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Ted Mao

@ternarybits.bsky.social
16 followers 27 following 89 posts

Builder, Investor, Father. I post stuff that I enjoyed reading.

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Ted Mao @ternarybits.bsky.social · 20/08/2025
1/ Earlier this year, I started working on a side project called Gumnut, around the theme of photo intelligence: the idea that AI can use photo understanding to enable businesses and people to do things that were previously considered impossible, incredibly time consuming, or too expensive.
photo-intelligence.beehiiv.com
Gumnut + MCP = Agentic Photos
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Ted Mao @ternarybits.bsky.social · 15/04/2025
They downplay it in the article, but this sounds terrifying. arstechnica.com/space/2025/0...
arstechnica.com
Starliner’s flight to the space station was far wilder than most of us thought
“Hey, this is a very precarious situation we’re in.”…
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Ted Mao @ternarybits.bsky.social · 15/04/2025
The latest article on the Pragmatic Engineer is pretty relevant if you’re a hiring manager, or a software developer searching for what’s next: newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com/p/the-realit...
newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com
The Reality of Tech Interviews in 2025
Interview processes are changing in a tech market that’s both cooling AND heating up at the same time. A deepdive with Hello Interview founders, Evan King and Stefan Mai
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Ted Mao @ternarybits.bsky.social · 15/04/2025
Glad someone is investing in this kind of research instead of simply plowing ahead. And I suspect that the foundational research Anthropic is doing here will also help them build better models in the future. www.anthropic.com/research/tra...
anthropic.com
Tracing the thoughts of a large language model
Anthropic's latest interpretability research: a new microscope to understand Claude's internal mechanisms
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Ted Mao @ternarybits.bsky.social · 15/04/2025
www.thesisdriven.com/p/reclaiming...
thesisdriven.com
Reclaiming "Affordable Housing"
Fixing housing's terminology problem
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Ted Mao @ternarybits.bsky.social · 26/03/2025
Great reflection on 8 years at Palantir: nabeelqu.substack.com/p/reflection... I’d personally heard of the FDE model before, but while reading this article, I realized that there are a lot of similarities between it and what I’ve been doing at TheGP.
nabeelqu.substack.com
Reflections on Palantir
A retrospective of an eight-year stint.
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Ted Mao @ternarybits.bsky.social · 26/03/2025
This is an incredibly fascinating look into how senior members of the Trump administration communicate and operate. www.theatlantic.com/politics/arc...
theatlantic.com
The Trump Administration Accidentally Texted Me Its War Plans
U.S. national-security leaders included me in a group chat about upcoming military strikes in Yemen. I didn’t think it could be real. Then the bombs started falling.
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Ted Mao @ternarybits.bsky.social · 24/03/2025
Stratechery interview with Sam Altman: stratechery.com/2025/an-inte...
stratechery.com
An Interview with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman About Building a Consumer Tech Company
An interview with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman about building OpenAI and ChatGPT, and what it means to be an accidental consumer tech company.
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Ted Mao @ternarybits.bsky.social · 24/03/2025
Just an interesting read. www.menshealth.com/health/a6414...
menshealth.com
The Doctor, the Biohacker, and the Quest to Treat Their Long COVID
One of them is a doctor who likes to play it safe. The other is a regular dude who’s willing to try anything. Both of them have long COVID. In their desperate search for answers, two men are bonded by...
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Ted Mao @ternarybits.bsky.social · 24/03/2025
Interesting article on what it will take to get autonomous cars to cities with snow. www.changinglanesnewsletter.com/p/automated-...
changinglanesnewsletter.com
Automated Driving in Winter Conditions
An Interview with Steven Waslander
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Ted Mao @ternarybits.bsky.social · 24/03/2025
Some humor: arstechnica.com/ai/2025/03/a...
arstechnica.com
AI coding assistant refuses to write code, tells user to learn programming instead
Cursor AI tells user, “I cannot generate code for you, as that would be completing your work.”…
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Ted Mao @ternarybits.bsky.social · 24/03/2025
I always find research on city and building design interesting. For example, the article on parking spaces that I shared a couple of weeks ago. And today, I found this interesting post on fire stairwells. x.com/SustainableT...
x.com
Philip Oldfield on X: "Important research by the @pewtrusts shows that 4-6 storey apartments with a single fire stair do not put residents at any greater fire risk (as compared to 2 stairs) Single stairs are also cheaper, and could allow much more housing to be built! https://t.co/K2iWwTPvVZ https://t.co/1FtGN3HfX7" / X
Important research by the @pewtrusts shows that 4-6 storey apartments with a single fire stair do not put residents at any greater fire risk (as compared to 2 stairs) Single stairs are also cheaper, and could allow much more housing to be built! https://t.co/K2iWwTPvVZ https://t.co/1FtGN3HfX7
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Ted Mao @ternarybits.bsky.social · 24/03/2025
Great writeup about using LLMs for coding tasks. I also agree with the takeaway: "LLMs amplify existing expertise" simonwillison.net/2025/Mar/11/...
simonwillison.net
Here’s how I use LLMs to help me write code
Online discussions about using Large Language Models to help write code inevitably produce comments from developers who’s experiences have been disappointing. They often ask what they’re doing wrong—h...
