Sunflower
Hello from my home in Matinkylä! This is NordLetter #, a weekly newsletter on living and walking in Finland. Each week I share some of the interesting things I found on the web.
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Savya had his first play date on Sunday. Prerna had arranged it. There are twins in Savya’s class. The play date was with them, and their mother. The library has a section for the kids to play around in. It used to be that there was a boundary around the place, so kids could not go out of that cordoned off space. Now, it’s different. Now, one of us needs to be after Savya all the time.
Kids their age are not really interested in playing with each other. They are however interested in picking books up, and handing it over to their parents, or wanting to play with the same toy, all three of them. Savya did all of that, and more.
I guess these play dates are equally - if not more - for the parents. We get to talk. We get to learn from each other. We get support. Or so I hope. Savya has been on only one play date by now.
The twins were done with the library soon though, they had started putting on shoes and standing next to their pram. So we packed up and went to the play area downstairs - a jungle gym of sorts. A space for kids to jump around in, hang off things, go through things and so on.
Savya had fun here. He ran around.
There was a child here - a little older than Savya. Not too old, maybe three years older. He was goading Savya on, Savya was running after him, trying to catch him. The goading involved showing the middle finger to Savya. It’s worse now that I type it out. He was just waiting for Savya to get there, as Savya is younger and slower, goading him on to come closer and then running away. It was friendly. But I could not help feeling what sort of a school and background this child was from.
Was it innocent or was there some sort of bias here?
I guess I would always keep wondering this.
We went to the sunflower field after that.
It was not a good time to visit it I think. This is the end of the season after all. And it had rained both that day and before that. The field was muddy. The flowers were spent.
The field was still full of sunflowers in bloom, but the field did not look bright. I have seen this field from the bus, going somewhere. It looks like a Yash Chopra film, usually.
We clicked some pictures - as we do. Here’s some.
We decided to visit our friends near EIS after that. A random thing. Nothing planned about it. It was supposed to be a short visit - one hour max - Prerna had said. We reached EIS at 19:00 and reached our home at 22:30.
A short visit indeed!
I enjoy these things, small groups of people - enough to hold a conversation - enough for it to be called a party. I talked about this in [[202509201243 NL72| NL72]]. I miss these conversations where you can talk about things other than where do you live and what do you do.
I miss the pow-wow.
Not here though. I hope we do more of these in the future.
I was at an Azure and Friends meet up on Thursday evening. I wrote about it.
I wrote a short story after a long time. Read it here.
/five things to share
1. Big Tech Dreams of Putting Data Centers in Space by Sophie Hurwitz
Altman has proposed creating a Dyson sphere of data centers around the sun, referring to a hypothetical megastructure built around a star to capture much of its energy. The rather glaring downside to this is that building it would likely require more resources than exist on Earth, and could make the planet uninhabitable. But somewhat more realistic plans are inching closer to reality. Startups like Starcloud, Axiom, and Lonestar Data Systems have raised millions to develop them.
It will be slow though getting data to and from these DCs. Wireless is very slow compared to fibre.
2. Trump says H-1B visas will now cost $100,000 per-year by Terrence O’Brien
The fee will only apply to new applicants and it’s likely to face legal challenges, but even just the specter of this change appears to have some companies scrambling. There are reports that Microsoft issued an internal memo advising any workers currently abroad that operate on a visa to return to the US before the new fees kick in at midnight tonight. And tech companies have already been warning those working on visas not to leave the US for fear that they might not be able to return.
Why not just scrap the program?
Also, The United States is Starved for Talent, Re-Upped - Marginal REVOLUTION
Overall, getting (approximately) one extra high-skilled worker causes a 23% increase in the probability of a successful IPO within five years (a 1.5 percentage point increase in the baseline probability of 6.6%). That’s a huge effect.
3. Microsoft’s AI CEO on the future of the browser by Tom Warren
“It’s almost like having a little angel on your shoulder doing the boring hard work of reading reviews, doing price comparisons, synthesizing research, but instead of it happening away from you, you can actually see it in real time unfolding before your eyes,” says Suleyman.
But the research is the point, when it comes to buying a new piece of technology. I enjoy reading the reviews. I enjoy the process. I don’t want someone to do the research and tell me what to buy.
4. Microsoft says this new cooling method could enable more powerful chips and efficient data centers by Justine Calma
With microfluidic cooling, liquid flows through channels etched onto the back of a chip. The trick is making sure the channels, about the width of a human hair, are deep enough to prevent clogging but not so deep that the chip becomes more likely to break.
Two things here -
- Since the coolant does not need to cool the metal stuck to the chip, it does not need to be as colder. So less energy.
- During spike in demands, you could overclock, instead of scale so less machines, possibly.
5. “The Funeral”
I wondered if my cousins thought my mother was dramatic as she cried, after all, she had not seen them in years. Perhaps she was sad for herself, or sad in the way people are when they realize the end is coming and all the people they have known in their lives are marching in a line toward the edge of the cliff, falling off one by one.
I enjoyed reading this. This is not a fantastical story. You don’t see stories like this so much these days.
If you enjoyed reading this, and know someone else who might, please consider forwarding this to them. It would help this grow and make me happy. 😄
Until next week.