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2023/12/31 #

2023/12/29 #

  • 19:24:00 +07:00 UK vinyl sales at the highest level since 1990 - The cool thing about vinyl is the awesome artwork that often is included. There’s so much creativity that goes into the production. That’s the one thing that we lost with digital. I’m glad people are still collecting, record stores are a big part of the music scene. # www.bbc.com

2023/12/28 #

2023/12/27 #

2023/12/26 #

2023/12/25 #

2023/12/24 #

  • 08:22:00 +07:00 Quantum Computing’s Hard, Cold Reality Check - Researchers have been lately trying to figure out what types of problems quantum computers would in practice be useful for. It currently looks like even if big improvements in reliability and throughout are achieved, classical computers are good enough for the vaste majority of computations. If I understand correctly quantum computers are good at problems with small data sets who's complexity increases exponentially with scale. Perhaps we just need to try and find more of these types of systems, which have problems that actually need solving. # spectrum.ieee.org

2023/12/23 #

2023/12/22 #

  • 15:03:00 +07:00 Multi-protocol fediverse - "It would be cool if they all supported RSS so we can have a mininum of easily implementable interop between them all. It feels like it could be like how there are many flavours of Linux, but they all support reading and writing to files, "everything is a file". Maybe all social networks have file based feeds." # markjgsmith.com

  • 06:10:00 +07:00 Ireland to launch human rights case against UK over Troubles legacy act - I'm probably hopelessly out of touch on this situation, but my initial thoughts were anger at the no doubt millions and millions that will be spent on lawyers and consultants and all the rest of it, dragged out over years. Why can't both sides just estimate the cost of the whole endeavour and instead spend the entire amount to lastingly lift people in the region out of poverty. Wouldn't that be a better way to remember all those that were affected, by actually working together to fix and strengthen the community? # www.theguardian.com

  • 06:00:00 +07:00 Glynn Simmons: US judge exonerates inmate after 48 years in prison - It's impossible to comprehend that the government can literally steel your life away from you even if you did nothing wrong. Having your life stolen is about the most rotten thing that can happen to you. Makes you wonder if AI will make justice any better, or isn't it more likely that we will all in some way end up like Glynn Simmons? Like that Andy Warhol prediction that everyone would be "famous for 5 minutes", except it would be more like everyone will be "guilty for life but innocent". Seems like it might be a good idea to mathematically prove this remixed prediction wrong. # www.bbc.com

2023/12/21 #

2023/12/18 #

  • 12:05:00 +07:00 Our website is currently unavailable - The british library got cyber attacked and has been offline for over a week. They expect it could take seceral months to get things fully operational again. The library is still open but some services are unnavailable. # www.bl.uk

2023/12/17 #

  • 05:29:00 +07:00 Adam Mosseri spells out Threads’ plans for the fediverse - Looks like all the essentials will be supported including following accounts from other fediverse instances, seing replies in your home timeline and eventually also moving followers between fediverse instances. Currently it only works with a few of their testing accounts. ETA is about a year, which seems very long IMO given there are only 3 features. Ability to walk away is key, that's a feature that historically companies have been very unwilling to ship, even in apparrently freedom-centric areas like for example bitcoin. # www.theverge.com

2023/12/16 #

  • 17:35:00 +07:00 Awesome Netlify Updates - Features include caching in edge functions, a new way to define serverless functions (aka functions 2.0), image optimization similar to Cloudinary, and a simple blob storage mechanism. The new functions format give you extra useful things like the ability to specify the endpoint custom location without needing a redirect, route parameters, geo data, http method matching, and easier streaming of data. # www.raymondcamden.com

  • 17:24:00 +07:00 The await event horizon in JavaScript - Interesting black hole analogy used to describe a situation where async / await could get you into trouble. It revolves around what happens when acquiring a resource using a promise, and that promises never settles. There’s a way around the issue using generators. # frontside.com

  • 12:45:00 +07:00 🚀 Latest Newsletter: The Bitcoin Self Custody Lie (Issue #145) # markjgsmith.com

2023/12/15 #

  • 10:17:00 +07:00 Threads launches for nearly half a billion more users in Europe - Personally I haven't been using Threads much recently, aside from posting links to the newsletter. Simply not enough time, and all followers are still on Twitter/X. If follower counts increase obviously that would make a big difference, and of course a good quality ActivityPub integration would be a big advantage too. # www.theverge.com

