Michael Bacarella
@michael.bacarella.com
Founder GPShopper (successful exit)
ex-Jane Street (pre-SBF)
ex-Google (pre-Sundar)
occasional shitpoaster
ex-Jane Street (pre-SBF)
ex-Google (pre-Sundar)
occasional shitpoaster
I had this stress dream last night where we were trying to catch a flight and when we got to the security line it turned out the tickets I printed out just had a big database connection error message printed on them. And attempting to install the app failed because I can't see my screen in dreams.
October 30, 2025 at 4:41 PM
I had this stress dream last night where we were trying to catch a flight and when we got to the security line it turned out the tickets I printed out just had a big database connection error message printed on them. And attempting to install the app failed because I can't see my screen in dreams.
how to power up your github contributor graph
1. pick favorite obscure programming language
2. build a really simple app, like a web photo album
3. find that the ecosystem libraries are missing tons of mundane features
4. submit PRs for all of these features
useful? kinda. looks impressive? sure
1. pick favorite obscure programming language
2. build a really simple app, like a web photo album
3. find that the ecosystem libraries are missing tons of mundane features
4. submit PRs for all of these features
useful? kinda. looks impressive? sure
October 11, 2025 at 6:26 PM
how to power up your github contributor graph
1. pick favorite obscure programming language
2. build a really simple app, like a web photo album
3. find that the ecosystem libraries are missing tons of mundane features
4. submit PRs for all of these features
useful? kinda. looks impressive? sure
1. pick favorite obscure programming language
2. build a really simple app, like a web photo album
3. find that the ecosystem libraries are missing tons of mundane features
4. submit PRs for all of these features
useful? kinda. looks impressive? sure
how did Valve get away with making games on Linux work reliably?
if Bill Gates was still running Microsoft he would have invited Gabe Newell into a smoke filled room and given him the speech from Network
if Bill Gates was still running Microsoft he would have invited Gabe Newell into a smoke filled room and given him the speech from Network
August 1, 2025 at 3:34 PM
how did Valve get away with making games on Linux work reliably?
if Bill Gates was still running Microsoft he would have invited Gabe Newell into a smoke filled room and given him the speech from Network
if Bill Gates was still running Microsoft he would have invited Gabe Newell into a smoke filled room and given him the speech from Network
it's straight up elder abuse that Chrome force uninstalled uBlock Origin on laptops that their grandkids set up for them
June 27, 2025 at 3:13 PM
it's straight up elder abuse that Chrome force uninstalled uBlock Origin on laptops that their grandkids set up for them
the brutality of 3d graphics programming is that you're mostly dealing with arrays full of floats all day and 30 years of software engineering discipline just passes you by because there's not that much that helps with that
you may as well be writing fortran
you may as well be writing fortran
June 27, 2025 at 12:56 AM
the brutality of 3d graphics programming is that you're mostly dealing with arrays full of floats all day and 30 years of software engineering discipline just passes you by because there's not that much that helps with that
you may as well be writing fortran
you may as well be writing fortran
yo what was hypercard? did it run on mainframes or something?
June 8, 2025 at 8:42 PM
yo what was hypercard? did it run on mainframes or something?
Your kid comes back from his first semester of CS101. First it was Python, you let that slide. Then came Go. "At least it compiles" you told yourself. But now... C++?
Your own flesh and blood, wearing that shirt under your roof. This is what happens when you let the universities get to them.
Your own flesh and blood, wearing that shirt under your roof. This is what happens when you let the universities get to them.
June 6, 2025 at 5:13 PM
Your kid comes back from his first semester of CS101. First it was Python, you let that slide. Then came Go. "At least it compiles" you told yourself. But now... C++?
Your own flesh and blood, wearing that shirt under your roof. This is what happens when you let the universities get to them.
Your own flesh and blood, wearing that shirt under your roof. This is what happens when you let the universities get to them.
if the net result of an earthquake destroying TSMC/Taiwan is that every LLM gets repurposed towards rewriting Java, C#, Python and Javascript into C++ or Rust ASAP, that'd be pretty cool
May 13, 2025 at 2:03 PM
if the net result of an earthquake destroying TSMC/Taiwan is that every LLM gets repurposed towards rewriting Java, C#, Python and Javascript into C++ or Rust ASAP, that'd be pretty cool
I really thought the hardest part of small electronics fabrication would be understanding EE and soldering stuff but it really feels like it's 90% staring at enclosures wondering how you can fit everything together and/or if you should 3d print some stuff
May 11, 2025 at 6:12 PM
I really thought the hardest part of small electronics fabrication would be understanding EE and soldering stuff but it really feels like it's 90% staring at enclosures wondering how you can fit everything together and/or if you should 3d print some stuff
so are the RL agents DeepMind developed that kick ass at video games like Wintermute whereas generative AI like LLMs more like Neuromancer?
May 9, 2025 at 5:33 PM
so are the RL agents DeepMind developed that kick ass at video games like Wintermute whereas generative AI like LLMs more like Neuromancer?
