markjgsmith

New Post: AI betrayal, mood and lousy versioning markjgsmith.com #

Britons in Israel told to notify Foreign Office to receive instructions on how to leave - I wonder if this is a particularly British thing or do other governments also do this in conflicted areas of the world. I only see Britain doing it, perhaps the US sometimes. But then I mostly watch, listen and read English speaking sources. theguardian.com #

Iran plunged into a near-internet blackout during deepening conflict - One of the problems when stuff like this happens is that it‘s really difficult to know for sure how and why the connections are being interrupted. It could be "both sides". Even if lots of people will say they know for sure. There are always a lot of conflicting interests in these situations. Worth keeping in mind. Also I‘m surprised there are 40000 Starlink terminals spread across Iran. nbcnews.com #

Amazon expects to cut corporate jobs as it relies more on AI - It‘s an interesting data point. I‘ve heard in other places that some are predicting huge deflationary pressures due to AI in the coming years, leading to strange situation like large companies laying off lots of workers while at the same time profits increasing. This from the article was interesting: "Amazon is using generative AI in virtually every corner of the company". nbcnews.com #

Senate passes GENIUS stablecoin bill, giving crypto industry first major legislative win - I think understanding stable coins going forward is going to be very important. They appear to be the new way the US government is getting people to buy US treasuries. cnbc.com #

New Post: A spelling rabbit hole markjgsmith.com #

What Are Kemi Badenoch’s Economics? - First serious interview I‘ve heard with Kemi. I have to say I was impressed. I saw her and Keir battling it out on PM question time the other day. He‘s also impressive, but in a completely different way. I hadn‘t noticed it before but he‘s much more crafty than I had previously noticed. He was very effective at batting off her attacks, and her attacks were spot on. They are in some sense quite well matched. podcastindex.org #

Musk’s xAI Burns Through Billion a Month as Costs Pile Up - The numbers are eye watering. $9 billion, and they expect to spend half of it in the next 3 months. bloomberg.com #

Sam Altman says Meta tried and failed to poach OpenAI's talent with $100M offers - More utterly bananas AI numbers. techcrunch.com #

Apple’s Journal app is coming to iPad and Mac with big upgrades - It will probably be very cool, but I bet it won‘t be multi-platform. Try switching to Android after Apple Journal becomes central to your life. 9to5mac.com #

Security and Privacy of VSCode extensions - Ticking time bomb. It was bad enough with silly iPhone apps, imagine how bad it could be when your IDE gets hacked. It‘s mind boggling that there aren‘t basic controls for users to add to the extensions they install. There should also be a simple way to inspect the data going in and out of an extension, rather than have to be some sort of security guru mitm-ing yourself. stackoverflow.com #

Bitcoin's March to $150K by Year-End with Mel Mattison - I thought this guy had some pretty interesting macro takes, demographics, stimulus‘, AI and lots more. podcastindex.org #