A. H. Zakai
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kripken.com
A. H. Zakai
@kripken.com
2.4K followers 550 following 860 posts
Software engineer. Loves fantasy novels and Agatha Christie. he/they

Tech: WebAssembly, Emscripten, Binaryen. All opinions here are my own, not my employer's (Google).

More links in: http://kripken.github.io/blog/about/
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kripken.com
Philosophers throwing shade
"Although Searle offers a rejoinder (2013b) to Tononi and Koch’s response, it largely rehearses the original claims." From https://iep.utm.edu/integrated-information-theory-of-consciousness/
October 28, 2025 at 12:21 AM
kripken.com
Bluesky doesn't have an algorithm, but sometimes serendipity makes it seem like it does
Screenshot of a bluesky timeline with two posts in sequence, the first a Lord of the Rings meme about "The age of Mclachlan is over", the second a sewer district post near-quoting the Lord of the Rings "not all who meander are lost"
September 24, 2025 at 1:32 AM
kripken.com
Maybe I missed it, but I don't see AI there? I do see

"PJM cites data center growth as the primary driver of the demand increase."

But data centers do a lot more than AI, and have been growing fast since 2010 (long before recent AI stuff):

cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/u...
May 29, 2025 at 5:20 PM
kripken.com
The very last survey item, on page 25, has a math error. It says 16% support minus 67% opposition is net -73%, but it should be -51%
The question "Allowing automakers to withhold reports of certain non-fatal self-driving car crashes" has 16% support and 67% opposition, but is marked as having net -73%. It should 16 - 67 = -51%
May 17, 2025 at 2:58 AM
kripken.com
them: is the content in your recorded talk "The History of WebAssembly" up to date?

me:
Game of Thrones' Three-Eyed Raven says "The past is already written. The ink is dry."
March 28, 2025 at 12:51 AM
kripken.com
If you don't want to watch the full video, here is the score chart:

LiDAR 100% success
Tesla 50% success
LiDAR has a green check for all 6 tests. Tesla has green checks for 3 tests (kid standing, kid moving, kid with blinding lights behind) and red checks for 3 tests (kid with smoke, kid with rain, fake painted wall)
March 17, 2025 at 2:06 AM
kripken.com
when they tell me there are plenty of fish in the sea
Severance E2E9 where Dylan says "It's just O&D and the goat people" with downcast eyes
March 14, 2025 at 10:28 PM
kripken.com
and for long covid, the US CDC's survey shows a slow decline in the total people currently suffering from it, which indicates more are recovering than get afflicted.

(not a perfect measurement, but other ones i've seen are generally similar)
CDC graph for its household pulse survey, for "currently experiencing long covid", june 2022 to august 2024. the general trend is down from something like 7.5 to 5.5. source: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/covid19/pulse/long-covid.htm
February 28, 2025 at 4:59 PM
kripken.com
12%, not bad. soon it will be the year of linus on the desktop for games
Poll results for "which platform(s) are being used for your current project", results are PC: 80% Playstation: 38% XBox: 34% Android: 29% ... Linus [sic]: 12% ...
January 27, 2025 at 3:23 AM
kripken.com
evidence:
Netflix's "top picks for you" for me, today. From left to right: 1. "The Swan." Chilling short film. I saw it this week. 2. "The Rat Catcher." Grisly short film. I saw it this week. 3. "What did Jack do?" David Lynch being weird. I saw it years ago when it came out. 4. "Cunk on Life." Brilliant. I saw it when it came out just a few weeks ago. 5. "Poison." Nerve-wracking short film. I saw it this week. 6. "The wonderful story of Henry Sugar." Wonderful short film. I saw it this week.
January 23, 2025 at 3:35 AM
kripken.com
wtf
A screenshot of part of a documentation page, stating calmly, as if that makes total rational sense, that JavaScriptCore, a JavaScript engine, requires the "iTunes" application be installed. iTunes is a media player. This is, for some reason, only needed on 32-bit Windows. source: https://www.npmjs.com/package/jsvu
January 16, 2025 at 12:15 AM
kripken.com
a helpful chart for DoorDash Discourse
a chart affirming that doordash costs more but also saves time. however, the chart goes on to show that many other options exist that save just as much time as doordash, but cost a lot less: meal replacements (soylent, huel), frozen supermarket meals (even healthy ones), and bulk meal delivery (hellofresh, purple carrot)
January 5, 2025 at 10:02 PM
kripken.com
i do feel sorry for the plaintiffs, who apparently lost their life savings, but my eye began to twitch when I read this part for example
"They retained nearly all their life savings in large, well-established assets like Bitcoin, Ethereum, US Dollars, and large-cap US stocks"
January 5, 2025 at 3:06 AM
kripken.com
even the wikipedia section on this bird's vocalizations uses the word "harsh" twice
Text from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steller's_jay#Vocalizations Like other jays, Steller's jay has numerous and variable vocalizations. One common call is a harsh "SHACK-Sheck-sheck-sheck-sheck-sheck" series; another "skreeka! skreeka!" call sounds almost exactly like an old-fashioned pump handle; yet another is a soft, breathy "hoodle hoodle" whistle. Its alarm call is a harsh, nasal "wah". Some calls are sex-specific: females produce a rattling sound, while males make a high-pitched "gleep gleep".
January 4, 2025 at 10:29 PM
kripken.com
feathered friend that alighted just several feet from me and did not mind being photographed
a hawk, possibly a cooper's hawk, looking absolutely magnificent, perched atop a support bar of a glass wall as it watches the setting sun. the bird has dark wings, brown-and-white patterned body, and yellow/orange eyes. behind are some date palms and windows of a building same bird but it looks directly at the camera
January 3, 2025 at 1:24 AM
kripken.com
idea of the day: blackout eyeshadow for sleep

