Ephes Blog

Mit so radikalen Aktionen wird das Klima absolut nichts erreichen. --Christoph Dolna-Gruber

The new Wagtail 5.1 release broke the video and audio choosers in django-cast so there's a new release 0.2.17 that fixes that. While I was at it, I also added some more documentation for the video and audio features. Lots of distractions this week with school and kindergarten stuff, but hopefully things will pick up soon 😅.

Last week I picked up a musical instrument for the first time in over two years. I hadn't been able to play before because I just didn't have the time. Now I'm thinking about getting back into the habit.

Articles

• On Being Useful | Yeah, struggle with that one too
• Taming the beast: Python Package Maintenance Made Simple | Interesting - I still do not have a good solution for this problem..
• Large language models, explained with a minimum of math and jargon | Good article!
• Catching up on the weird world of LLMs
• Message from the family of Bram Moolenaar | Sad news: the creator of vim has died (my editor of choice for the last 25 years..)
• Emergent Deception and Emergent Optimization

Software

• Software Engineering Body of Knowledge (SWEBOK) | Ok, didn't know about that one 😬
• View Transitions + Drag n Drop | Pure CSS in latest Chrome
• NewHope: Harnessing 99% of GPT-4's Programming Capabilities | Open source LLM based on llama2 for coding

Weeknotes

• Weeklog for Week 30: July 24 to July 30 | Johannes
• Science and Technology links (August 6 2023) | Daniel Lemire
• Weeknotes: Plugins for LLM, sqlite-utils and Datasette | Simon Willison

Videos

• 2023 – Podlove - Neuerungen 4 | Interesting, podlove now uses tailwind UI, auphonic plugin is new etc
• python 3.12 release highlights (beginner - advanced) anthony explains
• So sieht Quantenphysiker Anton Zeilinger die Welt | Sternstunde Religion | SRF Kultur | Ok

Podcasts

• FS267 Gesichtsmuffe (Freakshow) | More about Apple -> not bad
• Mit smarter Planwirtschaft gegen die Probleme unserer Zeit (Sein und Streit) | Oh boy. Why are people from the humanities often so naive and sloppy with their terms? Especially AI? And how could you call yourself a journalist if you don't manage to ask one critical question when your interview partner constantly makes fringe claims? A really low point.
• Welche Bedeutung schreiben Sie der Null zu? (Das philosophische Radio) | Is this the week of weak podcast episodes? Another really bad one. If you have some basic mathematical understanding listening to this is pure cringe.
• Ein Blick auf die Publisher 4 Beta (Podlovers) | Cool! This podcast is not dead yet 🎉
• Joscha Bach: Life, Intelligence, Consciousness, AI & the Future of Humans (Lex Fridman Podcast) | So much better. At 1:38 the possibility of having less formal languages that then are translated into "real" programming languages by a LLM is discussed. At 1:50 golems are pointed out as a useful metaphor for LLMs. Spot on.

People who prefer ketchup over mustard are annoying because as soon as you say you like mustard, they go on and on about how much they hate it. Like, okay. You have the same flavor palette you had when you were 5 but that doesn’t mean you should insult what I put in my coffee. --Roxi Horror

Even more vacation.

Articles

• Don’t Forget to Swim Now and Then | Well, I've been camping for about a week, and let me put it this way: Don't expect me to write some kind of Unabomber manifesto anytime soon...
• Introducing the popover API | Popper is one of the few javascript dependencies I use basically everywhere - would be great to have something built in
• Modern CSS For Dynamic Component-Based Architecture
• What AI can do with a toolbox... Getting started with Code Interpreter
• Charged | Webcomic

Weeknotes

• Weeklog for Week 28: July 10 to July 16 | Johannes
• Science and Technology links (July 16 2023) | Daniel Lemire
• Weeknotes: Self-hosted language models with LLM plugins, a new Datasette tutorial, a dozen package releases, a dozen TILs | Simon Willison
• Week in Review 2023-07-10 | Luis

Software

• Introducing Llama 2 | Llama 2 is available for free for research and commercial use - whoa!
• frappe - a web framework with "batteries included" | Didn't know about this one - interesting..

Podcasts

• Yuval Noah Harari: Human Nature, Intelligence, Power, and Conspiracies (Lex Fridman Podcast) | Great episode

Out of Context Images

There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect. --Frank Wilhoit - the composer, not the political scientist..

On vacation. Didn't do anything computer related.

Articles

• From Hacks to Elegance: Transforming a Card Component with Modern CSS Wizardry | This whole CSS stuff...

Software

• GPT4All Python API

Podcasts

• Das Alter entfalten - über das Altern in der Leistungsgesellschaft (Was denkst du denn?)
• Episode 92: Lazy Relativism (Hotel Bar Sessions) | Interesting discussion, refutation of relativism as self-contradictory is a bit theoretical.
• Ethik und Kritik: Die Grenzen der Moral (Hörsaal) | Better argument against relativism: first refute subjectivism as self-contradictory, then reduce relativism to group-based subjectivism.

