Published
Weekend Reading — Technically no difference
This week we have a new terminal app, our creativity replaced by machines, and what happened to lemon denim?
Tech Stuff
Warp A modern take on the CLI terminal.
The UI resembles a messaging app. The bottom of the screen is dedicated to the current command. It includes an edit mode for working with multi-line commands.
Each command runs in a “block”, so it’s easier to travel back in execution history, pick a command, copy its output.
There’s search history, smart auto-complete, and command palette (Cmd-P) for invoking terminal features. Add to that, a collection of pre-built workflows (you can add your own) for tasks like posting JSON with curl, editing the last Git comment, grep inside a directory, etc.
Even smarter, the AI command search: describe what you want in English, and it will suggest the command to run. For example, it will translate “find all typescript files” into find . -name “*.ts”.
This is all nicely packaged with a great looking, fast and responsive UI.
dlvhdr/gh-dash For terminal lovers: a dashboard for PRs and issues. You can only view issues in the terminal, one click to open in a browser, where you can comment, edit, etc. Still, feels smoother to use than GitHub's UI.
The Next Google The future of search tries to be everything that Google can’t (or won’t). This blog post explores some of the newer entrants, like Kagi, Neeva, and You.
Visual Studio Code March 2022 Love the new timeline view. Instantly recall or restore a previous version of the code. You don’t need to save (or commit) every change.
catalinmiron/react-typical React typing animation.
What can I say, I like this effect. I’m currently using this instead of a spinner. An action that takes 5~15 seconds to complete, give people something to read.
And of course this works for landing pages, where you want to show multiple value propositions on the same line.
Crudités is the only correct pronunciation of CRDTs
keith kurson “i am in hell”
Eye for Design
To make something simple, make it predictable
To make a product feel simple, every time a person takes a particular action, they should see the same result. That predictability means the user always understands their place in a product.
There’s an added bonus here: not only is predictability key to simplicity, predictability is also a substitute for control.
Undock Auto-complete for scheduling meetings. This is a good example for using auto-complete to help user breeze through tasks.
Intelligent Machines
Pathways Language Model (PaLM) With 540 billion parameters, Google’s latest experiment can explain jokes, distinguish cause and effect, and solve math problems by applying common-sense reasoning. 🤯
New OpenAI tool draws anything, bigger and better than ever OpenAI’s latest iteration of DALL-E can draw anything you can imagine. And of course, DALL-E has an Instagram.
Second, DALL-E does what they call “inpainting,” essentially smart replacement of a given area in an image. Say you have a picture of your place but there are some dirty dishes on the table. Simply select that area and describe what you want instead: “an empty wooden table,” or “a table without dishes on it,” whatever seems logical. In seconds, the model will show you a handful of interpretations of that prompt, and you can pick whatever looks best.
DALL•E 2 On that topic:
It’s a reminder that predictions about AI are very difficult to make. A decade ago, the conventional wisdom was that AI would first impact physical labor, and then cognitive labor, and then maybe someday it could do creative work. It now looks like it’s going to go in the opposite order.
Everything Else
Pulp Librarian “Whatever happened to lemon denim?”
The San Francisco accent is so weird—I’ve never understood why “I don’t want to go to that” is pronounced “yeah, I might be down.”
the ADHD urge to use parenthesis in every sentence (because every thought comes with additional bonus content)
Game about Squares A fun little puzzle that takes a few seconds to learn and a few hours to beat.
‘techno’ is short for 'Technically No difference between any of these songs'
Nicholas Coles, PhD Simple tips for being a better speaker:
A year ago, a non-academic friend listened to a talk I gave. I thought it went great. My friend disagreed.
She said that academics are experts at making interesting stuff boring—and that we should all take a speech class.
So I did. And here are 6 most useful things I learned.
Antotomon “My vacuum robot basically said ‘This house is too small for the both of us, bitch’, and grabbed her by the hair.”
