February 15, 2023

Mostly Bits Newsletter - Issue #45

Tony’s Pick

LLM commentary is reaching a fever pitch in my corners of the internet. You’ve probably seen the blurry jpeg article, the Tom Scott video, maybe even Bing gaslighting. But have you heard Colin Meloy play a song written for him, nominally in his signature style, by ChatGPT?

Kyle’s Pick

My wife pointed me toward this Twitter thread from the author of an exhaustive book about keyboards. (Here’s the Kickstarter. It’s 1200 pages over 2 volumes.) Some of the keyboards in that thread are pretty iconic—I had a coworker who tried out the SafeType vertical keyboard pictured below for a little while in the early 2000s—and others are strangely fascinating, like the one with a phone line built into it where you can type to talk.