markjgsmith

2023/11/04 #

• Andrew Keen has an interview out with Pierre Rehov. Pierre has made several documentaries about palestinians and has had access others have not had. It's a difficult interview, very emotionally driven, these events are clearly fresh. There's also a noticeable english vs french vibe between interviewer and interviewee. A much older conflict, but with it's own scars. People damaged by very old conflicts trying to work together to help people that are damaging each other right now in new conflicts. Oh the humanity.

  I found this french perspective quite enlightening. Pierre's interactions and experiences on the ground have been different to others I have heard. There are some interesting bits of information too:

  • The KGB, then part of the USSR, helped create the palestinian people and state as a response to increased western influence in the region through Isreal
  • Hamas has what are effectively sleeper cells throughout the world, though the members of which might not be very aware of the role they are playing
  • 2 million arabs live peacefully in Isreal, they have the same rights as jews
  • Jews and arabs are friends in Isreal, they form communities together
  • Hamas leadership have expropriated billions of dollars from aid organisations to other arab states where they live
  • Arabs in Isreal do not want to be associated with Hamas

  None of this should be taken as gospel truth, but I think it's useful information nonetheless.

  There's lots more in the interview, although it's difficult to watch in places, and the general intractability of the situation is palpable, there are bits of hope that shine through.

  I watched it too late to put it in this week's newsletter, so I wanted to draw attention to it here. #

• The ant-elephant fractal - An elephant hiding behind ant, hiding behind an elephant hiding behind an ant. To infiniti. Once you see it, you realise it's happening literally everywhere. And it's often circular.

  People creating the problems they complain about, and blocking the solutions they suggest.

  When you slow it all down in the debugger and make the circle smaller and smaller, eventually you see it: the elephant trying to hide behind itself. The elephant is trying to be the ant and the elephant at the same time.

  The ant and the elephant is you! You are all trying to be ant-elephants!

  And then nobody is happy and so it escallates and escallates until the entire universe is trying to hide behind a single neutrino.

  It's ridiculous maximus!

  And we have nuclear war over a piece of cheese. #

• Third man lucky - There's an interesting bit from David Sachs on this week's All-in Podcast where they are discussing the ups and downs in the commercial real estate property market. At one point they look at WeWork's likely bankrupcy and that even though it looks rather bad for them now, because they invested so heavily in sprucing up the properties they are renting around the world, should a private equity company take them over, they might very well do quite well after they renegotiate all their rental agreements.

  In the discussions he mentions there's an old saying that it's the 3rd developer that ends up making all the money. The initial developer almost always goes bust, and often the second one too. It's the 3rd guy that swans in and makes all the money. Apparently it's a thing.

  It occurred to me that this type of dynamic likely happens inter generations in otger areas too. The first time someone tries a truely new area of tech, they might get quite far but they are cutting through the jungle and it's a slog. The next generation have the benefit of the OG person's path, so they make very quick progress. Things are a lot easier for them. I wonder if what happens is the second lot push the ball up the hill even further, probably coming to different conclusions than the OG person who was too weighed down to continue. They get in a big argument with the OG folk, which weighs them down, until they too fall down. Then lucky sod number 3 walks in the door, they get all the way to the end of the path, avoiding any arguments, plant the flag and win.

  There's probably something to learn in all this. #

• Street art rotten - I used to be quite into street art, otherwise known as grafiti. I think it often looks quite cool. But I've discovered that much of it, espcially the lower quality stuff, originates in bullying people. They aren't in it for the art, they are just straight up vandals bent on intimidating often vulnerable others.

  Now when I look at some of the more impressive grafiti, it's tarnished by this realisation. Did this "artist" get to where they are by intimidating people? I don't like street art that much anymore. #

• cat << EOF > Social Media Renaissance (Issue #139)

  This week’s newsletter is out! (2023-11-04)

  In this week’s edition:

  Twitter is imploding but decentralised social media is entering a very interesting moment. AI futurism you just have to laugh at and let’s abstract everything for infiniti. Business as usual.

  Issue details:

  • Title: Social Media Renaissance
  • Issue: 139
  • Page: issue webpage

  EOF

• Expat Wars Next Generation - Discovering the Evil Host Country Invisible Open Air Holodeck-like Infiniti Prison (Moi too) #

Today’s links:

• 🚀 Latest Newsletter: Social Media Renaissance (Issue #139) markjgsmith.com #

• How to build your own customizable, upgradeable laptop - These customizable Framework laptops look really awesome. Great intro article with a tour of what's possible. I really like the idea of being able to put all the parts together because it's re-assuring to know that you could fix it yourself easily should something break. Some parts like a main board I guess have to be bought from them but SSD storage and memory are off the shelf which you should able to buy anywhere. Great laptops for nomads IMO. Also the magnetic input bezels could be interesting for custom keyboards. frame.work #

• How Framework Laptop Broke The Hacker Ceiling - Great writeup from Arya Voronova that covers the expanding maker community that is developing around Framework's modular laptops. This stuff is really awesome. If I ever manage to get myself one if these devices I'd want to mod it into the perfect mobile media publishing device, with integrated blogging, podcasting, newsletter, linkblogging and distributed social media software and custom input hardware. All running open source software, with fully customized workflows. And of course I'd want a 3D printer so I could make my own hardware! hackaday.com #

• The Future of RSS is Textcasting - Is RSS catching some wind in it's sails again? That would be pretty cool. All the fancy decentralised protocols are great, but it would also be nice to have a better RSS ecosystem too. kottke.org #

• OpenSea Slashes NFT Marketplace Staff by 50% - I heard an epic rant against NFTs earlier in the week, I don't remember who it was from exactly or I'd link to it. And I get it, I'm kind of frustrated by the NFT craze too in a way, but I also like that despite all their faults, people find NFTs fun. There aren't that many things in tech like that. I wonder how it will look when the hype shakes out. Might be a sign that a more rational market is starting. decrypt.co #

• CIQ, Oracle, and SUSE unite behind OpenELA to take on Red Hat Enterprise Linux - It's nice to see things stabilising a bit on this saga, but I'm still wondering how well this will work in practice. I was under the impression that Oracle hasn't always been cool with OSS. www.zdnet.com #