2025-12-19

Alembic Migrations with SQLModel Micro-Tutorial

"I have a database whose schema doesn't match my SQLModel models. I need to migrate this. I want to use alembic's – auto...

3 min

2025-12-05

136 Days of Unemployment

I keep a Google Doc titled "Notes". I look at it every day. I feel guilty whenever I look at it. I feel guilty because ...

2 min

2025-11-30

So, You Want To Build a Road

If you are reading this, you are considering building a brand new road! First, congratulations! Building a new road is a...

writing

6 min

2025-10-23

What I See Coming in LLM Reinforcement Learning

RL for LLMs is going to be a relevant and durable process for AI development so long as we don't have AGI. Reinforcemen...

5 min

2025-09-19

One Month Out

Here I am – standing in the same place as yesterday. I see how everything has changed right under my feet. These are so...

3 min

2025-09-01

Two Weeks of Unemployment

Previous I'm writing this post in an 84º AirBnB in Los Angeles. I've finished Moravagine (learned many new words). I'm...

1 min

2025-08-25

One Week of Unemployment

After four years, I've left Google. I accepted a voluntary layoff and my access was revoked at 5pm, Tuesday Aug. 19th 20...

1 min

2025-05-20

Thorne Wolfenbarger Statement of Beliefs

My name is Thorne Wolfenbarger. I am an idealist. I believe in many things. I believe in the pursuit of knowledge and t...

1 min

2025-05-16

There is No Truth and There Will Never Be Truth

Words are words like your hands are hands. You change the world with either but only hold words to a superior moral stan...

2 min

2025-05-05

Running Ads for lifestyle.photo for one day

I've made a lot of side projects over the years. I am a grown man now and have to admit that the reason that none of the...

2 min

2025-02-24

Weight Cycling

Placing alternating weights on the chest, chiefly known as Weight Cycling, is an effective method of communication while...

2 min

2025-02-11

[Unfinished] Regret Minimization as a Life Policy

How do you live an aesthetic/good/satisfying life? You can prioritize optionality, control, or a plethora of other metri...

5 min

2025-01-12

Why Capitalism is Abuse... Wait

Capitalism is an economic system that largely dictates the structure of a society built around it. If a society is "idea...

4 min

2025-01-02

What is my Pre-Reading?

Pre-reading is a useful activity before attending a lecture to make sure you get the most out of the delivered content. ...

7 min

2025-01-02

2024 In Review

Follow up on "2023: Reflections and Looking Forward". This is the year I became a reader, writer, poet, and meditator o...

3 min

2024-12-31

Python + UV + TailwindCSS Dockerfile | Jan 1, 2025

FROM python:3.12-slim-bookworm COPY --from=ghcr.io/astral-sh/uv:latest /uv /uvx /bin/ # Copy the project into the image ...

1 min

2024-10-21

Knowledge, Information, Compression. Useful?

Knowledge is having a simple representation for complex data. "If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it w...

essay

1 min

2024-08-19

Ephemerality

I hate ephemerality. I hate the mutability of life's structures. The shifting of connections through some agnostic evolu...

writing

8 min

2024-08-02

Software for LLM Effectiveness

Large Language Models (LLMs) are great when their needs are met: Need 1. Can consistently get relevant, well-formatted c...

thoughts programming

2 min

2024-07-15

He's so perfect!

He's so perfect! So why don't you text him? Well he doesn't text me! But he does, right? He texted you just as we sat...

writing

5 min

2024-07-07

The Ideal Government is a Hyper-Rational Evangelist

The singular goal of government, implicit until now, is to design and protect a structure where there is no distinction ...

thoughts

2 min

2024-05-25

The Author

I've answered too many questions about vocation - far too many about the heart and past relationships. Questions that, b...

writing

5 min

2024-04-02

1745 Days - Optionality

255 (0b11111111) days ago, I wrote my most personally significant blog post to date: 2000 Days In 2000 Days, I reflect ...

essay

10 min

2024-02-22

Review of "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?"

Philip K. Dick isn't the most literary writer, but the ideas he presents in this novel are engaging and I am sure that t...

reading

1 min

2024-02-22

Togetherness

isn't it funny? how in our togetherness, despite both individuals being worse off, keeping up the facade hurts a little...

writing

1 min

2024-02-12

Comments on Work (2024)

I am working on some exciting GenAI projects at Google. Through this work, I have found myself truly leading projects fo...

essay

3 min

2024-02-04

On Turning 25

Happy Birthday to you, Happy Birthday to you, Happy Birthday dear friend, Happy Birthday to you! May your day be filled ...

thoughts writing

2 min

2024-01-01

2023: Reflections and Looking Forward

Follow up on "My 2022 In Review". January Being in the software industry, I must consider the relationship of my work...

thoughts

6 min

2023-12-04

Book Review: The Remains of the Day

Kazuo Ishiguro's 1988 novel "The Remains of the Day" is an instant favorite of mine. In the book, Ishiguro explores conc...

reading

1 min

2023-12-04

thornewolf.dev charter

I've finally solidified on a purpose for my *.dev domain https://www.thornewolf.dev/. It is to provide an experience sim...

programming

1 min

2023-09-16

Placing Marbles Into Buckets - Expected Max Marbles

This question is inspired by an estimation problem I noticed in the workplace. We wanted to predict the QPS our service ...

math

1 min

2023-08-12

A Proposed Design for an LLM-Powered Text-Based MMORPG

In this writeup I will specify a few high level components that I think would be crucial for implementing an LLM-powered...

