a lowkey recommendation

Thu, 06 Feb 2020 22:50:17 GMT

if you've got anything ranging from a passing interesting in tech news, to, y'know, deep in the thick of it all day errday—you should probably be reading Normcore Tech.

it's a newsletter written by an east-coast data scientist, about "issues in tech that I’m not seeing covered in the media or blogs and want to read about." it turns out i also want to read about them!

for instance, here's a piece on the creator of Nginx getting arrested last month. while the mainstream news sites covering this story got the main points correct, what those stories lacked was the context/backstory that this author provides, which is just dang interesting in-and-of-itself (how Sysoev got his start is super-fun!), but also helped answer some of the questions i had: "woah wtf? is this just some Russian oligarch being comically evil again? did something happen? how is this related to the acquisition by an American company?" etc, etc.

(if you're a techie, the importance of Nginx is self-evident, and if not, that's chill; she explains that too.)

her bit on the deceptiveness of big tech companies' claims of AI prowess is another example of her solid writing approach. while companies misstating/exaggerating claims is hardly news or surprising, her doggedness in clearly "following the money" and explicating why this specific claim, and why now is quite useful.

that concludes my Official Recommendation TM

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Lost in Lualand

a lowkey recommendation