Weeknotes 2024.04
Week 04 of 2024 dealt with distractions and found some links related to AI, Programming, Security, Privacy, Automotive, Environment, and Workplace Culture.
The mental struggle continues. Unfortunately it also makes it hard to focus and you become distracted much more easily.
You know you have been distracted when instead of working in Visual Studio Code (VSC), you browse editor themes and icon themes for it š¤¦. It all started by trying to find out if there are any conventions for multiple LICENSE files in a project š.
Changelog
Slow week again in terms of creation, with only a few bits and bops here and there.
Linklog
AI
- Oh boyā¦ AI models as sleeper agents. Anthropic maybe having an ulterior motive to spread FUD on open source models would be extremely meta. I give them the benefit of the doubt. Weāre early in LLM applications and most threat vectors are not yet known. (via)
- Who owns the libel suit, OpenAI or the user? This will be an interesting case to follow, since it could have some profund effect not only on AI applications, but also their users.
- Fairly Trained will certify AI models that were trained on legally obtained data. It was a business bound to happen.
Programming
- Measuring Developer Productivity: Real-World Examples. Quite an interesting read. Iām critical of measuring developer productivity on the organisational level, because it will be used as a scapegoat for other (hard to measure) issues more often than not. On an individual level, meaning the developers themselves are motivated to measure certain activities as a way of self-improvement, itās a game-changer.
- Itās not just federated learning. Federation will become more important even as an architectural approach. Even with the stupid name āfediverseā attached to it.
- Martin Fowler updated his article on Continuous Integration. I need to set aside an hour or so to read it.
- Developing with Swift in Visual Studio Code. VSC is the go-to environment for server-side Swift. (via)
Security
- Inside the Massive Naz.API Credential Stuffing List. Troy Hunt dissects the massive list. I run the check in 1Password once a month and act accordingly. I probably should set some time aside and move to passkeys where possible.
Privacy
- Facebook remains to be a nightmare. On average over 2000 companies contribute to the data corpus for a single individual, with the peak at nearly 48000. No wonder their shadow profiles are second to none.
Automotive
Environment
- Getting āforever chemicalsā out of drinking water is expensive. Who would have thunk? š
- The New Climate Denial. The previous narrative no longer works, because of massive evidence against it, so the climate denial groups are moving to different narratives and profit from it on YouTube. (via, via)
Workplace Culture
- āItās not you, itās your job!ā. A required read for anyone in a leadership position: a burnout is trying to tell the employee something. If you ignore the message by downplaying this to an individualās problem, you may fail to see deeper lingering issues of the organisation as a whole. A burnout is like the dying canary in a coal mine.
- āLarry and Sergey [ā¦] got into a pattern of hiring and empowering psychotic pricks who were presumably āgood at businessā. Not gonna talk about some of the things I saw because these people are wealthy and litigious.ā While this is an obituary on Googleās culture, this quote struck a chord with me. Seen it myself numerous times in other companies.