Good morning from Charlottesville, Virginia! ☕️
I’m getting more and more excited about writing code full time at work. I’m sure that won’t last but I’m going to enjoy every minute of it while I can. 😃
I ran into issues getting my git SSH keys to work earlier in the week and while I find that frustrating it was also a nice challenge to fix. I’m up and running and ready to break some stuff! 👍🏼
I hope you enjoy your coffee and the links.
Irish singer Sinéad O’Connor has died at the age of 56, her family has announced.
The 80’s was my era of music and I most certainly remember Nothing compares 2 U, it was a big hit.
The thing that really struck me is, she was 56 years old. As I age my mortality has occupied more of my thoughts than I care to admit, but there you go.
God speed. ❤️
Jacob Zinkula • Business Insider
ChatGPT creator says AI advocates are fooling themselves if they think the technology is only going to be good for workers : ‘Jobs are definitely going to go away’
Emphasis is mine. I’ve not used ChatGPT but we’re pushing into AI hard at WillowTree. It’s such a hot button item at the moment all agencies will have to take it very seriously.
For my daily work I see it as a really smart auto complete. The next evolution in code assistant. It felt like cheating early on but as a developer you still have to validate the output. Did you get valid and good code? It may not work all the time. Yes, it’s fallible but it’s also early days. I am certain I’ll use it at some point to help generate some code.
Give it another 10 years to mature. I’ll be really close to retirement by then and the next next generation can use it to their advantage. 😃
According to General Motors boss Mary Barra, Chevrolet has backtracked on its plans to completely kill off the Bolt, which has so far seen its sales more than double in 2023. Now, the company is working on a next-generation Bolt, which will join Chevy’s other electric models: the Silverado EV, Blazer EV and Equinox EV.
I found this really encouraging! We need more little EVs in the market and I always thought the Bolt was a nice little car.
Hopefully the next generation gets its fire issues under control.
Oh, the only downside I can think of is Chevy’s insistence on building their entire infotainment system.
Dave Winer posted a 12-minute audio recording on his blog, addressed to me but applicable to everyone who is creating tools for the social web. Listening to it, I have a bunch of thoughts. In this post, I just want to start with server-to-server ActivityPub, and leave some of the other technologies Dave brings up for later.
Dave Winer has created a bunch of the technologies we rely on everyday in the blogging world; blogs, RSS, and Podcasting delivery. Now he’s trying to unify the mechanism to span posting to multiple social networks and blogging.
Manton Reece is the creator of Micro.blog — the service I use to publish this site — and is into open standards like MetaWeblog and ActivityPub, so much so Micro.Blog is a Fediverse server by federating with Mastodon.
To see these two chatting about putting something together to bride these systems is nice to see. I see what Dave is proposing as the next version of MetaWeblog, perhaps extended to accommodate new blogging and social network norms.
Perhaps Micropub could serve to do this? I’ve not looked into it but it seems like it could be the way to go?
I have my own opinions on the matter and I’m sure I’ll voice them at some point. In the meantime it’s nice to see this happening and I’m going to keep an eye on it. 👀
Someone who has tried to overthrow the U.S. government cannot be president.
Mr. Reich is point out what may sound obvious at first but what he’s really saying is it shouldn’t take a conviction to eliminate TFG. We all know he tried to overturn a fair and valid election in 2019. We all know he rallied his supporters to storm the Capitol and try to stop the formality of recording the election results.
He doesn’t need to be convicted. He’s a danger to democracy and the rule of law. That’s disqualifying. ⚖️
I recall how, when I was a junior developer, I often felt happy and reassured when I was writing software. It felt like a safe place compared to the overwhelming complexities of the world. The simple, deterministic functions, mechanical in their way of working, offered comfort. If you inject an input, it always gives the same output. It’s controllable, manageable, uncomplicated!
If you’re good at what you do eventually someone will notice and give you more to do with greater responsibility. Eventually you’ll be mentoring people and more junior developers will naturally look to you for your experience.
It’s not a bad thing. It’s just what happens and isn’t isolated to software engineering. This happens in all fields.
While I enjoy working with Junior folks there’s also this big part of me that’s ready to sit in the corner and just work on features and bugs, and that’s all. A simplified dev life. 😃
Barbie not only broke box office records, she destroyed the GOP’s Barbie Boycott
Barbie isn’t a film I plan on seeing but it sounds like the GOP is once again up in arms over cultural issues dealt with in the film.
I hope it breaks all the records. 🎬
I was visiting my family in the Chicago suburbs recently, when my niece mentioned she saw “some TRON thing” sitting on a curb while she was riding her bike through the neighbourhood.
As a teen I remember well the arcade in Exeter. It was called the Quarter Slot. Ahhh, good times. Anywho, I will never forget the Tron game — not the one mentioned in the article — because there were two guys who spent a crazy amount of time playing it and taking copious notes on how to beat every level.
Yes, those were the days.
James Surowiecki • Fast Company
Threads has one big advantage over Twitter: Zuckerberg understands advertising
If Threads can pull people away from Twitter — I mean, ahem, X — does that help to extinctify the ailing bird?
Who knows. Musk is crazy rich so I’d imagine he can keep it afloat for a very long time.
All I want to know is when will he be selling Twitter.com and for how much? It would make for a great Mastodon instance. 🐘
The Alpine F1 Team is currently competing at each race weekend with the odds slightly stacked against them. The Renault power unit used by the French factory team is believed to be 30 horsepower behind their rivals. Under normal circumstances, Alpine would be told simply to improve on their own, but there’s currently a freeze on engine development. The FIA, the sport’s governing body, wants to allow Alpine to catch up.
Alpine is kind of what remains of the Renault team and it seems like they’re going backwards.
I’d love to see them move closer to the front of the pack but they continue to be one of the “back of the pack” teams with flashes of brilliance on rare occasion.
Formula One is an extremely tough sport to compete in. Teams with extremely deep pockets can buy great engineering and dedicate huge resources to land their teams in victory lane. It also makes the races really boring. 😃
Here’s hoping Renault is given a chance to fix their horsepower issue ahead of next season. At this point I suppose it doesn’t matter much.
I’m a Haas supporter myself. It’s the only American team on the grid so why not support them? They also have Guenther Steiner who is the most entertaining of all the Principals in F1. 😃
Oh, by the way! Since you’re an American team why not use American built power? I mean, you run Ford motors Stuart Haas Racing, why not work with them on an amazing F1 power unit? I’d love to see that! Don’t let Red Bull be the only team doing it!
Who else is looking forward to the next season of Drive to Survive?
Apple has become the target of a £785 million ($1 billion) class action lawsuit on behalf of over 1,500 developers in the UK over its App Store fees, reports TechCrunch.
Unfortunately this is pocket change for Apple. I don’t make much as a developer of apps for Apple devices but to those who do giving up 15 to 30% of revenue is a big deal.
Even if Apple allow for third party stores or payment processors they’re still going to charge their fee. Might as well keep the App Store as it is and be done with it.
Translation From Hostage Code to English of X Corp CEO Linda Yaccarino’s Company-Wide Memo
I mean, if Yaccarino isn’t actually asking for help to get out now I suppose she will be in six months to a year because Space Karen won’t agree with her about something and drive her insane or sack her.
Just let Twitter fade away, sell off the domain, and let’s move forward with the open web.
Peet’s is widely credited with transforming the industry — after all, the three founders of Starbucks learned much of their craft from founder Alfred Peet — but there’s much more to it than that.
I’d always known Peet’s was a big influence in the coffee world but I had no idea how much of an influence it really was.
This story is a fun read about one employees view from the inside. ☕️
