Wednesday, August 23, 2023
It's quite frustrating not being able to publish new content to the website because of not having any build minutes. Of course this happens both as I'm starting to use the new notes feature that I added, which is leading to me writting a lot more, and as I'm coming up with lots of new ideas for code improvements. I don't want to code until I have build minutes otherwise I'll end up in another feature branch merge extravaganza.
The other thing that is absolutely typical is that now that I'm not coding, everything around me is relatively quiet. It's so odd, when I'm coding things are chaotic and problematic. This happens literally everytine, it can't possibly be random. I mention this because maybe some day it will become obvious what has been going on and perhaps this data point will be useful in getting to that place. #
AI progressive enhancement - Politico Tech has an interview with Google's Kent Walker where they discuss how providers of critical infrastructure should deal with AI. They mention an AI off switch. That got me wondering whether this is similar in some way to progressive enhancement that we use in modern web development. Perhaps a similar approach is necessary for designing these large systems. It should be possible to remove AI and the system should continue to function, though perhaps in a degraded state. #
Unix: technology and idea - Makes the case that when we say something is Unixy we mean two distinct things, namely that it conforms to certain technology choices but also a more broad philosophical idea, and this can cause people to disagree on unixness, since they are talking past each other. utcc.utoronto.ca #
The Broad Set of Computer Science Problems Faced at Cloud Database Companies - Cloud infrastructure companies power much of the modern internet and web. Their unprecedented scale mean they face very unique and interesting challenges. I still find it incredible how much S3 changed the landscape. davidgomes.com #
Elon Musk plans to remove headlines from news articles shared on X - Looks like I'm not the only person considering post titles this week. What are the chances? I quite like the idea that it will encourage people to write something instead of mindlessly re-posting. Personally when I share links I like to have both the original author title as well as personal comment. fortune.com #