Selected Readings 2024-W43

This is the first installment in what I hope will be a series of weekly lists of links that interested me.

• Jabra: Great ExpectAItions, Work in the age of AI Interesting data about the current state of AI adoption in the workplace, some interesting findings when looking at different age groups.
• Against /tmp A well-written list of arguments against a centralized /tmp that includes a historic perspective on the situation. I wish more technical essays would include the historical context and reasoning for the described shortcomings.
• 2024 Self-Host User Survey Results
• Drew Breunig: The 3 AI Use Cases: Gods, Interns, and Cogs

  Gods: Super-intelligent, artificial entities that do things autonomously. Interns: Supervised copilots that collaborate with experts, focusing on grunt work. Cogs: Functions optimized to perform a single task extremely well, usually as part of a pipeline or interface.

• DistroWatch Weekly: Atomic systems vs immutable distributions Distrowatch explains the difference between atomic and immutable distros. It’s the first time I’m reading a naming of the concepts. It’s better this way than seeing the atomic approach as an inadequate attempt of the immutable approach.
• NotebookLM I’m currently extremely impressed by NotebookLM. A little like Perplexity, but in a notebook form similar to Jupyter, and you can generate a podcast from sources where topics or specific aspects are discussed between two hosts. You can incorporate various sources and then dissect/edit/etc. them in a notebook. To be honest, I would use it just for the podcast feature.
• Figma Blog: The VS Code Method: Tightening a developer’s inner loop Well-written disection of the concepts behind VSCode’s design philosophy.
• Fonts in Use: BND Recruitment Campaign
• Spiritbox “Soft Spine” ft. Poppy - Live from Louder Than Life This video made me realize what FPV drones are doing to concert footage.
• Songs of the Week:
  • Wargasm UK: Circle Pit
  • Jamie Cullum: Age of Anxiety