Podcasts

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 links

The 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 90s on hair-brained ideas: the Newton, the Pippin, the QuickTake.

The rise of the tech ethics congregation →

Just before Christmas last year, a pastor preached a gospel of morals over money to several hundred members of his flock.

Web Sustainability Guidelines (WSG) 1.0 →

Get your sites sustainable! Officially.

My highlights of IFA and Startup night Berlin 2023

https://medium.com/@chrischinchilla/my-highlights-of-ifa-and-startup-night-berlin-2023-d0417bbcb610

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 Zencaster

This 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. I have famous company.

A Well-tempered History of Noise →

What is noise? Different cultures make music differently, and different genres have different concepts of “good”. As always, it’s in the ear of the beholder.

"Never call me your drummer again": remembering the time Charlie Watts punched Mick Jagger in the face →

A year on from Charlie Watts’ sad passing, the world fondly remembers the late Stones drummer’s shy, slightly retiring nature: never one to give interviews unless absolutely necessary, and - for the most part - unimpressed by the trappings of the rock ’n’ roll lifestyle.

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 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.

• State of Open: The UK in 2023 Phase Two, Part 1 “Show us the Money - The Economics of Open Source Software” Download the full report.
• Green energy tycoon to launch UK’s first electric airline →
• How to create a personal website, but it’s 1999 →
• Wikipedia’s value in the age of generative AI →
• How Do Lit Mags Make Money, Anyway? →
• Paul Nurse: The power of genetics, battling politicians, and the fight against cancer →
• The World’s Last Internet Cafes →
• The Wrath of Goodreads →
• Logitech buys editing console maker Loupedeck →

From me

• CSS in Depth, Second Edition by Keith J Grant. Find the early version on manning.com.
• It’s Setapp month and all month I will be producing content around how I use this macOS application subscription service but I begin with an overview of my favourite apps that I use on a regular basis. If you like what you read and want to get your hands on a Setapp subscription to try some of those applications, then follow my referral link to get started, much appreciated 🙇!

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, MIT Technology Review's weekly tech policy newsletter about power, politics, and Silicon Valley. To receive it in your inbox every Friday, sign up here.
• Your Fave Band Is Reuniting – But Not For the Reasons You Think →Blur, The Walkmen and Pulp are some of the bands staging comebacks. Is it a cynical sign of the times or has something changed? Nostalgia: It’s a hell of a drug, and the 2023 gig calendar is packed with reunion tours that show it’s more potent than ever.
• 30 years of change, 30 years of PDF →We live in a world where the only constant is accelerating change. The twists and turns in the technology landscape over the last 30 years have drained some of the hype from the early days of the consumer digital era. Today we are confronted with all-new, even more disruptive, possibilities.
• AI and Music-Making Part 1: The State of Play →Listen to this article. This is Part 1 of two-part aricle. Read Part 2 here.

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 version

So, 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 excited me much more, was the new Vision Pro. I am extremely un-excited by VR, and while AR has interesting applications, we have seen many large projects from equally large companies fail. But who am I to know? Here’s some interesting links from the discussion around WWDC.

With Vision Pro, Apple shows computing's future. But who's it for? →

Tomorrow belongs to somebody, but Apple’s much-talked-about mixed-reality device, Vision Pro — unveiled Monday during a glitzy presentation at the company's Worldwide Developers Conference — won’t ship until early 2024.

Apple will face an uphill battle convincing developers to build apps for its headset →

The ‘one more thing’ announced by Apple at its Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) this year was the industry’s worst-kept secret. The Apple Vision Pro, the tech giant’s gamble on making mixed reality headsets a thing, has received a mixed welcome.

News from WWDC23: WebKit Features in Safari 17 beta →

It’s been a fantastic year for WebKit. We’ve shipped eight Safari releases since WWDC22, with more than 140 new web technologies in the first half of 2023 alone. Now, we are pleased to announce another 88 web features coming this fall in Safari 17. Web apps are coming to Mac.

AInt so smart?

It wouldn’t be a tech newsletter without AI news would it? This week, efforts to regulate and the sites feeding all those “smarts”.

Inside the secret list of websites that make AI like ChatGPT sound smart →

An analysis of a chatbot data set by The Washington Post reveals the proprietary, personal, and often offensive websites that go into an AI’s training data.

Ethics — what ethics? For Microsoft, it’s full speed ahead on AI →

Microsoft is all in on artificial intelligence (AI) for a very simple reason: it believes its lead in the technology will make it the tech world’s top dog again.

