128. Liangzhu Tree
The cover photo shows a tree at Liangzhu Park, taken while I was lounging on a blanket in the grass. I thought about editing out the person, but I decided that having them there adds character—it makes it feel more “real” and less like a generic wallpaper.
Record the down-to-earth trending technologies seen every week, and publish them here after screening. If you find it good, you can follow this weekly to get update notifications.
Trending Tools
Experiencing ChatGPT Plugins
https://openai.com/waitlist/plugins
💡 The experience genuinely shocked me. Imagine when it matures: maybe the way users operate software becomes one big input box, and interaction design, user design and frontend work all get swept away by an input box plus a protocol for displaying results, a return to the essence of meeting user needs in the simplest, fastest and best way. Its strong context handling may even make it more convenient than a pure lookup tool.
😂 By then the software industry should see some interesting changes: app development would have no frontend or interaction work as we know it, you could even hand data to AI and have it generate the API for you, and data itself would become more important.
🏂 While trying plugins, I found dozens of them available, covering tools, travel, daily life, games, learning and more, though most are built abroad, and you can also develop, customize and publish your own following the manifest. You can use at most 3 plugins at a time, it is currently a bit slower than GPT-4, and when it cannot find the data it tries another way to look it up.
🤖 I asked Expedia to plan a trip to Tokyo, and it automatically arranged flights, hotels, sightseeing and car rental, even showing product cards that carry the parameters to the official site for one-click booking. It also supports interaction and remembers context, much more convenient than searching yourself.
🔮 I also played a text game, a kind of life-sim where you choose what to do step by step and it calculates your growth stats, good for anyone who likes raising-type games. There is room for imagination here too, like the Telegram bot Samantha I recommended last time.
🧐 The engineer’s role is slowly losing its fixed job boundaries and becoming about solving problems, and the ability to build a product independently matters more. This wave of AI will gradually flatten what makes each role special, as if one person plus an AI co-pilot becomes a whole team.
Programming Idioms: Code Snippets in Every Language
https://programming-idioms.org/all-idioms
A fantastic resource that shows the same programming patterns implemented across various languages. Perfect for developers looking to quickly pick up the “idiomatic” way of doing things in a new language.
YouTube Music for Desktop (via Pake)
https://github.com/tw93/Pake#popular-packages
I recently discovered how great YouTube Music is, but was surprised there’s no official desktop client. I used Pake to bundle the web version into a polished desktop app. Feel free to download and try it out!
Technical Related
Machine Translation in the Age of ChatGPT
https://sspai.com/post/79738
A look at how large language models are completely disrupting the traditional machine translation industry.
New JavaScript Features in ECMAScript 2023
https://thenewstack.io/the-new-javascript-features-coming-in-ecmascript-2023/
A summary of the latest small but highly useful additions to the JavaScript language.
I Want to Talk about WebGPU
https://cohost.org/mcc/post/1406157-i-want-to-talk-about-webgpu
An excellent introduction to the power and potential of WebGPU. A must-read for graphics enthusiasts.
Just Looking Around
Quai Network: Stunning Web Effects
https://qu.ai/
The Quai Network site features some truly impressive visual effects. If you love frontend engineering, check out the source to see how they pulled it off.
Rachel’s English: Master American Pronunciation
https://www.youtube.com/@rachelsenglish
A top-tier YouTube channel for non-native speakers looking to improve their American accent and listening skills. Rachel’s explanations are incredibly detailed and practical.
Infinite Market Cap: Tracking Global Assets
https://8marketcap.com/
A tool that ranks global asset market caps—covering everything from gold and stocks to crypto. Some of the rankings might surprise you.
