It is swelteringly hot in the UK this week. In most countries where high temperatures are normal it isn't a big deal. Here however, all our buildings are built to retain heat so in the summer it can get unbearable.
It also tends to be more humid here, so even in the shade it feels hot. Apart from in the car we don't have air conditioning, only fans to push the hot air around.
So with the heat affecting my sleep and my cognitive abilities I will just share the posts I have found interesting this week.
❤️ Picks of the Week #
📝 Article — A stack of browsers — The Horse browser is an interesting concept, but I am not sure whether I can bring myself to pay $80 a year for it. I haven't heard of Polypane either. I guess we should expect to pay for web browsers in future.
📝 Article — Carbon pomodoro — I should probably get one of these for my office. Especially when I have the door shut during meetings.
🤖 AI — Autonomous coding agents: A Codex example — More and more people seem to be using coding agents. I am still doing a lot of hand holding when doing AI, but maybe they are getting better at doing tasks on their own.
📝 Article — Watching Millionaires — It is a sobering thought that we spend a lot of our time watching millionaires.
📝 Article — Unionize or die — I am not sure if I would unionize, I am more likely to ditch software engineering completely and take up carpentry or some other skill that isn't likely to be replaced by AI.
📝 Article — How long it takes to know if a job is right for you or not — I have had a similar experience. Any job where I have stayed more than a year is usually because that first week or month was enjoyable.
📰 News — Lest We Forget the Horrors — This list of all the things Trump has done since coming into power got taken down hence the archive link.
🛠️ Tool — Turning My Old Netbook Into a Writer Deck — I have an old Eee PC that I bought while I was at university. I used it a lot then, but it has been sitting doing nothing in my cupboard for the last decade.
🛠️ Tool — Chatterbox TTS — Another AI TTS. There are quite a few of these now. I have been keeping a list here Text to Speech (TTS).
📝 Article — A receipt printer cured my procrastination — I still write physical to-do lists in my notebook when I need to get things done. I like the idea of the post-it notes. It reminds me of the physical kanban board we used to use at my old job.
📝 Article — One Week with TRMNL — This e-ink screen looks really cool. I can think of a lot of things I could use this for. I should probably just save my money though!
🤖 AI — Top 20 AI Concepts You Should Know — Whether you like AI or not I think most people can agree it is not going anywhere. It will soon be a requirement for developers to now it well.
📝 Article — Start your own Internet Resiliency Club — I have started trying to get my home war ready including buying bottled water and canned food. I might have to look into LoRas.
📰 News — WhatsApp introduces ads in its app — I still use WhatsApp because my family use it. I wonder if I can convince them all to go over to signal.
📰 News — OpenAI wins $200M U.S. defense contract — One step closer to Terminator becoming a reality.
🤖 AI — Generative AI coding tools and agents do not work for me — I agree with some of this. I use AI for generating dummy data for tests and for looking for bugs in my existing code. When using it to write large bits of code you do end up spending a lot of time reviewing it.
🤖 AI — Building Effective AI Agents — In contradiction to the above. If you want to learn how to build AI agents Anthropic have written a good article that is worth reading.
🛠️ Tool — Bento: A Steam Deck in a Keyboard — As I mentioned last week I am keen on the future of computer interfaces. The Xreal Air glasses look pretty good. I like the idea of a portable computer with a large virtual screen.
🛠️ Tool — Unregistry – “docker push” directly to servers without a registry — This is neat, I can see myself using this for my home server.
🛠️ Tool — The Zed Debugger Is Here — I really like Zed and I have been using it more and more. This just got released this week. I will have to see how well it works with C# code.
💬 Quote of the Week #
Hence, the old parable about a vacationing New York businessman who gets talking to a Mexican fisherman, who tells him that he works only a few hours per day and spends most of his time drinking wine in the sun and playing music with his friends. Appalled at the fisherman's approach to time management, the businessman offers him an unsolicited piece of advice: if the fisherman worked harder, he explains, he could invest the profits in a bigger fleet of boats, pay others to do the fishing, make millions, then retire early. “And what would I do then?” the fisherman asks. “Ah, well, then,” the businessman replies, “you could spend your days drinking wine in the sun and playing music with your friends.”
From the book Four Thousand Weeks by Oliver Burkeman.
Top comments (0)