Who should take responsibility for evil UX design and digital ethics? →

Ethics = moral philosophy. It defines what’s good and what’s evi

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 intelligence

It’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 report from NBC News shows that OpenAI, the startup behind ChatGPT, has been paying droves of U.S.

A 23-year-old Snapchat influencer used OpenAI’s technology to create an A.I. version of herself that will be your girlfriend for $1 per minute →

These boyfriends are dating a virtual version of Marjorie, powered by the latest artificial intelligence technology and thousands of hours of recordings of the real Marjorie.

AI Tools Are Scraping Your Website. Is That a Good Thing? →

The rise of artificial intelligence (AI) has been disruptive. Things are changing rapidly. And it seems like this technology is posing new moral, ethical, and existential questions each day. There are plenty of stories and opinions to choose from. But one recent incident caught my eye.

Inside the Discord Where Thousands of Rogue Producers Are Making AI Music →

On Saturday, they released an entire album using an AI-generated copy of Travis Scott's voice, and labels are trying to kill it.

Before AI Takes Over, Make Plans to Give Everyone Money →

The U.S. needs policies now to support workers made redundant by artificial intelligence. Artificial intelligence is coming for all our jobs.

Let’s start with some fun

This 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 Language

Tech makes cutbacks

For 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, and Amazon helped boost the nonprofit Code.org, a learn-to-code program with a vision: “That every student in every school has the opportunity to learn computer science as part of their core K–12 education.

Tech companies are finally firing tech workers →

Software engineers made up the biggest portion of tech layoffs in 2023. That advice is starting to feel even less welcome.

Amazon and Microsoft’s AI Gains Mask Cloud Slowdown →

(Bloomberg) -- The buzz around artificial intelligence that’s helped juice gains for Microsoft Corp. and Amazon.com Inc. this year may also be masking struggles in a business far more critical to the pair’s bottom lines.

AI, when and where will it stop?

Palantir Demos AI to Fight Wars But Says It Will Be Totally Ethical Don’t Worry About It →

Palantir, the company of billionaire Peter Thiel, is launching Palantir Artificial Intelligence Platform (AIP), software meant to run large language models like GPT-4 and alternatives on private networks. In one of its pitch videos, Palantir demos how a military might use AIP to fight a war.

The first babies conceived with a sperm-injecting robot have been born →

Last spring, engineers in Barcelona packed up the sperm-injecting robot they’d designed and sent it by DHL to New York City.

Why I'm no longer writing stories with AI →

Preface: Stories by AI is on hiatus. We may or may not be back soon. If you’d be interesting in writing stories for us, get in touch! contact@storiesby.ai I won’t be publishing any more stories with storiesby.ai. What was once a quirky lark of a side-side-project hits darker now.

Thanks for reading Chinchilla Squeaks! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

KubeCon, back to business

Ahead 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-a719-2b745ff7053c

SLIM.AI

I 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.

MINIO

Another 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.IO

I 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.

HIVEMQ

Dominik Obermaier joins me to explain why message queues may not be new, but there are still many niche use cases where companies like HiveMQ can excel, and for them it’s IoT end edge computing.

Podcast version

Find the podcast version of this newsletter, including my interview with Bertrand of Canonical on the Substack podcast page or wherever you find your podcasts.

Tech

A 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 Character Stats →

Over the past month, classified Pentagon documents have circulated on 4chan, Telegram, and various Discord servers. The documents contain daily intelligence briefings, sensitive information about Ukrainian military positions, and a handwritten character sheet for a table-top roleplaying game.

Android versions: A living history from 1.0 to 12 →

What a long, strange trip it's been. From its inaugural release to today, Android has transformed visually, conceptually and functionally — time and time again. Google's mobile operating system may have started out scrappy, but holy moly, has it ever evolved.

And finally…

The Most Spoken Languages In The World, Ranked →

There are over 7,000 languages in use across the globe, but for various reasons (like, for example, colonialism), some are spoken a lot more around the world than others.

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 me

Creating interactive fiction with Inform 7

Dynamic repositories with GitHub Blocks

Could you work all day on a phone?

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 Chinch

Tech

"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 has mixed for Black Sabbath, Metallica, Beyoncé, Lady Gaga, Neil Diamond and man, many others.

How the Weekend-Long Freakout Over Silicon Valley Bank Ended →

Unless you happened to take a digital detox this weekend, you probably witnessed a lot of online commotion regarding tech startups, the banking system, and the institution formerly known as Silicon Valley Bank.

The Silicon Valley Bank Contagion Is Just Beginning →

When Silicon Valley Bank collapsed on March 10, Garry Tan, president and CEO of startup incubator Y Combinator, called SVB’s failure “an extinction level event for startups” that “will set startups and innovation back by 10 years or more.

