Daily Reading List – January 9, 2025 (#469)

My day started at 2:30am when I got up to deliver a presentation to a company in Spain. I couldn’t fall back asleep after, so Google got some bonus hours of work out of me today. In today’s reading list, you’ll find some smart content on strategy and getting better results from AI models.

[article] Refining strategy with Wardley Mapping. I’ve tried to get into this, and never could. Probably not smart enough. But, some folks swear by this technique of understanding your strategic landscape.

[blog] A Good Life is Active not Passive. Important point by Brad here, and one that we should all take to heart as we resist becoming passive consumers of entertainment.

[blog] Supervised Fine Tuning for Gemini: A best practices guide. Get some good insights into the process for adding precision to existing models like Gemini.

[article] What’s Ahead for AI-Assisted Coding, Open Source and More. Everyone’s guessing, but observing lots of guesses can still help you feel more aware of the opportunities out there.

[blog] Monitor your Google Gemini apps with Datadog LLM Observability. As expected, software vendors are adding support for the LLMs that the market is embracing.

[blog] What makes strong engineers strong? Solid list of four traits. Many of these would apply to most professionals in technology.

[blog] The Last Strategy Framework You’ll Ever Need. There are plenty of frameworks for strategic planning (see the the first entry in my reading list today!). John explains a few of them, and explains why strategy is hard work.

[blog] Introducing Vertex AI RAG Engine: Scale your Vertex AI RAG pipeline with confidence. Getting more customized and contextual responses from an LLM is valuable. Retrieval augmented generation is a pattern, but involves some machinery. We’ve just made it much easier.

[blog] Evaluating RAG pipelines. Did you follow the previous entry here and create a RAG pipeline? Cool. How do you evaluate whether it’s the most effective combination and overall system? Mete helps you identify success measurements.

[blog] When to Consider Building a Private Cloud: A Pragmatic Perspective. Basically, they’re a fit for certain use cases, but shouldn’t a go-to for many companies.

[blog] Announcing Supporters of Chromium-based Browsers. I didn’t know the scale, effort, or cost of supporting a project like Chromium. Now I do, and am glad to see more folks pitching into this browser.

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