Meditation is not a cure to our sadness, anxiety, and stress. However, it can provide us ways to manage them well. This is more like a promise than a definite outcome. So, what are the direct and immediate benefits from practicing regular meditation? Concentration meditation, which is when we focus on our breath, makes us experience peace and bliss. How does it do that? Scientifically speaking, this practice shuts down our “mind wandering” default mode network in the brain - which is always scanning past and future for interesting things to think about....

I find it incredible that an ordinary human ~2600 years ago was able to provide powerful insights into human nature and reality. In essence, Siddhartha Gautama, most commonly referred to as the Buddha, made two statements: Change is occurring all the time both in and around us Self is an illusion we make up for ourselves, and this leads us into a flawed perception of reality When taken together, these statements give us the root cause behind the general dissatisfaction (dukkha is Buddhist term) we struggle with as human beings....

I have a hard time dealing with failure. I am guessing this is the same with most others as well. I go through the following chain of thought: why? why me? what did I do wrong? what could I have done instead? is there a way to salvage the situation? Simultaneously, I also go through another set of thoughts: is this a precursor of things to come? am I destined to fail at other new things or even my current endeavors?...

I enjoy reviewing classic industry papers periodically. The DynamoDB paper is fascinating, approachable, and deepens insights on almost every read. Finally, its a good reminder that good programs accomodate different concerns to optimize for others. DynamoDB was built for handling amazon.com’s shared shopping cart problem. Most Amazon customers have a single household account, and any household member should be able to add items to a shared shopping cart at different times on their devices....

If everything behaved like freshly scented flowers, life would be much simpler. Unfortunately, this is not the case for most of the things we store in our homes. Moving supplies, exotic lamps, pens, printouts, camping gear, old art, jewelry, fancy kitchen gadgets, clothes, sandals, shoes, and many other items have limited utility, yet we continue to carry them from one home to another. The accumulation of these items is due to several factors....

Moving to a new house can be surprisingly disruptive and challenging, even if you spend more than a month preparing for the move. In our case, it took us four days to complete the end-to-end move, despite all the preparations. We finally moved in on Saturday and spent the whole day setting up the new kitchen. Vanya cooked our first supper in our new home, which was Tacos with a delicious dessert....

Building and operating large-scale software is a relatively young field, and many industry practitioners, including software engineers, often overlook the necessary considerations for doing it well. While “Hello World” examples of software development may serve as good tutorials, they can also give the impression that solving software problems is a trivial task, which fails to acknowledge the significant amount of work and dedication required to achieve quality results. When developing a typical service solution at a big tech company, the following factors must be taken into account:...

Tech is changing - more people are using cloud services for computing and storage. Big companies provide the infrastructure and rent it out to customers through network interfaces. The benefits of using cloud services are that customers have easy access to lots of computing power and storage. The company takes care of software updates, so customers can focus on using their software. But what if a customer already has their own data center and running workloads is cheaper there than on the big cloud vendors?...

I use self help books to guide my meditation practice. Most recently, I finished Sam Harris’s Waking Up: A Guide to Spirituality Without Religion. Another interesting book I am still reading is Mark W. Muesse’s Four Wise Men: The Lives and Teachings of Confucius, Buddha, Jesus, and Mohammad. In my fledgling practice, I am noticing the following patterns: on rare days on which I skip meditation, I am more anxious and tend to be less even tempered if I am anxious, meditation is harder to do meditation makes me aware of my inner narrative, and reminds me that I am not critically analyzing it meditation increases my self determination better meditation helps me to hear what others tell me better meditation helps me vocalize my opinion more However, it is almost a catch 22 situation....

GPT-4 is a new disruptive technology. For the first time, machines start to understand the nuance and tone of our asks. Through the chat bot, we can carry out interesting conversations. Machines can take and succeed at our standardized tests (SAT, AP, GRE, GMAT). Through the use of plugins, the bot can find precise and accurate information, much like humans can. This new technology promises to be disruptive to many existing and established processes....