markjgsmith

09:59:00 +07:00 Maybe Bluesky has "won" - Gets a bit technical but not too much, highlighting some it’s architectural choices. I looked yesterday for examples and tutorials of integrating Bluesky into your website but didn’t find anything. Curious what exactly you would need to implement. anderegg.ca #

10:35:00 +07:00 New Post: Thought on integrating your website with Bluesky markjgsmith.com #

11:01:00 +07:00 Will we care about frameworks in the future? - Paul Kinlan makes the case that perhaps in the future we won’t even use frameworks because the AI in your IDE will be writing most of the code. paul.kinlan.me #

11:14:00 +07:00 Lexical - A framework for building text editors. I think it’s from the guys and gals over at Meta. lexical.dev #

11:29:00 +07:00 UK must pick between US economic model or EU’s ‘socialism’, says Trump adviser - It sure would be interesting to hear from Trump himself what his thoughts are on this, it certainly seems like unnecessary childish anger goading. It’s suprising that a country built on a foundation of fierce independance would seek to publically humiliate another anglophone country by telling them how they should run things. I don’t think it’s such a wise move. Ultimately if the brits feel they have a bad deal, they will boycott american products, and find other friends internationally. This might even be a boost for the entertainment industry, lots of new material. Note the article is from the Guardian. www.theguardian.com #

11:29:00 +07:00 Russian spy ship escorted away from internet cables in Irish Sea - Not a good sign. Seems like everyone is anger goading following the US election results. Looks like both lefties and righties are trying to provoke the UK following the US election result? It would be great if everyone could just growup and focus on getting our globally synchronised economies back on track. www.theguardian.com #

12:45:00 +07:00 🚀 Latest Newsletter: Bull runs, economies, politics, browsers & crypto AI (Issue #190) markjgsmith.com #

15:20:00 +07:00 New Post: The peaceful transition of humour markjgsmith.com #

17:33:00 +07:00 Not a Joke: 'The Onion' Buys Alex Jones’s InfoWars Site - They plan to turn it into a parody of itself. Not sure this is such a good idea. Feels like they might end up creating a bizare free speech inception singularity type situation, whatever that might be. Wouldn’t it be a sort of right wing Daily Show? www.inc.com #

07:20:00 +07:00 Where web components shine - Several weeks old at this point, but it’s the first chance I’ve had to read it. Great post with lots of first hand experience advice. I like how web components aren’t meant to solve everything, this patchiness actually sounds quite web-like. You just have to know what situations to use them for, and we are still figuring this out. Dave and Chris did a Shop Talk episode all about this post. Worth giving it a listen. daverupert.com #

13:01:00 +07:00 Factorio - "Factorio is a game in which you build and maintain factories" - I’m not a big gamer, played some consoles, and used to hang out at arcades during the lunch hour when at school, and also played a bit at university. But these days literally never. I only code cli tools and websites. In some ways that in itself is a sort of game, maybe even the ultimate game. I heard about Factorio (wikipedia page) on a recent programming podcast, I forget exactly which one. It was described by a developer as the closest thing to writing code in a game he had ever seen. You basically have to create all sorts of these interface type structures, and you refactor and optimise them. Anyway I thought it sounded kind of cool, a bit like Sim City but also maybe an interesting way to get into computer programming. Surely a more fun stepping stone that Excel and Microsoft Word :) www.factorio.com #

13:23:00 +07:00 Borewit/music-metadata - "Stream and file based music metadata parser for node. Supporting a wide range of audio and tag formats". This looks like it could be very useful if you were doing anything that requires reading / updating audio metadata, like IDE tags of mp3 files or even streams. Supports loads of other formats too. github.com #

08:31:00 +07:00 Bluesky adds 700,000 new members as users flee X after the US election - Saying that they are fleing seems a bit hyperbolic, I bet hardly any of them deleted their X accounts. It’s more like diversifying imo, and that’s a good thing. Who knows, maybe a lot of them are republicans who think Elon’s Twitter might get targeted by angry democrats. www.theguardian.com #

09:03:00 +07:00 How I ship projects at big tech companies - Lots of useful info in this article including a somewhat interesting way of defining shiping. I find it’s very much a mindset, getting the simplest functional version out, then iterating to make it better, while making sure you can always get back to a safe state should something unnexpected occur where you need to reverse course. It’s difficult, and you often have to make tough choices, weighing up short terms fixes vs more difficult structural changes. You have to be able to do both, and in the right sequence. There are many different paths to the same goal. Things change, you have to adapt. www.seangoedecke.com #

09:20:00 +07:00 Bitcoin is closing in on $90,000 for the first time ever - We are likely now in a period of increased volatility at least until Trump takes over, but generally on the up. The big question is whether we are in a super cycle or not. It certainly could be. If the US sets up the strategic bitcoin reserve they have been talking about, then other countries might follow suit, and then insitutions, and individuals too. www.cnbc.com #

09:28:00 +07:00 Bitcoin Touches Record-High $85K, Adds Almost $20K in a Week - Looks like it’s the start of the much anticipated bull run. This isn’t investment advice, but there’s been speculation for months that it will reach 100K. www.coindesk.com #

09:39:00 +07:00 MicroStrategy acquires another 27,200 bitcoin for more than $2 billion - This move is also going to push up the Bitcoin price somewhat. www.theblock.co #

09:45:00 +07:00 100,000 Chinese students join 50km night-time bike ride in search of good soup dumplings - Things really escallate quickly in China sometimes. For comparison, that’s around the same amount of people that go to Glastonbury music festival. www.theguardian.com #

09:59:00 +07:00 ‘Give us back our Fingers’: uproar in France as Cadbury biscuits vanish - Lots of fond memories eating these tastey treats during my youth. Glad to hear the french are speaking out against this injustice. We brits would definitely do the same if tastey french biscuits disapeared from our shelves too. www.theguardian.com #

