This week’s list is a little more business heavy. I’ve been traveling on vacation with my family, and just got back this weekend. Very, very little code written this past week as a result. The vacation was lovely - a welcome bookend for my sabbatical/family time. I’m looking forward to getting started with some consulting clients this week. Reach out if you think I can help you or your company - sujal@ this domain (or sujal.com ) will work.
- iPhone 13 Pro: The Edge of Intelligent Photography: Great overview of the iPhone 13 camera system and the choices that the computational photography engine makes. This is widely shared, but it’s worth thinking about the constraints on creativity that de With highlights in this post. As we include more AI, trained on a set of “ideal” results, where does serendipity and discovery come from. These aren’t mutually exclusive outcomes. It just seems like serendipity (or discovery, if you prefer) needs to be accounted for in the design of systems leaning on AI. Could be as simple as the toggles de With argues for here.
- Judges Behaving Badly: Amazon Antitrust Suit Dismissed: If you’ve ever wondered how Amazon Prime makes Amazon any money, this post contains a nice summary (and links to more depth) in the context of a weird decision in an Amazon antitrust case. Lots of other things in this one, and Stoller is a great read on monopolies and antitrust. I don’t always agree with him (I worked as an executive for a mega-corp, after all), but he’s describing real problems caused by mega-mergers and acquisitions that we need to reckon with as a society.
- Oy! MGM, Amazon and the FTC, Explained: Speaking of Stoller, he linked to this piece. If anyone has a subscription to the Ankler and could share the whole piece, I’d love to read it. I’d love to read one of their subscriber only posts before deciding to pay for it.
- The Latecomer’s Guide to Crypto: A really good, comprehensive rundown of crypto terminology and concepts for normal folks, written by Kevin Roose. Good place to start if you know nothing. I’d also recommend bookending this with Bomani Jones’s monologue on crypto in sports for a harder dose of reality. I really agree with him, even though I feel like there’s something really exciting possible with the underlying tech. Also, watch his show on HBO. It’s really good.
- A Metaverse Manifesto, Part 2: Interoperability: I’ll end by linking to Katie’s latest piece on the metaverse. Part 1 is also a good read, but this one gets at one of those potential underlying possibilities. Publicly auditable identity database could solve a few problems if the metaverse is to be a real thing. More of my thoughts on that in the near future.
