Weekly Thing 318 / Sycophancy, Rollerblades, Yoga
Good morning! ☕️
What a week for the technology community in the Twin Cities! On Saturday we had Minnebar 19 and it was absolutely incredible. On Wednesday we had Tech Connect 2025 hosted by the MnTech. Just three days between them. Minnebar is home to passionate technologists that want to share and learn as a community. TechConnect is the same for companies and technology professionals in the market. In one you wear shorts, the other business casual. It was great to be at both, see so many people, hear about so much AI progress, and learn from different people. You'll see a lot of blog posts from these events below.
This issue also marks our first donation from Weekly Thing Supporting Memberships — we raised $623.87 for Creative Commons! A sincere thank you to everyone involved. Creative Commons works on a problem that doesn't get enough attention by creating legal frameworks that support remix culture and sharing of creative work. I license each issue of the Weekly Thing with a Creative Commons license. I do the same with my blog. This may sound boring but it matters. Copyright law can strangle creativity and culture. Creative Commons is doing good work to enable an alternative path.
Next week I'll share the organization we are supporting next year! Thank you again! 💛
Brilliant yellow tulips on bloom at the Minnesota Landscape Arboretum. 🌷
May 04, 2025
Chanhassen, MN
Notable
Expanding on what we missed with sycophancy
Willison's commentary on OpenAI recent issue with "sycophancy" in the model. A recent model from OpenAI was overly praising — and for those that have used AI a lot you may be thinking they already do a pretty decent job of making you feel smarter and better than you probably are. This excerpt from Willison caught my eye.
Here's yet more evidence that the entire AI industry runs on "vibes":
In addition to formal evaluations, internal experts spend significant time interacting with each new model before launch. We informally call these "vibe checks"--a kind of human sanity check to catch issues that automated evals or A/B tests might miss.
This tickles a bit of unknown that bothers me in these LLM's and also bothered me with Neural Nets in general — they are black boxes to everyone. Nobody really knows what happens inside. So how do you train them — with "vibe checks"? Sounds a lot like how we dealt with way smaller models.
On one hand I can get comfortable with this. Neuroscientists don't specifically understand how our brains work after all, and we don't discount all input from our brain because of that. Mystery at the center of it all may be just fine.
However it does put in stark contrast a need for determinism. In computing we have many things that fundamentally need to be deterministic. We need to be mindful of the problem we are solving, and insure that an open approach, where we fundamentally don't know the "why" of any of it, is okay.
Post-Chat UI - Allen Pike
Pike has great examples of how products are using LLMs to just be smarter and more intelligent for users. Great stuff to consider in your own offering.
Helmdar: 3D Scanning Brooklyn on Rollerblades
I absolutely love everything about this — building a homemade "helmdar" by mounting LiDAR sensors on a helmet and rollerblading around? 💛 What a magical world where you can do this. It all makes me want to go get a LiDAR even though I have no idea what I would do with it.
As an Experienced LLM User, I Actually Don't Use Generative LLMs Often | Max Woolf's Blog
For many users ChatGPT is the interface for LLM, but the OpenAI API is a much more powerful way to interact.
To that end, I never use ChatGPT.com or other normal-person frontends for accessing LLMs because they are harder to control. Instead, I typically access the backend UIs provided by each LLM service, which serve as a light wrapper over the API functionality which also makes it easy to port to code if necessary. Accessing LLM APIs like the ChatGPT API directly allow you to set system prompts which control the "rules" for the generation that can be very nuanced. Specifying specific constraints for the generated text such as "keep it to no more than 30 words" or "never use the word 'delve'" tends to be more effective in the system prompt than putting them in the user prompt as you would with ChatGPT.com.
This is the capability I tapped into for the Weekly Thing. And now that I have an easy bridge to hit the OpenAI interfaces with Shortcuts I have a super simple way to create logical "agents" (a stretch) that I can easily instantiate and access from my phone whenever I want. Crazy stuff.
Mentra Smart Glasses: The AI Agents Interface
A lot of cool things with this product (project?). Love that it is open source. Like the idea that it is a hardware platform to innovate off of. Cheap so lowering barriers to adoption. However, none of this will be a scaled product. I've generally warmed to the idea that Smart Glasses, like Smart Watches, will likely be a platform with scale at some point. However I think we are further away from a scaled technology platform than we realize. In the meantime, open platforms to encourage hobbyists and innovation is exactly the place to play.
llm-prices.com
Willison put his LLM pricing calculator tool on a standalone website and added some new features. I debated linking right to the tool but this short writeup highlights how is using LLMs to actually make the tool as well. This highlight "using a vibe-coded bash script that I forgot to save anywhere" feels about right. He's adding features using LLM as well, and using AI for design elements.