10:55:00 +07:00 Physicist Says There's Another Universe Hiding Behind the Big Bang - For what it’s worth, and this most likely has no bearing on the structure of everything, with all the bizare synchronicities that happen to me on the daily, at times hourly, it very often feels like the universe is using me as some sort of mirror. Also, I wonder how the universe feels about wormholes, on the whole good or actually kind of bad? Or undecided? futurism.com #

11:11:00 +07:00 Creator of Crypto Mixer 'Bitcoin Fog' Gets 12 1/2 Years In Prison - Financial privacy is something we really need to figure out. It might even be THE most important thing when it comes to individual freedom. gizmodo.com #

11:21:00 +07:00 New Post: Individual freedom in the age of crypto currencies and AI markjgsmith.com #

06:00:00 +07:00 Voyager space probe closes in on a 50 year mission - I feel a lot like voyager, hopelessly typing out messages to no one, forever drifting into eternity. www.theregister.com #

10:47:00 +07:00 New Post: Monarchies and republics: An obvious difference I only just noticed markjgsmith.com #

14:15:00 +07:00 Polymarket open interest drops 64% after US presidential election - Interesting to watch people getting to grips with these new kinda powerful technologies, they have a sort of governance vibe to them, but also market trading. www.theblock.co #

11:51:00 +07:00 New Post: Joe Rogan and Dave Smith on government creating the problems they complain about markjgsmith.com #

15:21:00 +07:00 Canada orders shutdown of TikTok's Canadian business, app access to continue - They sitecsecurity concerns. I wonder if a possible solution to all this type of stuff is to have a password protected data transmission explorer app on all devices so users could see exactly what data was being sent over the wire. Of course that might create security issues itself, but perhaps the trade off would be worth it. You could then at least make an informed decision of which apps you want to have on your devices. Would love to hear why this isn’t a good idea. www.reuters.com #

15:57:00 +07:00 Relationship between UK and Ukraine ‘has worsened since Labour won election’ - Starmer apparently is waiting for approval from the US on whether Ukraine can use the misiles gifted to it from the UK, despite telling Zelenski it can make an independant decision on the matter. Seems odd. Allowed but also not allowed. Does blocking protect or in the long term just create more war? I wonder if there are smaller scale examples that know these sorts of dynamics. Seems like the gun market in the US is a free market, I wonder if that is a choice they make that reduces war overall. www.theguardian.com #

17:35:00 +07:00 🚀 Latest Newsletter: Deprogramming Dénouement (Issue #189) markjgsmith.com #

16:20:00 +07:00 Polymarket, Prediction Betting Markets Vindicated by Trump's Strong Showing - The prediction markets have definitely been interesting to watch. Worth remembering though that they function very differently to polls. As you get closer to the event you would expect the prediction market to get closer to 100%. Also the people participating there aren’t necessarily representative of the regular population. It wonder what types of events they get wrong. Prediction markets !== default reality, no matter what people say. Imo, there’s a bit of a danger they, or something similar, could become the next incarnation of the nanny state. www.coindesk.com #

16:38:00 +07:00 Jeff Bezos, Sam Altman, Tim Cook and other tech leaders congratulate Trump on election win - Very different to last time. It’s nice to see there is a bit of national unity despite the very vicious run up. I’ve been listening to quite a few podcasts, from both the left and right. It’s really interesting to hear the Democrats analysing what went wrong. I’ve been suprised by how good the retrospective analysis has been. It’s suprising because I think it shows that many could see better than they were admiting too during the campaigning. www.cnbc.com #

17:50:00 +07:00 Stock markets and dollar rise as US election result in focus - Good to see some positive signals from the markets. Keep an eye out to see how this changes during the first few weeks of the new government. www.bbc.com #

17:00:00 +07:00 Republic vs. Democracy: What Is the Difference? - It’s been interesting this morning to read about the differences, I wasn’t aware of the details previously. The US is technically a constitutional republic, not a democracy. The biggest difference appears to be that republics try to create a balance between majority and minority that prevent situations where the majority totally out power minorities. I was a bit suprised by this because I always thought the Democrats were about protecting workers and minorities. www.thoughtco.com #

12:03:00 +07:00 Kemi Badenoch announced as new leader of Conservative Party - I haven’t been able to fully read this article as I’m currently getting infiniti blocked everywhere. But it seems like an important moment. I do note that there are a load of strange coincidences around this. K-MALA Harris, also a black woman, all be it technically less black, is running for US president. BAD-enoch’s first name is literally K-me, so in a weird way the universe is saying she is BAD BAD-enoch. So technically BADer as well as blacker, I guess. Also Rachel Reeves, who has a very normal name in comparison, is the first female Chancelor in 800 years. She inherited an economy from the previous Chancelor, a man named HUNT! C how strange the universe is right now? It’s like everything is a scripted reality TV show created by AI agents that are in an infiniti war. This has got to be the strangest link I’ve written in a while. Congrats to both Rachel and Kemi. It’s all good. 🕊✌️☮️ www.bbc.com #

12:24:00 +07:00 altera-al/project-sid - A literal AI civilisation framework. It was on the HN front page earlier today. - "These preliminary results show that agents can achieve significant milestones towards AI civilizations, opening new avenues for large-scale societal simulations, agentic organizational intelligence, and integrating AI into human civilizations". What could possibly go wrong. It’s not like the entire world is a stage enhabited by actors being fed lines by AI simulations. It’s stuff like this that makes you wonder if there is actually a long term plan to eradicate conservatives. The way things evolve you have to assume there might be a counter plot to eradicate liberalism / the left. Presumably all good, I guess. github.com #

