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2023/07/23 #

  • Toast UI - Grid - The Grid is a powerful library with features like data editing, filtering, sorting, and more, and can be used to customize the editor or the renderer to your desired format. ui.toast.com #

2023/07/22 #

  • Apple slams UK surveillance-bill proposals - I feel like there is pretty much always a snooper's charter about to be unleashed on everyone. Do they keep getting struck down or is it literally just the same bit of legislation? Probably affects all social media apps, like for example Twitter DMs, but I guess maybe those aren't encrypted. How will brits communicate if all the app makers leave? www.bbc.com #

  • Wix’s new tool can create entire websites from prompts - It's important to keep aware of what the big players in personal websites development are doing, and according to Wix, the place we are heading is quite clearly AI powered tools. From tools that generate entire sites from chat prompts, with components for e-commerce, scheduling, food ordering and event ticketing, to text and content generation tools, through to image manipulation, site builder assistance and even domain name selection. It's all AI, all the time, for basically everything. techcrunch.com #

  • 🚀 Latest Newsletter: The Crypto, AI & Synthetic Biology Trinity (Issue #124) markjgsmith.com #

2023/07/21 #

  • Daily Overview: Wimbledon - I didn't get to watch any of Wimbledon this year, but I heard the tournament was on a few days ago. Got this daily overview in my inbox this morning, which publishes aerial photography of places from around the world. Made me smile a bit, remember that I'm british, and remember the time I went to Wimbledon, watched a match with a youngish Venus Williams. It was a really fun day out, even had some Pim's and of course strawberries and cream. I don't use this word very often, but it really was quite delightfull. Glad to see it's all still there, so many hours watching the coverage on the tele over the years. I used to be pretty good at tennis, long long time ago now. dailyoverview.substack.com #

2023/07/20 #

  • I expect this will be rather controversial, but what the hell. Think of it as a small, slightly bizare, thought experiment.

    Asians + Jews VS Blacks + Whites

    What happens next? #

2023/07/19 #

  • 85% of AI Startups Will Be Out of Business in 3 Years, Major Investor Says - "I would say a lot of the startups today, 85% of them, will be out of business in three years. They will run out of funding. The big incumbents are going to outspend them." - IMO the way we have things setup does not appear to be fundamentally structurally sound and/or sustainable. The difficulty is we don't yet know what structurally sound and sustainable actually looks like, it's broad and complicated and looks different in different situations, yet we are trying to optimise everything into oblivion. Maybe this is where institutions need to step up their game and create a better environment for innovation. www.thestreet.com #

  • 🎙Capital in the 21st Century with Allen Farrington Ep#434 (TFTC Podcast) - Listenned to this last night, and it's as interesting as the title suggests, though I will say that in places I felt the discussion was a little bit convoluted. I'm not sure what it was exactly, it's like there were way too many words being said as compared to the number of nuggets of knowledge being delivered or something. I find that happens a lot in finance. Maybe they need better metaphores. Maybe they just need to more fully understand the landscape. But that's ok, we are all learning, and they for sure know much more about it than me, and a lot of this stuff is new unchartered territory, so it's understandable. Having said that, I really liked the general approach, structure and I think this topic needs more exploration. I want to learn more about it. I want a better intuitive understanding of what capital-as-a-tool actually means. tftc.io #

2023/07/18 #

  • SEC Accepts Blackrock's ETF Application, signaling regulatory review - Several countries outside the US have been officially allowing ETFs, which make it easier to invest in a basket of crypto assets. So far the US has been blocking the creation of these financial instruments, so this is quite big news. Especially because Blackrock is such a large organisation. Also this week, the U.S. courts have pushed back on regulators for being overly zealous going after crypto companies. They officially ruled that Ripple's token XRP is not security. Securities typically have to follow much more stringent rules, and regulators have been attempting to apply these rules to many other cryptos, effectively putting them out of business. There appears to be a break in the clouds for the crypto industry. cointelegraph.com #

  • Incumbents vs. Startups in the AI Race - The speed at which the large established companies have deployed AI products has been unnexpected. Historically startups have been able to out maneuver larger organisations, at least initially, because they are less encumberred by beaurocracy. That's led to a healthy diversity in the ecosystem, but the AI era appears to be unfolding somewhat differently. The startups aren't getting the chance to get a foothold. Interesting observation, it had occurred to me too. It's beyond totally crazy that 6 or 7 companies basically run most of tech. How is that sustainable on a planet with 8 billion people? blog.autopilot.fund #

