Newsletter Issue 2

Summary and Reflection 🤔

I couldn’t be happier about the positive reactions to my new projects and newsletter.

Last week I released a small plugin for the Logseq text editor, and I’ve been getting a lot of positive feedback on it from all over the world.

Logseq is an open-source note taking application.

It allows you to write “plugins” or “apps” for the text editor you can release for others.

A new type of AI or “Artificial Intelligence” called GPT3 can be used to write notes. It can write your book report if you ask it to “Write a study guide to Hamlet.”

I released a plugin for an AI assistant that can write articles and answer questions for you.

This technology is brand new and much better than Alexa, Siri, or Google Assistant.

One of my favorite things about being a coder is thinking of an idea and building a tool for myself that solves a problem. Once I make a helpful tool, it’s just a little extra effort to put it online and share it with the world. I’m planning to make more of my projects and writing publicly available.

I had fun looking at the Twitter bios of people talking about the plugin. One plugin user is a self-described “Chaotic good statistical learning Ph.D. candidate working to strengthen humanitarian health systems,” precisely the type of person I want using the plugin! It feels good that I can enable others to do real-world work like this by knowing a bit of coding and how to get the code out there.

The plugin is called logseq-gtp3-openai and lets you send commands to this powerful AI system from inside your text editor. It can do a lot of things like write and summarize articles. It’s easy to get started. Download it in the Logseq marketplace, and let me know what you think!

In this newsletter, I’ll share some of the community’s reactions to my new AI plugin, some thoughts on productivity, a few interesting reads from the week, and what I have for the next newsletter issue.

Updates 🆕

Here is some feedback for users on Twitter

Feedback on logseq-openai/project plugin

This user summed up how I feel perfectly. Now that AI is part of my workflow, I want to keep it.

As far as I know, there is nothing on the market similar to OpenAI’s GPT3.

AI and humans will work together more closely and sooner than we thought. We’re getting “autocomplete for everything.”

Dentists love the plugin. I wonder how/if my own dentist stays up to date on the latest cutting-edge dental research 🤔

{{< tweet user=“zeno_dox” id=“1533923814899318785” >}}

Google docs and Microsoft word are about to get smart. Clippy is going to be a genius soon.

I thought this was funny. I usually ask the AI questions. But this user was instead getting the AI to ask him questions. I’ve tried making philosophical content like this as well, and it’s fascinating to see what the AI thinks about things like the meaning of life (even though it’s fancy autocomplete)

This user told me they found the plugin helpful in helping them understand code in an obscure language. You can ask it to explain any code in English.

A feature I still need to release made it into one of the videos. For now, type Summarize Text: instead.

This AI tech became available to the general public six months ago, so many people tried it for the first time through this plugin. I have yet to learn about consumer products using GPT3.

Putting your work on the internet makes you realize how big the world is. I love seeing the international developer community try out the plugin. You know your idea is making the rounds when you see your name surrounded by mandarin Chinese.

https://notes.pinchlime.com/snapshots/what-i-tried-today/tried-to-use-logseq-plugin-gpt3-openai/

Productivity Toolkit 🛠️

In this section, I’ll share a productivity tip I’ve learned recently.

One of my favorite productivity techniques is the daily highlight productivity technique

For a long time, I always had a sinking feeling I didn’t accomplish “enough” at the end of the day.

Eventually, I realized I never even defined what “enough” was.

Now, I pick one thing I want to accomplish in the morning.

This technique helps me focus on what will truly move my life forward and end each day with a sense of accomplishment.

See my post on the subject here: daily highlight productivity technique

Brain Food 🧠

Quote

The Last Question is a short story by Isaac Asimov.

It’s a timely short story about asking AI the answers to life’s biggest questions. This story shows up on the front page of Hacker News almost every year, and it is very thought-provoking. It feels relevant because a Google engineer recently asked their new AI, “Are you sentient?”

Isaac Asimov said it was his favorite short story he’d written.

“Ask Multivac.” “You ask Multivac. I dare you. Five dollars says it can’t be done.”
Adell was just drunk enough to try, just sober enough to be able to phrase the necessary
symbols and operations into a question which, in words, might have corresponded to this: …

The Last Question by Isaac Asimov

(Read by Leonard Nimoy)

Original Scans

Related: The Last Answer

Link of the week

I remember when I first moved to San Francisco, and Uber was doing a “match muni” promotion, where you could take an Uber anywhere in the city for $2.25 (same as the “muni” bus)

I would not be surprised if Uber went back to $50 a ride after more tech money dries up, like a traditional taxi.

We can also expect companies to go evil and try to extract more value from us through ads

I’ll expect to see more ads on youtube, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, etc., and prices of video subscriptions to go up

It may be an excellent excuse to find other hobbies than watching Netflix and ordering Uber Eats.

Analytics 📈

Twitter Analytics are fun. I am the ultimate late-comer to Twitter and started using it for the first time this month. Last month I had -1 new follower. This month I gained around 200 so far. I had a few “hit” logseq plugins, so I don’t expect this growth to continue forever, but seeing the numbers go up is fun.

Outro

Thanks for reading! This week I announced my new plugin and shared some feedback from the community.

Next week I plan on writing about some productivity techniques in Logseq and how I manage “projects” in my life, using this newsletter as an example.

Check out the newsletter-roadmap to see what I have in mind for future issues. Let me know on twitter @bsunter