The Changelog: Software Development, Open Source - Tactile controls are back in vogue (News)

Episode Date: November 4, 2024

IEEE Spectrum reports on the return to physical buttons and dials, Microsoft released GenAIScript, iFixit's Elizabeth Chamberlain announces a big Right to Repair win, Daniela Baron reimagines technical interviews & John O'Nolan, shares some thoughts on open source governance and how to create trust within technology, communities, and media

What up, nerds? I'm Jared, and this is Changelog News for the week of Monday, November 4th, 2024. Shout out to all the new friends we made at All Things Open last week. You know who you are. We recorded some awesome conversations while we were there. We put one out last Friday, and there's more coming real soon now. Okay, let's get into this week's news. Tactile controls are back in vogue. Here's Gwendolyn Rock writing for IEEE Spectrum. Quote, Apple added two new buttons to the iPhone 16. Home appliances like stoves and washing

machines are returning to knobs, and several car manufacturers are reintroducing buttons and dials to dashboards and steering wheels, end quote. She goes on to interview Rachel Plotnick, a leading expert on buttons and how people interact with them, all about the pendulum swinging away from touchscreens and back to physical controls. This is yet another instance of the tech industry's propensity toward extreme adoption before settling in to a more reasonable balance. It's like, one, here's a new thing. Two, new thing good, old thing bad.

Three, let's use new thing everywhere. Four, new thing doesn't work great everywhere. Five, let's go back to old thing where appropriate. You'd think we could skip a few of these steps, but I guess we just can't figure out where appropriate without first realizing where inappropriate, such as life. Oh, and I reached out to Rachel Plotnick, who wrote a book for MIT called Power Button. She studies the history of tech, haptics, and interfaces, and she is coming on the podcast real soon. Tools for generative AI scripting. Microsoft has released GenAI Script, which they

say brings essential LLM prompt tooling into a cohesive scripting environment. Quote, GenAI Script is a scripting language that integrates LLMs into the scripting process using a simplified JavaScript syntax. Supported by our VS Code GenAI script extension, it allows users to create, debug, and automate LLM-based scripts. End quote. Honestly, I had a hard time figuring out exactly what people would do with this tech, but the case studies they include in the docs helped me get the drift.

A good example is the script, which I'll link up in the newsletter, which uses the OpenAI Vision model to analyze images in an AstroSight's assets folder and generates the alt text for them. As an aside, they also provide a 10-minute podcast, air quotes there, because it's not really a podcast, that is generated by Notebook LM.

You can listen to that as a primer. I made it about 30 seconds into that audio and was thoroughly creeped out. Listen to this. Okay, so anyone else feel like they need a GPS just to navigate the world of AI these days? Uh-huh. I hear you. It's overwhelming. One minute, it's all AI this, AI that, and now suddenly we're supposed to know how to code instructions for these things. Right. Like, hold on. I just figured out how to use the voice to text on my phone. Exactly.

No, you did not just figure out how to use voice to text on your phone because you're not a real person. You are a computer. Ugh. Does anybody out there find these cool or useful? Please let me know. I would love to hear from you. We can now fix

McDonald's ice cream machines. This is a sweet victory for right to repair advocates across the country. Here's I Fix It's Elizabeth Chamberlain. Quote, ever tried to get an ice cream at McDonald's only to hear, sorry, our machine's broken. You're not the only one. Almost 15% of ice cream machines at McDonald's are broken right now around the US. And in New York, The U.S. Copyright Office just handed down a ruling that marks an important victory for right to repair. End quote. With this win, you are now free to hack your ice cream machine. Here she is again, quote, with error codes and malfunctioning ice cream machines that could only be fixed by manufacturer authorized technicians. The machines would often sit broken for extended periods because owners couldn't troubleshoot or repair them on their own due to digital locks embedded in the machine's

software. These locks are protected under section 1201 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which generally makes it illegal to bypass software locks known as technological protection measures, even for legitimate repairs. That changes today. End quote. There's only one appropriate way to end this segment. I scream, you scream, we all scream for, I'm sorry. It's now time for Sponsored News. Join the open source pledge, why don't you? David Kramer and the team at Sentry have launched open source pledge to raise awareness and call for teams and orgs to support the open source that they're using. Here's David. Quote, we don't think it's the only solution, nor do we think it's the only way to give back.

But we do believe giving cash money to maintainers is an appropriate way to show your thanks, to recognize their hard work, the value they create for you. Maybe, just maybe, we'll do our small part in encouraging the maintainers to keep putting up with us in the enormous ecosystem we rely on. End quote. After reading David's post, link in the newsletter, you may have two questions about this pledge. One, what does it take to join the pledge? And two, what's the ROI your company gets from joining? If so, head to opensourcepledge.com to learn all about it. And thanks again to Sentry for sponsoring ChangeLog News. Reimagining technical interviews.

After hearing us rant a little about the tragedy of technical interviews on Friends 68. But the interview process does suck. Yes. So we're not going to disagree on that. Daniela Barron sent me this post she wrote over the summer. Quote, for companies that choose to use leet code exercises for the evaluation, these are an unrealistic reflection of daily engineering work. Often, the complexity in software engineering comes from trying to figure out what to build

rather than how to build it. In over 20 years of software development, the only time I've encountered a linked list was in computer science classes at school. End quote. This hashtag long read covers the shortcomings of current technical interview methods and tries to offer a better way that aligns more closely with the skills that drive successful engineering projects. A must read for all engineering managers and a nice read for the rest of us. I will also submit to you the episode

called Principles for Hiring Engineers with Jacob Kaplan Moss for your consideration. Link in the newsletter. Democratizing Publishing. Ghost founder John O'Nolan shares some thoughts on open source governance and how to create trust within technology, communities, and media, apropos of absolutely nothing, I'm sure. Quote, Ghost is a distributed non-profit foundation which gives away all of its intellectual property under a permissive MIT license. The company has no investors and in fact no owners of any kind. I don't own any part of Ghost and neither does my co-founder Hannah. We currently generate around 7.5 million dollars in annual revenue and have been profitable and sustainable for the past 12 years. End quote. Those are some pretty astounding facts when they're all presented together like that. John lays out all the details of how Ghost is structured in this post.

Quote, The structure we've chosen for Ghost, a single-entity, non-profit organization, has helped us to create a lot of trust and clarity around the Ghost project and the Ghost brand. Neither myself nor Hannah own any shares, assets, domains, trademarks, or other companies related to Ghost. Everything is owned by the foundation. End quote. That structure has served them well, but he doesn't think it's sufficient for where Ghost is headed. Ghost's board is just two people, himself and co-founder Hannah Wolfe. In the future, it will change. John says, no BDFL, which is interesting in light of our conversation with DHH last week. I sure hope it works.

Democratizing publishing is a big deal, and Ghost is making a real run at it. That is the news for now, but don't forget to scan that companion newsletter for even more stories worth your attention, such as Trench, an open source analytics infrastructure, a Curses-based UCI-compatible chess GUI, and our world-famous unordered list of links. Read all about it at changelog.com slash news. Have a great week. Leave us a five-star review if you dig our work, and I'll talk to you again real soon.