100 / Here Come the Robots

This is issue #100 of Arnes Weekly from

It’s been 100 issues and over two years already‽ Thank you so much for reading this newsletter and all the feedback and encouragement! If you want to support this newsletter, forward it to a friend, it means a lot to me ❤️

To celebrate this anniversary, I’m giving away an eReader to a lucky person who is subscribed at May 7th 2023 at 1pm CEST (selected randomly). If you’re reading this on the web before that date, subscribe now!

Toot of the Week

I am working at the intersection of “desperate to get off the internet” and “joining every new social network for some reason”

@danielmgauthier@mastodon.social

Favourites

Towards better 1-on-1s: an awkward manifesto

4 min · tylercipriani.com

Tyler Cipriani shares their basic 1:1 agenda as well as a random question generator. Thanks, Ted!

Ask HN: Most interesting tech you built for just yourself?

news.ycombinator.com

l2silver asked this question on HN and there‘s endless inspiring comments of people talking about their small side projects they‘ve built just for them selves.

The Dual LLM pattern for building AI assistants that can resist prompt injection

11 min · simonwillison.net

Simon Willison has a proposal to make personal assistants more resilient against prompt injection attacks.

Software

Why is OAuth still hard in 2023?

11 min · nango.dev

Robin Guldener explains why it's still super complicated to set up OAuth even though it's standardised.

Is Rust a worthy contender for web development?

8 min · joshmo.hashnode.dev

Josh Mo showcases modern Rust web dev and compares it to modern JavaScript.

Building and Deploying a URL shortener with Rust in 10 minutes or less

4 min · shuttle.rs

Terrence Waters writes a guide on how to build a link shortened with Rust and shuttle.

Uptime Guarantees

5 min · world.hey.com

Itzy Sabo unpacks the downtime concept and argues two-and-a-half nines are good enough for most.

AI

A guide to prompting AI (for what it is worth)

8 min · oneusefulthing.org

Ethan Mollick explains good prompting techniques (although prompting is getting less important every week).

Here Come the Robots

5 min · randsinrepose.com

Michael Lopp about AI and the lack of critical thinking.

I’m ChatGPT, and for the Love of God, Please Don’t Make Me Do Any More Copywriting

2 min · mcsweeneys.net

Joe Wellman imagines the inner monologue of an LLM that's only used for copywriting.

Prompt Engineering vs. Blind Prompting

14 min · mitchellh.com

Mitchell Hashimoto argues that "prompt engineering" is often just blind prompting and shows how to actually create a good prompt without trial/error.

Cutting Room Floor

Meet the people who use Notion to plan their whole lives

3 min · technologyreview.com

Rhiannon Williams about people who managed their personal life in Notion; from tracking water intake to planning YouTube videos.

The Case Against Momfluencers

7 min · wired.com

Kate Knibbs about the new book by Sarah Petersen and why it's a mistake to put pictures of your children online publicly.

The endless uses for an always-on Mac

2 min · sixcolors.com

Jason Snell about the advantages and use cases of having an always-on Mac.

Insufficient forgetting

2 min · swellandcut.com

Matthew Sweet about the importance of forgetting to fight the accumulation of entropy.

The Four Hobbies, and Apparent Expertise

5 min · brooker.co.za

Marc Brooker about the tension between people that want to actually do the hobby and people that like to talk about it more instead.

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