Web Review, Week 2024-43
Let’s go for my web review for the week 2024-43. It’s published later than usual since I’m attending the Ubuntu Summit 2024 and had to travel because of it.
Microsoft maintains its own Windows debloat scripts on GitHub
Tags: tech, microsoft, criticism, funny
This is indeed telling unfortunately. It’s kind of ironic that they felt the need of having their own debloat scripts.
https://www.osnews.com/story/140955/microsoft-maintains-its-own-windows-debloat-scripts-on-github/
This Is Exactly How an Elon Musk-Funded PAC Is Microtargeting Muslims and Jews With Opposing Messages
Tags: tech, democracy, politics
This is just insane, claiming two opposite things to different demographic groups for political gains. And if you try to stop this kind of manipulative stunts they’d probably cry wolf about free speech…
Big Tech has given itself an AI deadline
Tags: tech, ai, machine-learning, gpt, economics, energy, criticism
More signs of the current bubble being about to burst?
Google, Microsoft, and Perplexity promote scientific racism in AI search results
Tags: tech, ai, machine-learning, gpt, criticism
This is what you get by making bots spewing text based on statistics without a proper knowledge base behind it.
The 3 AI Use Cases: Gods, Interns, and Cogs
Tags: tech, ai, gpt, copilot, language
Using the right metaphors will definitely help with the conversation in our industry around AI. This proposal is an interesting one.
https://www.dbreunig.com/2024/10/18/the-3-ai-use-cases-gods-interns-and-cogs.html
You Don’t Need Words to Think
Tags: cognition, neuroscience, language, logic, knowledge, research
Very interesting research. Looks like we’re slowly moving away from the “language and thinking are intertwined” hypothesis. This is probably the last straw for Chomsky’s theory of language. It served us well but neuroscience points that it’s time to leave it behind.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/you-dont-need-words-to-think/
Reliable Reasoning Beyond Natural Language
Tags: tech, ai, machine-learning, gpt, logic, research
Now this is an interesting paper. Neurosymbolic approaches are starting to go somewhere now. This is definitely helped by the NLP abilities of LLMs (which should be used only for that). The natural language to Prolog idea makes sense, now it needs to be more reliable. I’d be curious to know how many times the multiple-try path is exercised (the paper doesn’t quite focus on that). More research is required obviously.
https://arxiv.org/abs/2407.11373
Introducing quantized Llama models with increased speed and a reduced memory footprint
Tags: tech, ai, machine-learning, gpt, optimization
More marketing announcement than real research paper. Still it’s nice to see smaller models being optimized to run on mobile devices. This will get interesting when it’s all local first and coupled to symbolic approaches.
https://ai.meta.com/blog/meta-llama-quantized-lightweight-models/
You Should Probably Pay Attention to Tokenizers
Tags: tech, statistics, ai, machine-learning, gpt, language
This is still an important step with LLM. It’s not because the models are huge that tokenizers disappeared or that you don’t need to clean up your data.
https://cybernetist.com/2024/10/21/you-should-probably-pay-attention-to-tokenizers/
Developing a Beautiful and Performant Block Editor in Qt C++ and QML
Tags: tech, markdown, qt, note-taking, tools
Ah! I wish MarkNotes or KleverNotes would work like this. I wish we’d have a reusable component in KDE Frameworks too. This is quite some work of course, too bad this isn’t FOSS.
https://rubymamistvalove.com/block-editor
Bookmark Keywords
Tags: tech, browser, firefox, bookmarks
A very useful but indeed little known feature of Firefox bookmarks.
https://paper.wf/binarycat/bookmark-keywords
The IPv6 Transition
Tags: tech, internet, protocols, ip
Looks like we’re stuck in the middle of the bridge. Also looks like the motivation to finish the transition isn’t high.
https://www.potaroo.net/ispcol/2024-10/ipv6-transition.html
against /tmp
Tags: tech, programming, unix, security
Good reminder that /tmp has many security flaws built in.
https://dotat.at/@/2024-10-22-tmp.html
The Part of PostgreSQL We Hate the Most
Tags: tech, databases, postgresql, design
Since everything has design choices which imply trade offs. Here is the main issue with PostgreSQL right now. Hopefully it’ll get modernized at some point.
https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~pavlo/blog/2023/04/the-part-of-postgresql-we-hate-the-most.html
Sensible SQLite defaults
Tags: tech, backend, databases, sqlite
Another nice list of defaults for SQLite. Some of them I didn’t have on my radar.
https://briandouglas.ie/sqlite-defaults/
Using uv to develop Python command-line applications
Tags: tech, python, developer-experience
uv keeps showing promise to make development easier. It makes everything very much self contained.
https://til.simonwillison.net/python/uv-cli-apps
Use data that looks like data
Tags: tech, programming, debugging
Definitely a sound advice. You don’t want to be confused when debugging something because it looks too much like a variable or a property name.
https://registerspill.thorstenball.com/p/use-data-that-looks-like-data
pytest selection arguments for failing tests
Tags: tech, tests, python
Another example of why pytest is really a nice test runner. I really miss it on projects which don’t have it.
https://mathspp.com/blog/til/pytest-selection-arguments-for-failing-tests
SMURF: Beyond the Test Pyramid
Tags: tech, tests
Indeed a good way to reason about tests and the value they bring.
https://testing.googleblog.com/2024/10/smurf-beyond-test-pyramid.html?m=1
I’ve been writing software for the last 25 years. Here some things I learned so far
Tags: tech, career, engineering, craftsmanship, complexity
Another good set of advices. They’re not all technical which is to be expected.
https://blog.rpanachi.com/after-25-years-writing-software-here-some-things-learned-so-far
Framework overload: when convenience dulls innovation in software development
Tags: tech, framework, complexity, knowledge, learning, debugging, craftsmanship
I very much agree with this. The relationship between developers and their frameworks is rarely healthy. I think the author misses an important advice though: read the code of your frameworks. When stuck invest sometime stepping into the frameworks with the debugger. Developers too often treat those as a black box.
https://prahladyeri.github.io/blog/2024/10/framework-overload.html
Learning to learn
Tags: tech, learning, career
Definitely the most important skill to develop. Especially in our profession.
https://kevin.the.li/posts/learning-to-learn/
How do we evaluate people for their technical leadership?
Tags: tech, management, career, hr
Lots of open questions which are left unanswered. That said it shows how difficult it is to evaluate knowledge workers in general and that we’re often grasping to the wrong metrics.
https://chelseatroy.com/2024/03/29/how-do-we-evaluate-people-for-their-technical-leadership/
Ground Rules of Fairness at Work
Tags: management, transparency, fair
Transparency and fairness are definitely important to keep people motivated across an organization. That doesn’t make it easy to deal with of course, but that’s where managers should focus.
https://read.perspectiveship.com/p/fairness-at-work
Bye for now!