NL76 - Diwali week
Hello from my home in Matinkylä and Happy Diwali! This is NordLetter #76, a weekly newsletter on living and walking in Finland. Each week I share some of the interesting things I found on the web.
To follow the series, you can subscribe here. A new NordLetter will land in your inbox every Sunday. Not a fan of newsletters? No problem! You can read previous editions here. You can also subscribe to the RSS feed.
You can reach out to me by replying on this mail. I am also posting on Mastodon.
We started pre-Diwali celebrations a little early this time around. A couple of weeks back we were at a pre-Diwali party with some of our friends from our community. They live in Jätkäsaari, a beautiful 2 hall apartment. They had put up lights everywhere, around the mirrors, on the doors, on the curtains - everywhere. It looked pretty - we went ahead and got the same lights from Jysk.
I put up these lights today. For the past couple of seasons, we have been putting the lights up in the balcony. This year, we have put them in the interiors. I am typing this with all the normal lights in the hall off, and just these string lights up. It looks beautiful now, in my home.
It was a good party. There were games. We sang and danced and laughed. We drove back home late at night. The roads felt a little different this late.
Then this Friday we had planned for a game night with our friends. The original plan was to get the kids to sleep early and then play poker.
In order to get that original plan to work, we went for a walk to get the kids to sleep. That plan was partially successful. Savya slept but our friends' child did not.
They both did sleep eventually.
We played 28. We were all playing for the first time. We ended the night in a draw. We were too damn tired to continue.
We sat and talked for a bit before going off to sleep.
This Saturday, was the Diwali event organised by Suomi-Intia-Seura in collaboration with Espoo city. The venue was in Kivenlahti, around 13 mins drive from our home at the Elämysareena.
The event was on the third floor. Savya had already slept by the time we reached the venue. And, he slept through the entire two hour period we were there.
The arena was split in two halves - the first half was where the performances were taking place - a Finnish troupe was performing when we entered. The second half was where the baazar was setup - food stalls, art and craft workshops, games, sweets and a bunch more stuff.
Suomi-Intia-Seura also organises a Folklore event during the summer. I think I preferred that event more, the flow of it. Or maybe I preferred the summer more. We were walking in that venue. The performances were in a theatre on the third floor, the exhibition and the art stalls were on the second floor, the food was a further level down - out in the open.
That of course is not possible now, all events have to be in a closed space. And maybe that's the problem. There also was a spice eating competition. A couple of our friends ate all the spices and got a certificate? Anyway.
We took food from our friends at Santripti Kitchen. We caught up with a few of our friends. We took pictures. And then we left for home.
It's Diwali week after all. And we already had a bunch of chores that needed doing.
Happy Diwali!
/five things to share
1. Apple's Smart Glasses With In-Lens Display May Feature Two Modes by Joe Rossignol
In his Power On newsletter today, Bloomberg's Mark Gurman said he was told a future version of Apple's smart glasses may be able to run a full version of the visionOS operating system when they are paired with a Mac, and then switch to a more lightweight, mobile-friendly interface when they are paired with an iPhone.
This would make sense if they are connected to the Mac with a wire. A similar device exists already which connect to a PC.
2. Netflix is making a big bet on video podcasts by Emma Roth
Netflix is no longer just a home for TV shows, movies, documentaries, and live WWE matches — soon, you’ll be able to stream video podcasts, too. The streaming giant announced on Tuesday that it’s partnering with Spotify’s podcast studio and The Ringer to offer 16 series on its platform, including The Bill Simmons Podcast, Conspiracy Theories, as well as The Ringer’s shows on the NFL, NBA, Fantasy Football, and F1.
I was thinking about this a couple days ago - about how YouTube has full control over the video podcast market and how Netflix was not competing on it.
Seems like now they are.
3. Apple teases M5 MacBook by Jay Peters
Apple is teasing the imminent launch of a new MacBook with an M5 chip. In an X post, Apple SVP of worldwide marketing Greg Joswiak wrote that “something powerful is coming,” and a short video in the post includes the words “coming soon” and a silhouette of an Apple laptop.
I think Apple has settled on two events per year - wwdc and the iPhone event. Everything else is just these product videos and announcements. I love the Mac and feel a little sad about how Apple perceives its importance.
Apple did launch new products with the M5 - a new iPad Pro, a base 14 inch MacBook Pro and a Vision Pro - all spec bumps. That’s all I have to say about it. Not my year to get any of these devices.
4. FSF Announces the LibrePhone Project - Slashdot
The Free Software Foundation (FSF) has launched the LibrePhone Project, an initiative to create a fully free and open-source mobile operating system that eliminates proprietary firmware and binary blobs.
Will it ever work, given the Android and Apple duopoly?
5. Claude Skills are awesome, maybe a bigger deal than MCP by Simon Willison
Skills are Markdown with a tiny bit of YAML metadata and some optional scripts in whatever you can make executable in the environment. They feel a lot closer to the spirit of LLMs - throw in some text and let the model figure it out.
Here’s the learn documentation.
It’s a simple feature. The bunch of things Anthropic has announced since the past one month while I’ve been on the ChatGPT train is staggering.
I am tempted to go back. The only thing ChatGPT has right now is the web ui for codex. This was ot would be free till 20th, after which the web usage will count toward the overall limits.
I think it makes sense to me to go back to Claude and try that out.
If you enjoyed reading this, and know someone else who might, please consider forwarding this to them. It would help this grow and make me happy. 😄
Until next week.