markjgsmith

🚀 Latest Newsletter: Death’s Door (Issue #151) markjgsmith.com #

A 2024 Wishlist for Node's Test Runner - Colin J. Ihrig shares a list of things he'd like to see added the Node's new built-in test runner. I'd like to try out the test runner on a new project at some point so these are aticles are always interesting. cjihrig.com #

British inventor seeks to take $18bn bite out of Apple in bitter patent war - I don't have an opinion on this but I'd like to hear more about it and the outcome. The case has been going for more than 20 years. www.theguardian.com #

Sadiq Khan: ‘Free young people from Brexit work and travel ban’ - I'm glad there is at least some people that are trying to mitigate some of the negative effects of Brexit for the next generation of UK citizens. I bet things feel very tight at the minute for them. I grew up in mainland europe, so I was always going to be pro europe. I decided early on during Brexit that I'd be ok with either decision, even if I'd prefer to remain. You have to support your country. I could see there were many things wrong with how europe was being run, and if there was a mojority that wanted to leave, then we should trust that. I never saw leaving as the end. I think people both sides have had a lot of time to think through importamt things. I also think many in Europe miss the UK being a member country. Who knows what will happen in the future, so many possibilities, but start by opening things up for the next generation, maybe they will find a way to build something better. They have the energy and vitality, they have more powerful tools, more well defined problem spaces. We did what was possible at the time. www.theguardian.com #

Now OpenAI CEO Sam Altman wants billions for AI chip fabs - Somewhat missleading title, it's likely they want to create chip-on-wafer-on-substrate (CoWoS) packaging facilities. I guess the details are still not yet known. It is interesting though, especially as much of the money would be coming from Abu-dabi or Japan. How much of our future freedoms would he be giving away to secure the deal? The answer should be none, but it's not always very obvious, so it's worth asking the question. Has he even thought about that? www.theregister.com #

BrigJS/brig: User Interface Toolkits for Node.js - Interesting because it's based on QT. Back in my days working in the VFX industry, several of the facilities I worked at used QT for their custom tools. I don't remember it being the best by any stretch, but for basic robust UIs that work well, it was pretty great. Would be cool to have something similar for node. github.com #

New Post: Belgium and communes - Remembering some aspects of what it was like to growup in Belgium. It's really strange the seemingly obvious things you missed, and wonder later how it was that you never noticed. Some things just weren't relevant, but they become more relevant as you get older. markjgsmith.com #

🚀 Latest Newsletter: Quite Quiet (Issue #150) markjgsmith.com #

Astronomers spotted something perplexing near the beginning of time - They have found galaxies where according to current understanding of the laws of physics, there shouldn't be any. It's very interesting but I obviously have a lack of knowledge about how these measurements are being made. I find it quite confusing. When light hits the telescope, how do they determine how far the light has travelled? How can they differentiate between light from very far away and light from the very ancient universe? How do they know they aren't seing light that originated from a distance twice the length of the observable universe, created twice as long ago as the current estimate for the age of the universe? These are probably dumb questions, but I feel like I don't currently have good answers to them. There are likely a lot more if I spent some time to write them down. www.vox.com #

AfD plans to turn Germany into authoritarian state, vice-chancellor warns - Something to be aware of. This would of course be terrible. It's good that people are speaking out about it, and that liberal democrats are publically showing solidarity. Germany's energy prices have been hit hard by russian actions over the past few months. They really need more energy independence. www.theguardian.com #

Why is it so cold in the UK right now – and how long will Arctic chill last? - The explanation gymnastics in this article is quite amuzing. They basically use the exact same argument the so called 'climate deniers' use, that it's just normal weather. Anyhow whatever looks like it's currently mighty chilly in the UK! www.theguardian.com #

Taiwan elects William Lai president in historic election - Probably an important thing to be aware of, likely will have geopolitical implications. www.bbc.com #

