Nalin Mathur

genAI @meta ; video-gen diffusion models

a strange mix of healthy & unhealthy

[Nalin Mathur @nalin_mathur]

the world is a parody on itself

[Nalin Mathur @nalin_mathur]

@NEDUszn8 tevez

[Nalin Mathur @nalin_mathur]

@paulg absolutely unrelated question: have you started using AI in your writing (at least to unblock yourself at the start)?

I don't use AI for writing (emails, essays, messages), but only use it to unblock myself (at the start) for technical writings as a part of my job.

[Nalin Mathur @nalin_mathur]

@GigaBeers Virat Kohli!?

[Nalin Mathur @nalin_mathur]

I've been in tech for ~7 years now. My house is super analog.

I've to go hunting for my bedside lamp switch every morning/night as it's on a wire, and have to physically get up to turn my speakers on.

[@levelsio @levelsio]

There has to be some word for this concept

It's why designers from tech who design touchscreens like Jony Ive won't put a touch screen in a car but use real knobs

Or why programmers don't actually like smart homes and smart appliances at all but want things analog

Or why tech people raise their kids without mobile devices

Like knowing things so well from inside of it (tech) that you choose to NOT use it because you know the negatives that come with it in specific contexts

[Nalin Mathur @nalin_mathur]

@levelsio I couldn't

[Nalin Mathur @nalin_mathur]

Massive benefits of paper reading aside. Just having a pile of books/papers kept on my shelves/desk that I glance over now and then refreshes my memory about what I read.

Something that isn't possible in the digital medium unless you keep tons of tabs open to glance at (ughh)

[Anish Moonka @anishmoonka]

Went down the rabbit hole on this. Your brain treats a physical book like a landscape. It builds a spatial map of the text, the same way it maps trails, rooms, and city blocks. When you scroll on a phone, that map breaks apart.

Seven large-scale research reviews and direct brain scans confirm what you already feel.

A 2023 study in PLOS ONE attached brain-activity sensors to children’s heads while they read the same text on paper and on screen. Paper reading produced fast brain waves, the pattern linked to focused attention. Screen reading shifted the brain into slow waves, the pattern linked to mind wandering and daydreaming. Same kids. Same words. Measurably different brain states.

A separate 2022 study from Showa University in Japan scanned the front of the brain, the area that manages focus and comprehension, during phone versus paper reading. Smartphones sent that region into overdrive, meaning the brain was straining just to keep up with basic processing. Paper reading produced a moderate load that triggered natural deep breathing, which helped regulate brain function and sustain focus. The phone suppressed that breathing pattern entirely.

Since 2017, researchers have published seven major reviews combining hundreds of individual studies. Six of seven reached the same conclusion: people understand less on screens. A 2018 review of 54 studies and 170,000+ participants, literally titled “Don’t throw away your printed books,” found paper outperformed screens across the board for non-fiction. A 2024 follow-up with 49 more studies confirmed it. The gap has grown steadily every year since 2001. Being a “digital native” doesn’t help.

The best explanation is how your brain tracks where you are. Your short-term memory can only juggle about 7 things at once. A physical book gives you constant location cues: the weight shifting from right hand to left, where a paragraph sits on the page, how thick the remaining pages feel. Your brain hands off the “where am I in this text?” job to those physical signals, leaving more room for actually understanding what you’re reading. On a phone, every screen looks identical. Your brain has to track position and process meaning at the same time, and something gives.

A Norwegian eye-tracking study analyzing 25,000+ individual eye movements found screen readers processed text more shallowly. The students had no idea they were reading differently.

In 2019, nearly 200 reading scientists from 30+ countries signed an open letter warning that screen reading was degrading deep comprehension. Since then, Scandinavian countries, among the most digitized school systems on Earth, have started putting physical books back in classrooms.

[Nalin Mathur @nalin_mathur]

@jadeharcoharri_ @ask_joon Right after winter, sure seems like it..

[Nalin Mathur @nalin_mathur]

@Nonegivesshit Idk why. But I really want to see him play test cricket. White ball seems like child's play for him. Want to see how he tackles tests..

[Nalin Mathur @nalin_mathur]

@thevirdas Do have the sea salt cake in Kova Patisserie! Plenty of branches. China Town one is good.

[Nalin Mathur @nalin_mathur]

@sansyrox Put two on the floor or vertically up and do flys. AttCh the strings to a rod and it comes a chest press

[Nalin Mathur @nalin_mathur]

Every year (almost) from 2017 to 2023 I told myself I need to learn frontend dev, tried for sometime, and then stopped because it kinda sucked.

Claude + all coding models that came before it have liberated me! I no longer think about learning frontend.

[Upstate Federalist @upstatefederlst]

My favorite thing bout Claude thus far is I have apparently put off learning React long enough that it doesn't matter.

[Upstate Federalist @upstatefederlst]

My favorite thing bout Claude thus far is I have apparently put off learning React long enough that it doesn't matter.

[Nalin Mathur @nalin_mathur]

I try really hard not to sit on London public transport seats but sometimes you just need to!

Why not just make metallic seats that can be easily cleaned, like in Delhi/NYC? Whats the point of cloth if you can't maintain them?

[Hoops @Hoopss]

The reason bus seats have wild patterns and vibrant colours is to hide how dirty they are

[Nalin Mathur @nalin_mathur]

@paulg Asking this because product isn't necessarily unique. But product + person (pedigree, background, etc) are more likely to be the unique winning factor.

[Nalin Mathur @nalin_mathur]

@paulg What if your startup needs capital? Will you invest solely based on the product?

[Nalin Mathur @nalin_mathur]

AI use is a game changer for building throaway prototyes and operational speed-up tools, both of which speed up research (fast iterations, low tech-debt cost). I build websites to show my experiments everyday! Idk anything about js.

AI docs are a pain! Slop of highest quality

[Shreyas Doshi @shreyas]

This is the biggest practical problem with overuse of AI in product work right now. Highly competent founders and executives are seeing this happen on a ~daily basis, with team members who used AI to draft a proposal (fine) but did not thoroughly think through it (not as fine).

[Nalin Mathur @nalin_mathur]

@atulit_gaur That is a pub

[Nalin Mathur @nalin_mathur]

@sansyrox Big if