South Software Content Suggestion #10
What I read and watch this week (Friday, September 27, 2024)
We’re back this week with new content to enjoy! Here I review content I consumed in the last week, so you can decide whether to go for it or not.
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Books
I wish I came to this book sooner. It is really a deep dive into human thinking and all the way it can go wrong. Well, it can’t be all of them but a really good amount. After reading this, also only in part, you will look differently at you and others.
Articles
Founder Mode, hackers, and being bored by tech
Some weeks ago, Paul Graham dropped Founder Mode, basically arguing that founders have all the answers and the employees should be micromanaged so that they don’t get in the way. This article is a take on why this view is plain wrong, and how the Silicon Valley’s obsession about founders is making tech news more about exuberant people than tech itself.
Linked to the previous article, a comparison between the hacker culture and the founders culture, taking as examples two famous alumni of Y-combinator: Aaron Swartz and Sam Altman.
Stop Trying To Replace Your SaaS Products With AI
Some leaders are thinking to leverage AI tools to rewrite the SaaS tools they are using internally and thus stop paying subscriptions. This article shows why it is usually a bad idea.
Kids who use ChatGPT as a study assistant do worse on tests
If you spend some time on LinkedIn, you’ve probably noticed people bragging about how they are making their children study with ChatGPT, calling it of course a “game changer”. But is it even a good idea? The first scientific study on children studying with ChatGPT doesn’t sound too promising. It is definitely not the end of the story, but it seems clear that just using an LLM as a study assistant is not enough for improving performance.
Let us conclude with another short read, this time not tech related. Yet useful in job and more generally in life. We are often prone to dismiss new ideas because they just do not resonate with us. This article claim that dismissing ideas is way too easy, but if we spend even only 5 minutes to think about a new idea, we can actually find value we could not expect.
Podcasts
CS professor and bestseller book author Cal Newport shares his view about technology and work, productivity, life, as well as his thoughts on the relationship between children and the internet and how he manages to produce so much while also having a family. Really great stuff.
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