It's not a frumpy word, it's an awesome one and it means the feeling of great pleasure and satisfaction - find some now!
It was such a stunning day yesterday, I walked across the Harbour Bridge with a wrap for my lunch break. And hey look, a Cunard ship! By Ruben Schade in Sydney, 2024-12-12.
From The Keyword Google blog: Introducing Gemini 2.0: Our New AI Model for the Agentic EraToday we’re excited to launch our next era of models built for this new agentic era: introducing Gemini 2.0, our most capable model yet. With new advances in multimodality —
It’s hard not to read the news about that insurance executive in the US. His passing has brought a whirlpool of resentment, frustration, and anger to the surface, from people across all walks of life. It might be wishful thinking to assume this will bring about change by itself, especially with the incoming administration over there. But at least...
I recently wrote about over-engineering and striking a good balance bet
Just finished two weeks of workshops and am exhausted, so this one will be light. Hanuka Sale Logic for Programmers is on sale until the end of Chanukah! That's Jan 2nd if you're not Jewish. Get it for 40% off here. Stroustrop's Rule I first encountered Stroustrop's Rule on this defunct webpage: One of my favorite insights about syntax design...
Who and What comprise AI Skepticism? Benjamin Riley's response to Casey Newton's piece on The phony comforts of AI skepticism. Casey tried to categorize the field as "AI is fake and sucks" v.s. "AI is real and dangerous". Benjamin argues that this as a misleading over-simplification, instead proposing at least nine different groups. I get listed...
The flags are still flying, celebrating the man, not the country. Why is this something that happens now, and why is it something only happening on one end of the political spectrum?
PyMySkySpy shows a map of your flightpath so far. It also shows your current flight metrics and how these metrics have changed over the course of your flight. It does this for all data available from the in-flight wi-fi, even data that isn’t usually displayed on the website or headrest screen. I love this project, I’ve long wanted to build...
Rust has some really nice functional programming facilities built in, all around an iterator concept. Rust being focused on performance and low level control makes it possible to use this without paying a performance cost. Sometimes I still prefer to use the humble for loop though. In quite a few cases, it combines high performance with high...
I can't believe we wasted another good year. It is time to reflect back on the best posts at Metadata blog in 2024. (I think you guys should tip me just because I didn't call this post "Metadata wrapped".)Distributed systems postsTransactional storage for geo-replicated systems(SOSP11): I like this paper because it asked the right questions, and...
Effective management isn't just about constant action; sometimes, doing nothing fosters trust and ownership in teams, leading to innovative solutions and enhanced productivity.
There may be a better term for this, but I’m going with it! But first, one of my shaggy-dog introductions. As a tragic late-thirty-something, I’m old enough to remember when CSS was being debated and introduced. Source code for web pages in the 1990s was a hot mess, with content intertwined with presentation like pasta with so much sauce...
I like this a lot. Thomas has not only given plenty of detail on how to make outline look nice, but they’ve provided useful breakdowns of problems that could be happening for you and how to fix those problems. Keyboard focus styles are so important to get right, not just for accessibility, but for overall quality UX. One tip from me though is if...
Linux is often heralded as the holy grail for developers - a flexible, open-source playground free of corporate shackles. It’s the darling of the tech-savvy, the underdog in the OS wars, and the supposed utopia for programmers everywhere. But let’s take a step back from the hype. While Linux has its merits, it’s not the flawless paradise that...
A few weeks ago, I got a chance to speak truth to power. I used my WordPress.org account to sign in to the official WordPress.org Slack where the various WordPress dramas were being discussed. After a brief chat about the latest shenanigans, I publicly replied to the CEO: Here's a link to the full exchange There was no reply forthcoming -...
(echo "PID COMMAND PORT USER"; lsof -i -P -n | grep LISTEN | awk '{print $2, $1, $9, $3}' | sort -u | head -n 50; echo;) | column -t | llm "what servers are running on my machine and do some of them look like they could be orphaned things I can shut down" — Rob Cheung Tags: llm, llms, ai, generative-ai
Jimmy MillerThis is part of an Advent Series. Large Models of What? (pdf) We haven't really talked about LLMs much on the future of coding. In many ways, this may seem like a striking omission. Isn't it a podcast called the "future of coding" and aren't LLMs so obviously some part of that future? I think that is undoubtedly true. I don't see LLMs...