07:52:00 +07:00 New Post: JD Vance on Kamala’s talking style markjgsmith.com #

14:08:00 +07:00 New Post: A better metaphor for growth markjgsmith.com #

16:31:00 +07:00 New Post: Electronic music range markjgsmith.com #

12:45:00 +07:00 🚀 Latest Newsletter: Debugging a nuclear reaction (Issue #188) markjgsmith.com #

14:24:00 +07:00 Georgia must change course to open EU membership talks, says European Commission - The EU commission said that Georgia had taken a "conservative and anti-liberal course, away from the west and closer to Russia". www.theguardian.com #

15:27:00 +07:00 New Post: The ever changing EU markjgsmith.com #

14:21:00 +07:00 Apple Unveils New M4 MacBook Pro Lineup, Including, Hallelujah, a Nano-Texture Display Option - They finally raised the base model minimum RAM to 16GB. daringfireball.net #

14:24:00 +07:00 NHS, schools, and biggest tax rises since 1993: The key Budget takeaways - I’m no expert as far as the economy, but seems to me that by making it more difficult for businesses, that’s ultimately going to effect workers, which are the people they are saying they want to help. Increaing national insurance for business and increasing capital gains definitely makes things more difficult for businesses. I hear from business owners that things are already very difficult for businesses. Their 'rebuilding britain' is a great narative but the way they are doing it seems very arse about foot. www.itv.com #

18:01:00 +07:00 New Post: Redirect to title heredocs markjgsmith.com #

18:00:00 +07:00 rochacbruno/marmite - "Marmite [Markdown makes sites] is a very! simple static site generator". I thought this looked prettu neat. First of all, brilliant project name. But also the simplicity is kind of great. Supports a lot of cool markdown features out of the box too. Wish I had a laptop so I could try it out. github.com #

09:30:00 +07:00 New Post: A delightful quiet morning listening to Duncan Trussell markjgsmith.com #

10:24:00 +07:00 New Post: Matt Odell and Marty Bent on zero taxes markjgsmith.com #

16:25:00 +07:00 New Post: Freedom tech and the tax system markjgsmith.com #

11:23:00 +07:00 India's balancing act with the West as Brics flexes new muscles - They have a bunch of things they are trying to organise but the big thing everyone id looking at is their promised payment system, which so far hasn’t been realised in a meaningful way as far as I can see. www.bbc.com #

12:45:00 +07:00 🚀 Latest Newsletter: Beams Of Light (Issue #187) markjgsmith.com #

09:05:00 +07:00 Marseille is neither a drug-choked hell nor a tourist paradise: it’s the city that captures France at its best - Really enjoyed Cole Stangler’s piece about this southern city. It’s got a dark reputation that I’m quite well aware of, but apparently in recent years it’s started to nevertheless become a bit of a hub for creatives, with an influx of artists, chefs, musicians and writers. And it’s multi-cultural and generally has quite a tolerant vibe about the place. His description reminds me of East London, in the early 2000s, like Hackney and Shoreditch. Just the right mix of sunshine and grit. Definitely going to keep an eye out for all things Marseille. www.theguardian.com #

09:27:00 +07:00 Thom Yorke and Julianne Moore join thousands of creatives in AI warning - I had been wondering what had happened to old Thom. It’s been ages since I’ve seen him in the news. Glad he’s still making waves. Can’t help but wonder what weird and wonderful things he might come up with using AI tech though. But perhaps for it to have any effect for him, the AIs would need to get a lot more powerful. He has after all historically speaking been very okay with computers hasn’t he, more than most anyway. www.theguardian.com #

09:52:00 +07:00 I am so incompetent, I lose things I never had in the first place - Adrian Chiles writes about how the world is now punishing him for it’s own short commings. I sympathise. I’ve found that having considerably improved my competence in many areas of my life, the world is constantly offended at me now. This happens multiple times per day. It’s constantly trying to trap me, and when I catch it red handed, it gets even more offended. It’s kind of hilarious. But you can’t let on, because you can guess how that makes worldo feel. It’s hard to describe, but it’s definitely a thing imo. www.theguardian.com #

20:55:00 +07:00 New Post: The future of court cases and the legal system markjgsmith.com #

08:08:00 +07:00 Fear the Boom and Bust: Keynes vs. Hayek - The Original Economics Rap Battle! - Beastie Boys style rap battle between Keynes and Hayek. I feel like this is some sort of analogy metaphore simily fractal thingy of life. Really worth watching if you are curious about economics fundamentals. Wishing there was transcript / lyrics so I could get into it in a bit more detail. www.youtube.com #

08:20:00 +07:00 Fight of the Century: Keynes vs. Hayek - Economics Rap Battle Round Two - Another awesome economics based rap. Never would have expected to write that last sentence. It’s like they have figured out life’s ultimate question or something. www.youtube.com #

11:21:00 +07:00 VladimirMikulic/route-list - "Beautifully shows Express/Koa/Hapi/Fastify routes in CLI". This project made me smile. One of the very first weekend projects I built when I started learning NodeJS was routes-builder, which had a routes visualiser rendered in the browser. That was 9 yesrs ago! How time flies. I like the idea of having this as a standard CLI tool. Listing routes is such a great feature. github.com #

13:54:00 +07:00 IMF warns Trump trade tariffs could dent global economy as it upgrades UK outlook - It’s all very well saying that tarriffs are bad for everyone, but you have to somehow address the observation, which I understand might be somewhat controvertial, that there are very large reality inversions happening. Seems to me that we need to be at least directionally somewhat aligned on the fundamentals, on the macro dynamics, before we can hope to make any progress at other levels. I’d love to hear why the IMF thinks the US should be borrowing money from the people it is buying products from in order for them to buy said products. Extra points for not doing it in a patronizing style. Peace ✌️🕊☮️ :) www.theguardian.com #