What you need to know about the SVB bank rescue plan →

Question and answers about the federal government's plan to stop bank runs.

Language

The Moral Case Against Equity Language →

What’s a “justice-involved person”? The Sierra Club’s Equity Language Guide discourages using the words stand, Americans, blind, and crazy. The first two fail at inclusion, because not everyone can stand and not everyone living in this country is a citizen.

Content from me

My creative writing setup

How do I write my creative works? I tell you how…

Technical writing with JetBrains' Writerside and Grazie

And finally

Thanks for reading Chinchilla Squeaks! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

Welcome

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 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.

Tech

After 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 can rebuild from configuration and is comprised a literal bill of materials is compelling.

I try something similar with my own solutions for macOS, but that isn’t an operating system designed from the ground up to function this way.

LastPass tells (mostly) all

Months later, LastPass finally revealed what happened to cause their large data breach last year. I stopped using LastPass ages ago in favour of 1Password mostly as LastPass is so ugly to use. However, this was a huge betrayal of faith for a company whose main business is to keep things safe and I wonder how their competitors have benefited?

ChatGPT vs Writers

Of course, it wouldn’t be a tech newsletter without a quick mention of ChatGPT.

S.E. Ireland worries about the implications for tech writers and as that’s where I make money, so am I. For the more precudural aspect of that job, I am already worried. For the more human “how to connect the dots” content, not quite yet. We shall see…

Clarkesworld had to close submissions due to a flood of content written by people using ChatGPT and I would imagine they aren’t the only ones. As someone attempting to get short stories published right now, this is another shot fired by ChatGPT for aspiring writers, but is this akin the zoom bombers or spam comments on blogs and will all the trolls just get bored in a few weeks?

As a creative writer, I like writing and don’t necessarily want an AI interfering with that process. But others (ab)using it to flood publications still affects writers indirectly as I can’t get anything published right now…

New content from me

DiffusionBee and Amazing AI for generating images on macOS with Stable Diffusion

Mixing documentation and React components with Mintlify

And finally!

Never been a better “and finally”. My new website is ready… Mostly… But I am happy it’s live.

Podcast version

Find 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 February

Every day I am writing 500 words of flash fiction, read them on Medium.

Using AI to generate music with Magenta and Ableton Live

How did I find creating music with AI?

Tech

What 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 provider 1Password has announced that it will allow users to abandon passwords in favor of passkeys as the company pushes towards a passwordless future.

Linux 6.2: The first mainstream Linux kernel for Apple M1 chips arrives →

Linux 6.2 was released yesterday, and Linus Torvalds described the latest Linux kernel release as, "Maybe it's not a sexy LTS release like 6.1 ended up being, but all those regular pedestrian kernels want some test love too." For once, I disagree with Torvalds.

And finally…

Scientists Warn of A “Friendship Recession” →

A few weeks ago, I joined a local “comedic acting” class. The instructor asked us to introduce ourselves and explain why we were there — probably assuming we’d say things like I’ve always wanted to be on stage! or I did improv in college and it was fun.

The people who live inside airplanes →

After losing her house to a fire, Jo Ann Ussery had a peculiar idea: to live in an airplane. She bought an old Boeing 727 that was destined for the scrapyard, had it shipped to a plot of land she already owned, and spent six months renovating, doing most of the work by herself.

From me…

Migrating a website from…

Read more about my journey overhauling my old old website, and my progress so far.

Storytelling Collective Flash February

Every day I am writing 500 words of flash fiction, read them on Medium.

In bots we trust

My new show with my friend Killian where we look at generative AI, because, well, everyone else is!

Tech

Fake 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 responsibility

Google'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 shortcomings.

Mozilla, like Google, is looking ahead to the end of Apple's WebKit rule →

Updated Mozilla is planning for the day when Apple will no longer require its competitors to use the WebKit browser engine in iOS.

How Did the Duck Hunt Gun Work? →

The Duck Hunt gun, officially called the NES Zapper, seems downright primitive next to today’s technology. But in the late ’80s, it filled plenty of young heads with wonder.

And finally

The death of the customer service hotline →

Need to call Facebook? Frontier? Good luck. There’s been a breach of the Jonny Boston’s International Facebook page.

Updates from me…

Alternative browsers for macOS

I was interested in diving into the many new browsers emerging right now, especially for macOS.

* Video

* Blog post

Flash fiction February 2023

This 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.

Tech

Try 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 soon be bringing its own generative AI too.