Just like most people out there, I have some files that are irreplaceable, such as cat pictures. At one point I had a few single-board computers sitting idle, namely the Orange Pi Zero and the LattePanda V1, and a few 1TB SSD-s. I hate idle hardware, so I did the most sensible thing and assembled a fleet of networked offsite backups for backing...
Going to do some more work on WordLand now that Bingeworthy is back up and running, at least I can use it. It'll require a bit more work for other people to be able to use it. I want to find some WordPress pros to help test this mofo. If you know any, have them […]
One-line paragraphs, LinkedIn broetry, and the inevitable 'Agree?' - welcome to your AI-generated feed
# Introduction This blog post is about designing firewall rules, not focusing on a specific operating system. The idea came after I made a mistake on my test network where I exposed LAN services to the Internet after setting up a VPN with a static IPv4 on it due to too simplistic firewall rules. While discussing this topic on Mastodon, some...
Like many others working in software testing, and more specifically in automation, I have been introduced to the concept of the test automation pyramid early on in my career. While this model has received its share of criticism in the testing community over the years, I still use it from time to time.
The lack of server-side rendering in web components has become a sort of folk belief that oft goes unquestioned. I am happy to report that the fears are unfounded.
I've seen some programmers try to avoid the humble for loop at all costs, in favor of more functional abstractions. I'm going to argue that the for loop is sometimes simply the best option. That doesn't mean you should always use it -- far from it -- but it does mean you should give it due consideration. The goal is to help develop some...
For the last few months, I have been working on Artemis, a calm web reader. I use Artemis to follow my favourite blogs and websites. In designing Artemis, I had a few goals in mind: I want Artemis to be part of a web exploration journey, so every web link takes you to the author’s websites. I want the interface to make me feel calm, not...
This article is the eleventh edition of the Advent of Patterns series. In this series, running from December 1st to December 24th 2024, I will document one design or programming pattern I have noticed recently. Read more about this series. An inline function tray is an interface pattern that lists functions that you can apply to information in a...
by Evan HahnIn short: put in your element to refresh your page every second. This is a makeshift "hot reload" for development. It's not perfect, but it can be a quick solution! Hot reloading automatically reloads parts of your page while you're working. Change some HTML and see your work instantly! Tweak some CSS and the results are right...
Today's 12 Days of OpenAI release concerned ChatGPT Canvas, a new ChatGPT feature that enables ChatGPT to pop open a side panel with a shared editor in it where you can collaborate with ChatGPT on editing a document or writing code. I'm always excited to see a new form of UI on top of LLMs, and it's great seeing OpenAI stretch out beyond pure...
Supernote is a line of e-ink devices that are primarily aimed at note-taking. Resources Category Date Link Notes Tools 2024 sn2md a command-line tool to convert Supernote .note files into markdown. pysn-digest an open-source Python script library for building Supernote workflows
Introducing Limbo: A complete rewrite of SQLite in Rust This looks absurdly ambitious: Our goal is to build a reimplementation of SQLite from scratch, fully compatible at the language and file format level, with the same or higher reliability SQLite is known for, but with full memory safety and on a new, modern architecture. The Turso team...
From where I left Four and a half years after he left the project, Redis creator Salvatore Sanfilippo is returning to work on Redis. Hacking randomly was cool but, in the long run, my feeling was that I was lacking a real purpose, and every day I started to feel a bigger urgency to be part of the tech world again. At the same time, I saw the...
Chris Coyier and Dave Rupert join Adam and Jerod for a ShopTalk & Friends conversation on the viability of the web, making content, ads to support that content, CodePen’s future plans, books, side quests, and social networks devaluing links. ShopTalk & Friends
Reading Time: 3 minutesHi folks! I want to start doing an end-of-year giving tradition on my workshop website, so I’ve come up with a plan. If you use the code giving-2024 in the shop between today and December 31, you’ll get 10% off your purchase, and the entirety of your purchase (all the dollars; I won’t even take […]
As you’d expect, I have nothing to say on the topic other than there being an after of sorts for a fair chunk of the voice part of Azure for Operators.
The Depths of Wikipedians Asterisk Magazine interviewed Annie Rauwerda, curator of the Depths of Wikipedia family of social media accounts (I particularly like her TikTok). There's a ton of insight into the dynamics of the Wikipedia community in here. [...] when people talk about Wikipedia as a decision making entity, usually they're talking...
Hello friends. The next, and final (for the year!) Code Break will be Tuesday, December 17th, one week from today. I've got some surprises in store and would love to use this last session to answer questions from my audience. If you've got a question you would like me (and others - oh wait, that's part of the surprise!) to answer, leave me a...
