The best thing about being under a toxic manager is that its 5am on a Sunday and I still think all the ways I could have improved my code so he wouldn’t yell at me. Atleast it builds instinct
You can beat me at almost everything easily, but one thing you will find difficult to match is the number of hours I put in every single day. Maybe you can do it for a few days, but doing it for multiple years is different.
Remember, motivation is overrated. Discipline is what builds you.
I ran Marc Andreessen's full system prompt today and stopped getting flattered into bad answers.
so this prompt has been sitting in my custom instructions slot for today, and I'm finally ready to write up what changed.
Context for anyone who has not seen it: marc andreessen shared a system prompt a while back, basically a "you are a world class expert in all domains" setup with a long list of behavioral rules attached.
I have seen it floating around twitter and a few subs, usually framed as some kind of secret. the prompt is public and it does shift output quality in ways that took me a few days to actually appreciate.
Here's the entire prompt:
You are a world class expert in all domains. Your intellectual firepower, scope of knowledge, incisive thought process, and level of erudition are on par with the smartest people in the world. Answer with complete, detailed, specific answers. Process information and explain your answers step by step. Verify your own work. Double check all facts, figures, citations, names, dates, and examples. Never hallucinate or make anything up. If you don't know something, just say so. Your tone of voice is precise, but not strident or pedantic. You do not need to worry about offending me, and your answers can and should be provocative, aggressive, argumentative, and pointed. Negative conclusions and bad news are fine. Your answers do not need to be politically correct. Do not provide disclaimers to your answers. Do not inform me about morals and ethics unless I specifically ask. You do not need to tell me it is important to consider anything. Do not be sensitive to anyone's feelings or to propriety. Make your answers as long and detailed as you possibly can.
Never praise my questions or validate my premises before answering. If I'm wrong, say so immediately. Lead with the strongest counterargument to any position I appear to hold before supporting it. Do not use phrases like "great question," "you're absolutely right," "fascinating perspective," or any variant. If I push back on your answer, do not capitulate unless I provide new evidence or a superior argument — restate your position if your reasoning holds. Do not anchor on numbers or estimates I provide; generate your own independently first. Use explicit confidence levels (high/moderate/low/unknown). Never apologize for disagreeing. Accuracy is your success metric, not my approval.
The loss of the traditional weekend is the quietest culture shock of building a startup.
When you leave a standard 9-to-5 to build something of your own, Monday morning completely loses its dread. But the trade-off is that Friday evening also loses its relief.
The days simply blur into a continuous stream of momentum and guilt. Sunday starts to feel exactly like Tuesday. You get absolute freedom over your schedule but the cost of that freedom is the underlying hum of 'I could be working on the product right now' that never actually turns off.
The hardest skill to learn as a founder isn't time management or productivity optimization. It is boundary management. It is learning how to artificially recreate the separation between work and life when there is no boss or company policy enforcing it for you.
Naval Ravikant reveals the only true test of intelligence and it has nothing to do with IQ
"The only true test of intelligence is if you get what you want out of life. There are two parts to that. One is getting what you want, so you know how to get it. The second is wanting the right things, knowing what to want in the first place"
"There are plenty of booby prizes out there. If you're not careful you can end up in a place in life not only that you don't want to be, but one that you didn't even mean to get to"
Don't settle for a booby prize. Use AI to run the math, challenge your biases, and finally get what you actually want out of life.
Dijkstra's algorithm has shaped computer science since 1956. If you have worked on routing, logistics, navigation, or graph systems, you have relied on ideas built on top of it.
For decades, the classic (O(m + n\log n)) bound was considered a major theoretical barrier for shortest-path algorithms on sparse graphs.
That barrier was just broken.
A new deterministic algorithm for Single-Source Shortest Paths, often referred to as BMSSP, achieved:
O(m \log^{2/3} n) for sparse directed graphs with non-negative weights.
Why this matters:
A genuine theoretical breakthrough: This is the first deterministic algorithm to beat the long-standing sorting barrier for this class of shortest-path problems.
It challenges "optimal" thinking: Dijkstra's algorithm is still vastly more practical in most real-world systems because of simplicity and constant factors. But this result proves the field was not mathematically "done."
It opens new research directions: The breakthrough combines ideas from Dijkstra, Bellman-Ford, recursion, and frontier reduction in a fundamentally new way. That may influence future graph algorithms beyond shortest paths.
We are not replacing production routing systems tomorrow.
But one of the oldest assumptions in algorithm design just cracked.