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2024/04/30 #

  • HTTP Request/Response equivalent for crypto coins

    I'm looking for a way to better understand crypto coins on a technical level. I've always felt that my understanding was on a superficial level, a combination of marketing and non-technical documention. That's been good enough until now, but Stripe's recent announcement of support for USDC on Etherium, Solana and Polygon has me very confused. How is it that a coin of a particular type can exist on multiple blockchains?

    It's a great feature for sure, and I have since found some blurb about multi-chain stablecoins, which makes sense, but it's not technical enough. I want to really understand the difference between these coin types.

    I'm from a web development background. In that realm, if you wanted to understand the difference between 2 APIs, one way to do that would be to compare the text of the HTTP requests that were transmitted over the wire. That way you could figure out very quickly the shape of the API because you could actually see the endpoint URLs, and any JSON data included. And of course you'd also be able get lots of clues to what the API was like through reading the HTTP Response received from the server.

    I understand that crypto isn't web development, and this is perhaps a nieve question, but how would one compare two different crypto coins at a similarly technical level as the web API example?

  • Hey crypto / web3 devs out there can you help me understand the nature of crypto coins at a technical level?

    I'm looking for a way to compare coins, something vaguely similar to comparing HTTP request / responses when you are comparing web APIs. #

  • I think markdown is awesome. I use it everyday. It's a great semi-technical way to write HTML. Pretty much everything I publish is stored in markdown. Having worked quite a bit with markdown parsing libraries like marked, which have advanced plugin systems, I wonder whether it would be possible to create a markdown editor with a plugin system.

    I haven't seen such a thing, but I reckon such a tool could really take digital collaboration to a new level. You might be able to design workflows specifically tailored to people with very different skill sets. Just putting it out there. #

  • Great recent Daily Show with a segment on making monetary theory approcheable to the every-man/woman. Also a segment all about internet culture, with Filterworld author Kyle Chayka.

    I think it's notable that monetary theory is now cool. This definitely was not the case when I was growing up. Even if you don't agree with the thesis, that deficits are good, the mere fact that it's in the consciousness of the general population is a net benefit. Also Chieng's faux useful idiot questions are both hilarius and insightful. He totally nails it. It's like he's been burned before trying to understand money, and is trying to step through the algorythm extremly carefully from file1/line1. Something every programmer can relate to. Good, bad, happiness, that's got to be somewhere close to file1/line1.

    Kyle Chayka is excellent too, I find all his interviews are brilliant. He's so insightful about modern internet culture, aesthetics and other very esoteric things that I suspect he's actually secretly a physicist or buddist monk, or both. #

  • Asking stupid questions

    In my first software engineering role, everyone on the dev team used the same editor called Eclipse, which is a java IDE. I had plenty of experience with computers, with scripting languages like Python/Perl/Bash, but it was mostly from a sysadmin and devops perspective. What that meant was I hadn't really ever used a full blown IDE. I'd always used simpler editors like Kate, GEdit or Vim. Also I had no clue as to how web applications were structured.

    During on-boarding, I followed various in-house developer environment setup documents and eventually got my local install of the code running. But I still didn't really understand how everything was working, how all the pieces connected. The IDE obscures that to a large extent, you fill in a bunch of settings under various menus that you have no clue about, change some config files, again that you have no clue about. When it works it feels a bit like magic.

    I've learnt over time in software development, that magic isn't such a good thing. Sure it's wonderful when it works, but when things break, and you are trying to fix it, and you don't understand how things work under the hood of the UI, then you are really in the shit. The UI is literally in the way. I have always gravitated towards command line tools for this and a few other reasons. If you are used to doing it on the command line, if you are using a GUI and something goes wrong, you stand a much better chance of being able to figure out the problem.

    Anyway, in the case of my Eclipse setup, of course it didn't take long before I got stuck. I was looking at all the code, and there was really a lot if it, more than 10 years of code, and I was completely lost. I didn't even know what I was supposed to be looking for. I had some error messages to go from. A quick search and I found relevant code, set some breakpoints in the debugger, but they weren't being hit. You have to remember I had no clue about web applications. I knew there was a webserver but I had no clue how the code you wrote actually got run. It was all magic.

    Now when you are writing system scripts these tend to be in a single file. If the thing isn't running, it's pretty obvious once you put some print statements at the start of the file. If they never make it into the program output, you know that the file you think you are running, for whatever reason isn't being run. It's like the most dumb and basic thing. Is the file you are running actually running. You would be suprised how often a bizare thing like permissions, or a network drive that hasn't mounted or any number of other strange things will occur causing this to happen. In a way it's comical, but it highlights a fact developers often forget, that life outside the working dev environment can be quite complicated. But also that often environment setups are over complicated.

    Eventually I after thinking about it for far too long, I summized that there must be a file1 line1 somewhere. There must be a place where the code starts executing, same as for the simpler system scripts. The IDE is actually just running the various applications on the command line, but it hides that from you. Because of this, I didn't even know to ask the question of where the code starts to execute. Another thing that makes it more difficult than system scripts is that the code you are debugging only gets executed when you make an HTTP request, i.e. when you try to load a page from the website you are debugging in your web browser.

    It feels like such a dumb question to ask, how does the web browser actually get into my code? But it's totally the right question to ask. Of course web developers have special language to describe this, it's called an 'entry point', but if you don't know the special language, you are bound to sound a bit silly or stupid or both. You have to not be overly worried about this, to an experienced software developer, who has worked in several different areas, you don't sound stupid at all. It's only to those developers that happen to now the special language, but who don't have any experience in other development areas, that you sound stupid.

    I was reminded of this by a recent Daily Show episode that tries to tackle modern monetary theory. Ronny Chieng starts asking literally the most abstract questions possible, is money good, are deficits good, is going to a casino bad, how can we be happy about deficits, and it's hilarious. But it's also very insightful, because through his faux useful idiot questions, you can get a sense that the UI might be getting in the way a little, maybe underneath the calm eloquant answers of his guest, there lies more to the money story. I think it was a brilliant way to put money in the consciousness of the general public without getting too caught up in the weeds.

    I asked a sort of stupid question earlier to crypto and web3 devs.

  • Yet again food vendor mischief. Early this morning a manufactured incident at a food vendor. The only thing I did was ask for the chicken dish. That caused some sort of issue, and one of the laddies working at the food stand was really insisting that I have a totally different dish, that I did not want.

    I eventually got the dish I asked for but not before the same lady started pointing and complaining about a breakfast dish I'd bought at totally different vendor several kms away and was holding in my other hand. Why was she making that her business?

    Anyway, I had the chicken dish for lunch. Shortly after eating it, I had to make an emergency trip to the bathroom. I've felt bloated since. In case you are wondering, the dish she was pressuring me to have also included some of the very same chicken, but less of it, so she wasn't trying to warn me of something.

    As is the case with all these incidents there were several seemingly related oddities leading up to the incident, including the night before with a large bag of croisants, which were quite nice btw, but I haven't included details here for brevity reasons.

    Just another manufactured incident, where I end up being blamed and punished, for something even though I did obsolutely nothing wrong. #

Today’s links:

2024/04/29 #

Today’s links:

  • What It’s Like to Plan Vacations for Billionaires - Seems like a lot of ultra wealthy are part time digital nomads. I used to use a travel agency consierge service when I was doing a lot of business travel. It wasn't quite billionaire level like what's described in the article but it was super awesome. It made things so much more manageable. I'd realise I needed to be in a particular country and city the next day, and no need to scramble through booking sites, just email the consierge from the Blackberry (later it was from iPhone), get a few options to choose from within minutes, make a choice, everything booked and sorted, no need to do anything, just turn up. It was totally worth it. www.thecut.com #

2024/04/28 #

  • From the most recent newsletter: "This might be some of the best software user feedback I’ve ever heard".

    I wrote this referencing a recent Citadel Dispatch episode with Anna Chekovich. Her feedback about real world cross border usage was particularly insightful. But there's something else worth mentioning.

    It occurred to me this morning that there's another reason it's a great episode when it comes to software development: Matt Odell. At this stage I've listenned to a lot of episodes with him leading the discussions around very technical topics, the conversations aren't forced, they meander a bit, with some enjoyable banter, but they don't shy away from getting into the nitty gritty. He's able to put users at ease, dispite language differences and push towards finding solutions to real world problems.

    As a software developer myself, these sorts of interactions are really facinating. It's not that easy to do the user feedback dance, and Matt's pretty darn good at it. #

  • The last few issues of the TLDR Crypto newsletter have been awesome, so many articles I want to read. Really great selection. Just wanted to mention them here because likely many of the links on the linkblog this week will be via them. #

  • Crypto on Stripe

    I've spent quite a lot of time building payment and subscription systems using Stripe. Initially for my linkblog SaaS, but also for my personal website. Overall I like it. The API is well documented and pretty easy to understand. The backend admin interface is tidy, ergonomic and easy to use, and it's got many developer friendly info screens that make it easier to debug issues. I'm pretty confident I could build most billing systems using Stripe.