🚀 Latest Newsletter: Everything Bitcoin (Issue #149) markjgsmith.com #

The Website vs. Web App Dichotomy Doesn't Exist - Jake Lazaroff believes the website vs web app destinction doesn't do a good job of describing what's actually being built these days. He outlines a slightly different yet related way to break down the current web development landscape: informational, transactional, realtime and local websites. I think it describes what's out there quite well. Read this post to get a reassuring sense of where you are in amidst all the chaos. jakelazaroff.com #

Scholz urges unity against far right after mass deportation ‘masterplan’ revealed - They speak out against the secret plans for both forced re-migration, including of german citizens, and forced assimilation, whatever that means, it certainly sounds very barbaric. www.theguardian.com #

New Post: Viewing the everything feed - Describing some things you can do if the new everything RSS feed doesn’t display all that well in your feed reader. markjgsmith.com #

New Post: Writing annoyances - Listing of the current writing annoyances that get in the way of writing blog posts. markjgsmith.com #

CSS Media Query for Scripting Support - Gives you the ability to style content based on whether javascript is available, a little bit like <noscript> but for styling elements. blog.stephaniestimac.com #

FrigadeHQ/remote-storage - "remoteStorage is a simple library that combines the localStorage API with a remote server to persist data across browsers and devices." - I thought this looks pretty interesting for it's simplicity, could be great for some simple local first apps. github.com #

What’s the Value of 3 Million LPs in a Digital World? - We had a massive record collection at the student radio station I was part of back at university. Walls and walls of records. There was something very calming about being in that room surrounded by thousands of records. The ritual of queueing tracks up on the 2 Technics decks in the studio was very memorable too. And of course we would try to scratch like the pros, but we were terrible. We once had DJ Hurricane in to do a guest mix set. He was the DJ from the Beastie Boys. He was awesome. That was fun afternoon. Anyway yes records are amazing whatever the music genre. Keep vinyl alive! www.wired.co.uk #

New Post: Causing the problems they complain about - I had some more starter incidents happen to me at some food places and a shop. These type of incidents always get escallated to infiniti. It literally happens every time. So I‘m detailing them here so I have something to link to. It‘s also to try and paint an accurate picture of what it’s like here. markjgsmith.com #

New Post: Everything feed operational - Some notes after completing the website’s new everything RSS feed. markjgsmith.com #

Austrian heiress Marlene Engelhorn announces plan for €25m giveaway - Austria abolished inheritance tax a number of years ago. Marlene is putting together a team of 50 austrians, whom she will pay for their time, from across the social sphere who will decide how to spend the money. She's very literally doing her own taxation. An odd story but somewhat relevant given how unclear the future will be with pervassive autonomous AI, crypto currencies, as well as things like UBI and token based governance. I'm really curious to see how her project goes. Marlene if you need a web developer please get in touch with me :) www.bbc.com #

New Post: NYT vs OpenAI oddity - Something about the recent rebutal kept reminding me of something, I couldn't figure out what it was. Then of course I did figure it out. markjgsmith.com #

Thousands of Software Engineers Say the Job Market Is Getting Much Worse - When it rains it pours, although in my case it would seem it's much more like the entire multiverse is repeatedly destroyed over and over for eternity. I don't even want to be funny about it. That's basically what's happening and nobody can or is doing anything about it. The weather isn't too bad today, a bit hot around lunch time. Even trying to sound normal has an annoying funniness to it atm. www.vice.com #

IT Employment Grew by Just 700 Jobs in 2023, Down From 267,000 in 2022 - Seems like the IT sector has been hit particularly badly compared to other areas of the economy. www.wsj.com #

The Apple Vision Pro will launch in February - When the initial annoucement happened back in June 2024 seemed so far off, but now it feels like that happened a month ago or something. So many things have happened to keep us busy. Prescription lenses will be $149. Base model will have 256GB storage. I would have thought that folks will need much more storage for the 3D spacial videos they record. www.theverge.com #

I kept a diary of how I use my phone. The results were depressing - I can't say this mirrors my experience, I clearly don't use social media anywhere near as much as the author, yet there are some aspects of what he describes that ring true. www.theguardian.com #

