markjgsmith

2024/09/07 #

• 10:48:00 +07:00 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 #

• 10:56:00 +07:00 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 #

• 12:45:00 +07:00 🚀 Latest Newsletter: Unified Narratives (Issue #180) markjgsmith.com #

• 14:07:00 +07:00 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 #

• 15:24:00 +07:00 New Post: Extremely evil, duh markjgsmith.com #

• 17:25:00 +07:00 New Post: Could we build a decentralised podcast index? markjgsmith.com #

2024/09/06 #

• 13:13:00 +07:00 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 #

• 13:20:00 +07:00 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 #

• 19:11:00 +07:00 New Post: Is the concept of money blocking our understanding of the universe? markjgsmith.com #

2024/09/05 #

• 06:00:00 +07:00 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 #

• 10:54:00 +07:00 New Post: Journalists do definitely spread false information markjgsmith.com #

2024/09/04 #

• 09:10:00 +07:00 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 #

• 09:50:00 +07:00 New Post: Tumblr moving open source, Wordpress getting cool techcrunch.com #

• 11:43:00 +07:00 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 #

• 12:23:00 +07:00 New Post: How to get a balanced view of Europe? markjgsmith.com #

• 15:45:00 +07:00 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 #

2024/09/03 #

• 08:41:00 +07:00 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 #

• 08:58:00 +07:00 LLMs in the browser (17/03/2024) - Supporting evidence, my prediction of LLMs in the browser :) markjgsmith.com #

• 11:02:00 +07:00 New Post: Perverts vs Normies markjgsmith.com #

• 11:13:00 +07:00 New Post: Hyper hyper control days markjgsmith.com #

• 17:55:00 +07:00 New Post: Sequence down at the canal markjgsmith.com #

2024/08/31 #

• 08:01:00 +07:00 ‘Hold them captive’: Australian billionaire boss aims to end staff going out for coffee - So I write and publish a blog post about the Ukraine war aid being used to turn britons into slaves and this article pops up literally right after publishing said blog post. What are the chances? Probably just magic confirmation bias. Sure. I guess things are so f-up they are actually fine. Sure. www.theguardian.com #

• 12:45:00 +07:00 🚀 Latest Newsletter: Javascripts, Exponentials, Aliens & Slaves (Issue #179) markjgsmith.com #

2024/08/30 #

• 18:40:00 +07:00 Who needs GitHub Copilot when you can roll your own AI code assistant at home - Seems like a good idea to get familiar with how to run these open source models locally, especially for code assistants. www.theregister.com #

• 21:00:00 +07:00 New Post: Britain’s Ukraine aid situation markjgsmith.com #

2024/08/29 #

• 15:13:00 +07:00 Google Meet’s automatic AI note taking is here - This does sound kind of cool, though much like the author, I wonder what the quality of the notes will be like. I was listening to a podcast recently in a podcast app that had follow along style auto generated transcriptions, which most of the time was very accurate but it would get many propper nouns and peoples names incorrect, and differently incorrect each time. www.theverge.com #

• 18:06:00 +07:00 Ministers are considering banning smoking in a variety of places, including pub gardens, outdoor restaurants and outside sports venues, nightclubs and in small parks - Seems a bit excessive. I’m really glad I don’t smoke anymore, but the one important thing it taught me was how insane your inner self can be. I knew I needed to give up when I reached the top of a flight of stairs one day, hardly able to breath, and my inner self’s first thought was to reward myself with a cigarette. That obviously made zero sense. It was difficult to give up, but when I did it was the beginning of a long journey of discovery about my mind and body. I wonder if without cigarettes would I ever have noticed? Now that I’m smoke free a total ban feels like it could be like pulling up the ladders to awareness for others that haven’t had that experience yet. news.sky.com #

• 19:04:00 +07:00 Nvidia reports 122% revenue growth on surging demand for data center chips - Nvidia still riding that sweat AI wave. The thing that made me read the article was that it’s doing some big share buybacks. www.cnbc.com #

2024/08/28 #

• 10:53:00 +07:00 New Post: Chris Coyier on LLMs using your data markjgsmith.com #

• 11:07:00 +07:00 Macron on Telegram CEO’s arrest: French government was not involved - "This is in no way a political decision" - That’s a very strange way to deflect. Surely the judges are part of the government, no? What a strange game of hot potato. www.politico.eu #

• 13:30:00 +07:00 New Post: Politics ambidextrous markjgsmith.com #

2024/08/27 #

• 09:51:00 +07:00 London’s Luxury-Home Market Looks to Rich Americans to Save It - Make London great again ’init. www.bloomberg.com #

• 10:01:00 +07:00 French officials question Telegram CEO about child sexual abuse images and drugs - I wonder if these days it’s the case that just being a tech business CEO opens you up to being arrested abroad. Makes travel a lot more worrisome, because the rules are different everywhere. We should all probably just be mindless dumb henchmen drones, and put the humanoids in charge. www.npr.org #

