Technology on Rabid Curiosity

Building Fundamental Technical Knowledge

Tue, 17 Mar 2026 10:05:00 -0500

Introduction

There’s a pattern in technical work where people become highly skilled at the surface layer of a technology—the tools, the interfaces, the workflows—without developing any understanding of what’s underneath. This works fine until it doesn’t. When something breaks in an unexpected way, or when the tool changes, or when you need to make a non-obvious decision, the lack of fundamentals shows. This post is about why fundamentals matter and how to actually build them.

Sam Altman on Productivity, and How AI Creates Time

Tue, 17 Mar 2026 09:50:00 -0500

Introduction

Sam Altman has written and spoken about productivity in ways that are worth taking seriously—not because he’s a productivity guru, but because he’s someone who operates at very high leverage and thinks carefully about where his time goes. His framing around AI is particularly interesting: the claim isn’t just that AI makes you faster, it’s that it qualitatively changes the relationship between effort and output. This post reflects on those ideas and what they actually mean for how ordinary people should think about their time.

Reflections on Trusting Trust

Tue, 17 Mar 2026 09:30:00 -0500

Introduction

Ken Thompson’s 1984 Turing Award lecture, “Reflections on Trusting Trust,” makes a deceptively simple argument: you cannot fully trust code you did not write yourself, because the compiler that built it might have been compromised. The implications reach far beyond computer security. Trust in complex systems is always, at some level, an act of faith—and understanding that shapes how you should build, operate, and rely on things you can’t fully verify.