Home on Baduja

When AI Improves Itself, It Just Learns the Test

Wed, 07 Oct 2026 10:15:00 +0100

When I wanted to go to university in the US, I had to take the SAT. Everyone preps for it, and you quickly find out a little secret: you can get much better at the test without getting much smarter. You do old tests over and over. You learn the kinds of questions they like to ask, the tricks for guessing, how fast to go. Your score goes up. But you’re not really better at reading, writing or solving new problems. You’re just better at the SAT.

Hello Baduja

Wed, 07 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Every programmer’s first program says hello to the world. The first post on this blog says hello to something a little closer to home:

fmt.Println("hello, Baduja")

My daughter’s name is Victoria. At two years old, though, it doesn’t quite come out that way. When she says her own name, the sounds rearrange themselves and land somewhere soft and certain: Baduja. She says it with complete conviction, as if the rest of us have been getting it wrong all along.

About

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

I’m a dad to a beautiful daughter and a husband to a wonderful wife, and most of what matters to me starts there.

I’ve moved around a fair bit. I lived in Asia, then Central Europe, then spent eight years in the United States, living and working around Philadelphia, Princeton, New York and California. For the past ten years, London has been home.

I build things for a living, usually involving computers and networks. These days that means the world of high-frequency trading and market making, where a lot of effort goes into making things just a little bit faster.