thelinklist.dev

Welcome to the September edition of The Link List. I can't believe it's already fall, where did summer go? But, I won't complain too much, I can finally start wearing sweaters again. It's cozy couch season and I'm here for it. Let's jump into some links.

1. Why Reading Matters (5 minutes)

Of course Cal Newport, known for his books Digital Minimalism and Deep Work, would have a piece on the importance of reading. In a digital world that prioritizes distractions, reading has become less of a priority:

He also shares some links on what this could mean for the future of society. His solution is simple: try to avoid digital junk food and dedicate time daily to reading. Building a reading habit takes time. The first year I tried, I only got through 3 books. Start small, dive into subjects that interest you, and don't get discouraged if it takes time.

2. Me Me Me Me Me, You You You You You (6 minutes)

This was a lovely read on the value of community. McKenna talks about her experience with the effects of LLMs on a remote culture.

Remote cultures are built on trust and trust is built, in part, by authenticity. Can you change how your company uses LLMs? Probably not. But you can always take McKenna's path and quit while holding that pint glass to your forehead.

3. Cultivating a state of mind where new ideas are born (25 minutes)

How do we keep the cogs of our idea machines well oiled? Henrik and Johanna Karlsson write about the principles used by Alexander Grothendieck and Ingmar Bergman to do just that. Things like working alone and being free of censorship from both others and ourselves. Many of these ideas for spurring creativity also overlap with common productivity hacks. Maybe creativity and productivity are more closely related than we think?

4. Fargate Is Not Firecracker (4 minutes)

This one caught me off-guard, I had always assumed it was Firecracker. At least I'm not alone, Justin Garrison explains how this was deliberate by AWS Marketing. Phrases like:

litter the documentation with their false implications. Justin does mention he ended his work on containers and the EKS team in 2024, things may have changed since then. Regardless, it makes you wonder what other assumptions have snuck into your thinking.

5. Why LLMs Make Learning to Code More Important, Not Less (17 minutes)

Despite what some of the headlines say, learning to code is not dead. This is a transcript of a talk by Senthil Kumaran (20 years experience, works at uber), unfortunately I can't find and upload of the video. He pulls a quote from Feynman's blackboard:

Even though LLMs make harder subjects more accessible, creating is understanding and you still need the basics. I loved the examples of how to use LLMs for learning to program and his blurb about not getting trapped by the news of the day. Also this quote by Ralph Emerson:

6. The revolt of the reader (9 minutes)

I think at this point it's safe to say that a large majority of people dislike reading AI generated text. Bryan Cantrill's (CTO and cofounder of oxide) post talks about why AI posts push your readers away and how they use LLM's at oxide. He also links to survey of 668 devs that has some interesting stats:

• 78% "stop reading immediately" when they detect an LLM

• 71% of the respondents in Cynthia’s survey also "avoid the author in the future"

• 98% reported preferring an author’s own (imperfectly) written piece over an LLM-polished one

What this means to me is that it's never been a better time for YOU to share your own writing. Your imperfect writing has never been more sought after. He also talks about pangram, a tool detecting AI generated text. Pangram took one look at some of my writing and went "oh yeah, that's a human". My imperfect writing is now my secret weapon.

thelinklist.dev is a project by Cody Hiar.

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