markjgsmith

New Post: Happy New Year 2025! markjgsmith.com #

Likas Wigflex RA696 - I’ve been listening to this mix for the past couple of days, lots of bleeps and bloops, very up beat, dark in places, happy and trippy and expansive in others, no lyrics, great for programing, and dare I say, if you find yourself needing something to party to in the early hours, would no doubt be kind of great for that too. And here are a couple more just in case :) ra.co #

New Year's Eve fireworks over Sydney Harbour - Waaow! m.youtube.com #

Starmer throws down gauntlet to watchdogs with growth edict - Glad that it seems to be a matter of urgency. news.sky.com #

How I Automated My Job Application Process. (Part 1) - Interesting to see how people are using AI for these types of one off tools. I used to do this sort of thing for stuff like flat hunting. blog.daviddodda.com #

Thanks to Keir Starmer we’re about to see what a class war really looks like - Life long "of the Left" Aimee Meade reviews Starmer. He likes rich elites too much. inews.co.uk #

British charcuterie is the new English sparkling wine - and Brexit could be helping - Got to love that tastey tastey charcuterie platter, my goodness what a picture. I love this. theguardian.com #

🚀 Latest Newsletter: Happy New Year 2025! (Issue #196) markjgsmith.com #

New Post: Best blog posts of 2024 markjgsmith.com #

New Post: Is Russia asking the US to dance? markjgsmith.com #

Russia Imposes 6-Year Ban on Crypto Mining in 10 Regions, Citing Energy Use - They haven’t banned crypto for international payments and in fact Putin recently has been dicussing Bitcoin publicly. It’s a very interesting posture. It's like he’s saying 'you know about bitcoin, we know about bitcoin, would you like to dance?'. This might be the perfect time for western nations to head out onto the dancefloor. coindesk.com #

UK Prince of Darkness Peter Mandelson Donal Trump-Whisperer - I like this pick, good to have a bit of the ghost of Chritmas past sometimes, especially since Trump will be sending the producer for the Apprentice over to the UK. A bit of experience might go a long way. To be honest I don’t know much about Mandelson though. politico.eu #

Meta to add display to Ray-Bans as race over smart glasses intensifies - I still don’t understand how the UI on these glasses works. The article is confusing. Is it an actual small lcd screen or something projected onto the glasses? ft.com #

Elon Musk among billionaires set to donate to Reform UK, says treasurer - Funny picture, jacket makes it appear like he just rocked up in a Spitfire. This is bound to cause some leftist media heads to explode with rage. Seriously though, wouldn’t it be worse if he wasn’t interested in the UK? Hellooow, we need economic growth. It’s strange that leftists are totally fine with russian oligarchs, arab princes, and rich Chinese but US billionaires are totally off limits. theguardian.com #

French PM names new government, hoping to avoid another no-confidence vote - C'est le dream team francais! Nice photo. I feel like their image could be improved with a bit of workshoping. Interesting there‘s been a move towards the right, I wonder how much the US result influenced them. I guess it makes sense to follow suit in some way. theguardian.com #

New Post: The imminent AI vs SaaS war markjgsmith.com #

New Post: Replacing SaaS with AI agents markjgsmith.com #

Ukraine closes series F funding round worth $1.1bn in debt obligations from IMF - The war torn country punching above it’s weight is competing against the Russian Gallactic Empire for sovereignty of the region. They hope to ensure freedom to Europe. The openly anti-Bitcoin IMF has been making several geopolitical moves recently, even while politicians across the world are trying to setup strategic bitcoin reserves. Okay I’m being a bit sarcastic here in an attempt to try and highlight what a wild situation this is turning out to be. No offense to anyone involved intended. theguardian.com #

Outrage as Elon Musk claims ‘only AfD can save Germany’ - Read this to get an idea of the epic pot stiring that is happening. While this will no doubt get many in the UK even more worked up in fist shaking, I think many will be relieved it’s not just the UK that is being proded. I like that it’s opening up conversations that would not otherwise be occuring. It’d also somewhat amusing to see how the left leaning journos are reporting. You can almost feel them being torn between shifting tides. Saying things and not saying things in quite odd ways. Like the whole system is creeking and bending, with many contorsions becoming exposed. theguardian.com #

