Web Review, Week 2024-21
Let’s go for my web review for the week 2024-21.
Gender bias in open source: Pull request acceptance of women versus men
Tags: tech, foss, bias
A bit too GitHub centric for my taste. Still it shows some unwarranted bias, especially when outsiders to a project are identified as women. We should do better.
BitKeeper, Linux, and licensing disputes: How Linus wrote Git in 14 days
Tags: tech, foss, version-control, linux, git, history
The often forgotten history behind the creation of Git. This article does a good job summarizing it.
https://graphite.dev/blog/bitkeeper-linux-story-of-git-creation
Pluralistic: The Coprophagic AI crisis
Tags: tech, ai, machine-learning, gpt, data
The training dataset crisis is looming in the case of large language models. They’ll sooner or later run out of genuine content to use… and the generated toxic waste will end up in training data, probably leading to dismal results.
https://pluralistic.net/2024/03/14/inhuman-centipede/#enshittibottification
Google Is Paying Reddit $60 Million for Fucksmith to Tell Its Users to Eat Glue
Tags: tech, ai, machine-learning, gpt, google, data, quality
No, your model won’t get smarter just by throwing more training data at it… on the contrary.
How DeviantArt died: A.I. and greed turned a once-thriving community into a ghost town.
Tags: tech, ai, machine-learning, art, social-media, criticism
This is indeed sad to see another platform turn against its users. This was once a place to nurture young artists… it’s now another ad driven platform full of AI made scams.
https://slate.com/technology/2024/05/deviantart-what-happened-ai-decline-lawsuit-stability.html
OpenAI departures: Why can’t former employees talk, but the new ChatGPT release can? - Vox
Tags: tech, ai, machine-learning, gpt, criticism
Open is unsurprisingly only in the name… this company is really just a cult.
New Windows AI feature records everything you’ve done on your PC | Ars Technica
Tags: tech, microsoft, windows, security, privacy
This is completely nuts… they really want to unleash a security and privacy nightmare. The irony is that it does respect DRM content on the other hand, we can see where the priorities are.
A Grand Unified Theory of the AI Hype Cycle
Tags: tech, ai, machine-learning, gpt, hype
Definitely this, it’s not the first time we see such a hype cycle around “AI”. When it bursts the technology which created it is just not called “AI” anymore. I wonder how long this one will last though.
https://blog.glyph.im/2024/05/grand-unified-ai-hype.html
A Plea for Sober AI | Drew Breunig
Tags: tech, ai, machine-learning, gpt, hype, criticism
Definitely too much hype around large models right now. This over shadows the more useful specialized models.
https://www.dbreunig.com/2024/05/16/sober-ai.html
Bing outage shows just how little competition Google search really has | Ars Technica
Tags: tech, google, microsoft, web, search
We’re still fairly dependent on just two major web indices… time for an index built as a common for everyone to use?
stract: web search done right
Tags: tech, web, search
Looks like an interesting new search engine.
https://github.com/StractOrg/stract?tab=readme-ov-file
The curious case of the missing period - Tjaart’s Substack
Tags: tech, email, debugging
Fascinating bug… the fine details of mundane protocols like SMTP can sometimes be surprising.
https://tjaart.substack.com/p/the-curious-case-of-the-missing-period
Firefox bookmark keywords for faster navigation
Tags: tech, firefox, bookmarks
Interesting Firefox feature I didn’t notice. Looks fairly nice, I’ll use it more.
https://blog.meain.io/2024/firefox-bookmark-keywords
CADmium: A Local-First CAD Program Built for the Browser
Tags: tech, web, frontend, cad, physics, mathematics
This gives a good idea of the important parts in a CAD program. It also list a few of the usable libraries to build one such program in the browser.
https://mattferraro.dev/posts/cadmium
WebAssembly: A promising technology that is quietly being sabotaged
Tags: tech, webassembly, server
Where WebAssembly is, and where WebAssembly on the server is going… let’s hope it doesn’t become another CORBA.
https://kerkour.com/webassembly-wasi-preview2
Hartwork Blog · Clone arbitrary single Git commit
Tags: tech, git, ci
Neat trick, especially useful for CI uses.
https://blog.hartwork.org/posts/clone-arbitrary-single-git-commit/
Writing commit messages
Tags: tech, version-control, writing, communication
Very extensive guide on writing better commit messages. This is important, it’s a very central communication mechanism with other developers.
https://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/quasiblog/commit-messages/
UI Density || Matthew Ström, designer-leader
Tags: tech, gui, ux
Interesting discussion about UI density. What are we talking about? Is there value to is? Which aspects of a UI are impacting it? The conclusion makes it all very clear.
https://matthewstrom.com/writing/ui-density/
Bye for now!