markjgsmith

Rate 'rigging' traders say they were scapegoated - now the Supreme Court will decide - Noteworthy because the move from Libor to Sofr as the index which helps to set interest rates has been heralded as a moment of liberation for the US, since Libor was set by London banks. Turns out it was being manipulated, not just by these traders, but also by central bankers and governments worldwide, at even bigger magnitudes. www.bbc.com #

The Best Breakdown of America You've Never Heard - Richard Miniter - Very interesting history about the 4 main groups of people that migrated originally from Britain. They each had very distinct philosophies and politics, and they setup in different places in the US. podcastindex.org #

Highlights from the Claude 4 system prompt - Simon Willison very often has some interesting things to say aboug LLMs and his experiences with them. This post gets into the system prompts, they are a sort of unnoficial manual. simonwillison.net #

Elon Musk Just Showed Off The Most Humanlike Robot Ever - They are scheduled to manufacture 5000 robots by end of year, and 50000 planned for the following year. Says it will be the fastest growing product of all time by a factor of 10. Even if he is half wrong in his prediction, has the potential to really change what the world looks like kind of quickly. The figure 100 million units per year is mentioned, which is totally bonkers. We are entering the age of sustainable abundance, which sounds very nice. youtu.be #

GitHub - CajuM/jobhunt: Job Hunting Scripts - There sure are a lot of slightly dark synchronicities in this life. Anyways, job scripts could be useful, we should share more of these. github.com #

Sam and Jony and skepticism - I'm sort of enjoying reading and hearing the mixed reactions to their quite unique announcement. sixcolors.com #

Bond crisis looming? GOP abandons DOGE, Google disrupts Search with AI, OpenAI buys Jony Ive's IO (All-In Podcast) - Some great Ives and Altman takes. Rest of the show is worth listening too also.
podcastindex.org #

Announcing a new IDE for PostgreSQL in VS Code from Microsoft - Vergecast Microsoft native advertising compaign much? Still it does look like a pretty darn cool postgres IDE. techcommunity.microsoft.com #

Sergey Brin, Google Co-Founder (All-In Podcast) - In this interview from "All-In live from Miami", a lot of interesting discussions about Sergey's return to work at Google, and where he sees the AI boom going, and how he thinks it could impact every day lives. The thing with technical co-founders is they don't really do it just for the monday, they are all computer science enthusiast nerds, even the most successfuly ones. podcastindex.org #

I was first in line to try Google's Android XR glasses and came away impressed - Looks like the new generation of these AR glasses do actually have a screen projected into the inside of the glass. The Meta glasses don't have this yet. Really want to try these. I'm wearing reading glasses these days, so why not have some unintrusive headsup type display. Could be very cool. www.androidcentral.com #

25.05 Reasons to NixOS Ep#615 (Linux Unplugged Podcast) - Great episode all about Nix. Particulrly interesting to hear about it can be used to create Asahi Linux build environments. Giving me lots of ideas about how I could use the new laptop. Plus the usual assortment of cool linux based tools to pimp your setup and workflows. linuxunplugged.com #

Bitcoin jumps to new all-time high, surpassing prior record in January - It got all the way up to $111k, which is massive considering when the Trump tarrifs hit it went all the way down to $76k. www.cnbc.com #

Sam & Jony introduce io - It's a bit of an odd promo, like they are trying to be authentic and naturally awkward, crossed with silicon valley, crossed with gastro pubs. Yet it's kind of interesting. Are they talking to each other or the film crew? Or is this just what happens when you ChatGPT all day long? :) Looking forward to see what reality enhancement products they are working on. openai.com #

Jimmy Carr Ep#2045 (Joe Rogan Experience Podcast) - I watched this a few days ago, enjoyed it more than I thought I would. There's something slightly odd about Jimmy Carr, not sure what it is exactly, and I find myself slightly mesmerized trying to figure out what it is, and I never do quite, but anyway in the end he's very smart and he's got some very interesting ideas about where the comedy scene is at and where it might be heading. And him and Joe get on even if it's a bit awkward at times. Worth watching. youtu.be #

Initialization in C++ is bonkers - I scanned through this and though I didn't fully grok it, it's been 20 years since I wrote any C++, I felt like I would need this article should I everneed to get back into it. Also I feel like it's normally X in Javascript is bonkers, so it's nice to get a break. We love you C++ programmers :) blog.tartanllama.xyz #

New Post: 5 Dimensional Beings markjgsmith.com #

Physicist explains 4 dimensions of spacetime - Janna Levin and Lex Fridman - Watched this the other day. youtu.be #

World's first CPU-level ransomware - Sounds kinda bad. "Bypasses every freaking traditional technology we have out there". Basically can modiy the CPU microcode and is directly in the bios so everything is encrypted before any OS software even loads. www.tomshardware.com #

New Zealand MPs who performed haka in parliament given unprecedented punishment - Maybe NZ isn't the escape strategy some tech bilionaires had hoped for? Worth watching the video. Definitely a sign there are some very deep disagrements happening. I would have thought this was a step along a road to a rise in militant groups. www.theguardian.com #

