FOMO and links

Fear Of Missing Out is lethal when somebody invents a footgun

I published “Fear Of Missing Out is lethal when somebody invents a footgun” over on the newsletter

That last part is vital. Because sometimes the groundbreaking and original new technology is just a bigger footgun with very little actual benefit. One of my worries with generative models in software development is that extensive cognitive automation and programming is an extremely bad fit as it makes us think less about what we’re doing, which makes us more likely to make careless mistakes.

Dev

"PATH". Explaining the PATH variable is a missing step from so many tutorials online.
'“Out of the Software Crisis”: Dependencies - Jim Nielsen’s Blog' 😁
"Pixels of the Week – September 3, 2023 by Stéphanie Walter - UX Researcher & Designer.“
"Why do companies become hostile to their customers? – On my Om" Software companies are particularly prone to this.
"How to add syntax highlighting to code as a user types in realtime with vanilla JavaScript | Go Make Things"
"A lot of stuff is just fine. - Chris Coyier". True. One major wrinkle, tho. Just how fine any given content website is is generally inversely proportional to how much time a web dev has worked on it. Granted, they’re generally implementing other people’s bad ideas, but still.
"AI Startups Are Already Running Into Some Serious Problems"
"siderea | I Blame the W3C’s HTML Standard for Ordered Lists"
"Announcing Biome". That thing where a community fork of a project, by most of the core contributors, makes you feel optimistic that the new fork is more sustainable.

AI

Old photos

The sun sets behind the trees as a woman walks towards the grove where the rest of the party is waiting for her.

The shadows in the park are so sharp they’re almost geometric shapes. A man sits in a chair in the middle of the park.

The shadows in the park are so sharp they’re almost geometric shapes. A man sits in a chair in the middle of the park. Except this time it’s in colour so you get distracted by all the yellow and green.

We see out-of-focus trees through a row of tall grass.

Looking through the grass, we see a duck swimming.

A bloodied gull flees.

The silhouette of a sparrow caught mid-flight.

Somebody is reading a book in the shade in the park.

In the distance, we see a man sit under a tree.

People gather in the park.

A view down the underpass under a railway bridge. We see the silhouette of a person on the other side

A scruffy discarded chair was left under a bridge in Montreal. It really did have that venomous green look.

Concrete blocks and barbwire along a bridge.

We see people beyond the trees. The leaves on the ground and the changing colours of the grass almost looks like a rainbow.

The sun sets behind the reeds.

Parc Jarry is covered with snow. A person is walking along the path as the sun sets behind them. The snow is blueish. The sky is yellow.

A group of people stand in the rain in Parc Jarry, talking under umbrella cover.

A scruffy, blurry, grainy photo of a duck in rain.

A goup of people sit by a table under a tree in Parc Jarry.

Children fly a kit in Parc Jarry, in black and white.

Children fly a kit in Parc Jarry, in colour.

A foal watches an adult horse scratch the side of its head.

The sun is setting behind a summer cabin.

A photo of a mountain, whose name I’ve forgotten, taken while driving through Kaldidalur. That name translates as cold valley, which was appropriate.

A ruined harbour with Hvalfjörður in the background and a mountain range in the distance. Colour.

A ruined harbour with Hvalfjörður in the background and a mountain range in the distance. Black and white.

The remains of a hospital wall. Colour.

The remains of a hospital wall. Black and white.

A photo taken in Árbæjarsafn which is a museum dedicated to Iceland’s architectural history. The chickens are “landnámshænur” which is said to be the original viking breed of chicken.

This was taken in Viðey, a historically important location in Iceland and, as such, had generally very few tourists.

A photographer in Reykjavík harbour taking pictures of Viðey that’s out off to the side.

Ahead we see a couple walking along the sidewalk in a Montréal street.