NL24 - Certified and it feels so good

Hello from my home in Matinkyla! This is NordLetter #24, a weekly newsletter on living and walking in Finland. Each week I share some of the interesting things I found on the web.

Previous editions can be found here. You can reach out to me by replying on this mail or adding a comment on this. I am also posting on Threads.

One of my goals for this year was to get the Azure Administrator Associate certificate. On the 3rd September, I sat for the exam and passed.

It was a tough exam. And it felt so good to have this under my belt.

This weekend, I did not have to go to the library to study. I did go to the library on Sunday, but I did not have to.

/techStuff

John wrote a long post about the new changes Apple made to iOS to better comply with the DMA. I have thoughts. Two branches of thoughts primarily.

About default apps and browser choice screens.

1. About the actual changes that Apple is having to make. As an example, asking the user again and again, if they chose Safari to confirm their choice, whenever they change they get a new device, for example. I do not think it is a big deal. Sure, it's not ideal. But how often do you change your device? So that's OK.
2. These things are about choices, right. The user has a choice now. Sure they might pick something else. Or they might decide to stick with Safari.

The other thing is cultural. The difference between how Americans and Europeans look at their governments and their corporations. Europeans and Indians, and Japanese and the rest of the governments. Everybody is coming up with legislations. And I feel all of this could have been avoided. I feel the major thing here was people were unhappy paying the App Store commissions (taxes?).

One final thing about this is maybe Apple knew legislations will come. And they will have to run the App Store based on different geo-political boundaries. They had different rules for China. So they felt the optimal choice was to run it as they could for as long as they could and then fight all the legislation that came up around the world.

I added the wirecutter show to my podcast rotation recently. I have referred to Wirecutter for a lot of my purchases since long. The episode this week was about how and when to get your children phones. It was a fun episode. The hosts are nice.

If you're into podcasts, give them a listen.

/reading

What a 160-year-old theory about coal predicts about our self-driving future
As things get better, we start using more of it, therefore any efficiency improvements are not realised.

How Teacups and Demons Help Demystify Physics

In Literature Class, the book distilled from his Berkeley lectures, he noted—according to my translation of his Spanish text—that, “it has seemed to us that literature is a kind of combinatorial art in which fantasy, imagination, truth, lies, any postulate, any theory” are welcome. Scientists, on the other hand, he said, it has often seemed, occupied a very different world—one of certainty, confidence. “But when I read about Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle, I said ‘damn, they’re like us.’ ”

With time, I can see how the rigidity of science can be a problem at times. This post further feeds into that belief of mine. I am not saying fuck science and all that. Science helps us in understanding the world. But there is just so much that we don’t know.

Why A.I. Isn’t Going to Make Art

any writing that deserves your attention as a reader is the result of effort expended by the person who wrote it. Effort during the writing process doesn’t guarantee the end product is worth reading, but worthwhile work cannot be made without it. The type of attention you pay when reading a personal e-mail is different from the type you pay when reading a business report, but in both cases it is only warranted when the writer put some thought into it.

If you enjoyed reading this, and know someone else who might, please consider forwarding this to them. It would help this grow and make me happy. 😄

Until next week.