  • A Bleak VC Outlook - There's an AI boom happening, but only a very small number of companies are benefitting. The startup ecosystem is getting decimated. I fear that this could spread to other non-tech sectors as established players essentially garner tools that make themselves invinsible, while still keeping a cut throat culture. There are many similar unsustainable large scale dynamics currently occuring, like AI eating the old websites internet, like actors being replaced by AIs etc, that could result in very broad dystopian futures. How do we avoid large scale collapse of culture? www.newcomer.co #

  • They're really not into RFK Jr over at the BBC are they? I've listenned to him on several long form podcast interviews and I thought he sounded pretty smart. A few anti-establishment views, and that might even be a good thing, but on the whole he didn't come across at all like this article describes him. I wonder why there is such an enormous disparity. It's so extreme it's almost like they know something that they can't or won't say. I guess that's how politics goes, there will likely be some scandals revealed in due course. www.bbc.com #

2023/07/17 #

  • Ever notice that NATO.replace('O', 'ZI') === NATZI? Probably just a dumb coincidence. Everything boils down to debt, even the darn coincidences. #

2023/07/16 #

  • Lessons From a ’90s CD Collection - I have fond memories of some of the periods the author describes, mix tapes, then CDs, but I also went through a mini-disk phase as my music tastes broadenned from alt rock into electronic. When I spend a few minutes thinking about it, I'm astonished at how different everything was back then. There was no interactive world wide web, there was albums. In fact when you think about the bigger picture, bands and albums and independent record stores, and going to bars and gigs, and talking to other music lovers, quite literally music was the internet. www.insidehook.com #

  • 🎙All-in Podcast Ep#137: Inflation cools, market rips, ripple/msft beat regulators, NATO summit, cocktails of youth - Another great episode, interesting macro analysis, especially as it contrasts significantly with Jeff Snider's, some crypto talk and I also found the Ukraine war coverage great, especially the wider discussion about NATO, since I want to get a better handle on what type of things these large institutions actually do. Mindboggling that they operate in some ways like a giant SaaS platform, e.g. NATO requires military "interop" with members, also that more members means more defense contracts for US military contractors. Anyway, happy Jason is back though I thought the gang held it together pretty well last week too. podcasts.google.com #

2023/07/15 #

2023/07/14 #

  • AI is killing the old web, and the new web struggles to be born - There's a lot of worry in this article but I think it's for good reason. It highlights a lot of the potential pitfalls of the AI powered future we are moving towards. I like that the author makes the observation that the web has already gone through several oh-everything-is-ruined situations, but also points out why this time the downsides might actually outway the bennefits. Incidentally I'm consistently amazed at both the high quality and high quantity of the Verge's output. How do they do it? Where are the other media orgs writting on similar topics at the same level? www.theverge.com #

  • Guide to Responsive-Friendly CSS Columns - I'm conscious that latest page has been mostly styled to look good on mobile. The links in particular look quite good on mobile because the text that goes with a link tends to fill the screen, but on desktop the screen is much wider and links look kind of thin. I'm thinking to try displaying the links section in 2 or 3 columns. That way desktop users will get a similar vibe to mobile users, with content fitting snuggly without the links looking desperarely thin and wimpy. Anyway this article does a great job of describing how to accomplish that. css-tricks.com #

  • French to get bonus to make do and mend clothes - Of course many of the big fashion brands aren't too happy and especially fast fashion companies, but it will be interesting to see if a burst in creativity occurs as customisation and DIY become more popular in the general population. Here in asia there are way more clothes repair shops, and they're great, you can go in and give them a sketch of what you want, then a few days later you pick up your amazing creation. The numbers they mention are kind of mindboggling, with 700000 tonnes of clothes ending up in landfills every year. www.bbc.com #

  • Elon Musk's Tesla poised to launch British household electricty suppplier - Interesting time to enter the UK energy market after a couple of years of turmoil and high prices. Could be a good base to roll out services into the EU. It’s likely part of a bigger strategy because I would have thought that the UK energy market would be a bit too small to get Musk interested. Start in a place where you know the language, then expand? Wouldn't it be cool if Musk announced he was moving to the UK? Maybe he's going to buy a 3rd division football team. www.telegraph.co.uk #

2023/07/12 #

  • Podcasts could unleash a new age of enlightenment - Really interesting piece that makes the observations that podcasts are changing how people interact, then draws some very compelling parallels with the enlightenment, which it turns out was the period where parasocial relationships emerged. It's a nice painting, I just wish I had more personal experience of the changes he speaks of, sadly though I listen to a ton of podcasts, I don't interact socially with many podcast listeners, though it's nice to hear that it's thing. www.wired.com #