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Ted Mao @ternarybits.bsky.social · 24/03/2025
Kind of funny: > There’s a glimmer of a good idea here. But after a month of testing, I’ve never felt more gaslit. www.theverge.com/reviews/6270...
theverge.com
I outsourced my memory to an AI pin and all I got was fanfiction
Never have I ever been this gaslit by a wearable.
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Ted Mao @ternarybits.bsky.social · 24/03/2025
Very excited about this, and generally the movement toward optional and static typing in web applications. devblogs.microsoft.com/typescript/t...
devblogs.microsoft.com
A 10x Faster TypeScript - TypeScript
Embarking on a native port of the existing TypeScript compiler and toolset to achieve a 10x performance speed-up.
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Ted Mao @ternarybits.bsky.social · 24/03/2025
Pretty good write-up on how to effectively use LLMs for coding. I've found the part about providing instructions to guide the model (e.g. telling it what version of python I'm using, what best practices I wanted to follow, etc.) has been particularly helpful for me. www.honeycomb.io/blog/how-i-c...
honeycomb.io
How I Code With LLMs These Days
Phillip Carter provides guidelines around using LLMs in software development, like paying for Claude, asking for small changes, and more.
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Ted Mao @ternarybits.bsky.social · 07/03/2025
My instinct is to stay far away from this latest batch of YC companies... but maybe one of them will prove me wrong by shipping a quality product? techcrunch.com/2025/03/06/a...
techcrunch.com
A quarter of startups in YC's current cohort have codebases that are almost entirely AI-generated | TechCrunch
With the release of new AI models that are better at coding, developers are increasingly using AI to generate code. One of the newest examples is the
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Ted Mao @ternarybits.bsky.social · 07/03/2025
Another great article by patio11: www.bitsaboutmoney.com/archive/two-...
bitsaboutmoney.com
Two Americas, one bank branch, and $50,000 cash
Ever wondered what happens if you try to take $50,000 in cash out of a bank? Answer: a year of investigative journalism.
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Ted Mao @ternarybits.bsky.social · 07/03/2025
review.firstround.com/lessons-in-p...
review.firstround.com
How to Scale Your Product from Figma's CPO
Figma CPO Yuhki Yamashita offers up his playbook for the gnarly phase of product building that arrives after a startup clinches product-market fit — and sets its sights on the next phase of growth.
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Ted Mao @ternarybits.bsky.social · 07/03/2025
x.com/ChaithanyaK4...
x.com
Chaithanya Kumar on X: "I think everyone should watch @Karpathy's latest video on how he uses LLMs, even those who think AI is already a big part of their lives because: 1. One of the best minds in AI is spending time showing how he uses AI personally rather he could have spent his time building AGI , https://t.co/4ldmsB7Hel" / X
I think everyone should watch @Karpathy's latest video on how he uses LLMs, even those who think AI is already a big part of their lives because: 1. One of the best minds in AI is spending time showing how he uses AI personally rather he could have spent his time building AGI , https://t.co/4ldmsB7Hel
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Ted Mao @ternarybits.bsky.social · 01/03/2025
I know a few people here have been looking for a job for some time, and it’s sort of validating to know that they aren’t alone in their struggles. www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archiv...
theatlantic.com
The Job Market Is Frozen
Unemployment is low, but workers aren’t quitting and businesses aren’t hiring. What’s going on?
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Ted Mao @ternarybits.bsky.social · 01/03/2025
So this morning, I used NotebookLM for the first time for a project, and it was AMAZING. But it also took me down a rabbit hole doing research on NotebookLM, and I thought these two links were worth sharing:
sequoiacap.com
Google NotebookLM’s Raiza Martin and Jason Spielman on Creating Delightful AI Podcast Hosts and the Potential for Source-Grounded AI
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Ted Mao @ternarybits.bsky.social · 01/03/2025
Great read, if you’re into the nerdy details of accurately representing numbers in computers. chadnauseam.com/coding/rando...
chadnauseam.com
calculator-app - Chad Nauseam Home
"A calculator app? Anyone could make that." (this was originally a https://x.com/ChadNauseam/status/1890889465322786878) Not true. A calculator should show you the result of the mathematical expressi…
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Ted Mao @ternarybits.bsky.social · 24/02/2025
Really interesting writeup on fly.io’s approach to providing GPUs and how it’s gone so far — not very well. I love companies with leadership that can be introspective and honest, and are willing to publish their retrospectives.fly.io/blog/wrong-a...u/
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Ted Mao @ternarybits.bsky.social · 24/02/2025
While most countries have moved to the right in recent elections, Denmark has been an exception. Great article about why. www.nytimes.com/2025/02/24/m...
nytimes.com
How Denmark’s Social Democrats Are Succeeding With Stricter Immigration Policies
Around the world, progressive parties have come to see tight immigration restrictions as unnecessary, even cruel. What if they’re actually the only way for progressivism to flourish?