Kate doesn’t want Prince George to go to Eton – and for once I agree with her - I often wonder if the people that incesantly bully me here aren't boarding school victims. Pretty sure regularly schooled folks wouldn't behave so attrociously. I went to mixed schools myself and liked it. Seems like no matter what you do the bullies eventually get you. www.theguardian.com #

Hundreds block off Westminster Bridge in call for Gaza ceasefire - They should release those that were arrested, especially if they were non-violent. www.theguardian.com #

🚀 Latest Newsletter: Another year! (Issue #148) markjgsmith.com #

FreshRSS - "A free, self-hostable feed aggregator". Open source, had been in development fir 10 years, has extensions system, runs fast for up to 50k feeds. www.freshrss.org #

You have one life. What do you want to spend it paying attention to – your phone? - Important to be aware of, even if you don't immediately change your usage. I for one would love to ditch the mobile device and just have a laptop. But that isn't possible at the minute. www.theguardian.com #

A restless Gen Z is reshaping the Chinese Dream - I hope the jobs situation for the youth in China improves. It's an interesting article if only to get a window into a very different world. Anecdotally I'm less convinced by the developing world / developed world distinction these days, at least the way it's popularly understood. The more I have traveled, especially around asia, the more I realise how innadequate these comparisons are. Yes in some senses poverty and hardship is more visible in some places, but on the other hand while places like the US have giant shops with every concievable grocery, with abundance of products and colors everywhere, in asia you have entire streets that are a vaste sea of variety and beautiful colors, filled with exotic delights. I wonder what the UK equivalent would be of student girl they interview for the article with her thick brown sugarcane filled hotcakes, spicy Sichuan sausage, mooncakes, chestnuts and dried mango. Fish & chips, a savoloy and some mushy peas? Perhaps the metric we measure by should be something else. We have very different societies optimised in very different ways. www.bbc.com #

X Is Worth 71.5% Less Than When Elon Musk Bought It - Ouch 70% is brutal, but I think long term Elon's approach to stand up to customer bullies is good for the users of Twitter/X. me.pcmag.com #

Generative AI and intellectual property - Nice thought piece from Bennedict Evans that touches on many of the important aspects of intellectual property rights that ChatGPT is making us rethink. It's a real puzzler, do we all have to become mechanical turks for AI tech to work? www.ben-evans.com #

Vinyl is back for good and that’s exciting. Don’t let the greed of big labels ruin it - Recently people have been noticing the resurgence of vinyl records. John Harris' article goes into a bit more depth, looking at some of the dynamics at play between mainstream and independent labels, and the manufacturing realities in supply chains that seem currently to be predominently based in eastern european countries. I feel like a lot more could be written about this interesting topic. I would definitely read it. www.theguardian.com #

Britain is stuck in a doom loop: the system is rigged against growth. That needs to change - Will Hutton paints quite a bleak picture of the UK's coorporate sector. Chronic under funding of companies, money going abroad and UK companies increasingly being bought by foreign investors at an alarming rate. It's a doom loop that results in lower pensions, which are normally aggregated and invested in business. Overall it results in even less investment in home grown ventures, which results in even less pensions, and the cycle continues. He makes the case that the state needs to intervene. www.theguardian.com #

Transplanted to the US as a child, two accents seemed like a great idea. Until my first playdate - I too had a bit of a variable accent growing up between cultures. I'm suprised by how well the author remembers her experience. I for one do not remember hardly any of the details, to the extent my accent did change, it certainly wasn't something I was consciously doing. Of course you are going to change the words you use, otherwise people don't understand what you are saying. But it's not like you are staying up late studying and plotting coping strategies. Maybe I'm just thick. Strange article which rings true, but also feels very different to how it was, at least for me. www.theguardian.com #

RA 917 - Purelink - “90-plus minutes of intricately textured downtempo, dub techno and even UK garage, all cut through with a floaty, almost drowsy quality, with plenty of exclusives and unreleased cuts”. I’m really into this mix. It’s about atmospheric, about ambience. Reminds me of some of the stuff I was listening to in the early oughts. Reminds me of being in Belgium. It takes a while to get going but once it does it’s very good and very chill. Also liked this description - “a bridger of worlds, sounds and tempos”. ra.co #