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The Weekly Variable
Each week I’ll have a curated list of links from the latest tech to just interesting reads or videos, as well as updates on my own entrepreneurial endeavors. Thanks for joining on this journey!
Topics for this week:
Google App Engine
I’ve been exploring website hosting options recently, and along the way, I found I can’t escape my full-stack development roots. I want to be able to control the back-end as well as the front-end, and, unfortunately, the more convenient web hosting options won’t cut it since convenience comes at a price of limitation. I’ll have to host a full app instead if I’m to live the full Htmx + Go dream. After some conversations with Perplexity AI, I landed on Google App Engine for hosting for now. After minimal setup, I had a basic website with a Go back-end up and running. Anxious to expand on this foundation, but I’m optimistic with progress so far. More websites to be built in Google App Engine soon!
Aceternity
On the front-end of web development, I learned about Aceternity this week after catching Fireship’s recent video, which is a component library of some really impressive visual effects that are free to use for any website (assuming you’re using React). The React aspect is disappointing because I’m trying to avoid React, so I’ll have to do some work to de-React some of the styling, but Aceternity is still a great source of inspiration none-the-less. I’m all for more ways to dress up a Webflow site and expedite the process of building impactful websites efficiently.
Figure AI
The prospects of general purpose robots are only gaining momentum as AI development also continues to charge ahead. Robotics company Figure AI was valued at $2.6 billion this week after investments from OpenAI, Nvidia, and Jeff Bezos, among others. Figure AI is focused on building a general purpose humanoid robot and clearly some big tech players believe they a good candidate to do so, but this investment also shows that others are thinking robots will play a key role in the near future.
As mentioned a few times before, a majority of the pieces are there for a humanoid robot to be wandering around the city or roaming around the office. Many current AI models can easily interpret human speech and respond quite quickly. Language Processing Units like Groq are cutting that response time down to less than a second, enabling a basically normal conversation rate. At the current pace of innovation, it may be less than a few years before you’re having a face-to-robotic-face chat with one of these machines on a street near you.
The Ultimate Investing Algorithm
Not long ago, I touched on my interest in brushing up on my investing knowledge, so this Veritasium video was very timely. The Trillion Dollar Equation. A mathematician determined that the randomness of a stock is somewhat predictable, and from that, was able to determine a price for stock options which at the time were previously incalculable. I am a big believer that math is at the heart of nearly everything so this further supports that belief, even something as wildly complex as the stock market. What’s even more incredible is that multiple people discovered this same mathematical formula around the same time, only solidifying the underlying principle. As usual, Veritasium does a much better job explaining that I could hope to so watch and be amazed!
Dune: Part Two
Dune: Part Two officially releases today, although the trend of starting showings on Thursday has been in full swing for many years now, so I have already seen a Thursday showing, and will probably have seen it twice by the end of the weekend.
I was a big fan of the 2021 Dune, directed by Denis Villeneuve, so I had high expectations for the sequel, and I am happy to say it did not disappoint. It’s visually stunning, well acted and continuously entertaining.
No podcast recommendations in the newsletter this week, but I am recommending Dune Part Two, which is 166 minutes, basically the same length of my standard podcast recommendation and also well worth the time!
And that’s it for this week! Another newsletter about AI and robots and a movie that surprisingly doesn’t involve either.
Those are the links that stuck with me throughout the week and a glimpse into what I personally worked on.
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