Journal
Stats on Minnebar 19:
- Largest minnebar ever
- 167 sessions
- Over 2,000 registered attendees
Wow! 😮
Super strong kickoff to Minnebar -- one of the best I can recall. Great energy, logistics well orchestrated, materials very well done. Amazing. 👏👏👏
Great to have so many #TeamSPS folks here at #Minnebar19! Know more to be more! 💙
Garrick van Buren, Jim Bernard, and I after his Minimal Viable Polka session at Minnebar 19. I feel very confident that this is the first accordion experience at Minnebar -- and it was a great time!
I love the passion and excitement that people bring to the Mega-Minne-Multi-Indie-Mini Arcade at Minnebar.
Me and my cousin Quinn wrapping up a great day at Minnebar 19 -- it was my 19th Minnebar and his 1st! Related, I’m the oldest of the cousins and he is the youngest, with 13 more between us.
Happy Star Wars Day -- May the 4th be with you!
Finished 2.34 mile walk in 50 minutes (21.37 min/mile). Walked around a new lake when visiting Quinn’s new apartment. Nice apartment and nice lake! 🚶♂️
The tulips are blooming and looking amazing at the Arboretum.
Growth Cup Goes to Warsaw
May 4, 2025 at 2:31 PM
When I visited our new Warsaw office I was able to meet several brand new TeamSPS members as well as many of our Kyiv-based team that I hadn’t seen since before the pandemic. I also was able to bring the SPS Growth Cup there as part of the office opening celebration!
Here is the Growth Cup safely laying in its very rugged case ready as I received instructions on handling and the mechanics of the case.
Read the full journey on my blog...
Finished cycling 11.6 miles in 62.6 minutes. First time outside on the bike this year. Very nice and lovely ride around the lakes. 🚴♂️
Movie: Fighting With My Family
May 4, 2025 at 10:00 PM
We fired up some popcorn and watched Fighting With My Family this evening. It was a good story mostly about the relationship between siblings that have the same goal but only one gets there. But it was billed as a comedy, which I wouldn’t call it that at all. It was produced by Dwayne Johnson but he’s only in four scenes. Stephen Merchant wrote and directed it, and he’s very funny but there wasn’t much funny here. And Vince Vaughn, whose comedy I particularly liked, was in it and frankly had the funniest takes in the whole thing.
So it wasn’t that it was a bad movie. It was a good enough movie told with the backdrop of professional wrestling. But given the people involved in the movie, and the billing of “comedy” we were expecting a very different thing than we got.
I created my 100th photo collection on micro.blog today! It has been a very useful feature.
How to Newsletter: Lessons from 300 Issues of the Weekly Thing
May 6, 2025 at 8:00 PM
This is an article version of the presentation I gave at Minnebar 19 on How to Newsletter.
What I wanted to talk about is “How To Newsletter.” I’ve been sending a newsletter now for eight years, and I’ve learned a lot in that process. I thought it’d be fun to share that knowledge. I actually planned to do this session in 2023–so if you’re thinking, “Didn’t he already do this?”–I had to cancel it that year. Now we’re two years later, and I’ve got two more years of learnings and 50 more issues of my newsletter under my belt.
Read this full article on my blog…
My Minnebar 19 in Sessions
May 6, 2025 at 9:00 PM
Session 0 feat. Dr. AnnMarie Thomas!
Recipe for play:
- Joy
- Whimsy
- New People
- Surprise
Playful learning rules:
- Be kind
- Play well with others
- Clean up your messes
Read more about the other sessions on my blog…
What does Minnebar mean?
May 6, 2025 at 9:30 PM
I was having a conversation last week about Minnebar and there was a question about the name. What does it mean? Why Minnebar? It has nothing to do with being a bar with drinks. And it isn’t mini!
A super abbreviated history to get to the name.
It starts with Tim O’Reilly and O’Reilly Media. At one point O’Reilly hosted these “Friends of O’Reilly” events which as an acronym is FOO. It was Friends of O’Reilly, or Foo Camp. These were special events with an open agenda. Think wiki meets conference -- or unconference.