• 11:01:00 +07:00 What's new in ECMAScript 2024 - Some of these seem kind of fun, e.g. emojis in regexes, but the rest just feel overly complex to me. GroupBy looks useful but it’s annoyingly not on the Array object where one would expect it. Have we reached ECMAScript peak usefullness? I dunno I’m just a boring web programmer, all this fancy juggling just seems a bit over the top to me. pawelgrzybek.com #

• 13:11:00 +07:00 New Post: Liberalism should be about liberty not beer markjgsmith.com #

• 13:56:00 +07:00 New Post: The Game in a game problem markjgsmith.com #

2024/08/26 #

• 13:27:00 +07:00 Billionaire Telegram CEO Pavel Durov Arrested In France: Here’s What We Know - A strange fact from the Telegram CEO arrest. On his departure from social network VK - "he was fired after trying to withdraw his resignation". That’s surely quite unusual. Based purely on the amount of Techmeme associated articles and social media posts from anyone who’s anyone online, this story appears to have really stired things up. www.forbes.com #

• 14:02:00 +07:00 Is Telegram really an encrypted messaging app? - Some interesting subtleties about Telegram’s encryption implementation. blog.cryptographyengineering.com #

• 14:25:00 +07:00 Mike Lynch had concerns over Lucy Letby conviction, says former minister - I link to this because I’ve already been linking to several articles on this story, a story which seems very sketchy. www.independent.co.uk #

• 16:20:00 +07:00 New Post: The mind bending realities of the universe’s scale and deep time markjgsmith.com #

2024/08/25 #

• 11:26:00 +07:00 Telegram app founder Pavel Durov reportedly arrested at French airport - Arrested aboard his private jet, there was a warrant for his arrest. He’s been living in Dubai since he refused to comply with russian government demands to shut down opposition groups on a social media app he used to own. It’s unclear why there was a french warrant out for his arrest. His fortune estimated to be $15.5bn. Telegram has 900 million users. www.theguardian.com #

• 11:41:00 +07:00 How Lidl accidentally took on the big guns of cloud computing - Lidl is similar in a way to Aldi, it’s sort of a budget supermarket chain, but it’s got quite a unique vibe, stocking lots of lesser known brands, so there’s lots of choice and you often find products you would never normally try. Super interesting they are getting into cloud computing. I wonder if this is a new trend, where large local businesses start running their own clouds and offering services to smaller local businesses. I think it makes a lot of sense. Interesting they ended up buying a security company co-founded by a former boss of Israel’s secret service Mossad. That ticks the security box for sure. Clients include SAP and Bayern Munich football club. Their main offering is experience keeping competitively sensitive data very confidential. www.ft.com #

• 12:00:00 +07:00 ‘No thanks, I’ll pass on the service charge’: Why UK diners are opting out of tipping - Really not a good sign. It’s crazy to think that waiting staff have to pick up the slack when the economy goes down the tubes. Huge numbers of people are opting out of discretional service charges. Time for those with money to start overtiping, because if these places go out of business, it will be really tough to get them back up and running again. Tipping works great in good times, gives businesses flexibility, not so great in hard times though. www.independent.co.uk #

• 12:10:00 +07:00 China's robot makers chase Tesla to deliver humanoid workers - It’s fucking wild that there is now a tech category called 'humanoids'. Big push to start selling humanoid robots by 2025. The economic singularity is approaching. How long until digital nomads start moving around with a 3D printer and small teams of humanoids? www.reuters.com #

• 12:26:00 +07:00 Apple will let developers use the iPhone's NFC chip - Lots of cool examples of how the new chips could be used. I wonder what the privacy implications are for this new technology. Since it will likely become pervassive tech used everywhere, I’d like to know which services are worth the trade off and which it makes sense to just opt out of using. www.indiehackers.com #

2024/08/24 #

• 12:45:00 +07:00 🚀 Latest Newsletter: Supercuts, Urban Art, Bitcoin, AI & Aliens (Issue #178) markjgsmith.com #

• 17:19:00 +07:00 As Telegram, WhatsApp, and numerous other web services go down in Russia, Moscow blames attackers while activists suspect Kremlin interference - The rumour is that the authorities enabled ‘anti-messenger mode’, something that apparently has been used at the regionsl level before. It’s the first time such a thing has been observed at the national level. Authorities have blamed a DDOS attack. meduza.io #

• 17:39:00 +07:00 Balaji’s Network State Becomes a Reality in Singapore - I like almost every aspect of this project. I think there's a huge potential to build something truely ground breaking. But I don’t like the idea of focusing on 'Dark Talent' because it makes it sound like some sort of clandestine thing, especially since he explicitly says that legacy institution people aren’t suitable. I don’t like this exclusionary vibe, seems kind of elitist. The main thing that worries me about the network state movement is that it could very easily be used for bad purposes. Imagine a world where secret criminal network states exist, run by mafias, alongside the existing nation states. That seems scary to me. But if it’s all done in the open it could be brilliant. thedefiant.io #

