Links #70

Ian G. McDowell on laying out a book with CSS. Covers a lot of the foundation.

John H. Meyer on AI speaking in Steve Jobs’ voice, saying words written by ChatGPT.

Mike Crittenden on the best stuff and the worst stuff. Not caring about stuff does seem ideal.

Typst, a new markup-based typesetting system that wants to take on LaTeX. I don’t know that it’ll be as useful for the kinds of things I typeset, but still interesting.

Matt Webb’s ChatGPT e-ink clock. Cool.

Felt is now a flagship sustaining member of QGIS. Glad to hear. I’ve been playing around with QGIS more lately and it’s pretty powerful.

Jason Kehe’s fairly mean article on Brandon Sanderson and Brandon’s response.

Clive Thompson on ChatGPT not replacing programmers just yet. Also see Paul Kedrosky and Eric Norlin on AI eating software for a different viewpoint. I don’t know what I think.

textra, a macOS command-line app to extract text from images, PDFs, and audio. Cool.

Neil Clarke of Clarkesworld has opened submissions again. But for how long, who knows.

Paul Butler on the WebAssembly rift between WASI and the web platform.

Rich Harris on SvelteKit moving to JS from TS. Intriguing.

Laurence Tratt on how big a programming language should be. Here’s to small languages.

Robin Rendle on reading being messy. I like this. Feels more human.

Steven Heller with a little typographic trivia about a full stop in the New York Times nameplate.

James Cook makes art with typewriters. Wow.

Stanko’s Rayven, a line-hatched 3D renderer. I really like this aesthetic. Also Michael Fogleman’s ln, another line-based 3D renderer, and Piter Pasma on rayhatching.

Tyler Cowen on AI and Americans living in a sort of bubble outside history for the past few decades. Sans the AI part, this is something I’ve often thought about — how Americans have had it atypically nice for a while (when compared to the rest of the world and the rest of history), and how this most likely won’t last.

luckbeaweirdo on curing their asthma by self-infecting with hookworm. Whew.

Matthew Butterick on AI obliterating the rule of law. Cogent points. AIs being above the law doesn’t seem like a great outcome.