instead of blackout shades (the light from your devices laughs at you) or a sleep mask (slips out of place the first time you turn over; bonus "omg i'm blind" freakouts at 3am), just apply black paint to your eyelids before going to sleep
old "mental gymnastics" meme image: a super-convoluted routine with bars and flips and stuff, compared to taking a simple step on a gym mat
December 30, 2024 at 11:57 PM
kripken.com
downloading code, circa 1991
A page from Compute magazine, January 1991 (pre-internet). The page is row after endless row of meaningless numbers, absolutely impossible to type in without making a mistake somewhere, yet this labor was placed on the shoulders of children.
December 27, 2024 at 7:09 PM
kripken.com
shouldn't one red square there be green? i think it has to be, or else the "2" to the upper right from it has three mines (two below, one to its upper right)

but it's 10pm here so i could be wrong...
same board as above, with two purple markers indicating the squares mentioned in the post. specifically one purple marker indicates a red square directly to the right of the 9x9 block of red squares, and the other, the "2" to the upper right from it.
December 15, 2024 at 5:59 AM
kripken.com
me doing my most important work (asking "why did code size increase?" so that it doesn't)
github PR where code size on a test was about to regress by 225 bytes (2%) i annoyingly wonder why size increased, and in response the dev updates the PR with improvements to avoid the regression https://github.com/emscripten-core/emscripten/pull/23063
December 3, 2024 at 10:25 PM
kripken.com
in shocking news, this unusually precise prediction for a delivery time did not come to pass
"Arriving today 5PM - 5PM", above a progress bar that says "Out for delivery". This was at 5:20
December 3, 2024 at 2:40 AM
kripken.com
Metal.
"We stood inside one of the [giant coal power plant] boilers, already being decommissioned. It was a profound place. Few people have ever been inside. There is no door. When workers were sent in every few years for repairs, an entry was cut through the steel."
September 29, 2024 at 6:40 PM
kripken.com
If bluesky eventually grows to 1B users then everyone using it today will be in the first 1%
my bluesky card showing #95,628, first 1% of users (atm)
September 17, 2024 at 2:11 AM
kripken.com
It turns out Brian Jordan Alvarez and Rob Morrow are different people
A picture of Brian Jordan Alvarez on the left and Rob Morrow on the right. They look almost identical
September 7, 2024 at 10:05 PM
kripken.com
Interesting article and response here about the limitations of AI.

My 2c: Ted Chiang makes many good points that I agree with, but also undermines his central claim around the middle:
Title of a New Yorker article by Ted Chiang: Why AI isn't going to make art. Subtitle: To create a novel or a painting, an artist makes choices that are fundamentally alien to artificial intelligence. Text from later in the article: "It's not impossible that one day we will have computer programs that can do anything a human being can do, but, contrary to the claims of the companies promoting AI, that is not something we'll see in the next few years."
September 1, 2024 at 6:21 PM
kripken.com
Imagine being a studio exec and saying "no" to a David Lynch project
David Lynch pitched a project called "Snootworld" to Netflix, but they refused. https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/news/david-lynch-age-movies-emphysema-smoking-b2591296.html
August 5, 2024 at 6:30 PM