14:21:00 +07:00 Trump files extraordinary complaint claiming meddling by UK Labour Party - While I don’t personally believe UK MPs have been purposely meddling with the US elections, I think it’s important to recognise that, even though most of the time americans and brits, or should I say britains :), are very friendly, there is significant stuff in our history that could cause various red lines to be crossed, even if inadvertantly done. We should be mindfull of that. It’s a bit much to call it 'extraordinary' imo. And there have been a lot of UK MPs doing trips to the US during the elections, I’ve seen tons of podcasts with trip reports and interviews. If russian politicians were traveling to the UK during elections then it would raise some eyebrows surely. On the other hand I seem to remember a few years back Trump landing in Scotland to buy a golf course or something on election result day. Perhaps it was Brexit, I don’t remember exactly. Bit if a power move. Both sides can at times complain a little too much. www.theguardian.com #

14:48:00 +07:00 Elon's American 'technopoly' - I think this piece is a little alarmist, but it’s actually a good sign, it’s how free speech is meant to work. But I’m also happy people like Musk and even Trump are using social media, that’s a massive thing for humanity. We are all learning how these systems work as we go along, and actually you could do a lot worse. For all his faults Musk is actually pretty good at listening to feedback, can and has changed his mind and approach on many topics. Better to have that than regulate it all before we can see all the great ways it could improve things. It’s fascinating stuff, user testing at the nation state level. I think the mainstrean / corporate media could recorgise this and have the vision to facilitate this process rather than get in the way. They might even discover new ways of using the tech themselves. www.politico.com #

15:07:00 +07:00 New Post: Lord Robert Skidelsky on Keynes markjgsmith.com #

17:18:00 +07:00 New Post: What are these heredoc style blog posts? markjgsmith.com #

17:37:00 +07:00 New Post: The beams of light theory of relationships markjgsmith.com #

17:37:00 +07:00 New Post: Living as root, mostly a bad idea markjgsmith.com #

09:41:00 +07:00 Moldovans back joining the EU by razor-thin majority - Yet another chapter in the russia is really bad again epic. www.theguardian.com #

10:01:00 +07:00 Stripe in $1.1B Acquisition Deal for Stablecoin Platform Bridge - It will be good to finally see Stripe getting decent crypto currency support. I seem to remember that they have, over the years, had several failed moves into offering crypto payments rails. www.coindesk.com #

10:11:00 +07:00 Meta Glasses Are The Top Selling Product In Many Ray-Ban Stores - I really like the concept of having smart glasses, I could see it being really useful, but privacy-wise it’s going to be a complete nightmare. There are so many a-holes in the world already taking photos of people with their cell phones without permission. Happpens to me multiple times per week currently. You can spot the cameras in the glasses quite easily. Now anyone with thick glasses will be suspect. www.uploadvr.com #

10:22:00 +07:00 xAI, Elon Musk's AI startup, launches an API - Seems like the big hot AI companies to watch are OpenAI, Anthropic and now xAI. techcrunch.com #

10:49:00 +07:00 Build A Static RSS Reader To Fight Your Inner FOMO - Great article, it actually looks suprisingly easy to get something basic running. Add HTTP basic auth on the path, and basically you have your own self hosted private feed reader. Might be enough for those morning catch ups with the people you follow in the blogosphere. Uses netlify serverless functions but could also use cron. www.smashingmagazine.com #

09:53:00 +07:00 My solar-powered and self-hosted website - Man I love this kind of project. There something that’s so very indie web about it, with independance, resiliency and tech geekery shining through. This is exactly the sort of thing I’d get into in the early years of the web and my tech journey. Annoyingly as my mind has been so consumed by global politics and big important things recently, I found it difficult to concentrate on topic while reading through. Really hope one day I can return to these sorts of small scale hobbie projects. dri.es #

10:17:00 +07:00 Today is Ubuntu's 20th Anniversary (ubuntu.com) - That’s awesome! It’s amazing how time flies. Here’s the HN discussion.lists.ubuntu.com #

06:58:00 +07:00 Hike in capital gains tax will spark tech exodus from UK, investor says - An increase in capital gains would be a disaster. I wonder if an exodus is something they are actively trying to do. Are they saying to young people 'leave while you still can, go and find places abroad where you can thrive, realistically there is no life for you here'? www.theguardian.com #

07:24:00 +07:00 North Korean troops have arrived in Russia to fight Ukraine, says Seoul - Quite a funny headline image in this article. Probably a good time to mention that one of the security guards in a nearby office building where I an here is Vietnam is a total Vladimir Putin doppelganger, a 99%er no less, it’s very strange. He showed up a few weeks ago, about the same time I started giving peace signs in response to harassment. www.theguardian.com #

07:45:00 +07:00 Introducing Express v5: A New Era for Node.js Framework - Feels like this release took forever. It’s a purposely pretty boring release, mostly cleaning up old interfaces, making things consistent. The improved promise support is probably the most useful new functionality imo. Hopefully this will be the foundation for increased development momentum on the project. expressjs.com #

17:05:00 +07:00 New Post: JD Vance on the weirdness of the current US - China relationship markjgsmith.com #

06:00:00 +07:00 Traders bet the ECB's rate-cut floodgates are open - Looks like things are going to start heading up and to the right. Everyone in crypto is on the edge of their seat waiting for the big bull run to start. www.reuters.com #

06:10:00 +07:00 Does France really make the best bread in the world? As a baker, I’d say ... maybe not - When I lived in Brussels in the 90s the bread and pastries were very high standard, way better than in the UK. But things improved a lot. I lived across the road from an artisanal bakery in London Fields for a year that was tremendously good. I miss those days. www.theguardian.com #

12:45:00 +07:00 🚀 Latest Newsletter: Authentic blocking frenzy antidote (Issue #186) markjgsmith.com #

05:59:00 +07:00 India and Canada expel top diplomats in escalating row over Sikh activist’s death - I’ve been peripherally following this story. You don’t tend to ever hear about indian intelligence services or operations. I can’t even remember a single occurence. It’s a bit of an odd one. Seems to have escallated dramatically. Officials in India deny it happened, asked why Canada didn’t contact them, apparently they did, via the diplomats. www.theguardian.com #

