11ty is joining Font Awesome - Well that's an interesting development. Font awesome is well...awesome, so really interested to hear more about how and why this team up happened :) www.11ty.dev #
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France picks Sejourne as nominee for EU Commission after Breton clash - Looks like France and Germany might be having a bit of a power struggle in europe. www.theguardian.com #
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Singer Tito Jackson dead at 70 - There’s a Tito Jackson doppelganger that I see out and about quite often here, except strangely he’s white. Aside from the skin color the resemblance is uncanny. www.bbc.com #
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Why the world has to be built by innovators rather than just hoped for by optimists Ep#2191 (Keen On Podcast) - Great discussion between Andrew and Keith, covering I think some of the more important tech topics du jour. I find their occasional somewhat different use of language kind of fascinating, and listening them both explore that as a sort re-occuring side quest to the main show topics is really eye opening. Andrew is quite ruthless in keeping them on track, and it’s very effective, they stay on topic much more than other shows. Some useful off pistes but not too much. I think that’s part of what gives their show an interesting and unique flavour. I love the variety you get in podcasting. podcastindex.org #
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Starmer says rebuilding UK means painful decisions, not just ‘a lick of paint’ - I quite like this home renovation metaphore. www.theguardian.com #
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Emil Amos (Duncan Trussell Podcast) - The shocking prank call episode. I feel like I am surrounded by people perfecting their prank call skills most days, maybe I am living in prank call school? That would certainly explain a lot. Such timing from the universe. podcastindex.org #
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Joe Biden dismisses Russian threats during meeting with Keir Starmer - This entire situation is abhorent, and the US - UK bickering is worrying. It seems like Putin is under the impression he is in some sort of unspoken agreement with western nations to continuously bully Ukraine while the western nations pretend to help but are really just holding the Ukraine in a tight grip while Russia pummels them. Which side are you helping? It’s time to decide. www.theguardian.com #
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🚀 Latest Newsletter: Massive Enormous Gigantic Huge (Issue #181) markjgsmith.com #
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Pope criticizes Harris and Trump and tells US Catholics to choose ‘lesser evil’ - He boils it down to immigration vs abortion, which is the most insane thing. It’s like 'kill our babies and take our jobs' vs 'have our own babies and keep our jobs'. It’s like the most nightmarish IQ test ever. The answer is obvious, yet somehow there’s the most insane reality distortion field and it’s totally not obvious. www.theguardian.com #
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Starmer tells Putin he started Ukraine war and can end it any time - Clearly a war with Russia, which has the potential to turn nuclear, would be bigtime shit for everyone. Ironically non nuclear nations might survive. But that’s not why I’m posting this. I’m posting this because it’s weird to me that the day after I write about the importance of no strings attached aid, the main story is about no strings attached aid. This sort of thing is happening constantly to me, like most days. Why universe are you spiritually, metaphorically and physically always on the friggin warpath with me? What is up with you? www.theguardian.com #
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Billionaire completes first private spacewalk - Looks like the space race is really getting going. www.bbc.com #
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Farmers and students star in China's viral new football league - Interesting to see that the small football leagues trend that’s been gathering steam in the west is doing the same in China. www.bbc.com #
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Jon Stewart Tackles Harris & Trump's Debate and What This Means for the Election | Steve Ballmer (Daily Show Podcast) - I feel like Jon Stuart is on some strange quest to explore the limits of comedy. I’m not sure I like it. At times I just felt confused like I imagine a child feels when seing his alcoholic father go on a hate filled bender. It just stops making sense and turns into some form of nightmare. Note I’m not saying Jon had been drinking alcohol, just that the behaviour is in some way similar. The second half of the show is pretty good, putting the weird comedy aside, his analysis of the political situation is great, he asks great questions, and it feels like his heart and concern is in the right place. But do we really have to go through the nightmare synthetic abusive comedy alco dad to get to that? podcastindex.org #
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What Makes a Good Sense Of Humour? Ep#210 (No Stupid Questions Podcast) - Good episode, even if the universe is clearly still in abusive alco father mode. This just felt like I was taking another spiritual beating, but you know, the content was pretty good, ymmv. Just made me feel more tired. freakonomics.com #
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Express v5.0.0 released - There isn’t an official blog post about it yet, but looks like v5 is out. This is just the list of PRs included, difficult to get any sense of what’s new. Lots of folks have been waiting for this for years at this point. github.com #
