markjgsmith

2024/06/05 #

• Dear iOS,

  Please stop auto-correcting 'some' to 'sone', which isn’t even a word, and it’s most definitely much less common than 'some'. You do it constantly.

  Thank you & kind regards, Mark #

• According to Anatoly Yakovenko, the goal for the Solana L1 is to be able to support the entire world. 10M transactions per second: 100 transactions per person, per second, per day. That's a lot of transactions. #

• There's an interesting developer related segment on the latest Rabbit Hole recap Podcast. Matt and Marty comment on Peter MacCormack's recent Michael Saylor interview, and they go on to talk about being bitcoin conservative, open source development & funding, protocol changes, maintenance, the need for an ethical path for devs, and the scary prospect of shitcoiners funding bitcoin development (~00:50:00). Worth a listen if you are interested in Bitcoin tech and development. #

• It's election season in the EU, and I've noticed lots of articles in the main stream media. Perhaps I'm just reading the Guardian too much, but it seems to have peaked an interest in the UK.

  After all the Brexit stuff, and especially with a large majority of young folks being quite annoyed about the whole debacle, is the Uk getting interested in EU elections? That would be quite an ironic turn of events. Absence makes the heart grow fonder.

  Could also be because the EU elections are IMO actually turning out to be genuinely interesting this time around.

  I'd love to know how to get a representative read of the situation. #

• I thought this was an interesting quote from the recent article about Bilderberg:

  Time magazine has dubbed Ukraine "an AI war lab", and the Economist agrees, describing it as "a testing ground for companies like Anduril and Palantir" – the heads of both of these defense tech companies are here in Madrid.

  That hadn't occurred to me before, because the scale of war is just so big. But of course, some things you just can't test in staging, and that's even more the case for something like war. The point is that it's worth remembering that lots of people actually want the war in Ukraine to continue. It's very convenient for some.

  And it's likely a general thing, that if a horrible situatiom persists for far longer than seems normal, there's often an incentive disalignment. It might not be immediately obvious, but likely that some people are benefitting from the misery of others. #

• cat << EOF > EU elections AI analyst bot

  I've been getting mildly interested in the run up to the EU elections over the past few days. It's not something I've ever paid any real attention to before, but this year, there's so much going on. It feels genuinely a bit exciting. Like the entire region is approaching some sort of important crossroad.

  It's also an opportunity to do some arm chair tourism. Learn about some of the different cultural subtleties that exist across the continent. A time when it's possible to suss out genuine differences in the flavours of society, but also the things that hold us together, and maybe even more importantly, a way to envision how we could be better in ourselves and better integrated together in the future. Respecting and even appreciating our differences, and genuinely looking forward to building a great future that we can feel part of and valued.

  For me the western EU differences are quite well understood. I've spent time in many places in those countries. It's still interesting to catchup and remember how things were, how they might have changed in recent years. But I'm also really interested in the central and eastern countries. Those I have much less first hand experience with. Mostly just through watching alternative small budget films and talking to immigrants back home. There's a certain romanticism to it, they seem somewhat exotic, but in a cold sort of way.

  It's one of the reasons I like listening to the Crypto Voices Podcast. Matthew Mezinskis is a US expat in the region, living I think in Poland. His crypto coverage is the main attraction, he is somewhat famously good at numerical and scientific analysis of the monetary base system, and he's really excellent at explaining things. But he often drifts into a bit of local central european politics at the end of the episodes. It's a boots on the ground view of what's happening in the region. And that's tended to be quite a lot recently, given the war in Ukraine.

  Most of what I'm reading newswise is from the Guardian and BBC news websites. It's great writing but I'm always wondering what their biases are. I really wish I could read similar articles but from the different countries local media. Unfortunately because of language differences, but also because of shear volume, that's pretty difficult.

  It occurred to me so, that wouldn't it be great, in this age of LLMs and ChatGPT, to have an AI bot that on the daily, consumed all the election news, in all the various languages, creating not only a summary in your native language, because translation is so good these days, but also did some genuine analysis to discover biases, discrepencies, conflicts of interest, in short produced some high level pieces that gave you a way to check the pulse across the entire region.