The community decided there should be more of these to encourage sharing ideas in an unstructured way. In 2005 the first BarCamp was hosted to do that. In programming the most common variable reference is foobar, which isn’t the military fubar. So, not FooCamp but BarCamp.
There were BarCamps all over the place. It was a big trend. So when Ben, Luke, and a handful of folks decided we should have one in Minneapolis. But instead of it being BarCamp Minneapolis, let’s brand it a bit. Minnebar!
That is how you get there. So Minnebar is the largest unconference in North America, and I'm nearly positive it is also the longest running.
Great start to MnTech Tech Connect 2025 this morning with Joel Crandell starting things off and then John Sweeney leading a wonderful keynote on having an innovative mindset and being comfortable being uncomfortable. 👏
Great exploration of Spatial Computing at MnTech Tech Connect 2025 with Amir Berenjian of REM5 Studios. Pragmatic view highlighting where these solutions are solving big problems.
Fun to see Sam Pierson, TeamSPS alumni, at MnTech Tech Connect 2025. Was cool to hear what their team at Qlik is creating.
Wonderful #TeamSPS group photo at MnTech Tech Connect 2025. Was very sad that I missed the photo -- I got talking to people after the morning keynote and completely missed it!
Learned a lot at “Economic Update - Tariffs & General Economic Trends” with Matt Haggerty of RSM at MnTech Tech Connect 2025.
55% chance of recession -- Economist speak for “very high”. Predicted April will be the last month of positive job growth. Many false signals due to tariff “pull-ins”.
Was fun to share the stage with Melissa Flicek and Jenn Zmuda at the final session of MnTech Tech Connect 2025 during the CIO & CTO Panel. Many topics around AI adoption and leading digital transformations.
End of day #TeamSPS photo at MnTech Tech Connect 2025. Sitting in the chair was by popular demand. 😬😊
Duluth / Stairs.
Seated for Nate Bargatze "Big Dumb Eyes" World Tour at AMSOIL Arena in Duluth. Looking forward to seeing him for the first time.
Nate Bargatze in Duluth
May 8, 2025 at 10:59 PM
We had a night full of laughs seeing Nate Bargatze for the first time -- and as it happens it was the very first show of his new Big Dumb Eyes tour here in Duluth! The show was completely sold out. Julian McCollough served as host and there were short bits from Steven Rogers, Keith Alberstadt, and Aaron Weber before Nate took the stage for the main event. Hilarious stuff! 🤣
Briefly
I wasn't expecting to see Ethereum Name Service and United Nations in the same headline. 😊 I’m a total fan of ENS and love how they look at Crypto as an extension of the web, not in competition with it. Crypto would do so much better if we flushed the greed out and let this tech solve real problems. → ENS at the United Nations: How ENS is Rethinking Brands and IP in Web3 | ENS Blog
This is a good read, and I love the handwritten blog post. → Wherein I Go to Yoga (for the first time) | ruk.ca
Best news that could happen for Redis. The follow up post is also a good read. → Redis is open source again -
I loved this walk down memory lane with email, and a great history too. MIME types, uuencode, and mountains of RFCs for the win. I was at the tail end of it but I did plenty of USENET downloads with uudecode to get binary files off the nascent Internet well before the web. → Attachments helped email go global
Good story about building a small new product and getting initial traction. It took 5 years to get to the headline number which is about five times longer than a lot of folks dream it will take. → How I Created Perfect Wiki and Reached $250K in Annual Revenue Without Investors / Habr
I had no idea that there were Signal clones that used the same protocol and then did, well whatever they want with the info. Notably they could be archiving in plaintext all your beautifully encrypted and secure messages. I get (sort of) why Signal might allow this but I also think it has the potential to be massively brand damaging. They could require authentication in a way that stopped this. → TM SGNL, the obscure unofficial Signal app Mike Waltz uses to text with Trump officials
Security threats abound. → Hacking Spree Hits UK Retail Giants | WIRED
I took a workshop from Hansel and his newsletters are wonderful to read and filled with amazing images. → Photos From the Great Smoky Mountains National Park
Brilliant marketing from LEGO. I'd love to drive one of these. → Formula 1 Drivers Just Hit the Track in These Full-Size Lego Cars | WIRED
A blog commenting system backed by Github Issues? Huh. I guess so. → utterances
So much variety on the various ways that Daft Punk played with synth. → The vocal effects of Daft Punk
Fortune
Here is your fortune…
Unlock surprises faster than AI glasses! 🤓
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