  • EU Strategy to lead on Web4.0 and virtual worlds - I want government institutions to be genuinely interested in our technological future, but when I read these types of documents I just start loosing interest after 3 or 4 paragraphs. I don't know exactly what it is with them. Maybe they are too full of ridiculously abstract ideas. Maybe it's because they seem to aim to rule the entire universe. Maybe it's something else. I find it difficult to be in the same frame of mind as the authors. I'm thinking in terms of APIs, tech specs, http requests, web services and what not. They are thinking in abstract soup-ese. I don't see how these views intersect in a meaningful way. How should I be evaluating them? They aren't a service provider company, or a media company, but they also aren't a religion. They are somewhere in between. I find them confusing. ec.europa.eu #

  • Europe’s agenda for… not ‘the metaverse’ - This is the Politico piece that I got the previous EU commission document link from. It makes a lot more sense to me than the official document does, because the news format is well understood, we know what to expect from a media organisation. They produce a story that describes a situation. I guess I don't really understand what these government institutions produce - Also pretty sure I walked past Napoleon Bonaparte earlier, see the tweet of the day section, didn't expect to be writting that when I woke up this morning. www.politico.com #

2023/07/11 #

2023/07/10 #

  • Ukranian, belarussian and russian tennis players at Wimbledon and the French Open are refusing to shake hands before matches and it's causing a lot of confused reactions from the crowd, who are not understansing who is snubbing who, and sometimes getting it totally backwards. Life is such a complicated mess sometimes. www.bbc.com #

  • How to Verify your Domain on Nostr and Bluesky - These are instructions for micro.blog users but the general idea is similar on any domain, just create a text file in a specific location on your site. It has to contain some string of text the social media site gives you. Then they can check it's your domain, because you had enough access to add the file, at which point they add a verified check to your account. I think this should be the way Threads and Twitter should do verification. It feels like the "Open web" way of doing verification. At least have it as an option, they might find even more people sign up for the paid verifications. mattlangford.com #

  • "Caches is a web3 authenticated multi-topic forum on all subjects related to the Ethereum protocol, Web3, Science and Technology. Caches is hosted, created and curated by community members" - Sounds kinda cool, you have to have a crypto wallet installed but you don't need to have a balance, it's just for auth. caches.xyz #

  • Big Tech’s Biggest Bets (Or What It Takes to Build a Billion-User Platform) - It's a lengthy article but covers in a lot of detail the main large platforms in various areas. It's definitely worth the time to read, there's a load of financials, and just generally paints an incredibly broad picture of the current tech landscape. Seing it all in one article like this, I was struck by how unterecognisable the environment is compared to when I first got online. Maybe it's because I'm feeling particularly low energy today, but I just wanted to get through the article and found a lot of it unbelievably dull, though it's a well written article. I like the Android, iOS, SpaceX, OpenAI and a bit of the AR/VR coverage, but Alexa, gamming and everything else is super boring and tedious. I'm left wondering if I even am interested in more than about 20-30% of the tech industry. It's like a wonderful beautiful garden has been 80% turned into multi-level carparks. I guess technically they are ecosystems, they just sound and feel a bit lifeless to me. www.matthewball.vc #

2023/07/08 #

  • 🚀 Latest Newsletter: Pandemonium in cyberspace (Issue #122) markjgsmith.com #

  • Tech debt metaphor maximalism - It's definitely a very effective metaphor, really well written article too. Also, if you've got a good instinct for tech debt, might be a good thing to read to get a handle on financial matters. The thing that strikes me is how much all this stuff is like serious voodoo magic, and how terribly risky some of it is. It feels so risky to me in fact that I feel I should mention that you read it at your own risk, same for any content I write or point you towards, but I'm making that explicit for this particular linked article, which like I said is rather excellent. apenwarr.ca #

2023/07/07 #

2023/07/06 #

  • Writing as a form of thinking - The author makes the point that in this day and age of AIs that can create text on demand, that it's important to remember that the act of writing is itself a tool for thoroughly digesting and exploring an idea, a thought. He describes his writing habbits, particularly note taking. I tend to agree with him. I too take a lot of notes, especially when listening to podcasts. It's suprisingly difficult to get right. There's a big variety, sometimes it's straight forward and you take just the right amount, with a nice structure. More often you either end up taking way too many, especially when the information density is very high, or when the conversation you are listening to jumps around a lot and doesn't have a very clear structure, every bullet point ends up being top level, and there's isn't enough structure. Other times it's best just to put the pen down and listen without breaking the flow. I bet in the future AIs will monitor our thoughts as we consume media, and be able to give us a summary report afterwards with relevant links we made along the way to items in our life, and references to stuff we wanted more clarification on. Can you imagine how unbelievably cool that would be? But also kind of scary. lopespm.github.io #