13:09:00 +07:00 Building a robust frontend using progressive enhancement - Service Manual - Progressive enhancement is awesome, very under rated imho. Great thing to keep in mind whenever you build for the web. www.gov.uk #

16:07:00 +07:00 New Post: Progressive enhancement underrated markjgsmith.com #

15:36:00 +07:00 Free Public APIs - Could be pretty useful for some of those weekend project test apps. www.freepublicapis.com #

15:42:00 +07:00 victorqribeiro/TinyJS - "Tiny JS is a lightweight JavaScript utility for dynamically creating HTML elements". It‘s a bit like jquery but for creating snippets of HTML. Kinda cool. github.com #

10:38:00 +07:00 The EU needs Britain as much as Britain needs it. Where is Starmer’s solidarity? - William Keegan makes the case that similar to the post world war I period, there is a need for a european "esprit de corps". I like this entire line of discourse, I’ve been thinking along similar dimensions recently. The 'le triple non' bit is a helluva quote. www.theguardian.com #

11:06:00 +07:00 SpaceX Just Caught Its Starship Booster With Giant "Chopsticks" Arms - The video for this is pretty fucking rad. We are definitely more in the future now than we were in the year 2000, which was the year everyone looked at throughout my youth as the year of the future. It turned out to be quite normal in comparison, though some of the parties were mindbogglingly excellent. From what I’ve seen in the press recently parties appear to have gotten kinda nasty, and not good nasty. futurism.com #

11:25:00 +07:00 In latest move against WP Engine, WordPress takes control of ACF plugin - Holey moley Mullenweg is impressively ruthless. What interests me with this story is that due to the fractal nature of reality, and because of how foundational Wordpress is, I expect there to be a lot of unnexpected externalities and weirdnesses in strange places. Like a collective discovery that there is nobody driving the bus, so to speak. A lot of previously hidden oddities mught start coming into view. techcrunch.com #

11:50:00 +07:00 Is Matt Mullenweg defending WordPress or sabotaging it? - I feel like at some point this story becomes, is it okay to defend yourself against somebody using your creation against you. What a bizare situation. torment-nexus.mathewingram.com #

09:28:00 +07:00 New Post: Grand slams markjgsmith.com #

12:45:00 +07:00 🚀 Latest Newsletter: Simply Refreshing (Issue #185) markjgsmith.com #

15:15:00 +07:00 New Post: Funny old world markjgsmith.com #

15:37:00 +07:00 Online shopping returns to growth in Europe amid fierce competition - Well it’s nice to hear some good news about the europeans. I am of course a european, but I haven’t been in europe for many years. www.reuters.com #

09:00:00 +07:00 New Post: Tom Tugendhat on the british system of government markjgsmith.com #

11:00:00 +07:00 New Post: Joe Rogan - Michael Shellenburger on science in the context of vacines markjgsmith.com #

14:42:00 +07:00 New Post: Scarebundance markjgsmith.com #

21:06:00 +07:00 Hurricane Milton: nearly 3 million without power in Florida as category 3 storm makes landfall - This US hurricane looks very scary, the photos from space make it look like it’s the end of the world or something. I thought it was interesting that it appears to be named after a famous economist, especially since the US is in such economic troubles. www.theguardian.com #

21:06:00 +07:00 Des communes sous l’eau, des dégâts localement, le code jaune maintenu : la tempête Kirk a quitté la Belgique - While in Belgium there’s a smaller storm named after Captain Kirk from Star Trek! www.lesoir.be #

21:21:00 +07:00 ‘The Community Is In Chaos:’ WordPress.org Now Requires You Denounce Affiliation With WP Engine To Log In - And the storm over at Wordpress looks very narly indeed. The latest is that Mullenweg is now forcing users to say if they are affiliated to WP Engine. That’s obviously going to go down rather badly. I continue to be taken aback by his actions, yet there’s a part of me that is impressed by his convictions. He’s likely thought this through an enormous amount and he must see a real long term threat here, so I’m prepared to hear him out on his reasons, because he’s been a great steward of Wordpress and the open web for many years. www.404media.co #

21:33:00 +07:00 ‘Trump-proof’ European security by setting up ‘Nato bank’, thinktanks urge - I think the framing of this is pretty dumb on their part, but I’m glad there is at least recognition that they urgently need to get together, come up with some contigencies, practical solutions, and take control of the future of Europe. There’s too many fires happening all around to be complacent and complaining about the past. www.theguardian.com #

21:40:00 +07:00 Shein records £1.5bn UK sales amid plan for HQ in heart of Manchester - Undoubtably very popular, but lousy for the environment and I hear they avoid import taxes compared to other similar compsnies because of how they ship products. Interesting they are basing themselves in Manchester. www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk #

21:49:00 +07:00 US mulls Google break-up after landmark monopoly case - They sure do have a lot of power. I just wish they would ship more ground breaking products, like in years gone by. I also really don’t want the DOJ to do anything that might break Gmail. www.independent.co.uk #

14:42:00 +07:00 New Post: Keen & Tear on innovation in Europe markjgsmith.com #

17:01:00 +07:00 New Post: New heading fonts :) markjgsmith.com #

11:34:00 +07:00 Starmer urges all sides in Middle East to ‘step back from the brink’ - Could everybody please stop being shot? Also please stop shooting. Thank you. www.theguardian.com #

11:44:00 +07:00 Ireland is a ‘playground’ for Russian intelligence, says former army chief - This is very interesting, especially the planned russian embassy expansion that would have includes 10 subteranian power plant rooms. That’s insane. Also which countries in the east are western countries doing the same to? It’s bound to be happening in both directions, and likely via proxies too. I bet it’s a nice little money maker for many. But what happens when it spans generations? How are we ever going to untangle all this mess? www.theguardian.com #