  • 09:40:00 +07:00 EU to open membership talks with Ukraine and Moldova - Ukraine appears to already have mostly met the requirements for membership. It will be interesting to see how this changes the positions of other EU countries. Anecdotally I overheard some high schoolers speaking yesterday, here in Vietnan, the name 'Orban' was mentioned repeatedly. I guess they were speaking about the war, and Europe. # www.bbc.com

2023/12/14 #

  • 10:27:00 +07:00 Ukraine’s intelligence claims cyberattack on Russia’s state tax service - I tend not to link to hacking stories very often. Mostly I don’t find them that interesting. I’m a builder, I’m more interested in building rather than demolition. However this is interesting because of the scale, but also it’s the first example I’ve seen of cyberwar activities that directly impact one of the main sources of funding of a nation state. # therecord.media

  • 10:18:00 +07:00 Meta starts testing Threads integration with ActivityPub - Great to hear this is actually going ahead, especially since many doubted it would actually happen. I’m not able to read the article because now that I’m offline, the Pocket app has decided that 80% of the articles I saved to read later, still need to be downloaded. This happens almost daily. Anyway, maybe I’ll be able to read it at some point. # techcrunch.com

  • 10:12:00 +07:00 War or peace? Dictatorship or democracy? Europe’s future is on the line - Timothy Garton Ash makes the case that there are two europes. On the one hand there’s a coalition of liberal democracies seeking to peacefully agree and solve their differences, and on the other there is the emergence of more autocratic, dictatorial in nature, far right groups. It's a very cohesive piece, looking at recent history. Ukraine war, Russian aggression, central and northern Europe adapting, immigration issues and more. It paints a high level view of what's going on in the melting pot that is Europe. # www.theguardian.com

2023/12/13 #

  • 12:20:00 +07:00 What Will Enter the Public Domain in 2024? - This yearly list is always quite interesting. They have some sort of advent calendar of people on the main page, but there are links to more detailed wikipedia pages. Each year I wonder whether we will see an outburst of creativity. I wish there was a way to see if they were having an impact. Culture is massively important, often we are too focussed on tech. We need a forum, but for artists, where you talk by creating and remixing art. # publicdomainreview.org

  • 11:55:00 +07:00 AI’s big rift is like a religious schism - You know the AI carfuffle is going mainstream when it reaches the economist. I reckon this might start to expose what many have theorised for years, namely that much of religion is about controling people. Or at least that's the case for many, maybe even for people that seem genuine about what they believe. We might very well discover that this type of behaviour is very counter productive, blocking the free flow of information could very well lead to some form of inflation. It will become more obvious now. That's why I think it's notable to see an article like this in the economist. # www.economist.com

2023/12/12 #

2023/12/11 #

  • 09:29:00 +07:00 Elon Musk restores X account of conspiracy theorist Alex Jones - Trump, Kanye accounts also restored. I guess this is good for free speech. Hard to tell what is cause and what is effect. Did Elon chase away the advertizers to save free speech, or is he saving free speech because he needs more views? I bet it's difficult to plant a free speech flag when everything is shifting beneath your feet. I worry that this will just repeat itself. It doesn't feel like a resolved problem. # apnews.com

2023/12/09 #

  • 21:11:00 +07:00 Initial thoughts on the Arc browser - Chuck Grimmett writeup of his first impressions using the Arc browser. I've been hearing it mentioned a lot recently, all very positive reviews. Two standout quotes: "Chrome already looks outdated after a couple hours of using Arc" and "Using Arc + Raycast + Obsidian makes me feel like I’m working in the future". I haven't had a chance to try it yet. I miss not having a proper computer. # cagrimmett.com

  • 20:34:00 +07:00 UK names FSB unit behind hack-and-leak campaigns, summons Russian ambassador - There seems to be an increase in russian cyberwar efforts recently. Anecdotally I was having a conversation with someone a couple of days ago, and they mentioned that they had read that the wife of Ukranian president Zelinsky had been seen buying a million dollars worth of jewelry on a recent war funding negotiation trip to the US. I looked up the story, and it appears to be fake, likely part of a russian misinformation campaign. I read today that russian president Putin is running for a 5th term in office. # therecord.media

  • 12:45:00 +07:00 🚀 Latest Newsletter: Swimming in Nested For Loops (Issue #144) # markjgsmith.com

