Anirudh Oppiliappan

@anirudh

co-founder/ceo @tangled.org helsinki, finland (i don't look at dm requests; please email me)

173 Following2,023 Followers1,629 Posts

Bluesky

Is this your profile?Claim it and anirudh.dirty.social is yours.Claim profile

Anirudh Oppiliappan@anirudh· 15d

Excellent time with @scottchacon.com at the @gitbutler.com office today. Thanks for having me!

Anirudh Oppiliappan@anirudh· 15d

Wrote this quick thing on the plane to Berlin. anirudh.fi/strain

29 jul, 2026

The strain in your brain
Do you feel it?

[image of a brain]

Do you remember the feeling? You’re reading something: something new and complex. And you’re really trying—pushing through that strain in your brain. Do you feel that anymore?

It’s a strange thing. As a programmer, it was that feeling that signalled to me that I was learning something new. When the strain dissipated, I came out the other side afresh with new knowledge.

Writing code pre-AI gave me that feeling. Reading the docs, or oftentimes the source code of another project led to that tension. Finally figuring out how to wire everything right and make it work was cathartic. It was never really about writing the code anyway—reading and forming that mental model was the hard part.

Anirudh Oppiliappan@anirudh· 21d

a new atproto post has hit the front page: news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4902...

Anirudh Oppiliappan@anirudh· 26d

ha, glean amidst the sea of gleam. good hustle @julien.rbrt.fr :)

Anirudh Oppiliappan@anirudh· 28d

"instances"

Anirudh Oppiliappan@anirudh· 28d

Linus on LLM usage in kernel development. I will admit, it is a *bit* strange to see him state that Linux isn't a "social warrior" project and the stuff about technical merit—especially when they merged a code of conduct and subsequently "inclusive terminology". Be consistent, at least.

On Tue, 14 Jul 2026 at 19:01, Roman Gushchin <roman.gushchin@linux.dev> wrote:
>
> I think it makes the point of sashiko - helping maintainers - unachievable. If the point to not use
> LLMs in general, let’s discuss this, not how to make each use case more complex.
>
> It seems like [1] expresses a very anti-LLM position in general

Yes.

And no, that's not the position of the Linux kernel.

I realize that some people really dislike AI, but this is an area
where I'm willing to absolutely put my foot down as the top-level
maintainer.

Linux is not one of those anti-AI projects, and if somebody has issues
with that, they can do the open-source thing and fork it.

Or just walk away.

AI is a tool, just like other tools we use. And it's clearly a useful one.

It may not have been that "clearly" even just a year ago, but it's no
longer in question today.

There are other questions around AI (like what the economy of it will
actually look like in the end), but "is it useful" is no longer one of
those questions. Anybody who doubts that clearly hasn't actually used
it.

Yes, it can also be a somewhat painful tool, both for maintainer
workloads and just from a "it keeps finding embarrassing bugs"
standpoint.

But the solution is not to put your head in the sand and sing "La La
La, I can't hear you" at the top of your voice like some people seem
to do.

The solution is to make sure those LLM tools _help_ maintainers
instead of just causing them pain. There's no question on that side.

We're not forcing anybody to use it, but I will very loudly ignore
people who try to argue against other people from using it.

And no, AI isn't perfect. But Christ, anybody who points to the
problems at AI had better be looking in the mirror and pointing at
themselves at the same time.

Because it's not like natural intelligence is always all that great either.

The kernel project has been and will continue to be about the technology.

Sure, the social angle of working on open source is important and
often a very motivating part of the project, but in the end that's a
side benefit, not the _point_ of the project.

This is *NOT* some kind of "social warrior" project, never has been,
and never will be.

In the kernel community we do open source because it results in better
technology, not because of religious reasons.

And so we make decisions primarily based on technical merit. Not fear
of new tools.

Anirudh Oppiliappan@anirudh· Jul 9

this dumbass website omg

lobsters merged bun rust rewrite and andrewrk’s commentary

Anirudh Oppiliappan@anirudh· May 30

In Italy with my wife.

Anirudh Oppiliappan@anirudh· May 24

This is pretty incredible.

