Selected Readings 2024-W44
Kottke: Walt Disney’s Corporate Strategy Chart Think what you want about the company, I doubt many companies could express their strategy and vision as clearly as this, even if their life depended on it. And it always does.
- Microsoft has one of the clearest strategies when it comes to enabling actually productive everyday use of LLMs in the modern workplace. I’m not using their products much, but I enjoy them expressing and implementing a clear story and a lot of correct strategic thinking behind it.
Photoshoot Outtakes of Stevie Nicks and Mick Fleetwood for Fleetwood Mac´s “Rumours” Album Cover, 1976 What’s now iconic was once an experiment, unsure of its final form.
18 Life-Learnings from 18 Years of The Marginalian So much excellent thinking in this, but one thing stood out to me.
How you love, how you give, and how you suffer is just about the sum of who you are.
Simon Willison: Notes on the new Claude analysis JavaScript code execution tool This is an example of what I meant in Lenses. In this case, build a visualization of dependencies from a given TOML-based lockfile. Apart from the LLM building a parser for the format on the fly, this is a prime example of pushing the work of constructing a mental model from the human to the machine, a kind of shift left as described by Larry Smith.
Podcast: Creative Codex Loved so many episodes of this. Started with the ones about Leonardo da Vinci. A bit weird but I haven’t come across a single boring episode.
Meta Releases NotebookLlama Love the idea, but I currently do not have 140 GB of RAM lying around. Shows once again how strong Meta is in this space.
Does the O-Ring model hold for AIs?
The model, in short, says a production process is no better than its weakest link.
I don’t feel like mainstream LLMs are there yet, but an interesting problem to think about and it was nice to be reminded of the O-ring model.
When Your Product Is What It Is Arc is the first browser I really enjoyed using in a long time. I trust the company behind it and have so far not been disappointed. They take their open communication approach seriously and their playfulness never felt forced. Feeling a little anxious what will happen to Arc, though.
Kourosh Dini: I can’t do what helps me Dini describes a pattern I’ve noticed myself: People often reject helpful tools out of shame or fear of seeming “weak.” He highlights that avoidance can stem from a reluctance to confront these feelings. Dini suggests overcoming this by gradually building trust through “visits,” small, manageable actions that help alleviate overwhelm and cultivate self-compassion. His writing often revolves around this concept, he described in The Visit and the Waves of Focus.
Tool and library to check cryptographic public keys for known vulnerabilities via the grugq
Omnivore shutting down It’s a shame, Omnivore was the best read-it-later service I ever used. After testing Wallabag for two days, I’m back on Instapaper.
Ness Labs: Plus Minus Next Journaling Surprisingly effective. If you do not currently have a professional reflection routine, this is a good starting point.
“Presence” Trailer – Steven Soderbergh’s Unconventional Haunted House Horror Movie Looking forward to this. So many genre redefining movies these last couple of years, opening new vistas on the genre.
Introducing ChatGPT search Nice addition, but I’ll keep using Perplexity.ai for making first inquiries into new topics. Seems to be more aimed at everyday use and not academic.
What a beautiful idea Mass-Observation is
Mass-Observation is a United Kingdom social research project (..) aimed to record everyday life in Britain through a panel of around 500 untrained volunteer observers who either maintained diaries or replied to open-ended questionnaires (known as directives).
Songs of the Week:
- Linkin Park: Over Each OtherI love the new Linkin Park and enjoyed each of the three releasese so far. Amazing to see how they managed their reboot.
- Slipknot: Nero Forte