What I've been reading

• What if echo chambers work?, David Schraub.

• If Not React, Then What?, Alex Russell, which links to Javascript dos and donts, Mu-an Chiou, which links to a GitHub Engineering blog post about removing JQuery from GitHub.com in 2018.

• Building LLMs is probably not going be a brilliant business, Cal Paterson. Interesting post about industry structure and the LLM market.

• The next platform, Mac Chaffee.

• Egoless Engineering, Dan McKinley.

• Making Fun Flask Apps for No Reason, Mathew Duggan.

• FOMO is not a strategy, Rachel Coldicutt. This post provides an interesting reflection on a year of supporting AI adoption in non-technical organisations.

• Digitisation, politicisation and the civil service, Martha Lane Fox.

• The 6 Mistakes You’re Going to Make as a New Manager, Matheus Lima.

• Nobody Gets Fired for Picking JSON, but Maybe They Should?, Miguel Young de la Sota.

• Who and What comprise AI Skepticism?, Benjamin Riley.

• US outperformance isn’t all about Tech, Giles Wilkes

• Beyond Deterrence, Lawrence Freedman.

• How It Will Be Used, Dr. Greg Wilson.

• Bringing Elon to a knife fight, Jennifer Pahlka.

• 3 shell scripts to improve your writing, or "My Ph.D. advisor rewrote himself in bash.", Matt Might. Less interested in the shell scripts more interested in the writing advice!

• TDD for JavaScript with buildless Mocha and Chai, Chris Ferdinandi, and a nice follow-up is Buildless testing also by Chris.

• Following on from above is How do you even web dev without node?, Baldur Bjarnason.

• Walknotes 9 – 13 December 2024. I am addicted to Walknotes and love how they are written. The Other things section of this post is an enjoyable riff off odd Duolingo translations.

• Why should growth be any better under Labour? Giles Wilkes.

• Online Safety Act Notes for Small Sites, Russ Garrett. This stemmed from conversations on Mastodon about the Online Safety Act in the UK and this post in LFGSS.

• Career Advice for New Tech Workers in 2025, Mathew Duggan.

• Quick note on the US beating the UK at growth, Giles Wilkes

• A Letter from Joe Brumm, Joe Brumm. Big news for Bluey watching households like ours. I'm grateful to Joe for creating such a fantastic TV show to share with my family and am sure future series can survive without him at the helm.

• Did OpenAI Just Solve Abstract Reasoning? Melanie Mitchell.

• Cognitive load is what matters, Artem Zakirullin.

• Reflecting on Life, Armin Ronacher. Armin articulates well how having children changes your whole perspective on things like success and priorities.

• Does current AI represent a dead end?, Professor Eerke Boiten. Which links to this arguably quite jazzy site explaining AI Safety.

• The web is too big, or scaling down, Scott Richmond.