  You could also imagine that, if the AI bot knew your interests and background, it could unearth things that might be of particular interest to you.

  Would love to know if such a thing exists, and if it doesn't, why not?

  EOF

• I was thinking about which online communities I spend most of my time with. In no particular order, I'd say these broadly are the following: Linux, Webdev, Tech, Bitcoin, Music, Out There Stuff.

  I have to say, it's mostly reading at this stage. I don't actively participate in chats, forums, discord groups etc. That's mostly down to lack of time. But I would like to be a bit more connected into these in the future.

  In the past, many of my attempts to connect have been rebuffed. Maybe that will change in the future, really wish that could happen in some way. I guess I'm not very good at it.

  I've been online for 25 years at this point, still no real friends though. You would think that it would be a possibility. #

• cat << EOF > Static site vs dynamic web server

  It's true that dynamic web servers are super cheap these days. So why not use one instead of rendering your website as static files?

  Here are a few reasons off the top of my head:

  • Easily move your site around, avoid lock in and price gouging, just pick up all your files and leave, everywhere supports static sites
  • Long term stability, no npm installs that fail after years of not installing your site, no libraries out of date, no upgrades needed, your website is just files (see note below)
  • Security, virtually no way to hack your site because there literally isn't any code that gets executed
  • Automation and collaboration, Github powered workflows, since it's all just files, it's super easy to collaborate around a github repository, setup workflows using many available pre-built ones or create your own, your website isn't stuck inside a database, also great for automating pulling content from various sources and generating your website using static site generators
  • Publish and work offline, if you manage your site using a version control system like Git, then you can always create new content, even if/when your internet connection gets cut off / goes down, just sync up when you are next online
  • You can still integrate with dynamic servers if you need to for some things, use serverless function for example, or entire custom web servers, just put them on a subdomain, essentially you can mix and match

  These would be the first things that spring to mind for me.

  Full disclosure, I develop a static site generator, so I'm biased :)

  Note: Ok yes if you use a static site generator it's possible that you could run into npm install / up upgrade issues. On the other hand, in an emergency, you literally can just pickup all your files, leave, and get them up online at a different host without any difficulty. So keeping your existing site online is much easier. You don't need to mess about with a database. Then you have time to fix any problems with the static site generator.

  EOF

• cat << EOF > Some people just want to watch you starve

  Sadly another textbook example of the bullies creating the problem they complain about, blocking the solution they suggest, and eventually blaming it all on me. This one is going to be a bit depressing. Life is like that sometimes.

  About a month ago, my portable coffee mug went missing. I used to use it for instant noodles too, so it was quite a big loss. It disapeared under very strange circumstances. I wrote about it at the time. In any case I had been mostly avoiding instant noodles because in one of the places where they have hot water heaters in the public areas, a strange old lady was making it look like she was pouring small recepticles of clear liquid into the water heaters. I don't know for sure whether she was actually doing it or not, but I did end up with several sore throats.

  Following that, the incidents of people gifting me large numbers of instant noodles packets increased significantly. Sometimes big bags full of them. Since I had no way to cook them I had no choice but to refuse them or throw them away. And guess what, I got blamed, 'what an ungrateful foreigner'. Nevermind that I was often starving.

  In parrallel to this, the water supply in the taps at one of the public toilets slowly, bit by bit, week by week, systematically got reduced and eventually cut off. That was an entire ordeal in itself, but in any case now there is a red bucket outside the toilet that people are supposed to use to clean their hands. I don't use it because not only is it likely a new popular bath location, for the bird fauna in the neighbouring park, but I've seen the toilet staff use the same red bucket to clean the toilets. Fucking gross.

  Well in the interim over the past few weeks I decided to start eating noodles again since the previous noodles drama seemed long ago. So I've been enjoying the occasional instant noodles. That helps a lot when there is no food, and also a way to keep hydrated. Instead of the coffee mug I've been reusing an instant noodles recepticle. If you pay a bit more you get a recepticle, the noodles on their own are 1/2 the price. But the recepticle was made of cardboard on the outside so it wears out quite quickly.