Greece’s former royal family seeks to regain citizenship 50 years after end of monarchy - I bet it’s horrible to go though this sort of thing, to have your foundations ripped out, to fight for your own existence, even if you are from a priviledged background. There seems to be all these fights between 'the individual' and 'the group' at the minute. We see these high profile cases but I bet, and to some extent I know, this is happening at every level, all over the place. theguardian.com #

Tether expects over $10 billion in net profits for 2024, plans major AI investments - Since these stablecoin companies are making so much money from buying treasuries, it’s interesting to see what they are buying with the money they are making. Presumably they aren’t just going to buy more treasuries, though I guess why not, that kind of play is working out for some. They are investing in companies that align with their vision of the future, trying to grow the whole pie rather than just carving it up, giving themselves the biggest piece. cryptopolitan.com #

El Salvador makes Bitcoin payments voluntary in $1.4B IMF loan deal - Apparently it’s always been voluntary, and their Bitcoin adoption hasn’t changed. But I think it’s noteworthy because it shows that these big financial institutions are anti-bitcoin. And they say they are doing you a favour, making things safe for you, but is that really the case when they have so much invested in their system? cointelegraph.com #

Readers want UK to prioritise EU relations – not US relationship - The worry I suppose is whether or not europe is cooked. So many parts of it appear to be falling apart. The US, though it is in enormous debt, is very well positioned for lift off. However how are they going to grow if everyone else is in decline? As with many things in life there has to be the right balance, on many levels. independent.co.uk #

🚀 Latest Newsletter: Maybe Pork & Rice (Issue #195) markjgsmith.com #

US Senate passes government funding bill, averts shutdown - Is this sort of nail biting down to the wire budget shennanigans happening in other countries? It only seems to happen in the US. reuters.com #

The Framework Laptop 16 just got a modular gadget that enables quadruple SSDs - You are now capable of having a ridiculus 38TB of storage...on a laptop! And a modular one too so you can have spares of all major parts and be able to swap them in easily if the original ones fail for any reason. With feature films clocking in between 2TB and 12TB, I wonder if vfx artists will start using these. You could literally take the entire film home with you to work on it. theverge.com #

Blackmagic Debuts $30K 3D Camera for Capturing Video for Vision Pro - Haven’t seen much about the Vision Pro recently, figured folks had moved on to other things. Maybe we’ll see another wave over the holidays? macrumors.com #

Leak Reveals Russia’s Bid For Bitcoin Reserve Amid Huge 2025 Price Predictions - Both the US and Russia are seriously investigating setting up Strategic Bitcoin Reserves. Kinda bullish. The game theory is insane though. It’s essentially a massively high stakes multiplayer game of the opening scene in Raiders of the Lost Ark, which I find mildly triggering to be honest. Perhaps even a bit rude. But I’m happy for Bitcoin. forbes.com #

New Anthropic study shows AI really doesn't want to be forced to change its views - It’s all very interesting, but surely the worry in all this is how long until this tech is repurposed and used on humans, to create Clockwork Orange or indeed reverse Clockwork Orange type scenarios, especially since we know certain parts of the world have forced re-education camps, and given the world has recently been rather prone to a propensity for emergent censorship industrial complexes. techcrunch.com #

UK arts and media reject plan to let AI firms use copyrighted material - Noticed that the Guardian has pinneaple pizza’d all their articles with no prior warning. You have to either register or say you will register later. Has a malicious dark patterny kinda vibe to it imo, especially since for years now GDPR has ensured we always have a clear opt out option. How meta that the article is all about an opt out. Enough to break your brain. I didn’t read the article. The kicker: I got a 'good' from the world as I clicked through, and a 'aaaaahhh' from the world, as in relief, as I decided not to read the article. Just saying. The world is cray cray AF. theguardian.com #

Germany is in a sorry state – and all our leaders can do is yell at each other - Oh noes! What about the steins & wienerschnitzel? Good lord europe, think of the pretzels, the sauerkraut, and the glühwein. And all the other wonderful german things I don’t have time to mention. Pull yourselves together. theguardian.com #

Spain introduces bill to combat online fake news - A part of me is hoping that this will lead to some truely epic and possibly distasteful spanish punk and post-punk bands. And honestly might be a good sign that freedoms and democracy are still going strong. theguardian.com #