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Ted Mao @ternarybits.bsky.social · 24/02/2025
Most popular tech stacks used across early-stage, VC-funded startups. Data from 100+ US-based companies hiring and working with recruitment firm Coastal Recruitment. substack.com/@pragmaticen...
substack.com
Gergely Orosz on Substack
Most popular tech stacks used across early-stage, VC-funded startups. Data from 100+ US-based companies hiring and working with recruitment firm Coastal Recruitment. More interesting details about th...
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Ted Mao @ternarybits.bsky.social · 24/02/2025
www.telegraph.co.uk/business/202...
telegraph.co.uk
‘I’ve had it’: JP Morgan boss rails against Gen Z in expletive-laden outburst
Leaked recording of Jamie Dimon rant highlights growing frustrations over home working
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Ted Mao @ternarybits.bsky.social · 14/02/2025
For those of you building in the early stages of building a company now. review.firstround.com/the-30-best-...
review.firstround.com
The 30 Best Pieces of Company Building Advice We Heard in 2024
For the 12th year in a row, we rounded up 30 timeless company-building insights we published from the year before.
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Ted Mao @ternarybits.bsky.social · 14/02/2025
Great article on design patterns for building generative AI products. martinfowler.com/articles/gen...
martinfowler.com
Emerging Patterns in Building GenAI Products
Patterns from our colleagues
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Ted Mao @ternarybits.bsky.social · 12/02/2025
Just a generally interesting read. www.worksinprogress.news/p/the-prophe...
worksinprogress.news
The prophet of parking
A eulogy for the great Donald Shoup
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Ted Mao @ternarybits.bsky.social · 12/02/2025
www.politico.com/news/magazin...
politico.com
Voters Were Right About the Economy. The Data Was Wrong.
Here’s why unemployment is higher, wages are lower and growth less robust than government statistics suggest.
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Ted Mao @ternarybits.bsky.social · 12/02/2025
www.nytimes.com/2025/02/04/b...
nytimes.com
The U.S. Economy Is Racing Ahead. Almost Everything Else Is Falling Behind. (Gift Article)
The gap between Americans’ prosperity and quality of life has grown since the 1990s.
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Ted Mao @ternarybits.bsky.social · 12/02/2025
blog.lawrencejones.dev/ai-mvp/
blog.lawrencejones.dev
Beyond the AI MVP: What it really takes
The gap between demo-ready AI products and production-grade systems is much larger than most realise. This post explains the four stages of AI product maturity, what tooling you actually need to build...
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Ted Mao @ternarybits.bsky.social · 03/02/2025
Went to a family Lunar New Year event over the weekend, where some of my relatives were chatting about growing up in an age where AI is disrupting so many jobs. On that note, here’s a relevant take on what kinds of skills will still be relevant in tomorrow’s world. pradyuprasad.com/writings/how...
pradyuprasad.com
How to have a career even when OpenAI's o3 drops
Personal site
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Ted Mao @ternarybits.bsky.social · 03/02/2025
Not surprising. www.wired.com/story/deepse...
wired.com
DeepSeek’s Safety Guardrails Failed Every Test Researchers Threw at Its AI Chatbot
Security researchers tested 50 well-known jailbreaks against DeepSeek’s popular new AI chatbot. It didn’t stop a single one.
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Ted Mao @ternarybits.bsky.social · 03/02/2025
> All of this is to say that DeepSeek-V3 is not a unique breakthrough or something that fundamentally changes the economics of LLM’s;... what’s different this time is that the company that was first to demonstrate the expected cost reductions was Chinese. darioamodei.com/on-deepseek-...
darioamodei.com
Dario Amodei — On DeepSeek and Export Controls
On DeepSeek and Export Controls
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Ted Mao @ternarybits.bsky.social · 03/02/2025
Great article connecting the dots between housing supply and homelessness. The data we have isn't that clean, but the overall narrative seems convincing to me. www.worksinprogress.news/p/why-housin...
worksinprogress.news
Why housing shortages cause homelessness
It's not just about rents - it's also about the rooms friends and family can't afford to share
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Ted Mao @ternarybits.bsky.social · 28/01/2025
Good explanation of how DeepSeek R1 was trained. venturebeat.com/ai/deepseek-...
venturebeat.com
DeepSeek-R1’s bold bet on reinforcement learning: How it outpaced OpenAI at 3% of the cost
DeepSeek-R1’s Monday release has sent shockwaves through the AI community, disrupting assumptions about what’s required to achieve cutting-edge AI performance. This story focuses on exactly how DeepSe...