This 1980s computer was a huge leap forward. Now you can download its source code →

To celebrate the 40th birthday of the Apple Lisa computer, the Computer History Museum (CHM) has released the source code for the first graphical user interface computer.

The Calculator Drawer →

Remember scientific calculators? The Internet Archive now has dozens for you to play with in emulators and remember how we all used to live.

Writing

I Finished My Novel. Now What? →

Most people have ideas for a novel. Many people start a novel. Some people even bang out a good chunk of manuscript. But few ever finish a real novel with an actual conflict, characters, climax, and all that jazz — and it’s no wonder. That s**t is no joke.

And finally

The Search for Extraterrestrial Life as We Don’t Know It →

Sarah Stewart Johnson was a college sophomore when she first stood atop Hawaii’s Mauna Kea volcano. Its dried lava surface was so different from the eroded, tree-draped mountains of her home state of Kentucky.

Thanks for reading Chinchilla Squeaks! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

OGL 1.1/1.2/1.3/😱

Wizards of the Coast goes into firefighting mode to stop the exodus of D&D fans.

An Update on the Open Game License (OGL) →

When we initially conceived of revising the OGL, it was with three major goals in mind. First, we wanted the ability to prevent the use of D&D content from being included in hateful and discriminatory products.

Thanks for reading Chinchilla Squeaks! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

Wizards of the Coast Breaks Its Silence on Dungeons and Dragons' Open Game License →

Wizards of the Coast, the Hasbro subsidiary that publishes Dungeons & Dragons, revealed details of its new Open Game License on Friday and attempted to answer questions about the future of the D&D community that were raised after io9 broke the news about the contents of a draft of the document last

Cancelled D&D Beyond Subscriptions Forced Hasbro's Hand →

Dungeons & Dragons publisher Wizards of the Coast finally broke its silence regarding the game’s Open Game License on Friday, attempting to calm tensions in the D&D community and answer questions that were raised after Gizmodo broke the news about the contents of a draft of the document last week.

Looking for D&D alternatives? →

FATE WORLDS AND TOOLKITS MEETS ITS FATE TONIGHT! Today is your last chance to get our resurrected July 2021 Fate Worlds and Toolkits Bundle featuring the Fate rulebooks, expansions, campaigns, standalone RPGs, and many Worlds of Adventure from Evil Hat Productions.

Generative AI starts to monetise

Microsoft Considers $10 Billion Investment in ChatGPT Creator →

Microsoft Corp. is in discussions to invest as much as $10 billion in OpenAI, the creator of viral artificial intelligence bot ChatGPT, according to people familiar with its plans.

The ChatGPT revolution? Microsoft seems to have very big plans for this AI chatbot →

Microsoft is reportedly in talks to invest $10 billion into OpenAI, the maker of the popular ChatGPT chatbot, according to a report citing people familiar with deal.

Exclusive: OpenAI Used Kenyan Workers on Less Than $2 Per Hour to Make ChatGPT Less Toxic →

ChatGPT was hailed as one of 2022’s most impressive technological innovations upon its release last November.

The beginning and ends of eras in tech

History of Web Browser Engines from 1990 until today →

History of Web Browser Engines from 1990 until today Many tried, few remain... Last updated: January 2023 The loss of browser diversity since the rise of Chromium has been greatly lamented.

Twitterrific: End of an Era →

Twitterrific has been discontinued. A sentence that none of us wanted to write, but have long felt would need to be written someday. We didn’t expect to be writing it so soon, though, and certainly not without having had time to notify you that it was coming.

The world around us in games

“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!

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!

Hello all! Lots of lovely AI and machine learning links for you this issue as I am working on a new show! Also Twitter, Mozilla, and that internet thing? It's dead.

I'm back after two weeks of conferences. I interview speakers from Build Stuff in Lithuania, report back from other events, dig into the history of JavaScript frameworks, and hang out with Lana Moore… Or not.

Hey all 👋

Kin Lane is back on the show. Also a  week of announcements from companies that begin with "A", the speed behind Tech's sails starts to slow (and is that good or bad?) and life… Life not as we know it Jim.

xxx Chinch

This was my third invitation to attend in Lviv, Ukraine. But this was the first time, and indeed a first for me overall, that the conference happened during a war and in what was effectively a warzone.

Read my blog post for full context - https://hackernoon.com/it-arena-2022-ukrainian-tech-braves-the-war



And daily diaries starts at about 26:00

In this episode I round up the latest geeky news that has caught my attention including the Ethereum merge, looking forward to macOS Ventura, AI images already getting banned in image stores, a history of ARM, and much more!