UK economy defies gloomy warnings to grow 0.7% in first quarter of year - Nice to see something positive about the economy. www.theguardian.com #

Meta wants your smile, squats, and small talk — and it's paying $50 an hour to scan them for its next-gen VR avatars - I'm interested in trying these glasses though I'm not sure I like their goal of enabling social presence "indistinguishable from reality". www.businessinsider.com #

Trump meets interim Syrian president as Damascus celebrates lifting of sanctions - This visit really seems to be a big deal. www.bbc.com #

Trump's Gulf Billions: Saudi, Sanctions, and Ceasefires (Rest is Politics Podcast) - Lots of interesting background information about the situation in the Middle East. podcastindex.org #

Lumier - macOS and Linux virtual machines in a Docker container - Could be quite useful especially for developers doing testing. Docker is just an interface, underneath it's using Apple Virtualization Framework (Apple Vz). github.com #

git-bug: a decentralized issue tracker - It looks like everything is stored in your .git folder. "Manage issues, users, and comments directly within your repository - keeping everything versioned and clutter-free". And this was also interesting imo "work offline and sync seamlessly later". github.com #

White House partially cuts tariff on cheap goods - It's good to see some progress is being made. It will certainly be interesting to see how these tariffs affect american businesses long term. Also the supply shocks over the coming months are going to be considerable with everyone loading up on cheap products. www.axios.com #

Apple unveils iOS 19 accessibility features: Magnifier for Mac, App Store labels, more - Interesting to see this new accessibility direction that Apple is taking. The braille features are pretty intersting. 9to5mac.com #

President Donald J. Trump Secures Historic $600 Billion Investment Commitment in Saudi Arabia - The tech scene in the region has been growing rapidly in recent years. Interesting to see big military investment too. Over half a trillion dollars. www.whitehouse.gov #

Add Sound Effects to Your React Apps Effortlessly - I feel like maybe there should be a movement to add a special secret mode to most web apps that enables sound effects. The sound library is a lot cooler than I thought it would be, at least with headphones. www.reactsounds.com #

New Post: Hey Netlify, are you okay? markjgsmith.com #

Harold Sonny White Ep#2318 (Joe Rogan Experience Podcast) - I haven't completely finished watching yet but, if you are at all interested in interstellar travel, you need to watch this. There is one of THE coolest videos of how a warp drive could work. It occurred to me while watching this that what is likely to occur first is that AI becomes a warp drive for thinking, FASTER. www.youtube.com #

Void: Open-source Cursor alternative - Early days by the sounds of the associated HN discussion thread, but it's interesting to see open source versions of Cursor appearing. Cool project name. github.com #

10 useful VS Code shortcuts you should know - A lot of these are definitely super useful. dev.to #

Trump and Starmer confirm ‘breakthrough’ US-UK trade deal - Many of the articles I read earlier about this were really negative, whereas the tone appears to have shifted somewhat, even though they are still kind of negative. www.theguardian.com #

Cars, steel, beef and films: the key points of the US-UK trade deal - That's actually the strongest 4 words summary of Britain I've read in quite a while. www.theguardian.com #

Trump hails trade deal with ‘oldest ally’ UK – but what about the details? - The retoric as channeled by the MSM definitely has softenned in just a few hours. www.theguardian.com #

Robert Prevost becomes first American pope and will be known as Pope Leo XIV - Pope Louis the 14th! Sacre bleu. Joking aside, I didn't realise Leo's were so popular in the church. My first thoughts were that he looks much younger than recent popes. www.bbc.com #

Cisco says its new entanglement chip could speed up practical quantum computing timeline by a decade - I'm not an expert at quantum computing but it seems significant that the chip "generates up to one million entangled photon pairs per second, and does so at room temperature". My impression was that so far the most advanced tech in the industry was only able to create in the order of 1000 simultaneous entangled pairs, and that was at crazy cold temperatures. www.fastcompany.com #

As an Experienced LLM User, I Actually Don't Use Generative LLMs Often - It's interesting to learn how the LLM pros are using this new tech. There is a lot of tricks and nuance. You really have to have a good idea which type of problems are a good fit. minimaxir.com #

Maker of AI ‘vibe coding’ app Cursor hits bn valuation - I keep hearing about and seing the Cursor editor in all things related to AI developer tools and vibe coding. Haven't tried it myself yet. www.ft.com #

I built an AI code review agent in a few hours, here's what I learned - Interesting to hear from devs actually building developer tools that use AI. Many of the things the author describes I have seen variations of too. www.sourcebot.dev #

The AI wearables are always listening (Vergecast Podcast) - With the previous link in mind, this episode of Vergecast seems particularly relevant. Both journalists recount somewhat hilarious situations their wearables ran into. As David Pierce describes, and I am paraphrasing, the bar to be human is very high. There are just so many crazy complicated situations that we are immersed in daily. podcastindex.org #

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