markjgsmith

New Post: Captivity Notes: Tue 14th Jan 2025 markjgsmith.com #

Shallow clones versus structured clones - Definitely useful to know the details of this, I had sonething very similar happening to me a while back and it took quite a long time to figute out and resolve. philna.sh #

New Post: Captivity Notes: Mon 13th Jan 2025 markjgsmith.com #

Matt Mullenweg deactivates WordPress contributor accounts over alleged fork plans - It’s very strange that Matt Mullenweg’s approach was repeatedly and widely described as 'scorched earth' in the press end of last year, and now the case resurfaces at the same exsct time as the uterly mind boggling LA wildfires. I wonder what odds you would have gotten on polymarket for predicting those two events happening. What is up with that? Kinda strange. techcrunch.com #

Yoast’s former CEO calls for a ‘federated’ approach to WordPress repository - Interesting article that was linked to from the previous techcrunch piece. techcrunch.com #

New Post: Something is very wrong with open source markjgsmith.com #

New Post: Captivity Notes: Sun 12th Jan 2025 markjgsmith.com #

A Rare Alignment of 7 Planets Is About to Take Place in The Sky - It should be happening the evening of 28 February 2025. Alignment of 7 planets is apparently a very rate occurance. www.sciencealert.com #

New Post: Captivity Notes: Sat 11th Jan 2025 markjgsmith.com #

🚀 Latest Newsletter: Maybe the end of Season 2? (Issue #198) markjgsmith.com #

Zuckerberg says Biden administration pushed Meta ‘super hard’ to take down vaccine content - I’m listening to the Zuck - Rogan intervew as I write this, it’s pretty good. Zuck sounds more normal and relaxed than I remember him being. The bit about him looking like a fucking idiot on TV when he was younger was very funny. Yeah it’s a softball interview, but he’s had quite a few hardcore ones the past few years. www.cnbc.com #

Twin-headed Trump-Musk onslaught leaves Europe floundering for response - Things are definitely getting interesting. I like that Starmer responded, but it had a bit of a David Brent vibe to it. Not Starmer’s speech, but the whole event at an NHS event was a bit cringe. I just feel like we could do a lot better. Europe could do a lot better. At the minute Europe is both innefective and unfunny. Really needs to find it’s political personality. www.theguardian.com #

New Post: Captivity Notes: Fri 10th Jan 2025 markjgsmith.com #

New Post: Elon vs the UK markjgsmith.com #

New Post: Why right leaning folks should listen to the Rest is Politics markjgsmith.com #

Emmanuel Macron joins growing criticism of Elon Musk in Europe - Quite a pot stir. Seems like everyone who is anyone has something to say now. Imagine if we had so much unity in peacefully working together. www.theguardian.com #

New Post: Pressure cooker world markjgsmith.com #

Nvidia announces $3,000 personal AI supercomputer called Digits - "1 petaflop of AI performance, 200 billion parameters, 2 systems can be linked together to handle models with up to 405 billion parameters" - Sounds pretty cool, a top end workstation. Also sounds a lot like NVidia is eyeing up Apple’s lunch, and looks like they are about to go out to an S&M party. It would be kind of funny if all Nvidia employees wore Jensen Huang leather jackets to the office. He is so trying to be bad ass Steve Jobs. www.theverge.com #

Belgium issues food advisory against consuming Christmas trees - One memory I have of belgian Christmas’ was that for a number of years the big tree in Brussels’ main square had the usual christmas tree ornaments but additionally had several life size plastic sheep and cows, containing lit up neon bulbs of various colors, that were jammed in between the branches. I had no idea this little tradition had escallated and morphed to the point where people were eating the trees. They are quite surrealist in Belgium. I think it’s mostly well meaning even if it’s sometimes a bit risqé. www.theguardian.com #

New Post: Git complains about a non-existent branch while npm installing markjgsmith.com #

New Post: Physics is so weird markjgsmith.com #

New Post: What has happened with the FED, money printing and debt creation? markjgsmith.com #

New Post: Volodymyr Zelenskyy in the importance of digital communication markjgsmith.com #

Apple CEO Tim Cook donates $1 million to Trump inauguration - I imagine british people will be agast at this whip around from tech billionaires. I have no idea if this is a normal thing in US politics. The whole 'unity' vibe is an interesting way to dress it up. What are they going to spend the money on? One metric to watch out for during the next 4 years is how diversified the stock market is by the end of it. At the minute it’s very heavily weighed towards the mag 7, which is quite risky. www.axios.com #

comfyanonymous/ComfyUI - "The most powerful and modular diffusion model GUI, api and backend with a graph/nodes interface". This appears to be quite popular in the AI / LLM space. It’s interesting that no code node based graph UIs are being used. It hadn’t occurred to me, but it makes complete sense. github.com #

The Great American Tradition - John Gruber wonders about the whole tech billionaires inaugural donations whip around thing. Quite possibly a new tradition. daringfireball.net #

The Intricacy of ASML’s Extreme Ultraviolet Lithography Machines - The precision of these machines which are behind all the chips manufactured around the world these days is kind if unfathomable. daringfireball.net #

Simon Willisons’s Approach to Running a Link Blog - I’ve been thinking for ages to add a 'via' field to my linkblog posts frontmatter. I do try to mention author names. I read both John and Simon’s writing so it’s interesting to hear how they think about it. daringfireball.net #

🚀 Latest Newsletter: Blocked (Issue #197) markjgsmith.com #

New Post: Starmer first podcasting prime minister? markjgsmith.com #

Trolling the UK: the issues enraging Elon Musk, world’s richest ‘pub bore’ - Oh stop complaining, start a podcast. Real leaders that people love, blog and podcast awkwardly and imperfectly. They iterate. They get better in public. www.theguardian.com #

New Post: Be the change you want to see in the world markjgsmith.com #

Meta will appoint Republican Joel Kaplan to lead global policy team, replacing Nick Clegg - Sad to hear we will no longer have a brit over there. But times change. It was kind of cool that Zuck hired Clegg when he did IMO, and kudos to Clegg for trying something well outside of the orthodoxy. I wonder what Clegg will do next with all this tech industry experience under his belt. www.semafor.com #

Scandinavians came to Britain long before Vikings and Anglo-Saxons, finds study - The lead researcher’s last name, Skoglund,
and especially his penchant for pickled hearing, suggests maybe some impartiality issues? Interesting research nonetheless, especially the reverse migration they seem to have uncovered. www.theguardian.com #

Pornhub Is Now Blocked In Almost All of the U.S. South - It would be funny if it turned out to be an elaborate psyop to save the dying print media industry. www.404media.co #

The Biggest Challenges Create The Biggest Opportunities - Mike Masnick’s yearly optimistic take on the state of everything, focusing on social media. www.techdirt.com #

New Post: Better debug logging markjgsmith.com #

New Post: Elon Musk’s $200 million Reform markjgsmith.com #