Knight trap in the Petrov Defense As an improving chess player, I’m always excited when I can execute a clean tactical sequence. Recently, I played a game where I was able to exploit one of the classic traps in the Petrov Defense. I’d like to share this experience and what I learned from it. The Game That Made My Day 1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 Nf6 3. Nxe5 Nxe4 4. d3 Nxf2? Read more...
Posted: | Tags: books, probability
Fooled by randomness These are my notes for the book “Fooled by Randomness” by Nassim Taleb. The thesis of the book is that when we look at the past we find things that are not there, the past is much more random than our vision. This is called the Hindsight bias. So we have to be aware that when people relate the past usually they tend to create post-hoc rationalizations and retrofitted explanations. Read more...
Posted: | Tags: IA
Seeing the evolution of StackOverflow, which seems to be declining due to the rise of ChatGPT and similar tools, I wonder about the long-term viability of projects like this. On the other hand, where will AIs get their information if these projects disappear? Their answers could degrade significantly without such resources. Could we be stuck in a cycle where AI destroys these collaborative platforms, worsens after losing them, then these platforms revive because this is information that is needed (and now is missing), only to decline again as AI uses their information to present it in a more convenient way? Read more...
Posted: | Tags: cognitive bias, probability
In her book “Randomness,” Deborah Bennett presents an example that illustrates how bad we are at calculating probabilities, even highly trained professionals. A group of doctors received this question: The test of a disease has a 5% false positive rate. The disease affects 1 in 1000 people in the population. People are tested randomly, whether they are suspected to be sick or not. A particular patient’s test is positive. What is the probability that this patient actually has the disease? Read more...
Posted: | Tags: bash, linux, programming, shell
In Bash, when we run the command type type type type, we observe a peculiar behavior: it executes three times instead of once or four times. This phenomenon is fascinating and is due to how Bash processes arguments and how the type command specifically works. The behavior of type The type command is a Bash builtin used to determine how Bash would interpret a command name. When we execute: type type type type We get an output similar to this: Read more...
These are my reading notes for the book “Ética para ingenieros” by Galo Bilbao Alberdi, Francisco Javier Fuertes Pérez and José Mª Guibert Ucín. The Engineering Profession Different sociological perspectives explore the meaning of professions, from traditional occupations like doctors or lawyers to modern professions requiring university education. The fundamental aspect of a profession is its unique service to society, a vocation that has intensified with modernity through “professionalization.” There are notable concerns about the excesses of this process, such as the obsession with titles rather than service to society, distinguishing between “bad professionalism” and “good professionalism” oriented toward the community. Read more...
Posted: | Tags: google, note-taking, obsidian, TTS, wavenet
I’m sharing a little hack I put together. As a hardcore Obsidian user, I was getting frustrated with the available text-to-speech options. I really wanted to use Google’s Wavenet voices because they sound amazing, but couldn’t find a plugin that did exactly what I wanted. So I sorted it out myself. I cobbled together a hack using Google Cloud’s Text-to-Speech API and Obsidian’s Shell Commands plugin. Here’s how you can do it too (assuming you’re on Linux, if not you need some adjustment): Read more...
Posted:
Hy! My name is Abel González Vidal. I work as a platform engineer lead at Nextail. My CV is available here 📄 (PDF) or in Linkedin. Read more...