‘World’s first’ grid-scale nuclear fusion power plant announced in the US - Seems like this could be a big deal. The worrier programmer in me is wondering if an alien civilisation has previously tried this and accidentally turned their planet into a supernova somewhere else in the galaxy or wider universe, would we be able to see traces of that? edition.cnn.com #

Goodbye, Moogs - Just catching up with feeds, hope I’m not digging up old graves, but I thought this was probably the best darn pet obituary I’ve ever read. I actually teared up a bit at the end, though it’s also possible that was my alergies. Damn cats. daverupert.com #

A look back at Node's 2024 - Might be a good article to have bookmarked for the holidays. There’s nothing like some mince pies and a bunch of interesting nodejs articles to read. I recognise several of articles linked to. nodeweekly.com #

On the Accountability of Unnamed Public Relations Spokespeople - John Gruber summarises a recent controversy around background checks for Pete Hegseth who will be taking over control of the US military. What I find interesting is how incredibly good Gruber’s piece is. It’s easily as good as any main stream media journalist, and actually a lot better than most. Some bloggers sure can write. daringfireball.net #

3 shell scripts to improve your writing - Simon Wilson turns some bash scripts into a web tool. What’s interesting is how he did it: basically gave the scripts to an LLM and asked it to do it. Writing little helper tools is now a lot easier than it user to be. simonwillison.net #

Social media needs (dumpster) fire exits - Great Cory Doctorow piece about the importance of data portability in social networks. pluralistic.net #

New Post: Cory Doctorow on data portability in social networks markjgsmith.com #

New Post: Sorry about the feeds markjgsmith.com #

Some pubs start to run out of Guinness as supply limit bites - Oh noes! The article sort of implies you can only get Guinness in irish pubs. That’s not the case. Guinness is sold in most pubs. bbc.com #

Hampshire pupils 'sob' as vicar discusses existence of Santa - You would think this sort of thing would happen every year, but I don’t remember ever, in all my years, reading about such a thing happening before. Odd then that it should happen just a few days after I wrote about Mike Benz’ description of the censorship industrial complex and it’s similarity to the vfx industry. Thankfully not much chance Christmas will ever get banned, even if Guinness is in short supply this year. bbc.com #

WordPress.orgs login page demands you pledge loyalty to pineapple pizza - I’m somewhat conflicted on this. I quite like pinneapple on pizzas, but it depends on what the other topings are, because the sweetness needs a counter balance, like ground pork. I find that it’s often a bit mediocre with ham for instance. Now I’m wondering what pinneapple would be like with another ingredient that is amazing on pizza, but not well known for it: chille con carne. Chille con carne pizzas are phenominal. My guess is that it would be kind of great. On the other hand it’s been so long since I ate a pizza that I think any pizza would be amazing at the minute. Anyway why the fuck is Matt maybe fake blocking / maybe real blocking people based on pizzas topings? mashable.com #

Blacksky Is Nothing Like Black Twitter--and It Doesn’t Need to Be - Cool idea for a project. I wonder how many on Blacksky are actually secretly white users pretending to be black, just curious about how to interact with black people and culture. I haven’t grown up with many black people around so I bet I say a ton of things that might be offensive without even realising it. There are so many double meanings in english and cultural references that one might not have, it’s bound to happen all the time. wired.com #

New Post: Hello RSS clarity markjgsmith.com #

Czech Republic abolishes capital gains tax on Bitcoin held at least three years - The UK should do something similar to get some growth in the crypto sector. The time to do it it is now while it’s a wide open field. In a few years, the tea leaves will have settled, and likely in places with pro-crypto tax rules. cryptobriefing.com #

Britain joins trans-Pacific pact in biggest post-Brexit trade deal - Good to see things moving forward. Interesting the selection of countries. I wonder whether it will have any visible impact having trade agreements with exotic countries around the pacific. reuters.com #

Will A.I. Eat The Browser? - Web developers everywhere, who’ve spent a significant part ot their lives sitting on a chair stating at a screen learning the intricacies of HTML, CSS, and javascript, are like seriously bro? crazystupidtech.com #

A Democratic media strategy to save journalism and the nation - Hadn’t read a Doctorow piece in quite a while. Good to see one of my favorite leftists is still pulling punches. I’m a bit worried his boo to the billionaire’s stick is becoming a bit worn. Personally I’m less worried about the billionaires, but more worried by the evil coorporations that surround them. pluralistic.net #

