Web Review, Week 2023-05
Let’s go for my web review for the week 2023-05.
The AI Crowd is Mad
Tags: tech, ai, machine-learning, gpt
A few interesting points in there. Too much hype and important points are glanced over, we’d all benefit from them being more actively explored.
https://proofinprogress.com/posts/2023-02-01/the-ai-crowd-is-mad.html
Meta Was Scraping Sites for Years While Fighting the Practice - Bloomberg
Tags: tech, facebook
Oh the irony! Are we surprised? No not really… apparently who wields the tool makes it acceptable or not.
Merchant: Big Tech is using layoffs to crush worker power - Los Angeles Times
Tags: tech, work, hr, business
Looks like an attempt to sow fear in the workers at Big Tech. Hopefully it’ll lead instead to a better organization of the workers across the industry and people leaving Big Tech altogether to join less toxic environments.
The Transformer Family Version 2.0 | Lil’Log
Tags: tech, ai, machine-learning
Very nice summary of the architecture in the latest trend of transformer models. Long but comprehensive, a good way to start diving in the topic.
https://lilianweng.github.io/posts/2023-01-27-the-transformer-family-v2/
Writing a Custom SQLite Function (in C) - Part 1
Tags: tech, sqlite
An interesting but sometimes forgotten possibility for extending SQLite. Keep in mind this can lead to bad coupling between the software and the DB though which could carry interesting challenges around upgrades for instance.
https://www.openmymind.net/Writing-A-Custom-Sqlite-Function-Part-1/
Undefined behavior, and the Sledgehammer Principle | The Pasture
Tags: tech, programming, c, c++
Excellent conclusion to the recent turmoil around undefined behaviors. The way they are currently used as definitely a problem, they shouldn’t be ignored in your code (although that’s admittedly not that easy). There’s hopefully a path forward.
https://thephd.dev/c-undefined-behavior-and-the-sledgehammer-guideline
Data for Decisions - Max Countryman
Tags: tech, data, knowledge, decision-making
Too often forgotten. Data is indeed a mean to an end. It’s not outright knowledge and will require work to be useful. It better be aligned with your needs if you want to use it for decision making.
https://www.maxcountryman.com/articles/data-for-decisions
My critique of “the Spotify Model”: Part 1 | by Jason Yip | Jan, 2023 | Medium
Tags: tech, agile
OK, this is the best critique of the “Spotify Model” I’ve seen around. There’s been plenty of unfair criticism thrown at this “model” (never aimed to be something you fully replicate though, hence the complaints I think). This one is properly balanced and doesn’t just throw everything in the garbage bin, it takes the model bits by bits and try to highlight where the limits are. Very constructive.
https://jchyip.medium.com/my-critique-of-the-spotify-model-part-1-197d335ef7af
I’m Now a Full-Time Professional Open Source Maintainer
Tags: tech, foss, business
Interesting business model. Could be a new path for at least some maintainers to be sustainably funded. Still a lot of unknowns though… probably worth keeping an eye on it.
https://words.filippo.io/full-time-maintainer/
Estimating Square Roots in Your Head
Tags: mathematics
Interesting method to estimate square roots. I didn’t know about it, quite clever.
https://gregorygundersen.com/blog/2023/02/01/estimating-square-roots/
Bye for now!