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To end extreme poverty give cash - not advice | Rory Stewart (TED Talk Daily) - I have to say I quite often disagree with Rory and Alistair, for instance my heart sank after listening to a pretty good episode all about the recent US election debate, when they finished it off by saying Trump watched too much tele while eating Big Macs, out Trumping Trump as it were. They do the exact thing they so veheminently object to in others. I guess it’s just this horrid bit of human nature that is in us all. Anyway putting all that aside for a second, because this TED talk is a real tour de force. I think Rory is right about cash, because aid work so often is just a way to hide people stealing, it never reaches the vulnerable. Just give it to them directly. And the no strings attached thing is important too, and perhaps the most difficult. Saying 'buy some food' to a homeless person as you give them cash, is an attached string. What if they need to buy a bar of soap or a bottle of water instead, you’ve just removed their agency or turned them into a liar. You can’t live their life for them. Blocking them is really just you blocking yourself, because next time it will be even more difficult. Worth listening to this episode. podcastindex.org #
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Apple must pay 13 billion euros in back taxes, EU’s top court rules - There’s something really not right with this case. It’s taken many many years, and there’s this enormous back taxes that have to be paid, yet somehow all sides, whether that’s Apple, the government of Ireland or the European Union are still literally all claiming they did nothing wrong. What the fuck happened? It feels eerily similar to my situation here in Vietnam, all be it on a much bigger scale. I wonder do any of the sides in the bigger case feel they are slaves and / or prisonners? www.cnbc.com #
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Battle of Waterloo dig uncovers horror of severed limbs and shot horses - If there’s one thing the universe is definitely not doing to me right now, that’s it being on the warpath. Definitely not a warpathy universe today. No sir. Nope. Universe !warpathing. Interestingly I once came 1 person away from meeting the queen of England in Waterloo. True story. www.theguardian.com #
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Mel B among Britons taking fight against afro hair discrimination to parliament - I love Mel. When I moved to the UK for university was the time when the Spice Girls were just taking off big time. It was totally not my type of music, I was always indie and alt rock, but they were always on the tele and newspapers, so she was part of the backdrop of me discovering my home country for the first time. I find this afro hair protected status thing quite strange. Won’t it lead to more bullying in reality for regular afro wearers? What about white people with perms? Do they get protected status too. Is Gerry going to do the same for red heads? I could get a partial beard protection in that case. What about asian straight black hair? How are we discussing hair styles as a government rule? Isn’t this a little bit ridiculous? While we are here, what about freckles? I have a lot of those. I want my freckles to be a protected characteristic! I bet I’m not allowed to say that. Definitely my favorite story so far this week :) www.theguardian.com #
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The Big Tech Sandwich (June 2022) - A piece I wrote a while back. I’m re-posting it again now just to give a sense of the scale of the challenge the world is up against. It’s no doubt an example why I’ll never be running for office anywhere, but I‘d like to live in a world where it’s a lot easier to build. We need our leaders to step up to the challenge. markjgsmith.com #
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EU ‘needs €800bn-a-year spending boost to avert agonising decline’ - Mario Draghi: "For the first time since the cold war we must genuinely fear for our self-preservation". The former Italian prime minister has published a hard hitting "we are pretty fucked" report. Where are the european challenge accepted folks hiding? www.theguardian.com #
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New Post: How great, or not, is poker? markjgsmith.com #
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Mastercard Launches Crypto Debit Card in Europe: Spend from Self-Custodial Wallets - Pretty interesting, could make using self custodial crypto in daily life much easier.watcher.guru #
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Why Peter Schiff Hates Bitcoin & The Bull Case For Gold (Bankless Podcast) - The notorious Bitcoin hater makes quite a compelling case. I was a bit suprised how little Ryan and David pushed back on him. Also what timing, to have him on in September, known to historically be one of the worst performing months for Bitcoin. Interesting choice. www.bankless.com #
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DJI’s $199 Neo selfie drone is going to be everywhere - This looks awesome, likely will end up being the new digital nomad / solo traveller must have. www.theverge.com #
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Should everyone get free money? (The Rest is Money Podcast) - Really enjoyed this episode as I siped on a hot cup of coffee this morning. Two main topics: how do we configure society to handle the coming AI revolution? And what can we learn from the recent Oasis tickets fiasco? Both great topics, with some thoughtful analysis. Like Robert I was always much more of a Blur fan, but I softenned my stance during university because I saw how much fun we all had at the student union when Oasis tracks came on. I like both now, like two great flavours of ice scream. podcastindex.org #
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Elon Musk now controls two thirds of all active satellites - Interesting fact. It’s kind of a shocking figure. On the other hand perhaps it’s just the tip of the iceberg. Perhaps in the future all serious entrepreuneurs will need to have satellite constellations, and not just around Earth. www.independent.co.uk #
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Top 10 people most likely to reach trillionaire status - Seems like this will have happened by 2030 and be accelerating for many. www.cnbc.com #