Out of Context Images

I run my own Mastodon instance because I don't trust random admins to fuck up what I am perfectly capable of fucking up on my own. --moliver

Another busy week at work. Learned that creating PDFs from web pages is a little less difficult than expected. Using a headless Chromium actually works quite well, and it's not that difficult to deploy either.

Looking forward to having some time off. Maybe look a bit more into the LLM / machine learning direction, which suffered a bit from my recent deep dive into frontend stuff (htmx, alpine.js).

Updating mastodon and takahē were the only non work related computer activities I managed to do this week, hope this will get better soon.

Articles

• Rebuilding a featured news section with modern CSS: Vox news
• Container Query Units and Fluid Typography
• Two Ways to Turbo-Charge tox
• CLI tools hidden in the Python standard library

Mastodon / Twitter

• PyScript NEXT Tech-Preview Release!
• wellp. python 3.12 `type x = ...` aliases won't be auto-rewritable because they can't be used equivalently :(
• I have never seen anybody put forward a convincing argument against this theory | Webcomic
• People believe that if they could somehow walk into a research lab, they could then 'steal the knowledge'. | Yep
• Apple advertisements that look surprisingly good
  • no1
  • no2
• web development being surprisingly deep | webcomic
• Wow. Meta commits to dedicate three engineer-years to implement the removal of the GIL from #Python and fix upcoming compatibility and performance issues with it.
• Overview over funding sources for open source development

Weeknotes

• Weeklog for Week 26: June 26 to July 02 | Johannes
• Week in Review 2023-07-03 | Luis
• Writing After Twitter, Conference Life, and Turbo-Charging tox | Hynek

Videos

• LangChain: Chat with Your Data
• DjangoCon Europe 2023 | Keynote: A speedrunning guide to software development | Great talk

Software

• Karabiner-Elements A powerful and stable keyboard customizer for macOS

Podcast

• Privilegien- Quartett Ein Spiel, aus dem wir nicht aussteigen können (Was denkst du denn?) | Nice
• Episode 94: Progress (Hotel Bar Sessions) | Always good
• #128 - generative search, GPU black market, GPT-4’s Secret, Sam Altman’s World Tour (Last Week in AI)
• Things I Wish Someone Had Explained To Me Sooner About Python (Talk Python To Me) | Meh.
• #387 – George Hotz: Tiny Corp, Twitter, AI Safety, Self-Driving, GPT, AGI & God (Lex Fridman Podcast) | The episodes here are either ok or batshit crazy. Usually I try to avoid the conspiracy theory / techbro bootlicking / snake oil selling stuff. But this episode is both: sometimes interesting and sometimes batshit crazy.
• Season 3 Episode 13 Stephen Balaban (The robot brains) | Nice one.

I find OOP philosophically unsound. It claims that everything is an object. Even if it is true it is not very interesting — saying that everything is an object is saying nothing at all. --Alexander Stepanov

Using Django, htmx, alpine.js and tailwind for work, which is a very powerful combination. Did some vacation planning and misplaced my keys. Discovered that it's super easy to replace an AirTag battery.

Articles

• Vectors are the new json in postgresql

Software

• Shrinkpdf: shrink PDF files with Ghostscript
• There's a public roadmap for Wagtail
• Pydantic V2 Is Here!
• Modern CSS Solutions - for Old CSS Problems | Really cool site by Stephanie Eckles

Weeknotes

• Weeklog for Week 25: June 19 to June 25 | Johannes - I still have to play catch up a bit 😅
• Week in Review 2023-06-26 | Luis
• Science and Technology links (June 25 2023)

Mastodon / Twitter

• added a http://hyperscript.org powered copy button

Videos

• Demo of morph swap for HTMX 2.0 | Oh this is so cool! Maybe it will be possible to have an audio player keep running while navigating the podcast page without having to use an SPA!

Podcasts

• 30% Faster, UUID Downsides, Growing WAL, Processes vs. Threads | Scaling Postgres 271 (Scaling PostgreSQL) | There was also a poll on Twitter recently where the majority of people said they use UUIDs as primary keys. Which seems completely crazy to me..
• UKW112 Ukraine: Abteilung für Infarkte und Defenestration (Unsere kleine Welt) | Nothing is known for sure..
• Revision 575: Code meets Design: Frontend-Entwicklung (Working Draft) | Meh
• #385 – Jimmy Wales: Wikipedia (Lex Fridman Podcast)
• Noam Brown (The Robot Brains) | On solving Poker and Diplomacy - interesting.
• #386 – Marc Andreessen: Future of the Internet, Technology, and AI (Lex Fridman Podcast) | The first part was surprisingly strong. Good episode.