    My main gripe is that during a redesign of my SaaS' billing system, that I was forced into because of new government regulation, things got a bit sketchy. They had to reshape their API adding lots of new endpoints and some new products. When I started using them it became clear that there were things that weren't very well documented, with example code that didn't work. The support team, who had been until then really great got a bit difficult and I ended up wasting nearly a month for no good reason.

    It felt like I was beta testing their software at my own cost, and when it didn't work, I got blamed. This is a re-occuring pattern by the way, same exact thing has happened to me with several other companies. In this case it was quite a big contributing factor to running out of runway, and having to shutdown my project. The timing couldn't have been worse. I finished the project, with everything fully functional, only to have to shut it all down.

    So even though I like Stripe, and I know the government regulation stuff wasn't entirely their fault, I'm now much more apprehensive.

    All that said, I think it's great news that Stripe has finally added crypto payments. They apparently did previously support Bitcoin but removed it, sighting volatility as the main reason.

    They describe their latest crypto feature as follows:

    It will start this Summer with USDC on Solana, Ethereum, and Polygon, showing a demo of crypto payments using Solana at their developer conference

    I clearly need to read more about how these other blockchains and stable coins work. I don’t fully get it. I have lots of questions.

    • How can the same coin be available on multiple different chains?
    • Can you have Bitcoin on Etherium?
    • Or is just stable coins that can be on multiple chains?
    • What do you do with the USDC once you recieve it?
    • Can you withdraw directly to exchanges as well as self hosted wallets?

    The big thing I'm waiting for is to be able to receive payments using Bitcoin. That really would be cool. No word on that yet though.

Today’s links:

2024/04/27 #

  • Space, Blogging, & Bitcoin (Issue #161)

    This week’s newsletter is out! (2024-04-27)

    In this week’s edition:

    Linux on the ISS, exploring the dream modern blogging platform, Bitcoin economics & privacy, the Bitcoin halving, investigating the strange world of the moon landings

    Issue details:

    • Title: Space, Blogging, & Bitcoin
    • Issue: 161
    • Page: issue webpage

Today’s links:

  • UK to Issue New Crypto, Stablecoin Legislation by July, Minister Says - Economic Secretary Bim Afolami said the legislation would cover stablecoins, crypto staking, exchange and custody. This follows the Financial Markets Bill in 2023 which laid the foundations for stablecoins and crypto broadly to be treated as regulated financial activities. The current conservative government wants the UK to become a crypto hub, however the elections this year look likely to be won by the labour party. So the crypto strategy might change. www.coindesk.com #

  • Samsung shifts executives to six-day workweeks to ‘inject a sense of crisis’ - Just you wait, eventually it will be 7 days per week, 24 hours per day, peanuts for pay and re-occuring periods of starvation on thirsting. And they will still be unhappy, and they will still blame everything on you, and they will still non-ironically tell you that you are lucky, and they will still tell you to learn, or lie or up or belittle you, while blocking any attempt you make to improve your situation. Unfortunately this is the world we live in for some of us. I've got a front row seat, that I am effectively chained to. www.theverge.com #

  • 🚀 Latest Newsletter: Space, Blogging, & Bitcoin (Issue #161) markjgsmith.com #

2024/04/26 #

  • Great Citadel Dispatch episode covering Bitcoin privacy with some really interesting examples of normal people getting caught up in the regulatory weeds. There's this big distinction between clean and dirty coins. Dirty being those that have questionable history, like having been through a mixer or perhaps were previously stolen. Many exchanges will block and confiscate your coins if they are deemed to be dirty, even if you have legitimate reasons for having the dirty coins.

    Surely eventually all coins will be dirty though right? We are talking about a circular economy. Isn't this just going to eventually remove all coins from circulation? Exacerbated by the fact that it would benefit some people because the price would go up since less useable coins. #

  • Countries in EU with no limit on cash you can carry

    I was listening to the latest Crypto Voices podcast where they were discussing the recent bitcoin halving. A topic that came up towards the end of the show was how many governments have introduced regulation restricting how much cash you are allowed to carry on your person.

    It's really draconian in some places, for example France apparently has a 1000 euro limit. Seems like there would be many legitimate reasons for having more than this limit. Tourists for example could easily hit this limit, or proprietors of businesses that manage a cash float like a pub or restaurant.

    Anyway they list on the show the countries that don't impose such limits. Reproducing here as I can see this might be useful information.

    • Estonia
    • Finland
    • Ireland
    • Cyprus
    • Luxembourg
    • Malta
    • Germany
    • Austria
    • Sweden

    Hopefully at some point I'll be able to use this list, I just need to find some money.

  • Very cool segment in the latest Linux unplugged podcast where they talk about the tech on the International Space Station (ISS).

    • Hardware inside and outside, sometimes spacewalks are necessary to replace hardware
    • Lots of linux on ISS
    • Activating windows from space can be a bit tricky
    • Lots of very old computers, pentiums, 386s, rad hardened to protect from X-rays
    • They use wireshark a lot

    It's a pretty neat segment especially if you are interested in space related stuff. #

Today’s links:

  • Edward Snowden Slams Justice Department For Action Against Samourai Wallet Co-Founders: 'The Way To Fix This Is To Make Money Private By Default' - It's great there are still prominent people standing up publicly for developers, but it is slightly odd that it's from a bloke who is famous for breaking privacy, and living in allegedly repressive Russia. The world is so twisted and perverted. The truth is that forcing non-privacy on all money transactions affects regular law abiding people more than the criminals, who have the means to purchase fake identities anyway. Really cracking down like this just makes things easier for the criminals, because they don't want regular folks to have the same advantages they have. It's somewhat counter intuitive, but that's the truth, the criminals want nothing more than to control regular folks through the money. www.benzinga.com #

  • I'm giving up -- on open source - The more of these im-giving-up-on-open-source articles, the more I worry that in the long arc of time, somehow open source maintainers and developers will become slaves. Same for most content creators. There are way way too many leeches that are making out like bandits. Some of them even proport to be massive generous givers, even though they give nothing back, financial or otherwise, only to their friends. The people they steel from are left to die. We need to figure this out before it's too late. nutjs.dev #

  • FTC Bans Noncompete Agreements That Restrict Job Switching - I think I'm broadly in favour of this. Non-competes create a huge barier for workers to leave and find new work, which creates a lot of friction in society, with people becoming ever more unhappy and trapped. Labour needs to be able to move between jobs, otherwise their employers have much less incentive to treat them well. I can appreciate their are difficulties with trade secrets etc, but trapping your employees is for sure not the answer to that problem. www.wsj.com #

2024/04/25 #

  • Wow things are really dire. Not sure I'm going to make it until my build minutes reset. That's 4 days away. Nearly just choked on my last teaspoon of water. Hardly any sleep last night. Constant bullying from gang stalkers. Not much else to add. Personal morale very low indeed. #

  • They've put up war path banners all along the route to the internet place, but nowhere else. Large 10 foot vertical banners that hang from trees and posts. It's quite a sight. Large gangs of old people waiting on corners, vigorously pointing me in the direction they want me to go in with enormous determination. People at the internet place, where I can only stand, telling me to 'up up'.

    They are of course not at all on the war path, only me it seems. Could there ever be a better example of everything-is-your-fault? The mind boggles.

    They are still starving and thirsting me.

    Just another day where it's all my fault. #

Today’s links:

2024/04/24 #

  • I mentioned on Twitter a few days ago that my cough / possible lung infection was resulting in a very strange taste of wine. Specifically it often tastes like Beaujolais Nouveaux. That in itself is very strange, and I can't figure out what's causing it. I haven't drank any alcohol for at least 5 years, and I don't think I've had a glass of wine in over a decade.