  Well the recepticle I was reusing was getting quite knackered. This morning though I got gifted some noodles from a food vendor, which was very nice, though it seemed like it could very well have been part of some sort of grift, where they make it seem like it's a gift, then when you don't pay, they look very disapointed and sad, even though they have been asking you all about the difficulties you've been having stuck in Vietnam since COVID. Even though they walked up to you and said they would give you some noodles. Anyway, that's a whole other story I won't get into. Their noodles were very nice, and what was great they came in a compleately plastic bowl, one I can safely reuse. Brilliant, a problem solved!

  Well guess what, eventually everything good gets broken. It happens every time. I had the gifted noodles sitting in a cafe / shop for breakfast. I also had an instant noodles to test out the new plastic bowl. Worked great. A few hours later, lunch time swings around and literally just as I was about to get another instant noodles packet, one of the shop cafe staff walks up the stairs with, you guessed it, a red bucket, identical to the public toilet bucket, full of water, which he then uses to fill up the water heater with. At this point I notice I have a bit of a sore throat and a massive case of dry mounth, which hasn't been happening all the other times I've had instant noodles the past week.

  It's likely not the exact same bucket, but it is literally a bucket you could use to mop the floor. And guess how the place was configured the day before? I arrived to find all the stools upside down on the tables, evidently they had been moping the floor. It's hard to impart how strange this configuration is. I've been going there every day for months and months now, and that was literally the first time I've seen all the stools upside down on the tables like that. What are the chances?

  So one problem fixed, but then another one immediately created, blocked once again, no more noodles for me, and in an even worse situation than before. Whenever they help you, they also mutilate you.

  This is happening constantly with literally every fucking thing, every fucking day. And what's more there are people that are fully aware of the situation, egging you on, pushing you to have the noodles, pushing you to walk into thier evil and malicious trap, and then finding it absolutely hilarious when you do. And they will also find it the most hilarious thing in the universe when you are starving and can only afford an instant noodles. They just want to watch you starve.

  EOF

Today’s links:

• Thousands of homeless people removed from Paris in pre-Olympics ‘social cleaning’ - This should be a national embarrassment. It's clearly not a money issue, the Olympics will bring huge amounts of money. These people have been forced into horrible conditions by a system that is clearly against them, and now the state is trying to disapear them. Just horrendous. Sadly this type of thing happens in so many places, it's the modern day gas chambers. www.theguardian.com #

• Shein set to file for £50bn London listing - Interesting to see how local big clothes companies like Zara and H&M will react, apparently Shein skirts import taxes since many of the third-party suppliers, as well as contract manufacturers (i.e. small factories) ship direct to customers rather than import large shiping containers. www.bbc.com #

• Open Collective - "Open Collective is a legal and financial toolbox for grassroots groups. It’s a fundraising + legal status + money management platform for your community." - It's awesome that there are now tools to help these grassroots movements be transparent. That enables them to carry out the great work they do with much less likelyhood they will fall victim to corruption. opencollective.com #

• OpenAI Insiders Warn of a ‘Reckless’ Race for Dominance - Interesting to see they are engageing Lawrence Lessig, well known for his work creating the Creative Commons, the copy left movement, and experiments in elections reform. I find the excessive secrecy in these AI companies worrying, these groups should be operating with much more transparency. www.nytimes.com #

• New Post: EU elections AI analyst bot markjgsmith.com #

• Open Timestamps - "A timestamping proof standard, OpenTimestamps aims to be a standard format for blockchain timestamping." - Use the bitcoin blockchain to create timestamps so you can verify that a particular bit of content existed at a particular moment in time. I'd like to integrate something like this into my static site generator at some point. The website isn't loading the CSS, so not sure if it's still maintained. Sounds like a cool project though. opentimestamps.org #

• New Post: Static site vs dynamic web server markjgsmith.com #

• New Post: Some people just want to watch you starve markjgsmith.com #