Published
Weekend Reading — 🫛 War and peas
Tech Stuff
#GitHubUnwrapped 2023 - Your coding year in review Fantastic! “Get your personalized video of your GitHub activity in 2023.” This is open source, so you can customize it and build your own unwrapped experience for next year!
Knight Lab's SQL Murder Mystery “Use SQL queries to solve the murder mystery. Suitable for beginners or experienced SQL sleuths.”
The await event horizon in JavaScript
An async function traverses an await event horizon every time it pauses for the result of a Promise. When it does, control can never return back to it until such time as that Promise settles; and there is absolutely no way to guarantee that it (or any) Promise will ever settle.
Examples of Great URL Design Writing about the big beautiful mess that is making things for the world wide web.
Engelbart's "Mother of All Demos" was presented 55 years ago today. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yJDv-zdhzMY
It changed the way people thought about computers in the 1960s.
Before Jobs, Before Altman, there was Engelbart.
CSS Wrapped: 2023! Learn about what landed in Chrome and across the web platform this year.
Eye for Design
Should you add screenshots to documentation? And if yes then also how, because screenshots are tricky to maintain:
Screenshots in documentation can be a contentious topic — some people really like them and think they add a lot of value, while others dislike them due to the maintenance burden and accessibility issues. So what should you do?
The Creative Playground “A good match is a structured dance, where players aim to score while they are following well-defined rules. This freedom within a structure is what makes it fun.”
Why carousels don't work In short: “If everything is important, then nothing is”
Business Side
Heather Buchel In my experience this was always a problem. Some companies are more likely to hire people who can’t really code:
Throughout my career my experience of working with recent grads or junior developers went from people having a pretty good grip on how to build a web interface to people, hired for the same role as a front-end developer, having no idea how to format CSS properly or what HTML elements to use where. This is not a gross exaggeration. A lot of folks warned about this happening and it was all hand waved away as us not being able to let go or adapt.
Politics and the Future “We tried buying a social network to influence politics but all the users left. So we’re going to buy politicians instead” - Andreessen Horowitz — via Dare Obasanjo
The Demise of the 'IBM Way’ The company’s peculiar culture fueled its success, and eventually its fall from industry dominance:
The company’s technological accomplishments are still recognizable as the forerunners of the digital era, yet its culture of social responsibility—a focus on employees rather than shareholders, restraint in executive compensation, and investment in anti-poverty programs—proved a dead end.
From Unicorns to Zombies: Tech Start-Ups Run Out of Time and Money In the end, the zero interest rate phenomenon rate was fun while it lasted, but not long-term healthy for startups (see WeWork, Hopin, Bird, etc).
The year Twitter died: a special series from The Verge The Verge is not mincing words about Twitter’s demise, and the graphics are just amazing.
Insecurity
Marketing Company Claims That It Actually Is Listening to Your Phone and Smart Speakers to Target Ads Just the news you didn’t want to hear: “With Active Listening, CMG claims to be able to “target your advertising to the EXACT people you are looking for,” according to its website.”
If you’re using TikTok, Facebook, etc this feels so right. But … it’s not true. The tech is not there to allow your phone to listen to you without hacking your phone. And hacking phones is too expensive to serve you ads for $20 products. That's just business sense math. This claim is more likely someone from marketing making a bogus claim to attract customers who don’t know any better.
Machine Intelligence
Scientists tackle AI bias with polite prodding
The troubling presence of racial bias in AI output may be easier to contain than many thought. Scientists at AI research company Anthropic say a little politeness may just do the trick, at least in some instances.
Strut This looks interesting. A collaborative environment for writing, with a bunch of AI tools that don’t replace the writer but help them.
Visual Electric “The first AI image generator designed for creatives. Bring your ideas to life with our infinite canvas and intuitive interface.”
Everything Else
i was going to wait to tell the “who called it ‘secret santa’ instead of ‘non-disclosure claus’?” joke until it was closer to christmas, but i figured i’d totally forget, so i’m telling it now.
I am not LAZY! I am waiting until my anxiety about not doing the thing is higher than my anxiety about doing the thing! It's called a LIFEHACK! Read a blog!
Wonder of Science This mind-bending timelapse with the Milky Way stabilized shows the Earth is spinning through space.
tech? no! man, see but … but … I’m not in the control group!!!
periodic reminder that "no, I'm in the control group" is a wonderfully versatile response that works in many situations
"did you catch the Seahawks game last night?" / "no, I'm in the control group"
"do you have any plans for Christmas?" / "no, I'm in the control group"
"do you know how fast you were going back there?" / "no, I'm in the control group"
"can I get you something to drink?" / "no, I'm in the control group“
Kookie “Holy shit I love this map”
boy are you debian, because you seem to have dependency issues
Do not seize the day. This will startle the day and may cause it to become aggressive and give you a nasty bite.
Instead approach the day calmly without making eye contact, pet it gently, and slowly enfold it in a careful embrace
If the day shows any signs of resistance to being engaged with, it is likely to turn on you. Back off and return to bed.
The Eternal Jukebox Cool! This web app lets you search for a song on Spotify and will then generate a never-ending and ever-changing version of the song.
ADULT NEUROGENESIS IN HUMANS: A Review of Basic Concepts, History, Current Research, and Clinical Implications So maybe the reason SSRIs are effective against depression has nothing to do with serotonin deficiency and everything to do with improving neurogenesis?
Neurogenesis in adult humans remains a controversial area of research among neuroscientists. Methodological challenges have hampered investigators from conducting high-quality, in-vivo studies that can help elucidate the presence and/or activity of neurogenesis …
Neanderthal DNA may explain why some of us are morning people If you’re a morning person, I’ve got some news for you: “Scientists find genes inherited from our prehistoric cousins increase tendency to rise early – useful in regions with short winter days.”
35 rubbish Chinese mistranslations which will probably make you laugh
Israel Is Dangerously Dependent on Technology Even before “start-up nation” entered the lexicon, the army’s embrace of technology alarmed some military experts:
Israel’s fatal tech malfunction is worth attention as America and much of the world moves further into a haze of computer dependence, virtual reality, the metaverse, artificial intelligence, and a growing inability to discern what’s real.
trumpet@mas.to Theards now federates with Mastodon! And I have to admit, I doubted they’d ever do that, I thought it was just a marketing promise.
So my task right now is to figure out how I can use both with a single app, probably Ivory which is my favorite. However, I’m using mast.to as my Mastodon provider, and they decided to block all of Threads, so not technically possible today. Going to take a few days to see if they change their mind. If they don’t, I’ll have to switch to a different Mastodon instance. I just don’t enjoy the exclusion strategy, I don’t think it’s good, healthy, or welcoming.