programming

3 min

2023-08-12

Personal Dictionary Webapp

I was talking with my friend, Adam Bignell a few days ago about his reading habits. He likes to keep tracks of words tha...

programming

1 min

2023-08-12

Generated UI Library & Website

LLM-enabled workflows are here and they will only become more relevant in the years to come. To explore the power behind...

programming

4 min

2023-08-06

Python make altinstall fails

Follow: https://askubuntu.com/questions/1047445/altinstall-error

programming

1 min

2023-08-06

How to Configure Prettier + TailwindCSS + Jinja in VSCode

Create .prettierrc.json { "overrides": [ { "files": "**/*.jinja", "options": { ...

programming

1 min

2023-07-17

Nice Knowing You, Space Cowboy

Spoilers for Cowboy Bebop ahead: Cowboy Bebop is a 1998 single season anime that teaches the viewer about friendship, l...

thoughts

3 min

2023-07-16

A Few Ideas for Projects

I don't want to lose track of the project ideas I've been having recently, because I think many of them are really good!...

thoughts programming

4 min

2023-07-10

Database Options with Python APIs

This writeup is to provide an up-to-date list of database options for use in any Python application. I find that it's ha...

programming

1 min

2023-07-10

2000 Days

Saturday, July 22, 2023. On this day, my countdown begins. The moment the clock strikes midnight, I will have 2000 days ...

thoughts

9 min

2023-07-09

Writing: Killing Angels

I step hesitantly into an expanse of a room. The porous concrete floor grates harshly against my naked feet, the dry and...

writing

2 min

2023-07-04

Thoughts on Career, Living, and Work

I've been working at Google as a Software Engineer since June 21, 2021. At the time of writing this, it has been 743 day...

thoughts

2 min

2023-05-13

It's not intelligent!

"It merely has all of the byproducts of intelligence, its not intelligence though!" I make this statement in a frank wa...

thoughts

1 min

2023-03-25

Writing: Always Facing Outwards

Always facing outwards. No, sitting. People talk to me. Words. I talk to them. Words. People. Sitting. Always facing out...

writing

1 min

2023-03-19

Writing: Doorway

When I woke up I was already standing in the doorway. Afternoon comes so quickly these days that I wonder if I should t...

writing

1 min

2023-03-14

New Game! Find The AI Impostor - TuringJest

TuringJest is a social deception game with a twist. You want to act like an NPC! I've been working on TuringJest for a ...

programming

1 min

2023-02-18

The human experience isn't novel.

2023 kicked off with a Bing thanks to the introduction of Sydney, Microsoft's controversial new search assistant that se...

thoughts

2 min

2023-01-29

To Steal An Aesthetic. To Find Beauty in an API.

Beautiful design is addicting to look at. This fact is especially true when the design is brilliantly simple. I first sa...

programming

1 min

2023-01-05

Eliminate ID Generation Boilerplate Using the Python Secrets Module

Secrets is a Python module that snuck into my Python installations, completely without my knowledge. Added in 2016, I ha...

programming

1 min

2022-12-23

Building a GPT-3 Personal Assistant

OpenAI has a publicly available API for their GPT-3 model, "text-davinci-003". This API provides a simple and clean inte...

programming

2 min

2022-12-18

My 2022 In Review

2022 lasted about 12 months. During those months, I learned a lot, formed many opinions, and hopefully make some things ...

thoughts

9 min

2022-11-28

Using SvelteKit to build a Community Ranking Ladder

To make products people use, one needs some frontend skills. Historically, frontend is a weakness of mine and I've been ...

programming

3 min

2022-07-08

Heroku and Heroku Alternatives

Recently, I've been doing some shopping around for a new way to host my toy projects. I've used a variety of solution bu...

programming

4 min

2022-04-10

Pricing Options with the Black-Scholes Model [Short]

Recently, I have been learning about optimal options pricing under various sets of assumptions. The introduction to risk...

math programming

1 min

2022-02-05

Unconventional Statistics With Dice – Expected Minimum Roll from 3 dice

In a previous post I discussed the potential benefits for using Monte Carlo simulations in place of traditional statisti...

math

3 min

2022-01-25

Prebuilt Blogging Solution & Paying For Hosting as a Software Engineer - Why?

One characteristic that almost every engineer is the innate desire to create. These feelings of creativity can manifest ...

programming

3 min

2022-01-22

Algorithm Breakdown – Container With Most Water

Container With Most Water (Problem #11) on the popular competitive programming site LeetCode [leetcode.com] is called “C...

programming

2 min

2022-01-22

What Does System Design Actually Look Like? - Creating a WhenIsGood Clone From Scratch

System design is a complicated skill that takes engineers of all disciplines years to become proficient in, yet alone ma...

programming

2 min

2022-01-22

Monte Carlo Simulations: For When Math Is Just Too Hard

“Monte Carlo simulations are used to model the probability of different outcomes in a process that cannot easily be pred...

math programming

2 min

2022-01-22

Binary Search: An Algorithms and Data Structures Website for leveling up your skills

Recently released for beta, Binary Search [binarysearch.com] renovates the traditional online coding examination and pra...

programming

2 min

2022-01-22

See Eleanor Pahl's work at Eleanoria

Eleanor Pahl is a Podcast Intern at Coindesk, freelance crypto journalist, and music enthusiast. If you are interested i...

1 min

2022-01-22

Wordle optimal guesses using minimax

Wordle is an online game where the purpose is to guess a "random" 5 letter word in 6 or fewer guesses. A prompt explain...

programming

1 min