Alt text:

Infographic titled “Unicorn Founders: Countries of Birth.” A donut chart shows 44% of founders of US billion-dollar tech startups are non-US-born, 56% US-born, based on 1,078 founders across 531 companies that became unicorns between 1997–2019. A ranked list shows the top 10 countries of origin for non-US-born founders: India (90), Israel (52), Canada (42), UK (31), China (27), Germany (18), France (17), Russia (14), Taiwan (12), Ukraine (12). Source: Ilya Strebulaev, Venture Capital Initiative, Stanford Graduate School of Business, August 2024.

Anirudh Oppiliappan@anirudh· May 18

oh yeah wow what a unique space we’re in

Hey Anirudh - noticed you’re in SaaS as well - always keen to connect with people building in this space.

Anirudh Oppiliappan@anirudh· May 10

I think I may have lost some braincells reading this.

Anirudh Oppiliappan@anirudh· Apr 29

Also, incredibly pleased with the job application form thing I built (read: one shotted with CC). It's a simple Cloudflare worker that sends applications to a private Linear board. Linear issue statuses customized like picrel. I love this era where we can simply will software into existence.

Linear issue statuses for New, Shortlisted, Work Trial, Hired, Rejected

Anirudh Oppiliappan@anirudh· Apr 29

i love lobsters but god merging has got to be the dumbest idea… especially when they do it for things that are only tangentially related (each discussion relatively unique)

Anirudh Oppiliappan@anirudh· Apr 29

insane call by roscoe

Anirudh Oppiliappan@anirudh· Apr 27

X For You feed is better than any feed on Bluesky.

Anirudh Oppiliappan@anirudh· Apr 27

Espoo!

Anirudh Oppiliappan@anirudh· Apr 26

Insane to think that I live right next to this.

Anirudh Oppiliappan@anirudh· Apr 22

yeah, me too 🥹 flashing crosspoint was easy (thanks webusb). took a bit to get used to the size + button layout but you don't notice it after a bit.

Anirudh Oppiliappan@anirudh· Apr 19

We recently moved, and the new apartment is coming along rather nicely! Kitchen is still a work in progress—we re-laminated the shelves. Haven't got any of our light fixtures yet.

Living room with an orange floral Marimekko carpet, a TV, house plants, an off-white couch, a guitar over to the left and a La-z-boy.

Kitchen to the right, dining table with two chairs to the left. A bookshelf is visible.

Anirudh Oppiliappan@anirudh· Apr 19

wowie, vercel got popped? vercel.com/kb/bulletin/...

Tweet: Vercel has reportedly been breached by ShinyHunters. As of now, nobody else appears to be posting about this, so I’m sharing what I have. Here is the information I’ve gathered, along with screenshots provided by ShinyHunters.

Anirudh Oppiliappan@anirudh· Apr 5

tangled mentioned in the job app form!!!

Recommended if you have one. You can also share your Codeberg, Tangled, Gitlab or other coding platform.

Anirudh Oppiliappan@anirudh· Mar 27

Anirudh Oppiliappan@anirudh· Mar 24

i really dig claude's graphics for stats

Bar chart titled "Annual CO₂ savings — diet vs driving vs AI (no flying)." Four actions are compared by tonnes of CO₂ saved per year. Going vegan saves approximately 2.5 tonnes, shown as the longest bar in dark blue. Cutting out car use saves approximately 2.0 tonnes, shown in orange-red. Going vegetarian saves approximately 0.9 tonnes, in medium blue. Cutting personal AI use at 100 queries per day saves only 1 to 18 kilograms — roughly 0.001 to 0.018 tonnes — shown as a bar so short it is nearly invisible. Summary metric cards above the chart highlight: 0.9 t saved per year going vegetarian, 2.5 t going vegan, 2.0 t ditching a car, and 1–18 kg from heavy daily AI use. A footnote states sources include Flight Free UK, ICCT, and Google Cloud's Gemini 2025 disclosure.

Anirudh Oppiliappan@anirudh· Mar 18

decided to try vanilla ghostty multiplexing (no tmux) + retvrn to nvim. one year away from nvim and most of my config just didn't work anymore. but i sat with claudey boy and ripped out most of the cruft and now it's… okay ish. let's see…