Category: Hi tek

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Jon Udell’s 7 Guiding Principles for Working with LLMs has some really solid advice on using Large Language Models. His usage is mostly around software development and writing. Two areas where these LLMs can really shine.

By the way, Jon’s Seven ways to think like the web is still as relevant today as it was in 2011.

I’ve only dipped my toe into the LLM pool thus far. As I embark on a personal project, I’ll follow these principals while I lean on LLMs to make up for my lack of recent knowledge and experience in developing tech. I find them to be especially helpful with the syntax and best practices type questions I would have been scouring in Stackoverflow for in the past.

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Brian X. Chen writes that It’s Time to Stop Paying for a VPN. I think he’s right, especially given that some VPN providers may be owned by less-than-trustworthy parties. For a time, I was using iVPN, which still seems to be a reasonable choice. However, when my subscription lapsed, I didn’t renew. My motivation to use a VPN just wasn’t as strong as it once was.

For those that still need a VPN, self-hosting is an interesting option. The article mentions Algo, which looks straightforward and well documented. I haven’t tried it out myself, but if I feel the need to for a VPN in the future, I might opt for Algo over a commercial provider.

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NYTimes: The Lesson We Are Learning From Zoom

Unfortunately, I’m not sure we ever learn this lesson about privacy.

Brian Chen has some advice at the end of this article we should all follow:

… be mindful of what it means to tell others to use a product with weak data security. Try to avoid using it for sensitive matters, like work meetings that discuss trade secrets.