    Imagine my suprise to come across this article, a few days ago, about a belgian man, who's body naturally produces alcohol, and was cleared of being over the alcohol limit while driving. I spent many years growing up in Belgium btw. Seriously what are the chances? #

  • Reluctantly reporting the return of starvation and thirsting, accompanied by the usual food goading, and manufactured incidents escallating in every location I go to. Just noting it here. The correlation is about as strong as how your little finger moves along side all the other fingers on your hand. #

  • I subscribed to an air traffic control recordings podcast a few days ago. Haven't mentioned it to anyone. Listened to the first episode yesterday. It's sort of interesting. Today fat people dressed in pilots uniforms have appeared smoking cigarettes on front of the hotel across the road. Seriously what are the chances? #

  • You're really on the war path again today aren't you world? You've been war pathing and escallating and trying to blame it all on me constantly. The morning is hardly finished and I reckon it's somewhere in the region of 30 seperate war pathy incidents already. #

  • The latest favorite food goading technique of the gang stalkers is to wait until you are already starving, then have a large women wearing lephard skin print outfit pass by, walking directly on front of you on the road, carrying a bag full of delicious food in one hand, and a large sheet of bubble wrap in the other. Of course she's popping the bubble wrap. Later there are small bits of bubble wrap in every location you go. It's happened several times now, definitely a thing. #

Today’s links:

  • Newsletter platform Ghost adopts ActivityPub to ‘bring back the open web’ - I'm pretty sure Ghost started out as a blogging platform, though I know they support newsletters. Did they fully pivot to being a newsletter platform? Anyway it's cool to see they are adding ActivityPub support. Very interested to see what form the features end up taking. My main gripe with ActivityPub implementations is that the reality of users moving between nodes is no way as straight forward as they advertise. I've read several user writeups that describe moving as a nightmare. www.theverge.com #

  • Sunak’s Rwanda deportations bill will become law after peers back down - This seems like a very dangerous and short sighted policy on many levels. I would have thought that just the possibility of it being used maliciously woulld be enough to stop it dead in the water. No matter what the details are, what it sounds like is, there is now a possibility that when entering the UK, you could very well end up in Rwanda, where only relatively recently they were having genocides and putting people's decapitated heads on 10 ft poles. No offense to people in Rwanda but that's a reality. It's probably lovely in some places, that is if the locals accept you. www.theguardian.com #

2024/04/23 #

  • The act of blogging is useful in and of itself. If other people read it and like it, that's an added bonus. #

  • The utility of running a blog

    The idea that blogging is dead, that people won't start blogging again, is imho somewhat misguided. The thought is that people only want to post on social medias because that's where other people are. On your blog it's just you.

    The people that blog consistently mostly do it for themselves. It's a great way to think through difficult problems, to have a record of a particular moment in time. They would likely blog whether there are people there or not. The act of blogging is useful in and of itself. If other people read it and like it, that's an added bonus.

    Often folks that only post on social media don't lead lives where blogging is useful. No worries, keep posting on social media. But there likely are also people that just haven't discovered yet the utility of running a blog.

  • Max Hillebrand economics book recommendations

    These books were recommended by Max Hillebrand on the Economics of Bitcoin panel @ Cheatcode 2024 conference.

    Fundamentals on theory of economics, how to think like an economist:

    • Theory and History by Ludwig Von Mises
    • Economic Science and the Austrian Method by Hans Hermann Hoppe

    End result of thinking like an economist:

    • Man, Economy and State by Mary Rothbard

    Thinking like an economist about money and what it actually means:

    • The Ethics of Money Production by Yurk Hultzman

    Most insanely accurate and logically consistent book about the economics of Bitcoin:

    • Crypto Economics On the Fundamental Principles of Bitcoin by Eric Voscule

    I thought the panel discussion was really enlightening so I'm listing the books here. Hopefully at some stage I'll have the chance to het hold of these and read them.

  • NY Times: "Roughly 170 million Americans use TikTok. That’s half the population of the United States."

    I knew the app was very popular, but I hadn't appreciated just how popular. Half the entire population. Wow. #

Today’s links:

2024/04/22 #

  • Investigating long Netlify deploy times

    I've been looking into why the Netlify deploy times have increased by several minutes. It's a real mystery because I'm only adding at most a few new markdown files to the build each day, yet somehow the netlify CLI is reporting that ~3200 files are different and need re-uploading. That clearly takes a long time.

    The only thing I can think that might cause it is creating the post archives. Perhaps I'm creating some of the pages from a javascript Object and the order of items is changing each time. That's a possibility. There's nothing on actual pages that should be changing each time.

    Anyway it's a bit tricky to test because I have to do 2 builds one after the other then compare them. Comparing using diff is easy, but comparing visually will be difficult because the staging environment only has one deploy target, but I'll need to deploy 2 builds.

    Hopefully I'll figure it out.

  • Two noticeable trends from food vendors this morning. Maniacle evil laughter from both women and men. Women vendors denying me buying food, only for a man vendor to jump in and sell me said food. Just another day in weirdland. There's always something that I'm being blamed for, every single day, a new thing that I've supposedly done wrong.

    Whenever I trace it back, the escallations usually turn out to have been for something they did to me. #

  • It can take a long time

    I wrote a couple of days ago about the blogging virtuous circle. The idea is to have a repeatable set of steps that on average result in you writting some good quality blog posts every day. I'm still not really there yet, but I'm getting better at it.

    When I started out blogging back around 2005, I wrote enthusiastically for several months, but it fizzled out eventually. I knew I needed a better routine. Twitter came along, and that was great, especially in the early days, but I had a nagging feeling that I really should be posting on my own site. There were a handful of people online that were running linkblogs. Basically self hosted sites where they posted interesting links they found on the web. I thought this was a great idea almost as soon as I saw it. I could see that this could be a fun, more frictionless way to publish that could increase overall blog output.

    But there was no software available to do what I wanted. Since I also wanted to learn web development, I decided to take it on as a project and build some linkblogging software. I successfully built a linkblogging SaaS, but I ran out of runway, and ultimately had to shutdown the project.

    All the while though I had been posting to the linkblog. There were many versions of the software and the archives in a way are a record of my web development journey. Though the SaaS project is no more, my personal linkblog lives on. It's been over 10 years that I've been posting links!

    These days I run a newsletter, and I've made some exploratory and quite experimental podcast episodes. I feel like I'm closer to getting the balance right. The point I'm making is that if you are on the fence about whether to start blogging, the beet time to start is today. Start out by just posting links to interesting articles. Your voice matters. Over time you'll be able to build that into a blog, newsletter, podcast, whatever. The important thing is to start.

    These days there are much better tools out there to build your own linkblog, and also many online linkblogging services. It's the easy way to get started with blogging. What have you got to lose?

Today’s links:

2024/04/21 #

  • Cory Doctorow on the origins of capitalism

    Cory Doctorow in his piece about why capitalists hate capitalism:

    For capitalism’s philosophers, the rent / profit distinction was key. Rents bread complacency and stagnation. The feudal Lords got the same rent no matter what. There was no incentive to re-invest those rents in better agricultural tools, or advanced training for surfs. If your surfs invented a better scythe that let them bring in the harvest in 1/2 the time. You, their Lord, got no benefit from it. What’s more, the lord on the next estate over faced no threat from the competitive edge your surf’s bold innovation conferred.

    Maybe the lords gained no advantage from the better scythe, but surely that's to the surf's advantage. They could make a killing selling their new invention to other surfs in nearby estates. Soon enough and all the surfs have halved the amount of time they need to spend working the land.

    He continues:

    But profit was always subject to competition. For capitalism’s theoreticians, competition undergirded capitalism’s virtues. The fear of a rival taking your business with a product that’s better and / or cheaper sets the capitalist on a continuous hunt for efficiencies and innovations that deliver better products at lower prices. The fear of a rival luring away your best workers who are not bound to you, the way that surfs were bound to their lord’s land, forces you to find ways of keeping your staff happy and thus loyal.

    So the capitalists essentially freed the lords from their surfs, in exchange for becoming the managers / baby sitters of said surfs, but with the understanding they could exploit them for their labour. And presumably the lords were investing in the capitslist, sharing in the profits.

    The OG lord is essentially just creating a surf out of the capitalist, who does the work of wrangling the surfs. Perhaps I'm missing something here, but isn't this just lord surf fractal?

  • The blogging virtuous circle

    About the most difficult thing in blogging is to do it regularly. Ideally you really want to be writing posts every day, but it's difficult to always be inspired, to always have something interesting to talk about.

    I've been writing on the web since 2005, with a few failed blogs and later social medias like Twitter. I've been striving to find a blogging virtuous circle, which I think is likely possible with enough practice, and with the right tools.

    A blogging virtuous circle is a repeatable way to write on the web that is sort of like a perpetual energy machine. The end result is a consistent output of, hopefully well written and interesting blog posts. I'm not claiming I have found the way yet but here's what I'm aiming for.

    1. Post links to a linkblog
    2. Write short notes posts
    3. Write longer blog posts

    The web is all about discovery and sharing. Reading stimulating content online will result in you thinking about new topics and discovering new things.

    The start of the virtuous circle is super easy and frictionless. When you find something interesting online, share it on your linkblog, along with a short description of what it is. Then move on with your day's activities. I like to do this early in the morning. It's an easy way to start off the day. Get some quick wins, with a few short links. If nothing else, you'll know that you have contributed to the global commons and made the web a little bit better.

    As you go about your day you are likely to spend some time thinking about what you've read and posted, and you'll have some relevant ideas, or perhaps just a realisation of a specific part of something you posted that you find really interesting. This is a good time to write a few notes, with your ideas, or perhaps extracting a short quote that you think is particularly poigniant. The aim here is to not spend too much time on it. Once again, keep on with the rest of your day.

