Daily Log Digest – Week 15, 2025
2025-04-15
Missed a bunch of daily logs because I was locked in. Hopefully I can resume today onwards.
Oliver's Burkeman's Latest Newsletter - No Escape
The Imperfectionist: No escape (from 2022)
I think the general point here, beyond the specific question of how to get writing done, is that we desperately want to be saved. We want to find some person, or some philosophy of life, that will spare us the fear or discomfort or self-doubt or tedium that so often seems to come along for the ride, whenever we try to make progress on things we care about. We hate feeling yoked to reality in such an unpleasant way; we long instead to soar above it, in a realm free from problems. And it’s the mark of a bad self-help book, a dodgy spiritual guru or an incompetent therapist that they’ll be only too happy to encourage the illusion that this might one day be possible.
I don’t think people generally seek out such quick fixes or back-door solutions out of laziness or entitlement. It’s not because they think they shouldn’t have to put in the same effort as everyone else. Rather, most of the time, it’s the opposite: it’s that they feel so inadequate and unqualified for the task ahead of them (of writing, of marriage, parenting – whatever) that they believe they absolutely need a miracle technique, some sort of edge over other people, some secret from a book, if they’re to have half a chance of not screwing everything up. They don’t realise that everyone else is just winging it, too – and that all they need to do is the straightforward thing that’s been staring them in the face all along: to just write for a few hours a week; to sit down for a few minutes and meditate; to be the most loving spouse or parent they’re capable of being on this particular day, and so on.
AI's impact on the job market
The Post-Developer Era • Josh W. Comeau #ai #jobs #software #programming
Josh Comeau with a solid take.
If you’re a job-seeker, you know that there aren’t as many high-quality job listings as there used to be, and the good ones get swamped with applications. It’s very hard to get an interview, let alone an offer.
But I don’t think this is because companies are actually replacing their developers with autonomous AI agents. As I’ve shared, the real-world experiences I’ve read just don’t support that hypothesis. So what gives? Why is it still so brutal out there?
I think there are a few factors:
Macro-economic stuff. Interest rates are still relatively high, making it harder for startups to attract the funding they need to grow and hire developers. For several years now, the general economic sentiment has been that we’re on the cusp of a recession.
Layoffs. Big tech companies laid off hundreds of thousands of workers over the past couple of years, for a variety of reasons. This means that there are tons of highly-qualified devs out there, looking for work.
AI myths. Some companies are still operating under the belief that AI really will make developers obsolete soon, and so they’re not hiring as aggressively as they otherwise would.
That last point is particularly frustrating. Companies are not hiring the developers they need because they’re convinced that AGI? is right around the corner, and when that egg hatches, we won’t need human developers at all anymore. “It’ll be any week now”, they’ve been saying for years. 😅
2025-04-16
Situationships
Bad Romance #situationships #love #dating
A friend of mine is in a situationship where neither of them talks about their dating lives, so she doesn’t know if he’s seeing other people, and he doesn’t know if she is. Instead, she’s piecing together context clues to figure out his status. This is an untenable situation, and I was surprised she was okay with it. But I think the arrangement satisfies some of her needs while keeping alive the hope of real commitment. Sometimes, uncertainty is preferable when seeking clarity could mean learning that what you want is impossible. It’s like the Prisoner’s Dilemma: staying in a mutually tolerable situation feels safer than risking “losing it all” by asking for the truth.
AI as a normal technology
We articulate a vision of artificial intelligence (AI) as normal technology. To view AI as normal is not to understate its impact—even transformative, general-purpose technologies such as electricity and the internet are “normal” in our conception. But it is in contrast to both utopian and dystopian visions of the future of AI which have a common tendency to treat it akin to a separate species, a highly autonomous, potentially superintelligent entity.
Autonomy and Connection
The Age of The Social Paradox - Rob Henderson's Newsletter #books #review
A fascinating new book, “The Social Paradox: Autonomy, Connection, and Why We Need Both to Find Happiness” by William von Hippel, a social psychologist, offers some insight. Drawing from decades of research in social and evolutionary psychology, von Hippel argues that human beings are pulled by two needs: autonomy (our desire to control our own life) and connection (our need to belong). For our hunter-gatherer ancestors, connection took precedence because small, close-knit communities depended on collaboration and mutual trust. Personal freedom in such societies was constrained by interdependent reliance on kin and friends.
