Gregarious Mammal

It's a busy weekend of tech in Berlin, but have things cooled or are we all taking a well-earned break?No ads for this episode, but instead, a personal request to anyone I’ve interviewed or featured or if you’re a long-term or short-term follower. Please spread the word by rating, reviewing, or sharing the newsletter or podcast.First, a couple of linksThe best iPad score reader for most people →Even before Apple announced the iPad, seeing the first Amazon Kindle had me excited for the day that I would be able to leave my giant stacks of music scores at home.How the iMac saved Apple →The original iMac entered a computing world that desperately needed a shake-up. After the wild early days of the personal computer revolution, things had become stagnant by the mid-1990s.Elegy for the Native Mac App →The first Macintosh came out in 1984 with a familiar formula: expensive, limited, but elegant and easy to use. From the start it was something of a cult classic. Apple was struggling financially, and spent most of the

Something of a music theme in this issue. My interview is with Sefi Carmel of Spheretrax, a new take on selecting, synchronising, and licensing music for TV, films, and games. I also look at what “noise” really is, ancient music software, the continuing sage of Terraform, the end of Google, and maybe one of the most famous Rock and roll fights of all time.Sponsored by ZencasterThis issue is sponsored by Zencaster, who’s all-in-one podcasting platform helps me deliver my show episode.Use my special link zen.ai/chinchillasqueaks to save 30% off your first month of any Zencastr paid plan.The end of the Googleverse →Is Google’s business model coming to an end? Or are they just changing?Is Terraform still open-source? Yes, but… →OpenTF promises to fill the gap now (maybe) left behind by Terraform. But what are those gaps?“I made my first album on that actually,” he reveals. I used it long after I should have stopped using it.” →Turns out I wasn’t the only one to use an obscure piece of music software on an Amiga.

A packed issue full of AI content, what powers the internet, the real cost of food, offline-first, and an interview all about CK editor and TinyMCE.Full show notes here: https://chinchillasqueaks.substack.com/p/bd2d57e5-b110-4963-947b-5afaa19130c8

This episode I speak with Ines Akrap at the recent We Are Developers event about how we can make the web greener. Trust me on this one, nothing captured the enthusiasm I felt from her in the room, but I try

This episode is a links show and I cover Red Hat’s latest open source upsets, lab grown meat, AI ‘aint that bad, happy birthday ethernet, and more!This episode is sponsored by Zencaster, who’s all-in-one podcasting platform helps me deliver my show episode.Use my special link zen.ai/chinchillasqueaks to save 30% off your first month of any Zencastr paid plan.Find full show notes here: https://chinchillasqueaks.substack.com/p/lab-grown-forks?sd=pf

I am joined by hacker turned software entrepreneur, John Davenport to show me his new idea for using AI to summarise conversations and drill into topics covered.Also features… AI and Music-Making Part 2: Tomorrow Is The Question →This is Part 2 of our deep-dive into AI music-making. In Part 1, we learned what AI is; examined the challenges of applying AI technology to music-making; and explored uses of AI such as MIDI generation, timbral transfer, and analog modeling. Back to the Monolith: Why Did Amazon Dump Microservices? →It’s been a harsh couple of years for buzzy digital products and services. Crypto exchanges have been closing left and right. NFTs haven’t been panning out. Let’s Talk About YouTube Face and Clickbait →Today I’m taking off my publisher hat and putting on my content creator hat to examine “YouTube face” and clickbait titles. A few weeks ago, someone asked for my thoughts on YouTube face on my weekly livecast. Five big takeaways from Europe’s AI Act →This article is from The Technocrat,

Hello all! It’s been a little while and I’ve been holding on to a really great interview the whole time. In summary, after a long few years of running the podcast through varying shapes and sizes… I am joining a podcast network and agency! This is great news for me and will help me move the show to the next level, however I need to do a few technical transfers behind the scenes and that made me pause for a few weeks to avoid downtime. Unfortunately we hit a few issues here and there and that switch over will happen after this issue and episode now.Podcast versionSo, with that news over, the great interview mentioned above is with Aaron A. Reed, author of the amazing “50 years of text adventures”. I backed the book on Kickstarter, but Aaron gave me an advanced press copy and it’s a fantastic read! We spoke about the book, text adventures in general, and had a great conversation around the intersection of technology and writing.Flop or future?WWDC happened, and nestled amongst other announcements that actually