12:10:00 +07:00 Does China now have a permanent military base in Cambodia? - I don’t know anything about the military bases, but I suppose to a certain extent it’s to be expected. One thing I do note on my extensive travels around south east asia is how embeded the chinese community is basically everywhere. In many places there are streets where almost every house had some form of chinese decoration. It seems odd, but accepted. Imagine if there were streets all throughout France and Spain with Union Jack flag's everywhere, it would be a bit odd wouldn’t it? Somehow the chinese have managed exactlyish that. Imho, the european and US expats in comparison tend to blend in a bit better, though I guess I might be a bit biased. www.bbc.com #

12:33:00 +07:00 Why tech unicorns struggle to avoid the glue factory - Heck of a numbers game the whole tech scene. www.ft.com #

12:39:00 +07:00 Chinese stocks jump as markets reopen after Golden Week break - I’ve also heard in some places that the effect of the stimulus wasn't as big as expected. No obvious signs of it here in Vietnam yet as far as I can tell. www.bbc.com #

14:26:00 +07:00 W Hot Drama Week (Wordpress, WP Engine, and Web Components - Oh My!) Ep#636 (Shop Talk Show Podcast) - I’m not going to get into how good this episode is right now, as the moment I started writing this paragraph I started getting harassed by the world. If you are in any way involved in the web or curious about the web, and / or open source for that matter, then do yourself a favour and listen to this episode. Might even change your world view. What version of the simulation are Chris and Dave in that they can have such a nuanced and clear view of things? IMO, it’s a sign that a lot of important things are getting figured out at a very high level at the minute, hopefully for the better. It’s like we’ve reached some sort of tipping point where the number of minimal apps / mental models is approaching a big shift. shoptalkshow.com #

18:07:00 +07:00 New Post: Another configurable headers test post markjgsmith.com #

17:42:00 +07:00 New Post: Configurable day and article headers markjgsmith.com #

19:42:00 +07:00 The Medieval Masterpiece the Book of Kells is Now Digitized and Available Online - Trinity College Dublin has published a high resolution digital version. This is awesome. Hopefully whatever revolutionary tech is the hot new thing in 1000 years time will port the entire internet / world wide web onto itself, so that folks then can read this note about the hot new tech from 1000 years ago getting ported onto the internet / world wide web. If my static site generator is open source and still around perhaps they would consider making a generous donation. Also please ensure the maintainers aren’t hungry, and still living outside in the rain as I am. Rainy season is kind of brutal. And that the world isn’t still enslaving developers to write it’s open source code. Thank you. www.openculture.com #

20:19:00 +07:00 I stayed. - Jeffrey Zeldman writes a piece about why he decided to stay at Automattic even though they offered all staff a severence package following the WP Engine controversy. zeldman.com #

14:21:00 +07:00 Matt Mullenweg: ‘WordPress.org just belongs to me’ - Really seems like a full on war, which is quite unWordpress-like. Matt usually seems like a relatively calm and quiet fellow, which is somewhat at odds with the situation. Suprised to hear WP Engine are making billions of dollars. www.theverge.com #

14:38:00 +07:00 Keanu Reeves spins out at Indianapolis Motor Speedway in pro racing debut - I didn’t realise he was a race car driver. Pretty awesome way to promote his new graphic novel. Also great to see someone doing a debut at 60. www.theguardian.com #

14:38:00 +07:00 UK ‘resolutely committed’ to its overseas territories, says foreign minister - It’s interesting how many foreign territories the UK still has, very long term strategic in an uncertain world. www.theguardian.com #

11:08:00 +07:00 The Why of Crazy Stupid Tech - Om Malik was one of the first tech bloggers I started reading when I first seriously got online. I guess that was around 2003ish. He’s starting a newsletter, partnering with ex-Wired reporter Fred Vogelstein. The focus is interesting: the tech that powers the foundational layers of the stack, from materials science to sythetic biology and how they might change the future. Sounds awesome, can’t wait, subscribed :) crazystupidtech.com #

11:28:00 +07:00 159 employees are leaving Automattic as CEO's fight with WP Engine escalates - Matt Mullenweg founder of Wordpress and CEO of Automattic has been in a rather public fight with WP Engine for a few weeks. The whole saga is bringing to the surface some core issues with open source and specifically Wordpress, one of the most popular open source projects. Many are worried they aren’t as safe from despotic centralised control as they once thought, since Wordpress is using some of the very tactics it was setup to avoid, namely removing things from people. Many open source projects have been runing into philosophical brick walls recently. This case could have a big impact in the space. techcrunch.com #

11:55:00 +07:00 Boris Johnson calls for referendum on leaving ECHR - That’s the European Convention on Human Rights. The problem is that though it might appear to make sense from the perspective of fixing immigration, it would ultimately decrease valuable protections for all citizens across huge swath of completely unrelated areas. Not being part of a human rights treaty sounds very dangerous to me. www.theguardian.com #

12:05:00 +07:00 liriliri/eruda: Console for mobile browsers - This basically does what it says on the tin, ads devtools to mobile browsers. You include a library in the page, and then can open up a devtools style webapp in the page to look at HTML, network requests etc. Very awesome. I wish there was an app that was a dev webserver that automatically added this to your pages, so you could do local frontend development on your mobile device. github.com #

12:17:00 +07:00 @parischap/pretty-print - This looks awesome. All sorts of additional customisable features to JSON.stringify and util.inspect. colorisation and treeifying for example. I could see this really improving the debugging experience, printing to console is still one of the most popular ways to debug, because it works in most environments, might as well make it better. www.npmjs.com #