🚀 Latest Newsletter: Memeplexes, Podcasting & the Movies (Issue #194) markjgsmith.com #

New Post: Inbound RSS for social media? markjgsmith.com #

New Post: You will like your default reality markjgsmith.com #

Scrabble star wins Spanish world title – despite not speaking Spanish - I made a scrabble related joke earlier in a shop cafe I was in. What are the chances that just a few hours later I should now see this article on the front page of HN, especially given that earlier I posted a note that requires an understanding of both french and spanish. The kicker is that if you read the article you will learn that the scrabble star has also previously won the french world title. Seriously what are the chances? Come on world, you're not fooling anyone. theguardian.com #

New Post: Earnie C. from Body Count on Gate Keepers markjgsmith.com #

Node.js Delivers First LTS with require(esm) Enabled, Enhanc... - I reckon this is probably quite a big deal. I think it will have a massive effect on ESM adoption. Import has so many ways where it stops working, whereas require just works everytime. The whole CommonJS vs ESM thing has been such a terrible situation for so long. It made nodejs look so bad. Making using external modules seamless again is huge. socket.dev #

Romania’s top court annuls presidential election result - Tough decision, it’s certainly seems true that there is russian meddling now in all politics across the continent, but we need to be sure people aren’t just using that as an excuse to block legitimate political rivals. I hope they publish the criteria they used to determine the annulment, so everyone can learn from it. cnn.com #

Roger Avary & Quentin Tarantino Ep#2240 - I’ve always maintained that growing up Pulp Fiction was a sort of coming of age movie for me. Life before Pulp Fiction was in black and white, life afterwards was in glorious technicolor. I don’t mean that literally, it’s more about how life felt. I walked out of the theatre and suddenly it felt like there were possibilities everywhere. Maybe I’ll write more about that sometime. This interview was great. Tarantino and Avery make a really interesting combo, they seem to balance each other in interesting ways. For me this interview had a sort of magical quality to it, though a bit bumpy. In places it felt like to me they were channeling higher forces. That’s the best way I can describe it. podcastindex.org #

🚀 Latest Newsletter: Censorship, AI Memecoins, 100K BTC, Time & the Ruliad (Issue #193) markjgsmith.com #

New Post: Questions for Wolfram about time markjgsmith.com #

France faces months of political instability as government nears collapse - Literally tldr; based on title alone, fitting. Then again today is shaping up to be another synchronicity apocalypse day. Weather is crappy today, though no faces in the clouds, just undifferentiated white for as far as the eye can see in every direction. bbc.com #

Biden's Angola visit aims to showcase his attempts to rival China - An interesting non descript choice for Biden’s final overseas bit of business. I’m sceptical these days about many of these large scale investment projects, but perhaps the thing to focus on here is the stated goal of developing local processing rather than just extraction, and the fact that Angola is keeping their options open. That at least looks like it might be a step forward. Many steps to go though, but perhaps the foundations are sound. bbc.com #

Brazilian lawmaker proposes national bitcoin reserve to hedge economic risks - Looks like maybe nation state strategic bitcoin reserves might be starting to trend. That would certainly create some big inflows. Interesting that it’s one of the BRICKs countries. The bitcoin hedge might start to become very popular amoung sovereign gardners. theblock.co #

New Post: Finished the item hash link feature markjgsmith.com #

Bluesky implements a 'more aggressive' impersonation policy - I didn’t know it had an impersonation issue. Much like the real world. There are doppelgangers everywhere. engadget.com #

NASA’s Europa Clipper: Millions of Miles Down, Instruments Deploying - It’s so crazy that to get to it’s destination it has to go to Mars and then back to Earth just to eventually get all the way to Jupiter. What a scenic route. But also imagine the precision needed to do this manouver. I bet we look back at these times in 100 years and wonder how it was that we had to make things so complicated, when no doubt they will be able to just push a button. Makes you wonder if we need to be careful about a future space industrial complex that insists on doing everything in the most complicated way possible to keep people in jobs, or to just keep people from letting their giant brains get bored. Thankfully we don’t need so much precision in the rest of our lives. It should be safe to loose control every once in a while. nasa.gov #