Giorgio Sironi @giorgiosironi@qoto.org

I remember the days of manual failover of MySQL from a primary to a secondary, and the fear and terror that ensued. Facebook putting a consensus algorithm on it sounds incredibly hacky and complicated but also solving problems at a scale difficult to imagine https://engineering.fb.com/2023/05/16/data-infrastructure/mysql-raft-meta/?utm_source=pocket_reader

On the UK housing crisis, I am having a great (sobering) time reading All The Houses I've Ever Lived In https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/62711393-all-the-houses-i-ve-ever-lived-in an intersection of what it means to make a place home, and what it means to people to have to move continuously

A good framing on the way out of lack of housing being... building houses (it is complicated, but inescapable) https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/may/12/home-ownership-house-building-property-prices?utm_source=pocket_reader

You'll have a big edge in, say, producing marketing content using generative AI (all else being equal). Except "All else is not equal. Everyone else is going to be using these things too"; as such, expect an arms race with spam filters trying to stop all this generated content from stealing your attention, and to lose productivity as well wading through the noise

A bit long-winded but this is proper journalism about the AI hype "ChatGPT is not human, it has no critical faculty, and certainly no commitment to the truth" https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/may/22/can-we-still-handle-the-truth-journalism-alternative-facts-and-the-rise-of-ai?utm_source=pocket_reader

It has to be said this is complete bullshit from the BBC "AI can interpret data impartially" https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20230515-workplace-ai-how-artificial-intelligence-will-transform-the-workday?xtor=ES-213-[BBC%20Features%20Newsletter]-2023May26-[BBC_Features_StartUsingAI_Worklife]

Very interesting idea yesterday by @kevinrutherford to use Eventstorming in the process notation to explore a team's own work rather than a business domain. Helped me a lot in coming up with a consistent language, and seeing hotspot areas; a compiler for practices. As always, I run out of space!

Indeed frontend is terribly complex and hard to learn nowadays https://christianheilmann.com/2023/05/09/the-ongoing-defence-of-frontend-as-a-full-time-job/ the key I guess is placing specialist into a balanced team where the product is not entirely driven by anyone's specialty

Revolutions in tech from 2022 https://www.theguardian.com/technology/commentisfree/2023/may/13/death-of-mark-zuckerberg-metaverse-meta-facebook-virtual-reality-ai

Please ChatGPT write me a post with a fake graph and making no argument on why something should continue to improve, yet believing it will https://tidyfirst.substack.com/p/bet-on-growth

The Economist is a voice of reason while the hype on AI continues https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/2023/05/07/your-job-is-probably-safe-from-artificial-intelligence?etear=nl_weekly_3&utm_source=pocket_mylist

Great parallels between Rotten Tomatoes (art) and the system of scholarly publishing (science). By day I work on turning the gatekeeping of science journals into a system where publishing science is in the hands of authors, reviews aren't binary, and there are multiple ways to discover and classify what's relevant and trustworthy for the reader. Imagine if movie critics could censor a movie from being watched! https://www.vox.com/culture/2017/8/31/16107948/rotten-tomatoes-score-get-their-ratings-top-critics-certified-fresh-aggregate-mean?utm_source=pocket_saves

My latest blog post: I just want to run a container https://www.giorgiosironi.com/2023/05/i-just-want-to-run-container.html

While I get into blogging again, my most recent series of articles is about the experience of my team in ensemble programming (aka mob programming). From metaphors to code ownership, observing team dynamics, and the remote working environment. https://www.giorgiosironi.com/search/label/mob%20programming

I deleted my Twitter account a few months ago after I couldn't bear it anymore to contribute useful content to the new dictator's pet project. According to the downloaded Twitter data package, I had tweeted 18K times over 14 years!