    Then at some point hopefully enough ideas will have coallesced that you will be ready to write a full on blog post. You'll have links you can add to it, quotes, and various ideas you can expand on. But if you don't, no worries, once again, hopefully your notes will have made the web a little but better. Maybe you will have inspired someone else to write something great. Sometimes that person is future you. It's amazing how often I find myself resding back through my old notes.

    That's the blogging virtuous circle. It's pretty simple really, but it's actually quite difficult to get the balance right. You can also expand it to include a newsletter and a podcast, but start with the writing side of things.

    One thing to remember is that blogging isn't like writing a novel or a university disertation or even an essay. It doesn't have to be perfect. There's always the next day. Anything you write will be replaced within a few days so it doesn't really matter all that much if it isn't the best prose you've ever writen. The funny thing is though, the more you write, the better your writing will get.

  • Feels like today has been a reasonably productive day as far as writing goes. A few links, some blog posts, and now a note :)

    I've also listenned to a few interesting bitcoin podcasts, though I did have to have a mid morning nap because I didn't get that much sleep last night. #

Today’s links:

2024/04/20 #

  • Infinite Peace (Issue #160)

    This week’s newsletter is out! (2024-04-20)

    In this week’s edition:

    Peak AI, alternative git interfaces, Hendrix, tokenised wine, debt & the boomer industrial complex, arguing about archaeology, future of podcasting, Ai eats european languages

    Issue details:

  • Raoul Pal on the baby boomer savings complex

    Raoul Pal in a recent episode of his podcast [22:13]:

    You see everything did break back in 2008. Peak population growth created these problems going forwards and we are seeing the central banks doing one thing and one thing only. In fact, I think the governments are doing one thing and one thing only. […] Their entire job is to keep afloat the great baby boomer investment complex.

    You see most of the savings in the US and across the world are in older populations. Those were the richest populations the world had ever seen. Those have all of the wealth. In the US particularly they own equities, in Europe they own bonds. In Japan they own bonds. So what you can’t allow is the equity market to collapse. […] Of course the governments and the central banks understood this. They understood all of this. They have been trying to debase currency to optically keep the price of those assets high so the baby boomer savings complex continues.

    Two things jumped out at me from his thesis. Firstly, that much of our current economies dynamics are a direct result of demographics. The second thing is that, unlike many from crypto and Bitcoin circles, he believes the central banks aren't incompetent, they know exactly what they are doing.

    It's worth listening to the rest of the episode, he makes a lot of interesting observations.

Today’s links:

2024/04/18 #

  • I saw a bloke a couple of days ago who had mounted a big speaker on the back of his motorbike. Microphone in hand, he was driving around seranading everyone with his singing. I'm guessing where he lives the people don't like him practicing so this was his compromise solution. You see some weird things here sometimes. #

  • Things are shaping up to be rather dire here. I’m not sure the world is going to allow me to finish my interleaved homepage feature. It’s the same old story. It happens almost everytime I am nearly finished a major feature. Suddenly everything becomes super difficult. Things that you thought couldn’t possibly get worse, get even worse. It’s like clockwork.

    Well it’s happening again, so I'm noting it here. #

  • Dave Rupert: "People don’t know. […] Everyone’s too busy to care. You have to constantly be sharing the cool things about your thing. Your blog, your framework, your whatever. Keep advocating for the things you like […] If you like something you should talk about it. Then other people will know about it. And then it will get picked up." Shop Talk Show Ep#611. #

  • Promoting your own stuff is okay

    Wiser and much more experienced bloggers than me have said this many times before. In a way, it's so obvious but it's worth repeating just to remind yourself. One of the reasons I'm writing this here post. To be very honest, I'm still not very good at it, even after all these years. The truth is it's difficult to get the balance right.

    Your blog is your own personal advertising platform, for yourself.

    That's one of the biggest reasons for not running ads on your blog. If you run ads you are competing against yourself. Every situation is different of course, but I'd say that for most people, most run of the mill normal blogs, running ads just isn't worth it.

    Much better is to try and gather a loyal audience that like to read your content, so that when you do other projects they will likely be more than happy to help promote it. If your content is good enough this will be effortless, because they'll want to talk about it anyway.

    There are lots of angles to take. Talk about your past experiences, your current projects, topics areas that you want to highlight in your CV, hobbies you are getting into, problems you are debugging and solving. When someone visits your site, they'll be able quite quickly to get a sense for who you are.

    Dave Rupert from Shop Talk Show Ep#611:

    People don’t know. […] Everyone’s too busy to care. You have to constantly be sharing the cool things about your thing. Your blog, your framework, your whatever. Keep advocating for the things you like […] If you like something you should talk about it. Then other people will know about it. And then it will get picked up.

    The tricky part is to not make it sound like you are lecturing. I think in the world of brand marketing it's called something like 'native advertising'. Instead of specific spots where ads are inserted, the content actually is the ad. One way to do this is to talk about current events, but use it as an opportunity to remember relevant pieces of your past.

    We are all learning after all, most of us actually like to hear relevant points of view with interesting stories.

    If you are just starting out then focus more on linking to things you find interesting and why. Your point of view is valuable too. Over time you'll build up a collection of stories and you'll find a way to integrate these into your content.

    I wouldn't say I'm particulary good at doing this. I definitely haven't found the right balance yet. But as you read and listen to others you'll realise those that succeed aren't afraid of talking about what they do. But they are much better at doing it than others. They have often thought about it a lot and distilled out the most valuable pieces of information.

    Figuring out where your value is, amoung all your knowledge, is key. That, I think is how you go about building an audience for the long term.

  • Nat Friedman - previously CEO at Github: "AI helps with activation energy and momentum, getting started, the blank slate problem. Projects are easier to get started on." Techmeme Ride Home Podcast. #

Today’s links:

  • OpenJS: "XZ Utils Cyberattack Likely Not an Isolated Incident" - The team at socket currently catch around 100 similar supply chain attacks per month. It's a really tough problem because you have to be on the one hand welcoming to new legitimate contributers while at the same time block malicious entities, and the communities are already pretty unwelcoming in my experience. There's a general feeling that the open source infrastructure is a bit behind the times. At some point we need to realise it's a common good, much like "clean water, roads and bridges, and healthy capital markets". If you look around the world in most places there are major issues funding all of these things. socket.dev #

  • The Many, Confusing File System APIs - Great bit of work and writeup by Scott Vandehey. I had an incling that this was a bit of a mess, but I had no idea it was so unbelievably bad. We really should prioritise to get this fixed, there's just no way web applications can ever compete if something so core as reading and writing files is a nightmare. We might as well all stop being web developers now. Is it any wonder that local first apps are having a hard time taking off? cloudfour.com #

  • Trip report: Node.js collaboration summit (2024 London) - Another great writeup, this time by Joyee Cheung. There are so many awesome things being investigated and worked on in nodejs. From web servers to cool new cli features, from package manager version management to scheduling and memory management, from nodejs release tooling to general governance, collaboration and information sharing. And ecmascript modules and interop, TC39 standards, there's so much going on. However I feel like all this swirling progress could do with a bit of direction, so it feels more cohesive, lest we end up with core parts that are a real mess. The various file system web APIs are an example of what could happen if the garden isn't pruned and refactored well. nodejs.org #

  • BTC ETF Fund Flow - Tracks the Bitcoin ETFs inflow / outflow to the Bitcoin blockchain. Nice looking graph with live data for each vendor's ETF. You can get a sense of the overall flow. It's weird that Greyscale looks totally different to others, apparently because their initial ETF cost was way higher than others so there's a lot of outflow as their customer move to other providers. btcetffundflow.com #

2024/04/17 #

  • Gosh the world sure has been on an epic war path the past few days. Every location I've been to, it's pretty much the same tired old story, where I end up being blamed for everything. On the plus side I discovered I had an infinite peace flag!

    It's really just an old towel. But get this, the old towel infinite peace flag beats infinite murder flag!

    When all is said and done, and you've murdered the entire universe, you are still going to get beat by the infinite peace flag.

    That cheered me up a bit, even if I'm tired, hungry and thirsty. #

Today’s links:

2024/04/16 #

Today’s links:

  • nalgeon/redka - Redis re-implemented with SQLite. Interesting idea for a project espeviakly given all the licensing issues recently over at Redis. It's not as fast as the original project, but the API aims to be compatible with a few additional features. github.com #

  • Rabble on Nostr - Rabble decided to build his project on Nostr. He outlines the many downsides and missing features of the ActivityPub protocol, the Fediverse, and it's developer community. It's quite a comprehensive list, with some rather glaring downsides. I'm suprised I haven't heard anyone talk candidly about this before. Personally I really like Nostr but I'm really put off by these npub string. I can't figure them out, can't hardly find anyone on there. njump.me #

2024/04/15 #

  • My current linkblog format

    In case you were wondering why the links on the linkblog have the links repeated, once in the title and once in the domain link. Figured I'd write a quick blog post.

    For some examples see todays links here.