Abstract: What does the semantically anti-realist revisionary programme of Michael Dummett have to do with contemporary work on proof assistants? What are mathematicians doing when they encode their proofs in these proof assistants, based on constructive type theory? What does all this have to do with the(?) norms of assertion? (And are these...
Yesterday I arrived in Santa Clara for the Q2B (Quantum 2 Business) conference, which starts this morning, and where I’ll be speaking Thursday on “Quantum Algorithms in 2024: How Should We Feel?” and also closing the conference via an Ask-Us-Anything session with John Preskill. (If you’re at Q2B, reader, come and say hi!) And to […]
Raspberry Pi 500 uses QMK Firmware for built-in keyboard I mentioned in my Pi 500 review Raspberry Pi is dogfooding their own microcontroller in the new Pi 500. An RP2040 sits next to the keyboard ribbon cable connector, and interfaces it through a USB port directly into the RP1 chip: In good news for keyboarding enthusiasts, the...
The DDIA book is a great textbook, because it is not written as a textbook, but more of a guidebook. Textbooks are generally bland and boring. Textbooks that are written by professors even more so, because thoser are often written to impress other professors and to flaunt academic flair. Few textbooks take teaching as the primary goal.DDIA book...
Daily batch processes introduce significant latency, since input changes reflected in the output only after a day. For fast paced business, this is too slow. To reduce delays, stream processing occurs more frequently (e.g., every second) or continuously, where events are handled as they happen. In stream processing, a record is typically called...
I haven't stopped thinking about this recipe since I made it for the first time last week. It's from Brian Lagerstrom who is my favourite YouTube chef person. I've modified the recipe in a few different ways but it's mostly the same as his if you want to watch a video of it instead, he's got you covered. I'm using store-bought flatbreads for this...
I had an unusual request from my friend John recently – could I help him map the location of Santa as he goes about his deliveries? Ok, it wasn’t quite like that. He is a member of the Lions, and every December they take out a sleigh with Santa on the back through the streets […]
GenAI and quantum computing feel like they’re pulling us out of an era when computers were reliable. You put in inputs and get consistent, predictable outputs. Now? Not so much. Both tease us with incredible potential but come with a similar problems: they’re unreliable and hard to scale. Quantum computing works on probabilities, not certainties....
Remember that shiny new Samsung clamshell smartphone I got at the end of April this year? It already broke. The screen suddenly started flickering and turned white. It wasn’t the more fragile hinge or the screen near the hinge, but more likely a loose connector somewhere. Yet I was pretty upset, as the phone was just over six months old. Still...
JSON is extremely popular but deeply flawed. This article discusses the details of JSON’s design, how it’s used (and misused), and how seemingly helpful “human readability” features cause headaches instead. Crucially, you rarely find JSON-based tools (except dedicated tools like jq) that can safely handle arbitrary JSON documents without a...
Knowing when to use AI turns out to be a form of wisdom, not just technical knowledge. Like most wisdom, it's somewhat paradoxical: AI is often most useful where we're already expert enough to spot its mistakes, yet least helpful in the deep work that made us experts in the first place. It works best for tasks we could do ourselves but shouldn't...
Let’s stipulate that PostgreSQL has grown significantly in popularity over the last 20 years. I don’t know by how much, but certainly at least one order of magnitude, probably two or more.
The boring yet crucial secret behind good system prompts is test-driven development. You don't write down a system prompt and find ways to test it. You write down tests and find a system prompt that passes them. For system prompt (SP) development you: Write a test set of messages where the model fails, i.e. where the default behavior isn't what...
Jimmy MillerThis is part of an Advent Series. What is a Game? (pdf) Okay, so I'll come clean, I might be cheating with today's paper. Does this paper have anything to do with computing? No. But can we make it have something to do with computing? Absolutely! I mean, games have to be one the best things we've done with computers, so a paper giving...
I’ve said it here before, and I’ll say it again: I love Perl. I’ve used so many languages over the years, but writing Perl code feels natural. It feels like an extension of my brain. It’s expressiveness, data structures, and near limitless flexibility meant I reached for it whenever I had a problem to solve (it’s probably why I had fun with Ruby...
France24: Jubilant Syrians poured into the streets in celebration on Sunday after a lightning rebel offensive reached the capital Damascus, putting an end to the Assad family’s 50 years of iron-fisted rule over the Middle Eastern nation scarred by war. ABC News Australia: Said Ajlouni from the Melbourne-based Australian Syrian Association told...