Five Things: Altman, Helicopter Parents, Chinese Shopping, OnlyFans, Coding as a Craft
It's Sunday Morning, time for coffee and this newsletter.
Thanks for opening this email today! I’m glad you chose to read my Sunday compilation of stories I found somewhere and somehow on the interwebs.
There are two big stories for me this week. One is the ouster of Sam Altman at OpenAI, because it will be interesting to see how this will affect the development of Artificial Intelligence. The other story is a lot more personal. On Wednesday I stopped having a post-COVID headache, which really made my day. The fog has lifted and I feel so much better now.
Aside from that, Israel is on my mind a lot. One thing I really don’t understand is that people are very eager to forget that Hamas is a terrorist organization that brutally killed more than 1200 people and kidnapped 240 people. Just because they carried a blue ID card from Israel, these people became victims. The actions of the Hamas terrorists are diametrically opposed to our liberal Western values. Israel needed to retaliate in order to defend and protect itself. And just like with the Russian war on Ukraine, Israel is defending the West as well. We need to support Israel and Ukraine no matter what. I hate it that war is necessary right now as too many people will die. I also hate it that countries have to spend more for the military again instead of investing money into education. But I really do love our liberal Western democracies. And we need to protect us against the aggressors who hate this lifestyle we so much embrace. Hamas is the aggressor and not Israel. Gaza needs to be freed from Hamas. And then, hopefully, there can be a slow and careful way to peace. It’s shameful to see how people think of Hamas as freedom fighters and how much they distrust Israel. This current wave of anti-semitism is really disturbing and I’m appalled by how people resort to blaming Israel in this conflict. Israel is a democracy and it needs our support.
Many Details of Sam Altman’s Ouster Are Murky. But Some Things Are Clear.
Although Sam Altman had been around the Silicon Valley tech elite for quite a while, he jumped into mainstream focus almost exactly one year ago when his company OpenAI launched ChatGPT-3. And now he’s out. It’s a developing story and some people already compare this with Steve Jobs ouster from Apple in the 80s.
(LINK)
The Final Frontier for Helicopter Parents
The first thing I do when I get added from a Whatsapp group for my kids is immedieatly leaving it, before I lose my mind. For some strange reason there are parents who are joining groups for parents of college kids.
(LINK)
How China took over the world’s online shopping carts
This is something I really don’t get. I’ve been following this new wave of ecommerce for quite a while now, but I really don’t find this appealing at all. FOMO is not a good guide for shopping, unless you want lots of people buy stuff they probably don’t need.
(LINK)
Inside an OnlyFans empire: Sex, influence and the new American Dream
This is a truly strange and bizarre world.
(LINK)
A Coder Considers the Waning Days of the Craft
It’s been a while that I coded something and I was never really good at it, as I taught it myself and just knew what I needed to complete a task. This new era of co-pilots would be really helpful for cretins like myself. But I do understand that coders look at this differently.
(LINK)
That’s it. Have an amazing Sunday!
— Nico