Oh. Yes, the reason clang++-18 was not able to compile things on my box is because I forgot to... *checks notes* ... install libstdc++-14-dev
May 5, 2025 at 10:01 PM
Oh. Yes, the reason clang++-18 was not able to compile things on my box is because I forgot to... *checks notes* ... install libstdc++-14-dev
I was not expecting Tim Sweeney on Lex to bring up the Curry Howard Isomorphism and that the thing that would accelerate adoption of the federated metaverse is much stronger types in programming languages!
Looking forward to seeing how the Verse language unfolds!
Looking forward to seeing how the Verse language unfolds!
May 4, 2025 at 6:40 PM
I was not expecting Tim Sweeney on Lex to bring up the Curry Howard Isomorphism and that the thing that would accelerate adoption of the federated metaverse is much stronger types in programming languages!
Looking forward to seeing how the Verse language unfolds!
Looking forward to seeing how the Verse language unfolds!
how did Valve get away with making games on Linux work reliably?
if Bill Gates was still running Microsoft he would have invited Gabe Newell into a smoke filled room and given him the speech from Network
if Bill Gates was still running Microsoft he would have invited Gabe Newell into a smoke filled room and given him the speech from Network
May 1, 2025 at 2:42 PM
how did Valve get away with making games on Linux work reliably?
if Bill Gates was still running Microsoft he would have invited Gabe Newell into a smoke filled room and given him the speech from Network
if Bill Gates was still running Microsoft he would have invited Gabe Newell into a smoke filled room and given him the speech from Network
I remember seeing Silicon Valley (the place) for the first time. I was expecting an endless row of hacker houses, dudes soldering custom chips in garages, arguing about Lisp macros over ramen, rollerblading in massive arcades with ramps
but it was just a bunch of office parks???
but it was just a bunch of office parks???
April 22, 2025 at 3:31 PM
I remember seeing Silicon Valley (the place) for the first time. I was expecting an endless row of hacker houses, dudes soldering custom chips in garages, arguing about Lisp macros over ramen, rollerblading in massive arcades with ramps
but it was just a bunch of office parks???
but it was just a bunch of office parks???
The modern web is now so slow that I often do errands in parallel so that I'm not just sitting at a throbber for several seconds per step. How did we get here? Networks and computers are faster than ever, yet workflows are more sluggish than ever?
March 21, 2025 at 5:39 PM
The modern web is now so slow that I often do errands in parallel so that I'm not just sitting at a throbber for several seconds per step. How did we get here? Networks and computers are faster than ever, yet workflows are more sluggish than ever?
my latest idle hobby is finding personal automation things I had written in Python or F# that consume 100MB of RAM and asking Claude to rewrite them in C++ so they consume 3MB instead
surprisingly effective!
surprisingly effective!
February 17, 2025 at 12:57 PM
my latest idle hobby is finding personal automation things I had written in Python or F# that consume 100MB of RAM and asking Claude to rewrite them in C++ so they consume 3MB instead
surprisingly effective!
surprisingly effective!
So! My static analysis of the DeepSeek Android app reveals it contains significant spyware and malware functionality that a normal chat app shouldn't have.
Full technical details in my new blog post:
michael.bacarella.com/2025/02/07/s...
Full technical details in my new blog post:
michael.bacarella.com/2025/02/07/s...
Static analysis of the DeepSeek Android App
Introduction
michael.bacarella.com
February 7, 2025 at 4:03 PM
So! My static analysis of the DeepSeek Android app reveals it contains significant spyware and malware functionality that a normal chat app shouldn't have.
Full technical details in my new blog post:
michael.bacarella.com/2025/02/07/s...
Full technical details in my new blog post:
michael.bacarella.com/2025/02/07/s...
why yes, business bank, I would love to have to download all of my statements for the year one-by-one and have them all named statement.pdf
January 22, 2025 at 10:56 PM
why yes, business bank, I would love to have to download all of my statements for the year one-by-one and have them all named statement.pdf
if you look closely, tons of minor things are broken on various web sites during Christmas week
the B teams can't figure it out, but they don't want to wake the A teams up to fix it
the B teams can't figure it out, but they don't want to wake the A teams up to fix it
December 27, 2024 at 4:45 PM
if you look closely, tons of minor things are broken on various web sites during Christmas week
the B teams can't figure it out, but they don't want to wake the A teams up to fix it
the B teams can't figure it out, but they don't want to wake the A teams up to fix it
Kind of amazing how much WordPress Hacked Site Repair Services don't know about WordPress.
December 23, 2024 at 9:47 PM
Kind of amazing how much WordPress Hacked Site Repair Services don't know about WordPress.
we're all here on bsky rewriting our blogs in BrianLang 0.4 while researchers at Google are doing quantum supremacy
December 10, 2024 at 4:19 PM
we're all here on bsky rewriting our blogs in BrianLang 0.4 while researchers at Google are doing quantum supremacy