12:28:00 +07:00 Get ready to meet your AI best friend (Vergecast Podcast) - Lots of awesome tech reporting in this episode, and not just about AI. OpenAI mega funding, the Wordpress community values meltdown, progressive web apps, and a mindboggling description of the Dish/Direct TV timeline over the past few decades, which bizarely sounds to me like a simulacrum of a single week of my life right now here in Vietnam. podcastindex.org #

12:45:00 +07:00 🚀 Latest Newsletter: Punished For Being Born (Issue #184) markjgsmith.com #

14:26:00 +07:00 OpenAI gets $4 billion revolving credit line, giving it more than $10 billion in liquidity - It’s one of the biggest VC fund raises of all time. The company’s value is now $157bn. www.cnbc.com #

14:41:00 +07:00 Spotify adds a new, automatically updating playlist for offline listening - Really great to see some big players support offline features. Offline is massively underprovided for, but massively important for resilience and independance. You don’t realise you need it until it’s too late. Interesting to learn that Youtube music already has a similar feature. techcrunch.com #

14:51:00 +07:00 Biggest solar flare since 2017 erupts from sun and Earth is in the firing line (video) - The video of this is quite mesmerising, especially when they turn off the ultra violet filter and you see what is the biggest object for several light years distance, and it’s so completely on fire, like a burning Hades. Earth is expected to be impacted over the next few days. www.space.com #

15:09:00 +07:00 UK hands sovereignty of Chagos Islands to Mauritius - It’s clear immediately from the map hiw strategic the location is, it’s to the east of Aftica and south of India. There is a joint UK-US military based on one of the islands that will remain there. Many of the islanders now live in Crawley of all places. Britain still has quite a long list of around 17 overseas territories. www.bbc.com #

16:35:00 +07:00 New Post: Notes on the question of the meaning of life markjgsmith.com #

10:35:00 +07:00 Croissant debuts a cross-posting app for Threads, Bluesky and Mastodon - I don’t know if it supports posting from an RSS feed. That would be cool. Interesting that it supports threaded posts. I want something that I pass a post to via an RSS feed or an API and it just figures out all the details of making it compatible with each platform. Like a jQuery for social media posting. techcrunch.com #

09:22:00 +07:00 Spending cuts needed to tackle France’s colossal debt, Michel Barnier tells MPs - Michel Barnier is now the prime minister of France, having been recently appointed by president Macron. He is right leaning and so doesn’t have much support in parliament since the left co-alition’s big win. He’s trying to reign in excessive spending. Interesting situation, big lefty dreams meets reality. Since taxes are already so high in France he wants the rich to step up, and lots of efficiency projects. Europe seems week, Russia is getting stronger, the EU is busy squabling with partners like Britain over old graves, the middle east is turning into a major war, the US is tired of being the world’s police force. www.theguardian.com #

11:57:00 +07:00 New Post: Tom Luongo on seing people from all sides - markjgsmith.com #

14:54:00 +07:00 Irish finance minister calls €14bn tax windfall from Apple ‘transformational’ - Kind of an interesting time for a country all the way on the west of Europe to be having a windfall as the countries all the way in the east to be having issues with the local hedgemon. www.theguardian.com #

09:35:00 +07:00 Catholic Belgian university ‘deplores’ comments by Pope Francis moments after speech - Women were upset he has traditional views on women’s role in society, and they spoke out to him about women being subjugated in the past by the church. I thought his comments about victims of church pedophilia were a bit odd: "There is a need for a great deal of mercy to keep us from hardening our hearts before the suffering of victims, so that we can help them feel our closeness". I find the use of the term 'mercy' strange here. Doesn’t it imply the victims did something wrong? And that the church needs to be mercifull towards them? WTF is that about? But also doesn’t it sound a bit pedo? 'Feel our closeness'? What are you saying mate? And lastly, I happen to know there is an american parish in Brussels called 'Our Lady of Mercy'. Bit of a coincidence. I note that last week there was news the woman president of the European Commision unilaterally re-organised all lead roles, flipping from 60/40 male-female to 40/60 male-female. Just 'because'. This whole thing seems weird. www.theguardian.com #

13:29:00 +07:00 Top Russia diplomat warns west not to fight ‘nuclear power’ in UN speech - Russia’s "we can invade any small nation and you can't do nothing" policy is fucking demented. www.theguardian.com #

13:38:00 +07:00 European ministers call for immediate ceasefire in Lebanon - This ground invasion thing is strange. I feel like it’s a rather extreme thing to do unless there is some sort of existing teritorial dispute. Ground invasions don’t tend to happen unless there’s a fight over said ground. I wonder if there are some facts thag are being omitted. www.theguardian.com #

13:49:00 +07:00 UK universities urge government to restart flow of EU students after Brexit - I think that for university places, it’s a free market and there should be a corresponding number of good quality high standard places made available in the EU. Both sides should need to convince the students their courses are valuable. As long as fees are being paid based on demand for places there shouldn’t be much of an issue. Seems like they could figure out something. I think likely the bigger thing is the work placements side of things which is complicated, and Starmer is right to hold off on that. Using british youth as a bargaining chip doesn’t seem like such a great idea. www.theguardian.com #

13:49:00 +07:00 China, South Korea, Taiwan to spend most on chip equipment 2025-2027, industry body says - It’s all about chips at the minute, at least until the current AI wave runs out of forward motion. www.reuters.com #

13:49:00 +07:00 Keir Starmer calls for the 'return of the sausages' in Labour conference speech - Amusing gaff. Strange that it happened just a few days after my sausage pastry incident in the park, which was also the day I innadvertently Keith’d Keir. I think the return of the sausages would be magnificent right now, I've hardly eaten anything today. m.youtube.com #