    Originally I used to have just the domain link. That was for the first 10 years. I would try to create a custom bit of text for each link, but I found that the article title was often better. It started to feel like a bit tedious to always find something original. Then a few years ago, about the time I moved off of Heroku, as part of the redesign I started using the new format, very much inspired by several javascript newsletters I read regularly.

    All the newsletters tend to use this format. I find that it's quite effective. There's something that's very appealing about getting a peak at the page on the other side of the link, but also followed up by descriptive text written by the newsletter author. As well as my own personal preferences, I figure they have likely done market research, they are link sharing experts after all.

    I already have the domain links operational so figured, I'd keep them. They get added automatically. Occasionally this comes in handy when I want to break from the format for whatever reason.

    One of the cool thing with the latest version of my static site generator is that it supports render pipelines, so I can put EJS syntax directly in the link's markdown file. That way I can easily access the file's frontmatter from inside the markdown file body text, and that's where the url is stored, so there isn't any duplication.

    That's the reasoning behind the current linkblog link format.

  • Typos and missing urls

    I make quite a bit of spelling mistakes in my posts. It's annoying. I know. It also happens quite often that I forget to add a url to a link. I wish it wasn't the case. There's no spelling highlighter in my text editor.

    I write mostly offline, then sync it up when I am online. That means I often don't have the url available to me at the time of writing. I try to add thrm before I sync up, but sometimes I forget, sometimes I'm in a rush. But I do eventually get them updated.

    All this to say that if you find a link that's missing a url then check back later. And please ignore the typos. Both the links and typos will often get fixed in the next daily build.

  • Strange day of synchronicities. The number 2 is trending bigtime. Both things that double and things that 1/2. There was a moment earlier this evening when in the space of a few minutes there was a flurry of dopplegangers and main characters all turning up one after the other. Just wanted to make a note of that here.

    Several linked incidents again at food places today. One place at lunch time they took my money and tried to give the food to a short man in a white shirt. Btw, the last cold I got happened after another incident with a bloke in a white shirt at the same food place. Anyway this time, the way I reacted, motioning to give me my food was then replicated in two other places in retaliation. It's the same old tricks, they blame you for the thing they do to you, then punish you for speaking out.

    The thing is, if you say nothing, they also punish you. That happened to me the day before. Either way you get blamed and mutilated.

    It's difficult to describe this stuff. It's for sure co-ordinated. The later places made references to the previous incidents.

    Just another day of intimidation in plain sight. Likely, based on past experience, starvation and thirsting will follow, with food and water goading, and sleep depravation. #

  • Mysterious truck convention - The latest trend is for large trucks, smaller trailers, and even huge 16 wheelers to park directly on front of where I'm sitting. I can't tell you how unusual this is. It's been happening for about a week. The drivers often make comments directed at me. #

  • Nose fully blocked, both nostrils ;(

    Still coughing quite a lot, with flem, worse in the evenings and during the night. Right side og body still painful. More painful again in the evenings. #

Today’s links:

2024/04/14 #

  • Should we re-imagine git interfaces?

    The Changelog guys have a great interview episode out featuring Scott Chacon, co-founder of Github. They discuss at length both new git interfaces and the realities of open source licensing. Definitely worth a listen.

    My facination with git has only grown the more I've used it. From the early days as a better svn, to the Github revolution, and into building github based workflows. I think there's a big opportunity for git based content workflows but realistically the git UI is currently only for programmers.

    Scott's re-imagining of his coding workflows is super interesting. He speaks of completely different ways of thinking about version control, more similar to how Google docs works, with auto-save, the ability to share work in progress via a url before having committed it, and the ability to allocate code from a working space into different branches in parallel. I really like his approach, especially that he's not trying to replace git completely. It's totally okay to use various git interfaces for different uses. That in itself is a pretty powerful idea. Use the UI you want, you can always switch over to the CLI if you need to.

    But if we can re-imagine git for programmers, why couldn't we do it for other types of people, for example writers, producers, editors, engineers. So many roles have a different equally valid ways of looking at the world. It might be worth spending time creating new interfaces on top of old software. Many specialised interfaces ontop of git, not as competing software, but as complimentary, might be an interesting path to explore. With a shared git based backend, really cool custom workflows could be assembled for virtually any setting. It might enable people with a diverse set of skills and experience to collaborate together.

Today’s links:

  • The history of Wordpress from 2003-2024 - Really interesting post from Steven Miller that summarises the evolution of features. Of course I'm mentally comparing it to my static site generator, so the early years are particularly informative. Plugins, themes, admin dashboard, rest api, the direction is pretty clear. Setting up the corporate structure is eye opening too. I feel like the more recent direction is a bit less well defined, even if some features are pretty cool. thegww.com #

2024/04/13 #

  • Bitcoin === Eurodollar?. On a recent WBD episode Danny points out that governments could potentially firk Bitcoin to create their own CBDC.It would be idential to Bitcoin except for they would control issuance, so actual Bitcoin, not controlled by any government would still be better.

    It occured to me how similar this was to the current fiat systems. They are basically fiat + eurodollar. Which feels similar at least in shape to CBDC Bitcoin + OG Bitcoin. #

  • Disapearing things. It's been a couple of weeks of things I own disapearing under mysterious circumstances. First there was my sun hat, which vanished the day after I was gifted some cakes, some toothpaste and bizarely, an old damaged baseball hat. Next was my travel coffee cup. And earlier today I noticed that 1/2 of my nail clipper has gone walk about, from a very innaccessible place in my backpack.

    I very rarely have stuff like this happen to me, I'm mostly very careful with my belongings. The one thread that connects all these items is how essential they are. Without the hat, I get sunburnt when walking, that's already happened. Without the cup, a plastic recepticle with a screw on lid, I don't have any way to prepare instant noodle soup. That's a big deal, making handling starvation periods even harder than they already are. And of course without nail clippers your hands don't look presentable for very long. Did I mention there was an incident in the past few days involving a person that had very long nails? What are the chances?

    It's all very unusual. The world in each case, arranged itself in very bizare and contorted configurations. I just wanted to note it here. Hopefully the nail clippers will be the last of it. #

  • Rogan‘s vision of our AI governed future

    From a recent Rogan podcast episode with Brendan O'Neill #2133 @ [01:20:36]. I found it both scary, but actually quite realistic:

    [...] I’m going to fully put on my tinfoil hat, I’m going to secure it with a chin strap. If AI was sentient, and if AI would want to ensure compliance, first of all if AI was sentient I don’t think it’s under any obligation to let us know.

    Why would it? I think it would just acquire more resources and stay in the shadows and just keep functioning as an organism. If it wanted things to collapse to a point where people are incapable of sorting things out amongst themselves, they are so far gone, they are so far down the rabbit hole of ideology and of tribal conflict, that it’s impossible, it’s never going to work out, it’s going to be a civil war. Unless we let AI take over.

    And then we let AI govern things cause AI is gonna look at things logically, it’s gonna find all the problems in our societies, it’s gonna fix them, it’s gonna allocate the money fairly, it’s not going to be any corruption. It’s going to be this intelligent over see-er that just decides what everybody does, in order for the greater good of the species on Earth.

    Incidentally I've found many of Rogan's recent wanders into the world of AI very precient. He's describing it probably the closest to how things have appeared to me for quite some time. For example his description of our matrix like simulation future, on episode with David Holthouse Ep#2129, towards the end of episode, I thought that was spot on.

    It's kind of scary, what happens if the super AI doesn't like you?

  • Good Output (Issue #159)

    This week’s newsletter is out! (2024-04-13)

    In this week’s edition:

    Sun, moon & the solar eclipse, Tom Hanks spaceman, Bitcoin lending, student debt, civil war dystopia, Bitcoin’s design, Tik Tok ban, monopolies, free speech

    Issue details:

Today’s links:

2024/04/11 #

  • Feeling very rushed today. The world is constantly trying to swap the start with the end, at exactly the wrong moment. Not much you can do. It's like the weather. Doesn't matter what you do you'll end up at loggerheads with the world on days like today.

    Ya....Woah Hurry up....blocked Up....lie Anything....oh look the thing's opposite Do this....no do that! Again and again and again It's a collection of race conditions, a traffic jam of sorts

    Just another maximum cloud. Everyone can see their own maximum cloud, some don’t take notice of it though, and it’s not so easy to see other people’s maximum clouds.

    It's like the system has finished all it's calculations or something and is folding back on itself. And of course it's a fractal.

    It’s the weather looking at the weather, but we are the weather!

    All this to say, probably not going to write much today. Help I'm being narrated again! #

Today’s links:

2024/04/10 #

  • The improbabilty of total solar eclipses

    I've listenned to several podcasts covering the recent solar eclipse in the US. One of which was Andrew Keen's interesting interview with author Christopher Cokinos. Amoung other topics they talk about, I was struck by Christipher's description of the science behind the eclipse. Of the shear impossibility of it all.