Over time, however, modern lifestyles have elevated autonomy at the expense of connection, leaving many people struggling to balance these twin drives.
Von Hippel argues that the pursuit of autonomy often comes with a trade-off: If we want both independence and companionship, we may feel the need to influence or control others to align with our preferences. We want to live on our own terms, but we also don’t want to be alone — so we might try to guide others toward our way of thinking or doing things. As he puts it, “Only when others conform to your preferences can you meet all your autonomy needs while maintaining your connections.” But this approach is rarely sustainable. Relationships built on control rather than mutual understanding create tension and, ultimately, a hollow sense of connection.
VERT - online file converter
File converters have always disappointed us. They're ugly, riddled with ads, and most importantly; slow. We decided to solve this problem once and for all by making an alternative that solves all those problems, and more.
All non-video files are converted completely on-device; this means that there's no delay between sending and receiving the files from a server, and we never get to snoop on the files you convert.
Video files get uploaded to our lightning-fast RTX 4000 Ada server. Your videos stay on there for an hour, or after they're converted (in the case of the input which you upload) or downloaded (in the case of the output which is to be downloaded), whichever comes first.
Their code is open source as well: GitHub - VERT-sh/VERT: The next-generation file converter. Open source, fully local* and free forever.
The rise of end times fascism
The rise of end times fascism | Far right (US) | The Guardian
Inspired by a warped reading of the political philosopher Albert Hirschman, figures including Goff, Thiel and the investor and writer Balaji Srinivasan have been championing what they call “exit” – the principle that those with means have the right to walk away from the obligations of citizenship, especially taxes and burdensome regulation. Retooling and rebranding the old ambitions and privileges of empires, they dream of splintering governments and carving up the world into hyper-capitalist, democracy-free havens under the sole control of the supremely wealthy, protected by private mercenaries, serviced by AI robots and financed by cryptocurrencies.
The Map is Not The Territory - Social Media Edition
cutting through the image - by Adam Aleksic #map #territory #social-media
However, as I’ve previously written, social media platforms want us to think that their map is the territory, because that helps their business model. The more we confuse their “content” with reality, the more we identify with it. Over time, you might really find yourself pursuing regular basket-weaving instead of underwater basket-weaving, simply because that’s what’s available to connect with—but that makes you easier to target as a consumer, since you’re now aligning your identity with the kind of broad metadata the algorithm is able to work with.
Once you identify with the algorithmic version of reality, the manufactured values of the platform become synonymous with your actual values. Content is presented as if it’s “good”—after all, it’s targeted for you, and has lots of “likes” from other people—but these metrics are made up. They reflect the platform priority of engagement optimization, rather than actually being intrinsically “good” or targeted to you.
We might prefer to compartmentalize our “algorithmic selves” from our “real selves” like we’re characters on Severance, but the truth is that they’re both constantly influencing each other. You get basket-weaving videos because you have a latent urge to pursue underwater basket-weaving, and then you ultimately take regular basket-weaving classes because you identified with the spectacular presentation of reality.
Our memes and language are similarly always evolving online and offline, with both mediums constantly influencing each other. The territory affects the map we draw, and then that map affects how we interact with the territory. This is inevitable—it’s just useful to remember which is which.
2025-04-17
Intelligence in Birds and Mammals
Intelligence Evolved at Least Twice in Vertebrate Animals | Quanta Magazine
Intentionally Make Close Friends
Post 43: Intentionally Making Close Friends — Neel Nanda #friendships
Good experiment with some interesting ideas.
2025-04-18
Plastics
Plastics are greener than they seem
Although the drawbacks of the world’s reliance on plastics are all too apparent, the benefits they provide, in the form of reducing waste and cost, are all too easily overlooked. Plastics have made possible a bewildering range of new materials that can replicate the properties of existing ones, and can do things they cannot, while being lighter, more durable, and cheaper and easier to manufacture. These materials have become vital in everything from building to carmaking to consumer electronics.
Take food as an example. Plastic packaging prevents perishable foodstuffs from spoiling, making possible global trade in meat, fish, fruit and vegetables. It enables essentials like rice, cooking oil and powdered milk to be stored and distributed safely and cheaply. A one-litre plastic bottle weighs 5% as much as a glass one; plastic packaging thus reduces shipping costs and emissions.
Plastics have also eased the world’s reliance on older materials, and on the living beings from which many of them came. There are perhaps 10m pianos in the world. If all their white keys were made of ivory, how many elephants would remain?