12:31:00 +07:00 Raised by the internet - I thought it was noteworthy that the first time I’ve been subjected to a 7 day starvation, that the day after I finally got some food this article popped up on Hacker News. Interesting also no dates on the other blog articles on the site. It highlights the dilema of a captured truthful person. If you extrapolate, at some point it stops being feasible. Would the articles keep popping up with ever more impossible scenarios? The only way to find out would be to lie, but then you would be pointed out as a liar. If you don’t then eventually maybe you’ll actually get murdered by the world. This kind of thing is happening constantly to me, and not just on HN. Pretty much everywhere. jimmyhmiller.github.io #

17:34:00 +07:00 Starmer visit to Brussels could lead to overhaul of Brexit deal - This really sadens me. I want the youths, in britain and europe, to have mobility for sure, but the reality, the thing that no one is saying out loud is that europeans want this because they want free native level english language exposure and immersion. It’s not really about becoming friends. Be honest europe. So I think Starmer is right to hold back on that for the moment. The other thing that really sadens me is this notion that 'britain quit'. WTF is that? Were we employees of europe? No. European leaders you need to re-evaluate your morals, and grow up. Britain democratically chose to leave, and no country has ever done that before, and so it’s been incredibly difficult for everyone involved, but both europe and britain will be better in the long run, as long as you can manage to get past your mummy and daddy issues, and stop projecting them all on britain. This is a great opportunity for all involved, especially because there are many wars developing around europe’s edges. Stop procrastinating, start thinking creatively, leave your exploitative thinking behind you, lets build something better for the next generations. www.theguardian.com #

06:50:00 +07:00 New Post: Merdeism markjgsmith.com #

12:45:00 +07:00 🚀 Latest Newsletter: Vampires Vampire Attacking Vampires (Issue #183) markjgsmith.com #

15:12:00 +07:00 Boris Johnson: we considered ‘aquatic raid’ on Netherlands to seize Covid vaccine - On one level this whole invade Holland for vacines thing is obviously quite amuzing, but when you combine it with the no birthday cake story, no matter how you feel about Boris, how pathetic is it that the primeminister couldn’t even have a birthday cake on his birthday. Even if he’s lying about it, it’s so ridiculously pathetic my brain is having difficulty comprehending. What is going on? www.theguardian.com #

16:30:00 +07:00 New Post: Altman’s reality distortion field markjgsmith.com #

04:08:00 +07:00 UK must stop being naive over resetting relations with EU, thinktank says - There something that this article captures but I’m not convinced that the important thing is that the EU is all offended that a country should dare to leave. Looking at the macro happening with elections everywhere europe is looking more and more like it could be a sinking ship long term. To be sure that would be undesirable for everyone. There’s likely naiveté on both sides, but using that as a thing to hit the other over the head with is unproductive and childish. Better would be to move as quickly as possible to mend some core elements and stop procrastinating. Both sides stand to benefit in these uncertain times.www.theguardian.com #

12:07:00 +07:00 New Post: Joe Rogan’s vision on immigration sounds cool markjgsmith.com #

11:51:00 +07:00 New Post: Marty Bent and Matt Odell on Trump family World Liberty Be Defined markjgsmith.com #

11:51:00 +07:00 New Post: The crazy future of RL deep fakes markjgsmith.com #

15:26:00 +07:00 We have done more in 11 weeks than the Tories did in 11 years’: Keir Starmer defends his record - I thought this was a pretty good roundup of the story do far. It’s very high level, but I kind of like the general vibe. www.theguardian.com #

18:15:00 +07:00 New Post: Our Keir Starmer Journey markjgsmith.com #

11:53:00 +07:00 Microplastics in the Olfactory Bulb of the Human Brain - It’s a very detailed study, the intro section is quite skimable, but it doesn’t have the level of detail I was looking for. Still gives a vague idea of the potential dangers. jamanetwork.com #

12:26:00 +07:00 New Post: Human body threat detection tech markjgsmith.com #

12:45:00 +07:00 🚀 Latest Newsletter: Front Running the Big Bang (Issue #182) markjgsmith.com #

13:01:00 +07:00 Why Generalists Own the Future - First of all nobody 'owns the future'. I’m not saying there aren’t some interesting ideas in this article, there are definitely things worth thinking about. But I hate most of the framing. The notion that it’s even useful, let alone a safe thing, to reduce the entire universe to a binary is stupid. 2/3 of the Romans were slaves, avoiding such vampire dynamics is probably a much more important task than getting overly worried about pigeon holing people. every.to #

09:27:00 +07:00 New Post: Punish yourself so you can be nice to yourself markjgsmith.com #

12:22:00 +07:00 Israel bombards southern Lebanon after Hezbollah chief vows ‘punishment’ - This is aweful but the details are actually very interesting. It’s not just Gaza, it’s Lebanon involved now too. There’s a thing called the 'Axis of Resistance' setup by Iran as a counter organisation and narrative to the 'Axis of Evil' thing which I guess dates back to the Iraq war. The details of the supply chain attack are all interesting too, various companies in different countries. But the final thing mentioned is that Isreal submitted a ceasefire proposal to the US. Basically they are saying, 'we got you back for the attacks at the Isreali music festival, now the war ends'. It will be interesting to see how the international community reacts. www.theguardian.com #

12:45:00 +07:00 Explosions linked to walkie-talkies kill at least 20 in fresh Lebanon attack - This story is so f-ed up. I sure hope this isn’t the future for all of us, but the way the world has been going it doesn’t seem that far fetched to imagine that it could be. How many of us even have any idea how many degrees of separation we are from potential targets. The further we go down this road, the closer such a reality becomes. Next year’s, actually fuck it, this year’s most popular Christmas prezzy: bomb proof phone cases. www.theguardian.com #

16:17:00 +07:00 New Post: Sparrow people markjgsmith.com #

17:12:00 +07:00 New Post: Matt Walsh on racism, social media, US politics & the strange world of professional cuddlers markjgsmith.com #

18:12:00 +07:00 New Post: Slavery, the bible, and the changeability of institutions markjgsmith.com #