Computers are empowering and fun! Writing software that runs above the Karman line at @K2SpaceCo. Formerly and forever cofounder of @recursecenter (YC S10).
New York, NY
Joined October 2007
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@thorstenball I had a brainwave last night. Time for new Orbs:
Worb (Windows Orb)
Morb (Mac Orb)
Borb (BSD Orb)
9orb (Plan 9 Orb, pronounced “Norb”)
A few years ago I wrote a little more(1) implementation in an io.Writer. I still think about it regularly. Always gives me a warm, fuzzy feeling. Go is such a lovely language.
gist.github.com/davidbalbert…
I rewatched Guy Steele's Growing a Language this weekend. My favorite technical talk of all time, and yet I somehow forgot how great it is. Poetry.
youtube.com/watch?v=lw6TaiXz…
The OpenAI Black Hat talk was terrifying. Shocking that the message wasn't "training our models not to cheat is now our highest priority."
At work I've been working on sandboxing Claude Code, etc. Now I think effective sandboxing is likely impossible.
I know the OpenAI/Hugging Face story hit the NY Times, network news, etc. But I don't think it's legible to the public.
It wasn't even legible to me until I watched the talk.
This article rightly puts Mariah Carey on a list of the greatest living songwriters, but fails to mention All I Want for Christmas Is You. That song alone puts her in the songwriter pantheon.
nytimes.com/interactive/2026…
As of last Monday, my code is in space.
And two days ago, it (yes, some of my code!) fired the largest, highest powered Hall-effect thruster ever flown.
So that's pretty cool :)
I'm very proud to share that the team @K2SpaceCo has achieved Tier 2 Mission Success for Gravitas!
Over the past week, we've:
• Powered on our payloads
• Activated our high power propulsion system and fired the thruster
• Completed testing of our software system, including a software update
With all of the satellite bus systems demonstrated and checked out, we will be transitioning to sustaining operations for the rest of the mission.
This includes continuing our payload demonstrations while pushing the satellite bus systems to the limit to learn as much as possible for future missions.
(And yes, this photo is real. Our thruster firing on orbit.)
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David Albert retweeted
If you put the Apple icons in reverse it looks like the portfolio of someone getting really really good at icon design
Cursed documentation:
> To set a variable from the makefile, write a line starting with the variable name followed by one of the assignment operators ‘=’, ‘:=’, ‘::=’, or ‘:::=’.
For people who fly spaceships (on the ground), the human interface is mostly charts and graphs.
This spring, when we got the first graphs set up for our first satellite, two different colleagues, who've both built spaceships before, got choked up and teary-eyed.
I still keep our (private) factory livestream in the background though. The satellite is 3,000 miles away, and I want to feel connected.
Me using @AmpCode (or Claude, or Codex, etc)