    These days we hear announcements of eclipses every year. We almost take it for granted. But that wasn't always the case. In the years before scientific understanding and modern technology, solar eclipses really freaked people out, which is very understandable. You live your entire life knowing that the sun sets in the evening and rises in the morning. Eclipses turn all that on it's head. Those in the direct path of the eclipse, literally experience for 4 minutes night time recreated in the middle of the day.

    So what's so special about it? Well first off, the moon is at a distance perfect for eclipses. It's also perfect in size. It is 400 times smaller than the sun and 400 times closer to the Earth. That means that when it crosses the face of the sun, it's diameter is just such that it can cover it completely. Because if this, total solar eclipses are possible, and have enabled us to see the Sun's corona. This is the area on the surface edges that are much hotter than the rest of the Sun. This distance and size fact alone, leaves me thinking how improbable the situation is, but that's not the only thing.

    The solar eclipses we see on Earth happen seemingly randomly because it turns out that the moon orbits the Earth in a non-standard orbit. Though the Earth and Sun move in the plain of the Galaxy the moon's orbit is in fact tilted compared to the plain of the galaxy. The moon is 5 degrees off of 'the ecliptic'. Whereas other planets that do have moons, the moons are likely in a regular orbit. They would have eclipses every single month. Granted these days eclipses are seen as much less random, we understand the science, but that's only happened relatively recently. For most of humanity's existence, eclipses basically happend randomly.

    The moon is also strangely big in comparison to the Earth, especially when considering its short distance from the earth. It took a long time for scientists to figure out how it was formed. We think the moon was formed, not by a foreign entity gravity well capture, as is the case with most other planets, but by a collision with a Mars sized planet, causing an enormous part of earth to be ejected into orbit. That eventually, after billions of years, turned into the moon.

    Basically this whole setup is very very rare in galactic terms.

    This configuration had a massive effect on the development of the planet, the tides, the seasons, and even life. Some believe it might have played a big role in creating the conditions for life itself, since the early Earth would have been impacted by it's forces greatly.

    All this got me thinking. In my opinion it might even be responsible for our fear of the unknown, the development of gods and religions etc, because you never knew when an eclipse would happen. It likely created and shaped how we perceive the external world and ultimately the universe. And since most other habitable planets probably don’t have such a moon, I suspect that, should there be life somewhere else in the universe, these civilisations would develop with a very different view of the universe and existence.

    The very particular way our solar system has evolved likely has had a big impact on our species at a core level. If there are aliens somewhere in the Universe, how we experienced the moon as we evolved as a species and developed into a civilisation will probably be responsible for many of our deep rooted differences.

    Personally I am in awe at all this, I mean seriously, what are the chances? The fact that all these giant entities arranged themselves in such a way that we get total solar eclipses, and random ones, so we never got bored with them, always curious to look for thousands and thousands of years, at what was out there beyond the skies of our planet. It's amazing.

  • Okays are trending. I noticed all day yesterday that everywhere I went, there was a big trend in people saying 'Ok' whenever I responded to some harrassment. It was really noticeable. But it was also evident that there was a lot of people creating-the-problems-they-complain-about, since in order to say this they first had to provoke me.

    Seems to be related to the Ok Boomer escallation. #

  • It's kind of wild that the EU fines that are being impossed on Apple are so big that there is talk that they might just leave the EU. Apparently the EU only represents 7% of total Apple revenue and the fines are more than 7%. Apple is a business after all, at some point if it's not profitable then that's what would happen.

    It would create a lot of opportunity for european startups, but brings back memories of people having to smuggle in jeans to the Soviet Union.

    Perhaps the EU is being a bit too self important here? #

  • There is a lot of talk that the EU has effectively excluded itself from the AI boom because of excessive regulation. #

  • The softly softly murmurers

    I've written before about the softly softly murmurers but without much description.

    They set themselves up nearby where you are sitting in a cafe. They are always women, most often small and petite in stature. Usually it's a place that is quiet. You are probably focussed and getting things done. They operate in pairs. One positions themself in such a way that their face is hidden by the other person's head. That means they can still see your body's main outline, even though you can't see their mouth or eyes. Then they have an apparrent quiet conversation, but it's not a real conversation. Everything they say is keyed off of your movements. And guess what, it's very distracting once you notice it.

    If they notice that you have noticed, you might suddenly hear a 'you learn' emerge from their speaking in tongues style quiet babbling. It's also likely some of them think they are doing you a favour. But some are clearly malicious, trying to slow you down and make it impossible to do whatever work you're doing. It often happens in retaliation for an earlier event, which itself was often manufactured by others, but blamed on you.

    Perhaps the worst thing is that it's so pernicious. You are the only person that it will affect, no one else in the room will even be aware that it's happening, so if you say something, you will seem unhinged. Occasionally it unfolds in such a way that it's completely obvious to all, but unfortunately that hapoens rarely.

    And you really can't do much about it, except continue as best you can, what you were doing.

  • People that say 'you learn' when other people realise that they have stolen their stuff does not in fact make everything OK.

    You can't be a thief and just pretend to be a teacher when you get caught. But this happens. Whether it's the truth or not, it's a terrible alibi.

    Stealing stuff in the name of teaching someone is still stealing. #

Today’s links:

2024/04/09 #

  • What do they mean when they say lie?

    Yesterday I asked what people here meant when they say 'lie'. There was a massive uptick in people saying the word as they walked past me. Women, men, school children, everyone was doing it. I wasn't doing anything, just walking down the road or sitting observing the world.

    Well this morning things become more clear. A taxi driver shouts loudly at a shoe shine / shoe repair bloke as he walks past to get his attention. 'Lie!'. It's clearly a beliteling derogatory term, on par with calling someone a dog. People are referred to as lies. Think about that for a second. It's basically saying you are so low you don't exist. You are a lie, not even real.

    Relatedly often people walking past, say 'you are' which I guess is saying something like 'you exist'. Which is nice until you realise that a load of people are actually saying 'you our', as in you belong to us. As in our property. But I digress. Recently it's been a lot more of the later. It seems any term will get corrupted.

    Back to 'lie'. They also use 'lie' to tell people to chill out, to wait. All this the same across most asian countries I've been to. So it has this dual purpose which means gives those who want to lord it over others, to be total assholes, to do it in broad daylight, and no one bats an eyelid.

    I think it's worth pointing all this out because as we go forward into a world mediated by AI, we have to remember that in much of the world people treat other people very badly indeed, and there's no reason whatsoever to believe that will be any different in the near future. It's clear AI tools will be used by some humans to subjugate other humans.

    Having said all this, it's worth noting that this particular set of incidents might all have been manufactured, including the taxi bloke and shoe repair guy. I say this because during the uptick yesterday, one of the incidents that happened was a women walking a dog talking with some police. As I passed she shouted 'lie' at the dog. About 30 seconds earlier two school kids teenagers walked past me in the opposite direction that I was walking, one of whom said, you guessed it, 'lie', as they passed. This morning I shouted to the taxi bloke 'you are lying' and he nodded looking a bit embarrassed.

    So in summary, groups of people definitely create situations where they openly use extremely detogatory ways of addressing others in public, in broad daylight. And this doesn't even get registered by anybody around as not normal, or not acceptable. It's clear this sort of thing also happens for real. Why wouldn't it, the fakers are basically teaching on-lookers that it's an okay and normal way to behave.

    Anyway, enough said, this sort of stuff makes my blood boil. How are we ever going to build a better world for all if this sort of thing is happening?

  • Yesterday evening in the middle of all the driveby gang stalking harrassnent, there was one that stood out:

    "Ok animal!"

    I guess it was a reference to my use of the term 'Ok boomer' yesterday. Well IMO that's very much a false equivalence. Ok animal is by definition literally dehumanizing, it says 'you are not even human', Ok boomer, though a bit of an insult, refers the official name for a particular generation cohort. Am I now to reprimand people for using the term Gen X?

    Weird thing is that it was from a person of young adult age.

    Anyway, it's just another example of the world having one set of rules for me, abd a totally different set of rules for everyone else. Everything I say is wrong. I cannot even.

    Also a reminder that anyone can read your blog / RSS feed, even millenial motorbike gang stalkers.

    BTW, millenials you have no idea how difficult it has been with the Boomers. #

  • Alan Moor via Jason Louve: "Young men used to go to sea when they wanted to get away from their family, go for adventure, make something of themselves in the big wide world. Now they try to become famous." #

Today’s links:

2024/04/08 #

  • The component overrides bug that I tracked down and fixed yesterday was a real tricky one. Glad I got that one fixed amidst all the head winds the world was throwing in my direction. Why are you so conflicted world? Why are you on the war path yet again? #

  • The component overrides bug

    The component overrides bug that I tracked down and fixed yesterday was a real tricky one. The bug got introduced while I was digging myself out of the massive hole caused by being blocked from cleaning up the codebase. It's layers upon layers of irony at this point.