2023/07/05 #

  • Microsoft unveils the world’s first analogue optical computer to solve optimisation problems - This is pretty cool. It's a rack mounted computer that uses streams of photons hitting a grid of modulators to perform basic matrix calculations at light speed. Initially they are using it to solve optimisation problems in bank settlements, but I guess it could be used for many optimizatiom problems. Maybe also AI? There's a lot of matrix calculations in AI as far as I understand. I feel it's worth mentioning, beware of over-optimisation. Technology is inherently deflationary, at a macro level you need to ensure you still have innovation, don't optimise the people away. There's no sense in being the best at shrinking the pie. An optimization mania could cause more problems than it solves. And I think emerging / developing economies are probably most at risk given the pressures they are under. Also worth thinking about: optimization neutrality and equality, because it's the sort if thing that could very well be weaponised. interestingengineering.com #

  • A little experiment inspired by a ghost of parasocial past, so to speak, no animosity intended, quite the opposite in fact. I remembered that a while back I added the ability to make linkblog posts without urls. I know that might seem a little bit ridiculous at first glance, please bear with me. #

  • Since adding the url-less links feature, a lot has changed, the biggest thing being full markdown and EJS support in link text, which makes it possible to add hyperlinks and also insert data from various sources like for instance frontmatter, here's the date from this post's frontmatter: 2023-07-05 12:10:00 +07:00.

    And this is a second paragraph on this post. It's the thing I'm most curious about. Will it break the page rendering? #

  • Well linkless posts are sort of working 1/2 working. There is no url domain link (that's good), but there's also no hash link (not so good), and also paragraphs currently get removed (not so good). I have to think about this a bit more.

    Update: I got paragraphs working :) #

  • Incidentally I managed to get workflows triggering workflows between repositories. What that means is that the website now gets automatically rebuilt when I merge new content into the main branch. Practically speaking it's pretty huge for me because it aleviates some of the frustration I've been experiencing from really slow github repo interaction, which I think is because there are over 15000 source files and the client is not able to handle it. Hopefully I'll be adding a new entry to my minimals selection soon, the minimal works on private repos, just need to find time to test it on public repos. #

  • France riots: 'For the politicians we are nothing' - I've been reading some of the flow of news from the french riots coverage these past few days. It's such a complicated situation. I stand alongside the marginalised, it's crushing to hear that the youth have no prospects, that society has stratisfied. I spent a long time growing up in Belgium which had problems of a similar vibe, so I really feel for the communities. When I moved back to the UK, in London I experienced the british equivalent, first at a distance, then living in Hackney and Whitechappel. Though I very literally feel sad about it, I'm hopeful because I've also experienced what it's like when it works, moments when the communities were well integrated, when we were together, some incredibly magical moments. I think we can overcome the troubles, let's continue to make increadible art about the sometimes difficult realities, that's how we get through this together. We did it in the UK in the 80s with punk rock breaking through a horribly stratosphered society, then reaggae, ska, and later electronic music. Even if you aren't a fan of those genres, think of the importance of integrating the communities for the youth. That's what art does, it finds a way to bring us together. And we can do it again in whatever way we'll find this time. Having said that these past few years I've travelled the world and I've also experienced some bad things, so I know it's not all optimism, there are real concerns on all sides. Here in Vietnam it's an odd mix, because of the history of both french and english speaking influence, but also they have their own generational challenges, combined with relatively recent memories of war. Anyway, we need more innovation, more art, more building things together, and we need to grow the pie for everyone. www.bbc.com #

  • France riots: Nanterre rocked by killing and unrest - One more french riots link to say I've felt somewhat self conscious of my use of rocket emojis next to personal links to blog posts, podcasts and newsletters, given how much the riots coverage has been banging on about the prevailing use of rockets by the protestors. The origin story of my rocket emojis is 100% linked to the idea of launching towards orbit, and nothing at all to do with weapons. That thought hadn't even crossed my mind. Honestly I never even thought about it much more than just oh-launching-rockets-into-the-sky-is-cool. When I got online I was really into Rocketboom, still one of the best videoblogs that ever was, which was zero about war, and everything to do with making things, and building online and real life communities. When I think of rockets, I think of Rocketboom, a world of possibilities. Anyway I'm probably being overly paranoid. In any case, I'm gonna keep launching rockets, the ones I use are strickly amazing non violent rockets. www.bbc.com #

