Ashwin Bharambe
394 posts

Ashwin Bharambe
@ashwinb
Software Plumber variously.
Los Altos, CA Se unió Temmuz 2007
174 Siguiendo170 Seguidores

Hiro is joining OpenAI!
Hiro Finance@hirofinanceai
We started Hiro with the vision of building an AI personal CFO. Joining @OpenAI gives us the chance to pursue that vision at a much greater scale. Important dates: - Today: Hiro is no longer accepting new signups - April 20, 2026: The product will stop working, but data export will remain available - May 13, 2026: All user data will be deleted from our servers Existing users can export their data from the Settings page in Hiro’s web app. Thank you for trusting us with your time, feedback, and finances. Building for you was a privilege. We hope to serve you again through what we build next at OpenAI.
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Ashwin Bharambe retuiteado

Is it weird that AI coding assistance is not giving me identity fracture?
A lot of software developers are feeling disoriented and threatened these days. Programming by hand is clearly going the way of the buggy whip and the hand-cranked auger. Which is how we're finding out that a lot of people have their identities bound up in being good at hand-coding and how it feels to do that.
That's not me. It's not me at all. Rather to my surprise, I don't miss coding by hand, not any more than I missed writing assembler when compilers ate the world and made that unnecessary. (That was in a couple years back around 1983, for you youngsters.)
Maybe the fact that I'm not feeling any of this disorientation disqualifies me from having anything to say to people who are. On the other hand...if you can learn to emulate my mental stance and be completely unbothered, maybe that would be a good thing?
So. If you're a programmer, and you're feeling disoriented, try this on for size:
I like being a wizard. I like being able to speak spells, to weave complex patterns of logic that make things happen in the world. Writing code is a way to manifest my will.
Yes, I've piled up a lot of arcane knowledge over the 50 years I've been doing this. But languages of invocation, they come and they go. Been a long time since I've had any use for being able to program in 8086 assembler, and that's okay. I have better spells now, and these days some rather powerful familiars.
What I'm inviting you to do is think of yourself as a wizard. Not as a person who writes code, but as a person who is good at assuming the kind of mental states required to bend reality with the application of spells.
And if that's who you are, does it matter if the spells are painstakingly scribed in runes of power, versus being spoken to an obedient machine spirit?
It's all one; it's all the manifestation of will. Arcane languages come and go, machine spirits appear and then diminish to be replaced by more powerful ones, but you? You are the magic-wielder. Without you, none of it happens.
Same as it ever was. Same is it ever was. And so mote it be.
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Ashwin Bharambe retuiteado

@charlieholtz @conductor_build I can’t get Claude to work because the Claude binary is an org private wrapper which injects its own separate auth etc. What’s Conductor trying to do which makes this not work? Does it have its own build of Claude?
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Ashwin Bharambe retuiteado

Maybe a very prosaic observation, but I've been reflecting on just how much the pandemic changed the world in ways that are completely unrelated to the pandemic itself. I think I've underestimated it 'till now.
In a recent interview, I was struck by the comment that so many of the shops that we associate with the best of France—the poissonneries and the fromageries—closed during the pandemic, to be replaced by take-out pizza shops and the like.
College professors almost uniformly describe big changes in student behavior: lecture attendance and willingness of students to complete reading assignments are both way down.
A UK government official recently told me that British economic statistics have become much less reliable since the pandemic: data on trade, employment, and population is suspect. (The true GDP per capita figures are probably worse than what is indicated by the published data, since the 2021 census is believed to be an undercount.)
In the West, there are far fewer bustling workplaces than there used to be. In recent conversation with a well-traveled friend, he bemoaned how so many cities—places like Madrid, Buenos Aires, and Bali—have lost so much of their erstwhile vibrant nightlife.
Immigration accelerated enormously across many countries, including the US, the UK, Canada, and Australia.
In China, I hear descriptions of how fear, caution, and conservatism have persisted since the COVID lockdowns. (And Western travel to China remains massively depressed.)
Lots of the changes are neutral, or even good. Retail participation in the US stock market almost doubled overnight, say, and has persisted at that elevated rate. Firm creation in the US increased by around 50%, which is probably a very good thing.
Overall, the number of time series (either literal or figurative) that jumped discontinuously during COVID and then didn’t return to baseline is just very striking.
Which are the best historical analogs? Are there any apart from major wars?
I want to read this book!
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Ashwin Bharambe retuiteado
Ashwin Bharambe retuiteado
Ashwin Bharambe retuiteado