2023/12/06 #

  • 10:52:00 +07:00 Belgian character created to add inclusivity to festive season dragged into row - I have many fond memories of St Nicholas / Sinterklaas festival. It was always the christmas season warm up. The christmas before christmas. I agree with the sentiment that the Zwarte Piet character was a little confusing, but I wouldn't say it was overly so. At least for me, it just wasn't the focus. But I could totally see how these days it might be. I also have great memories of the african communities in Belgium. It's a difficult history but it's also perhaps an opportunity. We have had many integration difficulties in the UK too, though it's different for sure, it's a different vibe. It's a long time since I was in Belgium so maybe I'm very out of touch with how things are now. My initial reaction reading this, to be honest, was it felt a little like some floozy was trying to steel St Nicholas, and it's weird because St Nicholas was never about kings and queens. Also I think St Nicholas might have a wife, so I imagine she's probably a bit miffed. I could be getting this confused with Santa Claws though. Anyhow, in this age of user generated content and fan fiction, perhaps this is just the first iteration of an adaptation. These things take years, but the kids these days are very creative, maybe they will eventually arrive at a more modern story. It might even be a fun journey. # www.theguardian.com

2023/12/04 #

  • 11:41:00 +07:00 good-lly/lowstorage - "for Workers using R2". Looks like it could be useful for when you are dealing with non complex situations in Cloudflare workers and handling JSON data. # github.com

  • 11:20:00 +07:00 ikatson/rqbit - I haven't seen anything interesting come out of the bit torrent community for a long time. The latest v4 has a cli, HTTP and desktop app interfaces. Looks very straight forward to get up and running. Bit torrent is a very useful but underused protocol imo. I keep hoping that one of these days I'll figure out a good use for it. Amazon S3 buckets support it. Sharing LLMs perhaps? # github.com

  • 11:09:00 +07:00 tomnomnom/gron - "Make JSON greppable!". This looks awesome. Apparently based on jq, but the interface is much simpler because it focusses on a more limited, but very useful, set of use cases. The world continues to be very confrontational and fighty :( # github.com

  • 10:30:00 +07:00 Let’s learn how modern JavaScript frameworks work by building one - I was really excited to read this article, especially after Friday's, somewhat challenging, but actually very good article about using web components to integrate different frameworks. In a way the article is well written, but there are so many small code snippets, often relying on global variables, you quickly run out of memory. I found myself endlessly scrolling up and down, and just wanting to see the whole code. There are also things like Proxys, Weakmaps, tagged template literals, and especially the ?? operator that I'm only partially familiar with. I didn't have an internet connection, so no way to quickly readup on them. I have a vague idea how these frameworks operate now, but my current impression is there is a heck of a lot of indirection, and I wonder if it's more trouble than it's worth. Often feels like it's over complicated for not a lot of benefit. The world around me was really fighting me as I was reading this, it finally let up, but it was too late by then, so bear that in mind. Seems to happen every time I try to go modern JS. One of these days perhaps the stars will align, and I'll be able to learn and write some modern clientside javascript. Today was not that day. :( # nolanlawson.com

2023/12/03 #

  • 08:40:00 +07:00 AmrDeveloper/GQL - "Git Query Language (GQL) is a query language with a syntax very similar to SQL with a tiny engine to perform queries on .git files instance of database files". Kind of interesting. What would be even more interesting would be an adapter on npm so you could write GQL queries from Nodejs. # github.com

2023/12/01 #

  • 15:39:00 +07:00 London’s famed black cabs will be listed on Uber’s app in big win for the ridehail company - "Next to New York’s yellow cabs, the black cabbies of London are arguably the most iconic taxis in the world" - The Londoner in me was immediately outraged by this statement! But on reflection, the yellow cabs have a bigger marketing department don't they, so I guess they probably are a bit more iconic worldwide. Still, there's nothing quite like piling into the back of a black cab on a night out. And that turning circle really is very impressive isn't it. Anyhow hope all the cabbies back home are doing alright. # www.theverge.com

  • 08:28:00 +07:00 Building bridges - A Twitter thread from me about how people come together in difficult circumstances and build things that make a real difference to everyone. It's tough going, but little by little progress is made. And then hopefully things get easier. It's worth taking a moment every now and again to reflect, so you can remember how things used to be, and see more clearly how things can be in the future. # twitter.com

  • 08:10:00 +07:00 Web Components Eliminate JavaScript Framework Lock-in - I wouldn't say that I perfectly understood all this, it's a lot to get through reading it on a small screen. Combine that with an unfamiliarity with react and web components syntax, and the fact there are several frameworks, and even vanilla javascript. Kind of tough. But...I got enough to see I really like it. I've been wondering what slots are for ages. Pretty cool. It's really well written because the example is simple, but not so simple that it doesn't do anything meaningful. Naturally since all my dev work at the minute is serverside, I now want this serverside :) # jakelazaroff.com

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