2023/07/04 #

  • Why Apple's Visio Pro will change movie watching - Om went to watch the new Wes Andersen movie at a theater and describes the experience. He then wonders if the Vision Pro will become the next big tech for movie watching. I'm not opposed to it, though I like going to the cinema. The more I imagine watching a movie on a Vision Pro, the more I think I might have a bit of a phobia. Whenever I think about having little screens a centimeter from my eye balls for multiple hours, I get mild anxiety. Btw I've never tried any of these AR/VR products. om.co #

2023/07/03 #

  • All the feels - A classic @gapingvoid. It occurs to me as I write this that perhaps Hugh doesn't make all his own art anymore now that he's become rather successful. Reguardless the piece is great. People do operate on the level of feelings rather than the level of facts. I love the right hand image, that's totally how I feel a lot of the time, blobs of colour, sguigley bits, that's when it's interesting. It's even better when we are helping each other paint each other's pictures. Time flies. I love the idea that large companies can still create that kind of vibe. How about bigger entities like cities? Countries? I reckon they can too. www.gapingvoid.com #

  • Unique transition between grid and list views - I'm having a terrible time getting through the CSS for this offline, but I was able to view their demo earlier when I was online, and the effect is super cool, the sort of thing you might expect in an TV advert or perhaps a native app, but definitely not a webapp. I want my blog to have something like this, and wouldn't it be awesome in 3D on the Vision Pro? wannabedev.io #

  • Apple forced to make major cuts to Vision Pro headset production plans - They had previously forcast 1 million units in the first 12 months, but the chinese company contracted to fabricate the device has said Apple only ordered 400000 units for the first year, with other parts suppliers reporting they have only been asked for enough for 150000 units. Apple has sited difficulties in scaling the supply chain. www.ft.com #

2023/07/02 #

  • Twitter has started blocking unregistered users - I noticed this earlier, didn't think much of it, I was busy doing other things, waiting for extremely slow git push/pull or branch switch. Thought to myself oh here we go again world, now you're blocking Twitter too? Anyhow, hope Elon finds a way to undo because what's the point in posting there if everything is annexed behind a login, might as well just use WhatsApp. Yuk. www.theverge.com #

  • Euclid: Europe ready to launch dark matter and dark energy telescope into space - The super high precision telescope will be able to determine where all the missing stuff is in the universe. According to measurements we have made to date, measurements of the distortion to light arriving to earth from far away, everything we see in the universe, all the planets, moons, stars and billions of galaxies only accounts for about 5% of the mass and energy of the entire universe. It might even turn out that dark energy is a 5th force, one that only operates at enormous scales. Doesn't that sound earie? What in the universe would cause such a thing? www.bbc.com #

  • Twitter temporarily restricts number of tweets users can see - Following on from the news earlier about Twitter forcing login to view tweets, now there are reports of user quotas, 500 tweets per day for unverified accounts, 10000 tweets per day for verified (i.e. paying) accounts. If it really is just to combat scraping by AI training companies, why isn't regular rate limiting not enough? Does he expect literally everyone in the future to be training AIs? I suppose that is a possibility. www.bbc.com #

  • Linda Yaccarino's vision for Twitter2.0 emerges - The new Twitter CEO, who previously headed advertizing at NBCUniversal, has announced plans for full screen video ads, a new digital wallet, and gaining back advertisers trust by focussing on brand safety, as well as business partnerships with large companies like Google, Amazon, Salesforce, and IBM. I hope they don't forget about the small fish, indie Twitter seems such a long time ago now. arstechnica.com #

2023/07/01 #

  • Moving on - Doc Searls' blog is being unnexpectedly shut down. Doc was one of the first people I started reading and listening to online back in the early 2000s. He wrote much about Linux and open source, and was on quite a lot of the early tech podcasts. Looks like he'll be able to move his stuff over to his old domain. I’m glad he has some friends that can help him. It's not much fun being booted out. Best of luck with the move. [internet archive version] Update: He ended up at doc.searls.com. blogs.harvard.edu #

  • 🚀 Latest Newsletter: Offline in a Digital Asset Economy (Issue #121) markjgsmith.com #

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