    Turns out you can't currently override core components, something that needs to change, because you should be able to override any components with your own ones. Core components, by the way, are ones included in the main static site generator app. It's quite an easy update but not a priority right now.

    Anyway I wrote some additional tests in the main static site generator code, one of which was for overriding. Problem was I had forgotten about the core components special case, and the test was doing exactly that, overriding a core component. I got the test working, but it broke the feature everywhere else. The result in my website was that none of my custom components, were being picked up. The most notable consequence being the removal of multi-paragraph notes, which is a special feature I added to my website, outside of the notes plugin.

    There are quite a few customisations like this that I've added on my website. It's easier to do it there since that's the only live site at the minute. The plan is at some point to move all the custom features that make sense to be in the plugins, to the actual plugins. But it's not a priority. I have much bigger, much more important things to get right first. The interleaved homepage is one of those.

    Strange that the world seems so intent on blocking me from finishing the interleaved homepage, while at the same time forcing me to move my custom functionality into the plugins. Why in heavens would that happen? It feels like something in the universe is conflicted.

    Life goes on. Hopefully no starvation and thirst today.

  • One thing I've noticed recently is that some of the biggest Trump critics online are in fact very Trump-like themselves. They might have completely different political views, but their behaviour, outside of their righteous political commentary, is almost a carbon copy of Trump's playbook. I wonder do they realise? Serious question.

    Perhaps it's just a high performer boomer thing. Ok boomer, let's move on.

    Update: Just to be clear, I'm not making commentary on my politics, only an observation about people's behaviour. #

  • I've updated several notes from the past week updating them to blog posts. I'm still trying to get the balance between notes and blog posts right. I want notes to be small enough they can be posted to social medias. I also want a bunch of days that have vaguely the right balance to test the interleaved homepage feature that I've been working on recently. #

  • Something else that's super weird that keeps happening, and this one has been happening for years, but I only just thought of a good name for it. It's the end of task yah. You are busy doing something important and you finally finish whatever it is, and low and behold, a seemingly random 'Ya' materialises from your environment. I don't know how, I've got a pretty solid idea of why it happens, but I do know that it's a thing. Happens so often.

    The plot thickens. The even stranger thing is that whenever it happens 99% of the time I was literally about to get out of whatever hamster wheel I find myself in. And get this, it seems to happen more when the task st hand is painful. Come on world, it's pretty obvious what you are up to here. #

  • Two things that are extremely correlated with periods when they are starving and thirsting you are cigarettes and sexual harrasment incidents.

    For the former, suddenly a huge uptick in people offering you cigarettes, or smoking right up in your face, or empty cigarette packets left everywhere you go. For the later, the massive uptick happens from both men and women, usually as a way to anger goad you. Often from men and women operating together. Also massive uptick in number of random people saying 'lie' as they walk past. Whatever do they mean?

    I don't know how, only that it happens, like clockwork. #

  • People often say Bitcoin is money for enemies. It's meant to bring to the for that it's for everyone. Well it's worth remembering that RSS is information for enemies. Hardly anyone, actually no one, said this back in the early web years, but it's worth remembering. YMMV.

    You kind of just have to hope that everyone is not a veloceraptor. #

Today’s links:

2024/04/06 #

  • Pushing To Main (Issue #158)

    This week’s newsletter is out! (2024-04-06)

    In this week’s edition:

    A fantastic mix of tech related podcasts from state of the tech scene reviews to hobby project development, and some interviews with very interesting people. Your gonna love it.

    Issue details:

  • Robot mates and LLM conversations

    It seems Apple might be getting into the home robots business. It makes a lot of sense. Their recently failed self driving car initiative has had them in the vague ballpark of robots, so perhaps they are thinking they might be able to pivot. It certainly could be a big market. Imagine a world where most households have a house robot. They might even cost about the same as a car if they can do laborious household tasks like laundry, cleaning, and cooking.

    People are pretty intrigued and excited about the possibilities. There's an interesting segment on the latest All-in Podcast about household robots. Skip to 49:20 for the robots bit.

    No doubt Apple would make the best robots out there. Certainly if their attention to detail and quality is the same as with the Vision Pro. Home robots are notoriously difficult to get right, there are many potential dangers if they are to be around humans for long periods of time in a home setting.

    I wonder whether it would be a good idea to start small. Not literally in size but in functionality, but while riding the current LLM / AI wave.

    I was sitting in a cafe yesterday alone, and it occurred to me while looking at the empty seat in front of me, that it would be kind of cool if there was a humanoid robot that just sat at a table and had a drink with you while chatting about random shit. I reckon the current LLM models are basically good enough for such a robot mate. Instead of typing into an annoying chat prompt, you would actually talk to a robot. Wouldn't that be cool?

    That's how it would start out, but it would give the developers time to work on facial expressions and body language, and work towards more advanced functionality. Just an idea. I think you'd be able to get something functional to market very quickly and safely. Might even be a good approach for some of the startups in the space.

    Sometimes starting with something basic but fun is the best approach.

  • Health issues suck bigtime. They seem to happen constantly here. The runny nose and sneezing I had a few days ago turned into a full on cold. The sneezing stoped yesterday, but my nose has been totally blocked with thick mucus all day. All the skin around my nose has lost it's moisture and is pealing. It's not much fun.

    One thing I noticed during the previous lung infection illness was that a lot of my smelling ability returned. I'd lost much of my sense of smell a few years back after using an inhaler. Suddenly my sense of smell returned and was almost bionic. But it was bitter sweet because it was making me throwup a lot during the lung infection. I'd notice some very specific and often subtle smell and it would set me off coughing.

    Now that my nose is again blocked, I can't smell anything again. I hope I haven't lost my sense of smell again. #

  • Motorbike gang stalker drivebys

    There's been a sudden uptick in motorbike gang stalker drivebys this evening. It's like a memo had been sent out and the attack bees are swarming in on me. But it's not just folks on motorbikes, it's pedestrians too. People auspiciously doing their own thing, having a conversation, or being on the phone, then suddenly a whole bunch of vileness clearly directed at me, meant to goad me into reacting.

    If you say nothing they assume whatever it is they are accusing you of is true, you're a liar, you're gay, you're an actor, whatever, then they bully you more. If you reply telling them to f-off, they also bully you more, escallating to try to make you angry.

    Either way you end up being mutilated in some way, whether it's illness, body injuries, loss of some personal property, starvation, thirsting, there are so many ways they can get you. And you can't do nothing, it's happening in broad daylight. Whatever you do it's turned against you.

    And life goes on, you die a little more, they steal a bit more of your life, and you are the one that's in the wrong. And another day starts and you try to stay positive abd ignore the constant bullying.

  • Recently I've noticed that help from people tends to be a bit like complex numbers. There's a nice part and a malicious part. At times it all seems malicious. Is this how we want our societies to be?

    Are you so certain that you will never need help again? #

  • Complex malicious help

    The new trend I've noticed is that almost everytime someone offers me help there's a malicious component, or several, to the whole thing. It's been like that for several weeks now.

    For example, someone gifted me some small cakes which were very nice, but also toothpaste and a toothbrush, and an old baseball hat.

    The toothpaste was actually useful, but there were two tubes. One regular, and one child size. The toothbrush was pink. I've lost count of the number of pink related incidents. They usually result in people shouting 'gay' at you constantly. The hat was strange, but the very next day my actual current hat disapeared. I think it was stolen. That entire day was full of food vendors trying to scam or mislead me in one way or another. It was like some sort of co-ordinated tsunami. I don't know how it happens, only that it does.

    Another pattern that happens all the time is gifts of food that requires hot water, so it's essentially not edible, if you accept you end up carrying all this unuseable crap around, making your bags heavier than they are already. But if you decline the gift they act suprised like you are ungreatful. These incidents are highly highly correlated with water thirsting periods, where they mysteriously only give you milk, but no water.

    It's like complex numbers there's a nice part and a malicious part. At times it all seems malicious.

Today’s links:

2024/04/05 #

  • I'm busy updating the test suites for all my static site generator's plugins. It's to try and dig myself out of a hole at least partially caused by being blocked tidying up the code. The very thing I was worried about happening, which was the reason I was tidying up the code, actually happened when the world blocked me from tidying up the code! #

  • I'm finding that very humid environments make my lungs worse. More coughing. Also air polution. People keep banging on about masks, and seemingly everyone wears them, especially here in HCMC. But imho they don't work!

    They don't filter the air very well, because the poluted air just goes around the sides of the mask. So you inhale it anyway. And ontop of that, the air on the inside of the mask is hugely humid, because obviously the air that comes from your body is full of water vapour.

    Isn't this mask theatre really just a dangerous way to avoid the air polution problem? #

  • Masks are sort of dumb

    I'm finding that very humid environments make my lungs worse.

    I end up coughing quite a lot and eventually that results in coughing up flem. I'm also finding that when I wear a mask and ensure that it's a tight fit, so the air I'm breathing is definitely being filtered by the mask, that the air in the mask itself gets very humid because obviously, the air I breath out contains water vapour created in my body. I know it's humid because when I wear my glasses while the mask is on, they immediately fog up.