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Ted Mao @ternarybits.bsky.social · 28/01/2025
Do you know what the inside of a lithium battery looks like? My mental model was way off. edconway.substack.com/p/how-batter...
edconway.substack.com
How Batteries Work
What's actually going on inside your smartphone battery right now? The answer, it turns out, is: rather a lot.
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Ted Mao @ternarybits.bsky.social · 28/01/2025
Pretty spot on? www.reddit.com/r/singularit...
reddit.com
From the singularity community on Reddit: DeepSeek R1 thinking in the style of Donald Trump
Explore this post and more from the singularity community
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Ted Mao @ternarybits.bsky.social · 28/01/2025
One of the only criticisms I had of R1 when I tried it was that it wasn't multimodal. Well, looks like DeepSeek is working on that too. venturebeat.com/ai/deepseek-...
venturebeat.com
DeepSeek unleashes ‘Janus Pro 7B’ vision model amidst AI stock bloodbath, igniting fresh fears of Chinese tech dominance
DeepSeek's Janus Pro 7B vision AI model launch sends shockwaves through markets, triggering US tech stock sell-off and intensifying competition with Silicon Valley giants like OpenAI and Nvidia.
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Ted Mao @ternarybits.bsky.social · 28/01/2025
Sorry, just lots of AI posts from me this week, but to be fair, it has been a pretty disruptive week. www.bloomberg.com/opinion/arti... (archive.ph/drCHB)
bloomberg.com
DeepSeek Disruption Has Its Upside
Also unrealized crypto gain taxation and X debt collateral.
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Ted Mao @ternarybits.bsky.social · 22/01/2025
www.nytimes.com/2025/01/10/c...
nytimes.com
L.A. Fires Show Limits of America’s Efforts to Cope With Climate Change
California has focused on fortifying communities against wildfires. But with growing threats, that may not be enough.
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Ted Mao @ternarybits.bsky.social · 22/01/2025
OpenAI’s Board, Paraphrased: ‘To Succeed, All We Need Is Unimaginable Sums of Money’ daringfireball.net/2024/12/open...
daringfireball.net
OpenAI’s Board, Paraphrased: ‘To Succeed, All We Need Is Unimaginable Sums of Money’
OpenAI is to this decade’s generative-AI revolution what Netscape was to the 1990s’ internet revolution.
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Ted Mao @ternarybits.bsky.social · 22/01/2025
I’ve been following NYC’s implementation of congestion pricing with interest. This is a great article on how it’s going so far. www.lesswrong.com/posts/GN8SrM...
lesswrong.com
NYC Congestion Pricing: Early Days — LessWrong
People have to pay $9 to enter Manhattan below 60th Street. What happened so far? • TABLE OF CONTENTS …
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Ted Mao @ternarybits.bsky.social · 22/01/2025
Read to the end for gems like the screenshot below… minimaxir.com/2025/01/writ...
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Ted Mao @ternarybits.bsky.social · 22/01/2025
I ended up taking the management track, but luckily I enjoy management too. Now… I’m in VC, but only sort of? Maybe starting my own thing soon? newsletter.goodtechthings.com/p/you-get-10...
newsletter.goodtechthings.com
I'm glad I took the off-ramp from software engineering
A letter to my very stupid 22-year-old self
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Ted Mao @ternarybits.bsky.social · 22/01/2025
Really liked this article on observability best practices. newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com/p/observabil...
newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com
Observability: the present and future, with Charity Majors
In today's episode of The Pragmatic Engineer, I'm joined by Charity Majors, a well-known observability expert – as well as someone with strong and grounded opinions.
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Ted Mao @ternarybits.bsky.social · 14/01/2025
My family has had an… okay experience with the local public education system. I do sometimes get frustrated enough to consider private schools, but so far we haven’t seriously considered homeschooling… newsletter.goodtechthings.com/p/why-are-te...
newsletter.goodtechthings.com
Why are tech people suddenly so into homeschooling?
I have my suspicions
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Ted Mao @ternarybits.bsky.social · 14/01/2025
The JavaScript ecosystem still seems to be the most vibrant and dynamic one around. Here’s a good roundup of what’s currently popular. risingstars.js.org/2024/en
risingstars.js.org
2024 JavaScript Rising Stars
A complete overview of the JavaScript landscape in 2024: trends about frontend, fullstack and Node.js frameworks, React and Vue.js ecosystems, build tools, state management...
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