Good Things Weekly Roundup - 2024-08-05
Things I read, watched, and enjoyed this week
(data saved to/pulled from Readwise Reader)
Youtube Videos
Computer History Museum - Oral History of Leslie Lamport - Part 1
Scott Hanselman - Leslie Lamport - in Partnership With Acm Bytecast
Jeremy Howard - How Htmx Is Changing the Web, With Carson Gross
Zig Showtime - Zig’s I/O and Concurrency Story - King Protty - Software You Can Love 2022
Articles
Things I Finished or Mostly Finished
Worldviews, Altruism, and Embracing Variance (With Emmett Shear)
Spotify
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In a podcast episode, Emmett Shear discusses how his worldview differs from the typical Silicon Valley perspective. He explores the differences between ideologies and worldviews, as well as the role of middle management. The conversation also touches on ways to improve democracy.
Really enjoyed this podcast. Never met Emmett, but I am friends with Spencer and consider him to be an extremely interesting person. Came away from this feeling like I’d have lots of fun with these two taking walks in the park. Particular topics/moments of note from the podcast: Emmett’s thoughts on the role of term limits in democratic governments, Emmett’s thoughts on the role of variance in SV/EA/good outcomes, Emmett’s idea that we could mostly fund all worthwhile charitable projects with 10% of giving (interesting that this number is almost exactly what the Catholic Church had as a policy with tithing, there’s nothing new under the sun).
You’re Still Looking for Your Keys Under the Streetlight
postlibertarian.com
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Emmett Shear discussed effective altruism on the Clearer Thinking podcast, emphasizing the idea of donating 10% of income as a positive step. The critique of effective altruism often overlooks its focus on measurable impact and the variety of causes it supports. Ultimately, effective altruism seeks to find the most effective ways to do good, rather than just alleviating guilt through charitable giving.
I found the above podcast after seeing Emmett tweet this response to his ideas. Basically, Emmett had some critical things to say about common philosophical ideas present in EA, and this person wrote a critical response to Emmett’s criticism. Worth noting that all critiques involved were civil and interesting. This article in particular is very well-written and notes that many serious thinkers in EA have addressed exactly Emmett’s concerns, and that Emmett’s ideas about the most good coming from high variance outcomes misses the idea that actually the biggest lever in doing important charitable work is that the altruistic idea needs to be “neglected” to some extent aka the work that would be done is sufficiently unlikely to already be on the roadmap by some other competent person. Good critique, since one of Emmett’s examples in the podcast of a worthwhile project was “making Youtube,” but in reality, if you devoted your efforts to that endeavor, it wouldn’t really move the needle bc a large number of other people would step in to make YouTube precisely bc you could get rich by doing it, and get rich in ways that were already conventionally understood at the time by many investors and entrepreneurs. Really good discussion of ideas in this article and in the podcast.
Starting Hospice. the End
Jake Seliger
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Jake Seliger is entering hospice care due to the worsening effects of squamous cell carcinoma. He reflects on his life, expressing gratitude for love and support while recognizing the challenges his family will face after his passing. Despite his situation, he hopes for a bright future for his soon-to-be-born daughter, Athena, and encourages support for his partner, Bess.
Been following Jake Seliger’s story/blog for a while, ever since I noticed it on HN for the first time a couple years ago. Really heartbreaking. Jake seems like a wonderful person and his story is extremely sad. I very much appreciated his perspective on his battle with cancer and how the FDA significantly limits patient autonomy in their efforts to try novel treatments.
Things I Saved and Didn’t Get to
InnoDB
Jeremy Cole
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Jeremy Cole’s blog discusses various aspects of InnoDB, including its internal structures and behavior. He covers topics like space file layout, page management, and index structures. The posts also explore efficiency, bugs, and the effects of multi-version concurrency control in InnoDB.
Understanding Apache Iceberg’s Consistency Model Part 3
Jack Vanlightly
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In the final part of the series on Apache Iceberg’s consistency model, the author discusses a formal specification and model checking results. The model checking revealed a safety violation related to delete operations that could lead to incorrect data states due to missed validation checks. The series aims to enhance understanding of various table formats and their consistency mechanisms.
Bytecode Interpreters for Tiny Computers
dercuano.github.io
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The text discusses bytecode interpreters for small computers, highlighting a set of 35 instructions used for programming. It compares the efficiency of different coding methods, showing how various approaches affect the size of the compiled bytecode. Ultimately, it suggests that Squeak’s design, which combines a stack for intermediate results and a local-variable vector, achieves the best bytecode density.
Google Best Practices for Java Libraries
Google Best Practices for Java Libraries
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Google Best Practices for Java Libraries provide guidelines to help reduce issues for users of interconnected Java libraries. These rules are based on years of experience and aim to improve library quality and minimize conflicts. The list of best practices is open-ended, allowing for new additions over time.
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