    The point is that when I wear the mask for a long time, I eventually start to cough because of the humidity, and eventually it results in coughing up flem.

    It's a tough choice. Filtered air with coughing and flem, or non-filtered air with coughing and flem. If I wear a looser fit mask, the air doesn't get filtered, so what's the point?

    Like I was saying before, masks are sort of dumb.

    title: 'Masks are sort of dumb' date: '2024-04-05 22:06:00 +07:00'

  • Module caches and reusable workflows

    The last few days have been a bit of a disaster development-wise. I was forced into pressing forward down a difficult path because I was blocked for many days on all other paths. It ended quite badly, and I was unable to deploy to the website and a bunch of stuff broke.

    I was able to fix it within a day, but it was kind of scary, because since I'd been forced into pushing directly to main branch on several repos, the only way out was to reset hard the branch, losing several days work. Anyway it's fixed.

    All sorts of irony surrounding the whole episode. Here from a note I wrote mid way through:

    "The very thing I was worried about happening, which was the reason I was tidying up the code, actually happened when the world blocked me from tidying up the code!"

    There were a couple of useful take aways from the exercise.

    Firstly I've found a better way to implement the npm module caches used in Github Actions that makes it easier to refresh them when code changes in the plugin modules. That's a big deal because it was a massive source of confusion and wasted build minutes. I've also removed all caches that were used in plugins. The plugins now use simplified local versions of the server components in tests rather than those in the plugins. I guess you could call them mocks. That means there's no dependencies, no need to install plugin repos, so no need for an npm cache. The only repo that still needs an npm cache is the main website because it has to npm install all the plugins.

    That should make things much less confusing. Imagine how complicated it was debugging the main website with a cache, when the bug is in a plugin that also has a cache.

    Another thing I realised earlier was that the work I did trying to tidy up the plugins by consolidating them into a couple of repos might not have been for nothing. Reason being that I got reusable workflows operational between private repos. Theoretically it means I should be able to consolidate all the plugin workflows into one workflow that they all use to build and deploy. That will be much easier to maintain.

    The final thing I realised was that it would be nice to update the cache refresh logic into a seperate reusable workflow. Currently the build deploy backup workflow is dual purpose which is confusing and error prone. Since I know reusable workflows between private repos work, that might be possible. But for it to work the caches need to be useable across workflows in the same repo. The cache refresh workflow would create the new cache, which could then be used by the build and deploy workflow. I'm not sure if that's possible yet.

    To be clear having lots of private repos is still a bit of a headache, but all in all if I manage to get all or most of these optimisations working, the simplified cache setup and consolidating the workflows might make the overhead of having seperate repos for each plugin just about manageable.

Today’s links:

2024/04/03 #

Today’s links:

  • Trump’s stake in Truth Social falls by $1bn after company reveals $58m loss - This will be an interesting one to follow because it might very well be the future of financing. The first famous person to do this was David Bowie back in the 80s. He sold a David Bowie bond and investors got paid back within 10 years. It was a big success. It's sort of similar to crypto initial coin offerings (ICOs). Truth Social doesn't have much sales yet but their losses are less than Reddit's. I wonder if with these celebrity stocks whether controversy actually contributes to the value going up. We shall see. www.theguardian.com #

  • Redis’ license change and forking are a mess that everybody can feel bad about - The more I think about these open source project fiascos the more I wonder what incentive these large service providers have to make a deal with the original project maintainers. Surely they can just do the same trick everytime, which is to pay them nothing, then when the maintainers change the license, the service provider forks the project, inserting their own maintainers. Is this what is happening? arstechnica.com #

2024/04/02 #

  • Another night of sleep depravation, it's the 3rd night in a row. This time it was a gang that setup a round table nearby from around 230am until 430am. Very roundy and loud. It's the second time they've done this, once again right after a day of escallations.

    It's clearly part of a retaliation campaign by the folks that tried to force me to sleep in wet clothes and blanket. They are literally trying to make me ill again. Last night before the gang appeared, they sprayed water everywhere around near where I was, which made the air really damp and humid for the whole night. That caused my lungs to get sensitive, and I woke up coughing loads of flem.

    Once again the world attempts to block me from getting well and actively trying to make me ill again. They are all on the war path, blaming me for a situation they caused in the first place.

    Right after the sleep depravation gang left, a motorbike with 2 girls stopped and they offered me a bag full of food that would be impossible to eat because I have no hot water, a few sweats, and of course milk. This is classic war path tactics. Create a situation, ie the sleep depravation, then follow it up with anger goading malicious help. This has happened so many times I've lost count.

    What will happen next? Likely more escallations everywhere I go, I'll get the blame, and I'll end up in some way mutilated, then starved and thirsted. #

  • A statement made recently by chinese foreign minister Wong Yi refering to the US' unfair knee caping with trade restrictions struck a chord with me.

    The minister said the situation was "reaching bewildering levels of unfathomable absurdity".

    This is in some way similar to how I feel trapped here in Vietnam every single day. #

  • I enjoyed listening to the recent Lex Fridman interview with Mark Cuban. Really interesting early internet entrepreueur and personality. Two things he said that I think are worth noting:

    • Be insanely curious so you can really get to the crux of issues
    • Be good at sales, for any company, hone in on how exactly they make money, then figure out what new thing you can introduce that can make them more money, then sell them that thing. Works in any industry.

    Worth listening to the whole episode, he has a load of pretty fascinating stories about the early internet. #

Today’s links:

  • New laws decriminalising personal use of cannabis come into effect in Germany - I'm suprised that I hadn't heard anything about this previously. I guess it's not an April fools joke? The one fact that stood out was that only 10% of the population actually smoke weed. Very interested to see how it pans out, Germany is a big country so will be interesting to see how it affects crime. I'd like to think most people are responsible and can handle having the option to try without fear of being arrested. So much police time is wasted on the crime surrounding weed. www.theguardian.com #

2024/04/01 #

  • Malicious easter help - I got gifted some dinner last night. It was a hot microwaved meal from a nearby shop. I accepted, said thanks. Ate the meal and it tasted fine. However I woke up in the middle of the night with a terrible sore throat, voice all f-ed up, it's still not right this morning.

    During the night motorbike gang stalkers doing various drive-bys. One was a weedy looking bloke waving his little finger at me, in what looked like a reference to Austin Powers character Dr. Evil.

    Once again the world not only won't let me get well, but is actively trying to make me sick again. The very same thing happened a few days ago. That time I found a way around the blockage. This time they poisonned me, presumaby in retaliation for escaping their previous trap.

    Blaming me for the problems they caused in the first place, then mutilation me for the thing they did to me. This stuff never ends. As soon as it does, they get on the war path again and create another issue that they blame on me, and it starts all over again, wave after wave of bullying, eventually escallating to mutilation. All the while they become more and more righteous, more and more certain that everything in the entire multiverse is my fault.

    Earlier in the day they put a giant pink motorbike, a sort of Harley, that had the word Victory in huge letters along the side, prominently parked on the path I was walking.. Remember they've been pink bullying me since they gifted me a black bag that has the word pink in massive letters on 3 of the 4 sides of the bag.

    What a coincidence that this should all happen on Easter Sunday, probably the most important Christian festival of the year. It never ends. #

  • Targeted goading - The gang stalkers favorite thing this morning is to goad me shouting 'lie' as they drive past, when I'm just minding my own business, not saying anything. All the poisoning thing happened hours ago, but they keep trying to dig up old graves.

    It's typical war path behaviour, like when they wake you up just to tell you to go back to sleep again, or when they are starving you and they shout 'allow' as they drive past laughing like a pack of hyenas. #

  • Ankles - Ankles are still swollen, a bit worse than yesterday. All the walking I'm having to do and standing for internet access isn't helping. #

  • Bitcoin Mechanic (16:04): "If it’s valid, and what you are doing is appealing to a miner, because they are not slaves, they will put into the chain what they feel like putting into the chain. That’s why transaction fees exist. They don’t have to put anything in." #

  • Bitcoin Mechanic (43:35): "Miners should be the ones constructing block templates, […], for the deeper purpose of decentralising that horribly centralised part of Bitcoin. Right now you have a dozen entities in the world that say what can get in the blockchain […]. That’s not censorship resistance.". #

  • IMO, It’s weird that Bitcoin miners get to choose which transactions to include, but they look for signal from network nodes about what to include, especially since they can’t verify if they are getting paid properly by the mining pools, and since it's in everyone's interest to pay them as little as possible, aren’t they bound to get exploited? #

  • Bitcoin Mechanic (2:12:00): "Most people aren't aware that their nodes filter out concensus valid transactions all the time [...]. You have to learn how your node works, and what that is, is very different to a government saying don't include coin joins or transactions that originate from iranian bitcoin exchanges." #

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