MS GB200 rack, Malaysia DC boom, Oracle DCs, FuriosaAI, OCP concrete, IBM Mainframe Telum II, NotebookLM youtube summary, EdgeShark, RSA Quantum, OCP24 Meta

It seems Malaysia is getting a DC boom, but it based on coal???

This is a MS NVIDIA GB200 based rack. I am quite impressed with the cooling systems being twice as big as the compute rack! And yes, MS is sticking with IB for AI networking.

I didnt know that Oracle OCI was getting that big in the DC/AI business. And they were related to xAI. Their biggest DC is 800 megwatts… and a new one will have three nuclear reactors??

FuriosaAI: A new AI accelerator in the market. Good: cheap, less power. Bad: memory size.

OCP concrete: Interesting how far can go the OCP consortium.

IBM Mainframe Telum II: You think the mainframes business doesnt exist. Well, it is not. Honestly, at some point, I would like to fully understand the differences between a “standard” CPU and a mainframe CPU.

NotoebookLM: It seems it is possible to make summary of youtube videos! (and free)

EdgeShark: wireshark for containers. This has to be good for troubleshooting

22-bit RSA broken with Quantum computer: I think Quantum computing is the underdog in the current “all-is-AI” world. Schneier says we are ok.

OCP24 Meta AI: It is interesting comparing the Catalina rack with the one from MS above. The MS has the power rack next to it but FB doesnt show it, just mention Orv4 supports 140kW and it is liquid cooled. I assume that will be next to Catalina like MS design. And AMD GPU are getting into the mix with NVIDIA. It mentions Disaggregated Scheduled Fabric (DSF), with more details here. And here from STH more pictures.

A Man for All Markets

Very interesting book. I learned a lot new things from the origin of card counting, beating the roulette with the first wearable device (with Claude Shannon!!!), beating the markets based on managing risk, etc. The author is truly remarkable.

It is interesting how Edward moved from Chemistry to Maths due to problems with fairness in this Chemistry “career”. And still he didnt find much fairness in Las Vegas, and even worse in the stock market. He was driven to solve problems people didnt think had a solution. And was impressive how he taught himself. And likely he was a pioneer in computer-based trading. He is against the low latency trading. He mentions many times Warren Buffet and his investment style. As well, Citadel, as his continuation about the management of risk. It seems he didnt look for the sort term profit but going long, looking for mis-priced stocks.

I am happy he doesnt believe in the efficient market neither.

The Places in Between

This is the story of crossing by foot Northern Afghanistan after USA invasion. Not the best moment. The author had already travelled by Iran, Nepal, Pakistan but this one was really meaningful. You dont read many travel books about Afghanistan. He is trying to follow the path of the emperor Babur.

The most interesting part of the book is his interaction with the locals, with the good and bad things, and how different “tribes” he finds in his journey. His relationship with the dog “Babur”.

And what a disaster was the invasion. Western culture/democrazy can’t be imposed. EU had to go through several centuries of wars to notice that democracy/union was the less evil. Let’s see if we get back to the old habits…

The Panama Papers

This is a book that makes you to reconsider how you look at the “elite”. For me, paying taxes is one of the most fundamental part of a working democracy, and it is equal to trust and equality. And yes, we all want to pay less taxes. But if you knew everybody paid their part and everything was used properly, and you could live decently (imagine: good education, good health system, good infrastructure, etc) I doubt you wouldn’t do it.

With the Panama Papers, you can see how powerful is Mr Money. Everybody has their hands dirty: politicians (Kirchers-Argentina, Camerons-UK, Iceland, Russia, Ukraine, Spain, China, etc), banks (nearly all German banks), conglomerates (Siemens), artists, sports (FIFA, Messi…) And this is just the tip of the iceberg. Amazon, Apple, M$, etc have billions in tax heavens. This remind me to a similar book regarding off-shore investments where it said there are trillions of $ hidden from us.

I am still surprised this is still “legal” and main player/countries are still allowing it. If USA doesnt crack it down, then, there is still something “worth it” for some people there…. Looks like a lost battle. But still worth it. I hope you dont ever again cry for Messi, CR or any other “star”. Very likely they dont deserve you.

Still, I am happy there are publications like this. Well done for the authors.

Hidden Potential

This is an ebook about personal performance. You dont need the genetics, attend the best school, come from money, etc to be great. In many areas, the most successful individual were not prodigies. Although we have a lot of literature highlighting being a prodigy was the source of everything else. The book gives plenty of examples to contradice that. And this is a great example: Raging Rooks

With the right opportunity and motivation to learn, anyone can build the skills to achieve greater things. Potential is not a matter of where you start, but of how far you travel. The “soft” skill/qualities underrated: proactive, prosocial, disciplined, determined are more important that maths or reading skills.

Character: It is a learned capacity to live by your principles. It is how you show up on a hard day. Being comfortable being uncomfortable.

Character skills predict and produce success in life.

Then you need to the scaffolding to maintain those character skills when things dont go well (it will happen) Those structures will sustain your motivation. He puts the example of the Chilean mining accident in 2010 about the importance of “teaming”. It shows why intelligence agencies failed in early 2000 attacks

Finally, the book talks about building systems to expand opportunity. And the best example is the Finnish education system.

I will have to read it again (in paper)

Waking Up

To be honest, I struggled with this ebook. It is about spirituality without religion, the connection of consciousness and our brain (interesting the cases when people got removed something the brain hemispheres got disconnected), false gurus (you can apply this to many env in life: sport, work, etc), next-death-experiences, enlightenment and the use of psychedelics to open your mind.