markjgsmith

Today’s links:

• So why is SpaceX buying Swarm? - Interesting developments in the space race, pico satellites for the internet of thingsckarchive.com #

• What is Designing for Safety? with Eva PenzeyMoog - There are a lot of areas that people don’t generally consider in this topic, people don’t speak about it much, and it’s deceptively difficult to get rightshare.transistor.fm #

Today’s links:

• I got my device charged again, but I had to position the power cable in the weirdest and most contorted way, every moment could be my last, I hate this situationen.m.wikipedia.org #

• Shop Talk Show Ep #475 - Ben Hong’s Views on Vue, VuePress, Nuxt, Petite Vue, Shopify + Netlify, and Static Hosting - Linking to this because listening to a webdev podcast cheered me up a bitshoptalkshow.com #

• Apple’s Mistake - Ben Thompson on the Apple CSAM fiasco - “Apple is compromising the phone that you and I own and operate, without any of us having a say in the matter”stratechery.com #

Today’s links:

• Apple’s New ‘Child Safety’ Initiatives, and the Slippery Slope - I’m down to 2% power now, haven’t had time to read this article, I always said the internet would be shutdown by people trying to ‘protect’ children, looks like my final link is all about that, Goodbye Worlddaringfireball.net #

Today’s links:

• It’s that weekly thing again where my power cable stops working right after I publish the newsletter, still no place open to buy power cables, just spent over an hour trying to get my device charging, down to 8% power now, looks like this is how it all ends, goodbye cruel cruel world, maybe other worlds are available, I just want to build websites, surely that’s not too much to asken.m.wikipedia.org #

Today’s links:

• Tropical MBA Podcast Ep #609 - Is DeFi the Future of Finance? - Learnt some new stuff listening to this including CeFi vs DeFi and what stablecoins are and why they are usefulwww.tropicalmba.com #

• Jamstack Radio Podcast Ep #84 - The New Web with Harrison Hines of Fleek - Most crypto stuff is focussed on finance, but this episode is concentrated on using blockchain based technologies and open protocols to build websites and apps on a stack that essentially replaces the Web 2.0 stack we have been using for the past decade - Includes quite a bit of practical advice on how to get started in this spacewww.heavybit.com #

• 🚀 My javascript / tech / web development newsletter for 2021-08-07 is out!blog.markjgsmith.com #

Today’s links:

• London Hard Fork on Ethereum Now Live - The changes are expected to make the crypto currency more stabledecrypt.co #

• FSF-funded call for white papers on philosophical and legal questions around Copilot - I think this might be interesting to watch, especially if you are a developer, because it’s a serious effort to investigate the implications of using AI in software development tools, and they outline sone really interesting questions around freedom that arise with these new tools, all selected/published papers will receive $500www.fsf.org #

• Can GitHub Copilot Crack a Facebook Coding Interview? - Has sone animated gifs showing Copilot in action, it certainly looks impressive, my first thought is that if everyone is using such tools, will they really know the codebase they are working on, won’t it just result in people having a very superficial understanding?medium.com #

• Power cable on the blink again, down to 10% battery, still nowhere open to buy a new cableen.m.wikipedia.org #

Today’s links:

• Conversations with Tyler Podcast - David Deutsch on Multiple Worlds and Our Place in Them - I enjoyed this podcast a lot, and was struck by several things (1) the many worlds theory is quite weird to think about, it has some very unexpected and strange sounding aspects (2) I found the exploration of where philosophy meets physics enlightening, both from a historical perspective, but also how practically important it is that both these disciplines are functioning well, and (3) it’s amazing and also scary to me that it’s possible to have a mastery of subjects such as reality, evolution & freedom that is comparable to how I feel about web development, with the ability to know clearly and precisely which parts you know about, which parts you don’t, which parts require further experimentation and debugging, something which David certainly appears to have, hopefully he has some incredible refactoring tools to help with his institution and government systems buildingcowenconvos.libsyn.com #

Today’s links:

• Deviate with Rolf Potts Podcast Ep #169 - The Olympics started out as a travel fest - All about the ancient Greek Games - Very topical since the Tokyo Olympics games are currently happening, this is a great exploration of the ancient games that ran for 1200 years without break, looking at specific details to get a sense of the culture of the time, how it was intertwined with philosophy and life in general, and how it affected politics across the world - I was very surprised how interesting this part of history is and how much it has shaped the modern worldrolfpotts.com #

• The situation in HCMC Vietnam where I am is rather dire, everything everywhere I go is shut, the only cooked food I can buy is literally fried eggs and hot dogs, it’s been like this for around 2 weeks, just wanted to make a public note of that hereen.m.wikipedia.org #

• Ninja Tune Podcast - Mind w/ ELKKA, Percolate, Yaya Bey & Peach - Interesting conversation about mental health in the electronic music industry, I feel like the conversation was a lot more real than some of the similar efforts I’ve heard from software / web developmentpodcasts.google.com #

Today’s links:

• The most unbelievable things about life before smartphones - Of course so much has changed over the past 20 years or so, but it has happened bit by bit, so you almost don’t realise the enormity of it all, this article does a phenomenal job of describing just how drastic that change has been, by highlighting specific details of every day life - It’s scarily accuratemattruby.substack.com #

Today’s links:

• New in Git - switch and restorewww.banterly.net #

• Tokyo’s Olympic medals made from recycled electronic devicescosmosmagazine.com #

Today’s links:

• Running CPU-Bound Tasks in Node.js - Introduction to Worker Threads - Well written article with just the right amount of explanation and detail and some clear code examplesyarin.dev #

• oozcitak/xmlbuilder2 - An XML builder for node.js - I haven’t used this myself but the interface looks very nice especially the ability to create an XML file from a javascript object, certainly looks like it makes working with XML files much easiergithub.com #

• Using Google Drive as a CMS - Kind of a neat idea, especially for use cases where non technical folks are managing the content using Drive - The article has some good suggestions but is a bit light on code samplescss-tricks.com #

• Beachball - The Sunniest Semantic Version Bumper - It’s by the folks at Microsoft, looks very robust and usefulmicrosoft.github.io #