NL53 - My own writing Meetup

Hello from my home in Matinkylä! This is NordLetter #53, 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 Mastodon.

I am hosting my first ever (and Espoo's first ever) Shut-Up & Write session on 6th April.

I had joined a previous session at Oodi Library back in Feb. While writing during the session, I had wondered out loud what it would take to host my own session in Espoo. During the session itself, I had finished applying to be a host.

Over the next month or so, with the wonderful Cecilia and team, from organiser support, I managed to get access to the Meetup group for ShutUp & Write.

Yesterday I looked at the availability of the meeting rooms in Iso Omena library. I found space in one meeting room for the coming Sunday.

I would ideally like to do this every Saturday going forward, and at a fixed time. But that is dependent on availability of the room.

I am excited for this.

Writing can be lonely at times. Sitting and talking to other fellow writers can be encouraging and fun.

/five things to share

1. Seth Godin - The second time through

The first time, we’re not only wayfaring, we’re asking, arguing, compromising, re-working, re-starting and exploring.
The second time, we have a map and we’re ready to go.

2. Apple Seeds iOS 18.4 and iPadOS 18.4 Release Candidate With Priority Notifications, Ambient Music and More

With this release, Apple Intelligence will finally be available in localised Indian English. The great Siri redesign is not happening this year. The rest of the features are nothing special. I did not change my locale or language to US-ENG in order to test these features out. They never felt that important or great to be honest. So, now is my chance to see what the hoopla is all about.

Also, Apple has announced WWDC 2025 Dates: June 9–13.

3. The Illusion of a Smart Home

How did we get here? Pete Warden, a former Google researcher who worked on IoT and related technologies, has an answer that makes sense. “I think the original sin in this space is the desire to capture users in a walled garden, for purely business reasons,” Warden says. “Apple, Google, and Amazon all do this with their ecosystems, but independent manufacturers also want a direct relationship with their customers, so they build their own apps that usually require setting up yet another account.”

I have Deltaco smart bulbs in my home. They do not work with Apple Home. The one thing I want it to do is based on the time of day (whether the sun is out or not) change the colour temperature of the bulbs. I can not do it.

4. New plastic dissolves in the ocean overnight, leaving no microplastics

Go Japan!

5. Your TV is watching you

The shift toward ad-supported everything has been happening across the TV landscape. People buy new TVs less frequently these days, so TV makers want to make money off the TVs they’ve already sold. Samsung has Samsung Ads, LG has LG Ad Solutions, Vizio has Vizio Ads, and so on and so forth. Tech companies, notably Amazon and Google, have gotten into the mix too, not only making software and hardware for TVs but also leveraging the massive amount of data they have on their users to sell ads on their TV platforms. These companies also sell data to advertisers and data brokers, all in the interest of knowing as much about you as possible in the interest of targeting you more effectively. It could even be used to train AI.

This is the second time I am reading this article. Not this same exact article, but something along the lines of - you should not connect your TV to the internet.

Back then, I had wondered what could one do. All modern TVs are connected TVs. It is not possible to buy a TV without the smarts in it.

Of course, once you do, they will spy on you, see what you see, all to sell you relevant ads.

Fuck relevant ads.

/new posts

These are the posts I’ve written this week. Click the links to read them.

1. A weird day
2. Be a hybrid - have expertise in 2-3 things
3. My ego would not let me say sorry - a poem
4. Duplicating everything
5. Boiling frogs and global warming
6. How would the web work in an increasingly AI-fied world

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.