Hello everyone!A big dive into questioning artificial intelligence and an interview with Avi from Scarf, who aims to help open source developers gain insights into their usage.Questioning artificial intelligenceIt’s another AI-heavy issue, but this time I want to highlight some content that questions the technology and attitudes to it in some nuanced ways. I start with how AI creators and users are “hallucinating” its potential, wonder if it’s as smart as it looks, and look at the discussions around how to block AI using your content.AI machines aren’t ‘hallucinating’. But their makers are →Inside the many debates swirling around the rapid rollout of so-called artificial intelligence, there is a relatively obscure skirmish focused on the choice of the word “hallucinate”.ChatGPT Is Powered by Human Contractors Getting Paid $15 Per Hour →ChatGPT, the wildly popular AI chatbot, is powered by machine learning systems, but those systems are guided by human workers, many of whom aren’t paid particularly well. A new

Let’s start with some funThis newsletter gets dark quickly, so first something to enjoy.Farrago 2 soundboard for Mac arrives with 50 new features including Shortcuts and Stream Deck integration →Rogue Amoeba is releasing a major update to Farrago, the great soundboard app for Mac. Farrago 2.0 includes 50 new features ranging from fun emoji art to well-designed Stream Deck interactivity.Thanks for reading Chinchilla Squeaks! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.Microsoft is busy rewriting core Windows code in memory-safe Rust →Microsoft is rewriting core Windows libraries in the Rust programming language, and the more memory-safe code is already reaching developers.David Rumsey Map Collection →111,792 RESULTS Media Type Year Collection Creator LanguageTech makes cutbacksFor years we’ve told people with less job prospects to “learn to code”, now tie cutbacks and AI, what do we tell people instead?Learning to code isn’t enough →A decade ago, tech powerhouses the likes of Microsoft, Google,

KubeCon, back to businessAhead of the event I arranged some interviews with companies that piqued my interest and don’t all fit under the headings in my write up that you can read here - https://chinchillasqueaks.substack.com/p/9c266812-78f0-4985-a719-2b745ff7053cSLIM.AII previously covered the slim toolkit from Slim.ai and in the interview I am joined by Nnenna Ndukwe, developer advocate at the company, to discuss their new vulnerability scanning and hardening features.MINIOAnother company I covered previously, I speak with Daniel Valdivia, MinIO’s Kubernetes expert to cover how their S3 compatible API helps users streamline object storage.INCIDENT.IOI speak with Christopher and Stephen about their new(ish) companythat attempts to solve the human side of incident management. The company also had some awesome T-Shirts that channeled their english roots with “Don’t Panic” emblazoned across them.HIVEMQDominik Obermaier joins me to explain why message queues may not be new, but there are still many niche use cas

Podcast versionFind the podcast version of this newsletter, including my interview with Bertrand of Canonical on the Substack podcast page or wherever you find your podcasts.TechA mixed bag this issue covering everything from the slow death of Russia’s tech scene, a visual history of Android, GPT-4 in role-play games in role-play games in classified comment leaks. Erm, yes, you read that right.How Russia killed its tech industry →Seven days after the invasion of Ukraine, Vladimir Belugin packed up his and his family’s belongings, canceled the lease on his apartment in Moscow, withdrew his kids from kindergarten, and started a new life outside of Russia.My kids and I just played D&D with ChatGPT4 as the DM →My two oldest kids Taylor Anne and Liam, are 26 and 23 (respectively). My youngest son Tenzin is 15 years old. All of us are together at my house in Mexico City this week, and the discussion topic generating the most heat is OpenAI and GPT4.Leaked Classified Documents Also Include Roleplaying Game Chara

It's time for open-source users to open their wallets →It was around the year 1999 and I was attending my first Linux convention at the Research Triangle where Red Hat was headquartered. I was, needless to say, excited.Internet Arcade →The Internet Arcade is a web-based library of arcade (coin-operated) video games from the 1970s through to the 1990s, emulated in JSMAME, part of the JSMESS software package.MS-DOS Meets ChatGPT →ChatGPT has to be one of the hottest buzz words right now. It seems to constantly be in the news as well as gaining more attention and users by the day. In addition, OpenAI has also released APIs allowing developers to integrate chatbots into their applications.Content from meCreating interactive fiction with Inform 7Dynamic repositories with GitHub BlocksCould you work all day on a phone? This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit chinchillasqueaks.substack.com

Hello everyone welcome to my regular ramble through geeky subjects from tech, to history, games, writing, language, and more.This issue is a little light on links, but I have a great interview with Marshall Jung of Tabnine you can hear in the voiceover section of this newsletter or wherever you find your podcasts. We spoke about the company’s take on AI coding assistants and how they’ve been doing things differently from some time.Thanks for reading Chinchilla Squeaks! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.That aside I look at some of the best content for digging into what happened with Silicon Valley Bank, what will AI to do music, and more!xx ChinchTech"It's always going to be very biased towards the data it's trained on" – Red Hot Chili Peppers and Adele mixing engineer Andrew Scheps shares his views on AI machine learning, and his tips →Three-time Grammy Award-winning mixing engineer Andrew Scheps worked on Adele's 21, RHCP's Stadium Arcadium (both of which is won Grammys for) and ha

