Last updated: June 29, 2025
NL 60 - Trip to NYC III
Hello from my home in Matinkylä! This is NordLetter #60, a weekly newsletter on living and walking in Finland. Each week I share some of the interesting things I found on the web.
To follow the series, you can subscribe here. A new NordLetter will land in your inbox every Sunday. Not a fan of newsletters? No problem! You can read previous editions here. You can also subscribe to the RSS feed.
You can reach out to me by replying on this mail or adding a comment on this. I am also posting on Mastodon.
/trip to NYC III
day 6 - AMNH
We had reserved this day to visit the Museum of Natural History. We meandered through the city, going from our hotel, to Trump Tower and Billionaires’ Row, then through Central Park, finally emerging at the 81st street entrance. AMNH is massive, with four floors + LL filled with many specimens and artefacts.
We were interested in space, dinosaurs, and the human exhibition. We started at the Big Bang theatre, where in a dark theatre, Liam Neeson took us back to the birth of the universe. It was a wonderful experience, after which we walked down the cosmic pathway, with stations that pointed out different important milestones and some asteroid fragments.
From there, we went and saw the Planet Earth hall, and then to the insects exhibition, which had some live bugs, and ants in their environments. We stood in the Griffin Atrium, which is beautiful to look at. We passed a few more exhibitions on our way to the Ocean Life hall to look at the blue whale.
After that we looked at the human origins exhibition, which was fairly informative and beautiful to look at. I learnt something about genes and how men and women differ if we want to track our ancestors.
Finally, it was time for the dinosaurs! The dinosaur exhibition is on the fourth floor and it is massive!
Look, here we are with a T-rex.
And here’s a dinosaur eating another dinosaur.
And here we are with a massive one.
I had fun. We walked out of AMNH fully spent. We walked back through Central Park, ate ice-cream, and picked some things from the 5th Avenue Apple Store.
day 7 - NY Public Library + Times Square
I love libraries! On Library way, as you walk toward the New York Public Library, on the pathway, there are these golden things put in the ground with quotes from famous authors. I did not know such a thing existed. It was a fun surprise.
Most sections of the library were closed for use by researchers. What I saw were mostly exhibitions, which were great, but not what I was expecting to see. What I was expecting was something similar to the Helsinki library, but that is a little further away from the NYPL.
Somebody important used to sit in this chair.
After that we stopped for a dinner at the Tick Tock Diner. This was the last of my stops for this trip. An American style diner with milkshakes, fries and burgers. We ordered burger, fries and milkshake. And pancakes.
It did not disappoint.
We ended the day with a visit to Times Square. We picked a wrong day. It was the worst experience of the entire trip for me. It was chock-full of people. It smelled so bad. Savya was crying all the time. We wanted to leave ASAP.
But we got the picture, so here you go.
/five things to share
1. Death Stranding is out now!
I had access to it from earlier. I managed to play a little on Friday. I made the first delivery, connected that distro center to the chiral network. But that was it. Savya broke the HDMI cable that connects the PS5 to the TV. I need to get a new cable.
2. Why the AI revolution needs tollbooths
AI web crawlers had begun inundating news and information websites with thousands of requests a day compared to the handful they typically saw from search engines. Not only was the explosion in traffic ballooning hosting costs for these sites, the bots supplied zero traffic to them in return. Web traffic in exchange for permission to crawl has been one of the unseen foundations of the internet economy for a generation.
This sounds like a good idea. The AI companies pay if they want to access your site. It needs to happen at scale, a new way for people to get paid for what they write/make.
3. The AI Backlash Keeps Growing Stronger
“Our innovation ecosystem in the 20th century was about making opportunities for human flourishing more accessible,” says Shannon Vallor, a technology philosopher at the Edinburgh Futures Institute and author of The AI Mirror, a book about reclaiming human agency from algorithms. “Now, we have an era of innovation where the greatest opportunities the technology creates are for those already enjoying a disproportionate share of strengths and resources.”
Also, AI Killed My Job: Tech workers
I have been a software engineer at Google for several years. With the recent introduction of generative AI-based coding assistance tools, we are already seeing a decline in open source code quality 1 (defined as “code churn” - how often a piece of code is written only to be deleted or fixed within a short time). I am also starting to see a downward trend of (a) new engineers’ readiness in doing the work, (b) engineers’ willingness to learn new things, and (c) engineers’ effort to put in serious thoughts in their work.
4. Microsoft is moving antivirus providers out of the Windows kernel
It’s been nearly a year since a faulty CrowdStrike update took down 8.5 millionWindows-based machines around the world, and Microsoft wants to ensure such a problem never happens again. After holding a summitwith security vendors last year, Microsoft is poised to release a private preview of Windows changes that will move antivirus (AV) and endpoint detection and response (EDR) apps out of the Windows kernel.
Also, Windows is getting rid of the Blue Screen of Death after 40 years
The new design drops the traditional blue color, frowning face, and QR code in favor of a simplified black screen.
5. Michael Tsai - Blog - Software Is Changing (Again)
A positive take on the AI revolution. I have had a similar experience myself, where in I find myself making systems level decisions, and let the agent write the code, push to git, etc. I think that’s good.
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.