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Google and DOJ return for round two of their antitrust fight -- this time about ads - This looks likely to be one of the big court cases happening over the next few years. Certainly looks like Google took control of all sides of the online ads market and tightenned the screws to extract as much as possible, but the devil is in the detail. www.theverge.com #
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Boris Johnson faces ‘serious questions’ over new business with uranium entrepreneur - Boris is clearly soldiering on too, as is the universe. In all seriousness though, this does look like quite a story, with some pretty thorough reporting. Shell companies, uranium trading, Iran, nuclear power plants, a mysterious appointment of a junior assistant to the House of Lords, and a series of links that lead back to RFK in the US. It’s like a plot setup right out of a Bond movie. www.theguardian.com #
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New Post: We have control issues markjgsmith.com #
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Official NGINX Open Source development repository has moved from Mercurial to GitHub - Big news because Nginx is such a big part of web infrastructure. It‘s used as a reverse proxy / load balancer, and sits on front of much of the web’s websites. It will be interesting to see how the visibility of the project changes. mailman.nginx.org #
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YouTube takes down right-wing channels linked to DOJ Russia indictments - Two interesting points I’ve heard about this story: (1) another russian interference story right before elections, what a suprise, (2) strange it’s always right wing media that is colluding with russia, why would Russia care which side to collude with? (3) it could be an attack on podcasting, the only fully open publishing medium. www.washingtonpost.com #
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🚀 Latest Newsletter: Unified Narratives (Issue #180) markjgsmith.com #
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AIs are now paying other AIs with crypto - Coinbase’s Brian Armstrong announces this crypto milestone. I'm wondering if we should all rewatch the Termintor movies. [sarcasm] but also [kind of not sarcasm?] especially given that my git client is currently blocking me from changing the history on one of my repos, one which I literally just finished integrating into most of my other repos. Coincidence? Something tells me this isn’t the end of this story. x.com #
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New Post: Extremely evil, duh markjgsmith.com #
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New Post: Could we build a decentralised podcast index? markjgsmith.com #
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A mega-merger aims to reshape India's entertainment landscape - Could capture 40% of the TV market including sports, which importantly includes cricket. I’m suprised the deal is only worth $8.5bn. If it does go through, could be one of those deals that is worth a lot more 10 years down the line. www.bbc.com #
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US, UK and EU sign on to the Council of Europe’s high-level AI safety treaty - I’m not sure how important such a thing is, though probably worth knowing it exists. It looks like it’s seeking to bring together a whole load of similar sounding initiatives that already exist. One thing that raised my eyebrow: signing countries are committed to a "circular requirement". The programmer in me looks at that and thinks, that + AI sounds like it could have some unnexpected and unbounded negative externalities. techcrunch.com #
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New Post: Is the concept of money blocking our understanding of the universe? markjgsmith.com #
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Multithreaded Programming in Node.js using Atomics - I hadn’t read about atomics before, so far never needed to use worker threads outside of a test app. It’s cool there’s way to avoid race conditions. At some point I want my static site generator to support worker threads so might be the thing to use. pavel-romanov.com #
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New Post: Journalists do definitely spread false information markjgsmith.com #
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Tumblr to move its half a billion blogs to WordPress - This sounds awesome. I hope they document a publish the journey as they go. techcrunch.com #
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New Post: Tumblr moving open source, Wordpress getting cool techcrunch.com #
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There’s only one way to keep Germany’s far-right AfD at bay. Address the concerns it exploits - Big changes in Germany, at least according to the Guardian. www.theguardian.com #
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New Post: How to get a balanced view of Europe? markjgsmith.com #
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I just crossed $1 million on GitHub Sponsors. 💰🎉 - Lots of interesting tips. It’s cool to know it can be done. Seems light years away from me right now. calebporzio.com #
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Dave’s Second Brain Idea, Notion Thoughts, And Google’s LLM in Chrome - Really enjoyed Dave and Chris’ discussion about second brains in this episode because somehow it fits in quite well with a lot of the stuff I think about while making my static site generator and website. Also LLMs in the browser! Very cool, I do believe I predicted this! shoptalkshow.com #
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LLMs in the browser (17/03/2024) - Supporting evidence, my prediction of LLMs in the browser :) markjgsmith.com #
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New Post: Perverts vs Normies markjgsmith.com #
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New Post: Hyper hyper control days markjgsmith.com #
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New Post: Sequence down at the canal markjgsmith.com #