Web3/Crypto: Why Bother? From Albert Wenger, back in December. “As a first approximation all the big powerful internet companies are really database providers. … Only they get to decide who has permission to read and write to this database and which parts of it they get access to.”
WeatherKit from Apple may not be the biggest announcement from yesterday’s WWDC, but it’s one of the most interesting. “In keeping with Apple’s commitment to privacy, WeatherKit is designed to give hyperlocal forecasts without compromising user data. Location information is used only to provide weather forecasts, is not associated with any personally identifiable information, and is never tracked between requests.”
The EU mandates USB-C on phones. Consumer protection theater. I’m sure standardizing power outlets across Europe is next on the EU’s agenda.
The Pragmatic Engineer: Shipping to Production. From YOLOing it to multi-tenancy rollouts, an excellent guide with tons of links to how companies like Uber, Facebook and Doordash manage shipping code to production.
Simon Willison on playing with GPT-3. “Everything about working with GPT-3 is prompt engineering—trying different prompts, and iterating on specific prompts to see what kind of results you can get. It’s a programming activity that actually feels a lot more like spellcasting. It’s almost impossible to reason about: I imagine even the creators of GPT-3 could not explain to you why certain prompts produce great results while others do not. It’s also absurdly good fun.”