WelcomeHello everyone welcome to my regular ramble through geeky subjects from tech, to history, games, writing, language, and more.This issue is a little light on links, but I have a great interview with Josh Koenig of Pantheon you can hear in the voiceover section of this newsletter or wherever you find your podcasts. I remember Pantheon from my Drupal days. And we spoke a lot about the past, present and future of content delivering what where they came from what they have been doing and what they're about to do with the proliferation of new ways of managing and providing content.TechAfter 20 years are developers now ready for Nix?First something that relates nicely to the interview I had last week with Jetpack.io who have built some tools on top of NixOS. This article from John Leonard pondered if Nix was ahead of its time, and only now are companies and users (at scale) building on top of it. Most of this ties into increased requirements for “software bills of materials” and an operating system that you c

Podcast versionFind the podcast version of this newsletter, including my interview with Daniel on the Substack podcast page or wherever you find your podcasts.From me…Read more about my experiments with managing the macOS home folder with version control.Storytelling Collective Flash FebruaryEvery day I am writing 500 words of flash fiction, read them on Medium.Using AI to generate music with Magenta and Ableton LiveHow did I find creating music with AI? TechWhat Is ChatGPT Doing … and Why Does It Work? →That ChatGPT can automatically generate something that reads even superficially like human-written text is remarkable, and unexpected.Microsoft finally authorizes Windows 11 on Apple M1 and M2 Macs →Microsoft is finally supporting the practice of running Windows 11 on Macs powered by Apple's M1 and M2 chips, opening the door for VMware and Parallels to offer full support for running virtualized Windows 11 on Arm.1Password is saying goodbye to passwords in favor of passkeys. Here's why →Password manager provid

From me…Migrating a website from…Read more about my journey overhauling my old old website, and my progress so far.Storytelling Collective Flash FebruaryEvery day I am writing 500 words of flash fiction, read them on Medium.In bots we trustMy new show with my friend Killian where we look at generative AI, because, well, everyone else is!TechFake Pictures of People of Color Won’t Fix AI Bias →Armed with a belief in technology’s generative potential, a growing faction of researchers and companies aims to solve the problem of bias in AI by creating artificial images of people of color.Tech CEOs screwed up →Now laid-off employees are paying the price Download the app CEOs made mistakes, workers bear the bruntWith great power comes no responsibilityGoogle's ChatGPT competitor spaces out at the start →Google and other major tech companies this week have been showcasing how conversational chatbots can help improve internet search. In one instance, however, Google may have inadvertently showcased the technology's sho

Updates from me…Alternative browsers for macOSI was interested in diving into the many new browsers emerging right now, especially for macOS.* Video* Blog postFlash fiction February 2023This daily writing challenge is back, read my entries on Medium, pretty much every day.Thanks for reading Chinchilla Squeaks! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.TechTry Astro 2.0 Today →Astro 2.0 is available on npm today. Upgrade an existing project by running npm i astro@latest or start a new Astro project right in your browser by visiting astro.new. Looking for more? Tune into a special Twitter space this afternoon at 12pm PST feat.After inking its OpenAI deal, Shutterstock rolls out a generative AI toolkit to create images based on text prompts →When Shutterstock and OpenAI announced a partnership to help develop OpenAI’s Dall-E 2 artificial intelligence image-generating platform with Shutterstock libraries to train and feed the algorithm, the stock photo and media giant also hinted that it would s

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“The Dead Among Us” is a post-post-apocalyptic love story that shows emotion and understanding can conquer history, resentment, and generational divides to create a truly new world.I have been working on this novel for just over two years and now after several drafts I am ready for public feedback.If you are interested, then fill in this Google form, I won’t accept everyone, but will be very pleased to hear from everyone who is interested. If you just want to know about updates, then you're already in the right place! This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit chinchillasqueaks.substack.com

Hey everyone!So, I am quite late with this newsletter and podcast as I was travelling blah blah. But also Twitter owns the service I was using for newsletters (Revue), which meant I needed to look for a replacement. I looked at a few but settled on where all the cool kids were… Substack. Then I noticed they also support podcasts, so migrated my podcast too. I wanted to give a good window of time to ensure everything had migrated, and now finally here we are!Substack offers a lot of cool new features and options that I am only starting to explore, so the newsletter will change look a little over the next few issues. OK, enough of that, it’s 2023, it’s going to be a great year. Here we go! This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit chinchillasqueaks.substack.com