I try to use default keybindings and keyboard layouts as much as possible, but as a vim user, I’ve always mapped Caps Lock to escape wherever possible. On certain mechanical keyboards (I use the Drop ALT) you can map multiple functions to the same key, so a tap presses one key while holding it treats it as another. I never thought about this much until recently, but realized this functionality is incredible for vim and tmux users:| jarbus.net
I just published a novella that I wrote during the summer of my PhD thesis defense. I actually wrote the first scene a year ago because it wouldn’t get out of my head, then returned to it in May 2025. A novella is apparently just a short novel, so that’s what this is, I guess. I have no interest in wasting people’s time—especially my own—so I wrote Growth and Decay to be a quick read (~70 pages) while still saying everything I had to say. This was a surprising journey for me. I didn...| jarbus.net on
0x0d-I: March 13th, 2181, 10:00pm “Hi Ari, it’s Ari.” Ari’s head snapped to face the speaker placed on the floor. It was a small bookshelf speaker, with a laptop resting on top. On the screen, a bar scanned across a waveform titled 12-greeting-final-2-final.mp3. The voice sounded like Ari’s.| jarbus.net
Just upgraded my Framework Laptop 13 Mainboard from a Ryzen 7640U to a Ryzen AI HX 370. I run Arch Linux. Here’s my experience: Upgrade was easy, but the cables for my WiFi card wouldn’t snap into place. There’s a plastic thing that I have to put on top of the connector to hold them in place, but it’s a massive pain to connect. Took me over 20 minutes to align and lock the cables into place, but I got it working.| jarbus.net
Like many edgy teenagers, I once embraced nihilism—the belief that nothing matters, that existence is fundamentally meaningless. I could write a book on how strongly I subscribed to this area of thought, but that’s not the point of this post; you’ll have to trust that the following comes from someone who climbed out of the pit: Everything matters. And that’s even scarier. I still don’t believe in broad concepts like “meaning” or “fulfillment”. I believe in biological reactio...| jarbus.net
My latest paper is available on arxiv: Low Rank Factorizations are Indirect Encodings for Deep Neuroevolution. The general idea is that we can search for stronger neural networks in a gradient-free fashion by restricting search to networks of low-rank. We show that it works well for language modeling reinforcement learning tasks. It’s essentially a crossover between the following papers: LoRA: Low-Rank Adaptation of Large Language Models Deep Neuroevolution: Genetic Algorithms Are a Competi...| jarbus.net
If all goes well, I’ll leave Brandeis University with a PhD degree in computer science this summer. Here are my parting thoughts for our remaining students, divided into technical and non-technical sections. I write this out of self-interest; students after me will represent our university in years to come, and it’s in my best interest for them to be as effective as possible. NON-TECHNICAL Students often lack crucial skills. Technical students may lack communication skills, or social butt...| jarbus.net
I used to have a mental block against casually reading things that weren’t designed to be casually read, like old papers, textbooks, documentation, etc. If I was going to read for enjoyment, I’d read blogs or popular science/fiction books. Not sure why. Over time, I’ve met people who read things I’d never think to read. I’ve gotten a lot of value from copying them, so I’m sharing my thoughts here.| jarbus.net
Starting from REINFORCE, the original deep reinforcement learning algorithm, we will trace the evolution of policy gradient methods to the Group Relative Policy Optimization algorithm used to train Deepseek r1. This post ignores the LLM side of things, less-related developments in RL, and most of the equations used for these algorithms, but captures the essence and intuition of the RL-timeline without wasting your time. This is all self-study, so feel free to send me any corrections/suggestio...| jarbus.net
I just finished The Story of Civilization, Vol. 1 (1976) by Will Durant. It’s a fantastic read; Durant is eloquent, witty, and surprisingly relevant today. Below are some of my personal highlights of his writing, mixed with some quotes-of-quotes I found interesting. Sections: Introduction | Communism | Government | Women | Morals | Language | Appearance | Sumeria Egypt | Babylon | Assyria | Judea | Persia | India | China | Japan | Conclusions Introduction “the provincialism of our traditi...| jarbus.net
I don’t think r1 will get us to artificial super intelligence, but whatever comes next probably will. We are reaching a familiar bottleneck in AI. Previously, humans had to manually hardcode the patterns that AI could recognize. With deep learning, machines began to learn patterns on their own, without human assistance. With (relatively) expensive humans out of the loop, we threw machines at the world’s data until they began to talk, code, and paint. Many people believed this would be suf...| jarbus.net
I’m doing an internship right now, and thankfully, I read a few books on software design before starting. I had to design a database schema, data submission page, submission approval page, and dynamic dashboard for the project I was assigned to. This is one of those projects that AI can obviously do 90% of to work for if designed appropriately–if the right abstractions are used, performance trade-offs are made, and the right tools are chosen. I wanted to make sure that, throughout the pro...| Blogs on
Wikipedia translates the Greek philosophical concept of Eudaimonia as “Human Flourishing”, particularly on the spiritual level. It refers to genuine happiness and fulfillment over hedonism or GDP. The modern world feels meaningless at times. Instead of hunting or farming to put food on the table, many of us sit at a computer or stand behind a counter, far removed from the fruits of our labor—if our labor even bears fruit. Our screens bombard us with videos of people more beautiful and s...| Blogs on
It used to be good enough just to copy others. Now, with AI in the hands of billions, there’s little value in copying. For instance, take programming. Five years ago, building apps, websites, or games required a non-trivial amount of skill, and getting your first project off the ground was an accomplishment. Now, AI can generate most starter projects in hours, if not minutes. I think this decimates the reward, both internal and external, of actually completing the first few projects. First,...| Blogs on
CUPERTINO, CALIFORNIA - Apple today announced the release of the groundbreaking iPad Pro Max, the world’s first tablet powered by the all-new quantum Q1 processor. Capable of 30 octillion floating point operations per second, the Q1 makes the iPad Pro Max the most powerful streaming device ever made, over 2x faster than the M4 iPad Pro. Available in both 11-inch and 13-inch sizes, Apple says that the iPad Pro Max is the perfect device for generating TV shows, movies, and games in real-time ...| jarbus.net
Choosing sides is fun. Be it politics or pop culture, nothing validates an opinion better than classifying opposing opinions as wrong. Sometimes, as seen by Holocaust deniers or the anti-vaccine movement, it’s possible people can be completely and utterly wrong. However, in the general case, both sides have merits and both sides have pitfalls. When trying to gain a perspective of the bigger picture, it’s best to position oneself somewhere in the middle.| jarbus.net