2024/08/23 #

• 06:57:00 +07:00 CCTV emerges of moment Sicily yacht sank as search efforts continue – video report - Not exactly convincing. www.theguardian.com #

• 07:00:00 +07:00 Government borrowing surges to higher than expected £3.1bn as Reeves under pressure to raise taxes - They are missing billions and having to borrow it, abd of course everyone is blaming everyone as they sip on their $10 frapachinos. www.independent.co.uk #

• 10:10:00 +07:00 Being on The Semantic Web is easy, and, frankly, well worth the bother - I’ve been hearing about the semantic web for years, but nothing ever happens with it. This article makes it seem quite straight forward, at least to get started. Also mentions some competing standards that gave emerged. Seems like there could be an npm module or something to make it easier to add these semantic pieces during my site build. csvbase.com #

2024/08/22 #

• 16:50:00 +07:00 U.S. Elections-Linked Bitcoin Options Draw Nearly $350M in Open Interest - Seems the hive mind is predicting a big Bitcoin rally around the elections from current $60k price to $80-100k. www.coindesk.com #

• 16:59:00 +07:00 New Post: Rory and Alistair on the treatment of palestinian prisoners markjgsmith.com #

• 18:15:00 +07:00 New Post: Steph and Grace on how education affects collective organising & action markjgsmith.com #

• 18:56:00 +07:00 Body of Mike Lynch pulled from Bayesian superyacht wreck - Such a bizare story, and a lot of strange synchronicities with things going on in my life for some reason. www.ft.com #

2024/08/21 #

• 16:18:00 +07:00 Running Postgres inside Node-RED via WASM and PGlite - I’m always curious about Node RED, it reminds me of Shake in vfx which is the software that’s most popular for 2D compositing. Or at least was when I was working in vfx. I’m undecided whether such a tool would be a good idea in say news publishing. I wonder how much such software shapes the quality and easthetics of the final product. conoroneill.net #

• 16:37:00 +07:00 Announcing Official Puppeteer Support for Firefox - I haven’t used puppeteer on any projects myself but I understand that it’s very popular. I guess they just need to get it working with Safari. No mention of if that’s on the horizon. hacks.mozilla.org #

• 16:54:00 +07:00 Sicilians are brought up to hate our island – but those of us who flee are seen as the enemy - Lots of stuff in the news the past few says about Sicily. It’s interesting to learn some of the details about their expat culture and how it’s connected to long histories of invasions, and is kind of toxic in places. Every country handles expats slightly differently, but there are commonalities for sure. Some of the things she describes ring true to me too. I find it all very complicated. I’m a sort of double expat, having grown up outside the UK, then returned for university and early career then moved away a second time. Being an expat is definitely weird. I wonder whether I’ll ever have english friends again sometimes or if they just think of me as a foriegner too. www.theguardian.com #

2024/08/20 #

• 12:00:00 +07:00 UK tech entrepreneur Mike Lynch among missing in Sicily yacht sinking - Weird story, everyone appears to have died apart from a baby and her parents. And in an aparrent completely unrelated accident that happened over the weekend Lynch’s old company’s accountant was killed, hit by a car while he was out jogging. www.theguardian.com #

• 12:08:00 +07:00 Stephen Chamberlain who was Mike Lynch’s accountant dead after being hit by a car - They had both just been aquited of fraud after selling their software company to HP a decade ago. The trial lasted for 10 years. This whole story is so bizare it seems like it could be a setup or something. www.independent.co.uk #

2024/08/19 #

• 18:10:00 +07:00 Final artwork in Banksy animal series removed by London Zoo - It’s not clear to me why they couldn’t just keep on using the entrance as before. Kind of comical that a real world entrance is being blocked by an imaginary exit. Seems a bit heavy handed. www.theguardian.com #

• 18:18:00 +07:00 Sicilian town angered after ‘vile’ social media post by son of mafia boss - He used the wrong street name, everyone freaked out, he deleted the street name from the post. Seems like a storm in a tea cup that got amplified out of all proportions because it’s the town that gave it’s name to the Corleone family in the God Father films. I can see why people are annoyed I guess, but ultimately it’s just a typo, all be it perhaps an intentional one. www.theguardian.com #

• 18:30:00 +07:00 Digital euro faces skepticism in Germany over privacy concerns - They say "The main motivation for the digital euro is to decrease Europe’s reliance on non-European payment services". Seems like a worthy goal but many countries still prefer cash, worried that a CBDC would enable government surveillence. Apparently their CBDC has an offline mode. I wonder sometimes how good the privacy is with cash since all notes have serial numbers, technically you could trace usage if you really wanted to, though might be difficult at scale. It will probably be a moot point eventually once they track our thoughts with the brain implants. cryptobriefing.com #

2024/08/18 #

• 15:06:00 +07:00 X says it’s closing operations in Brazil - They were apparently being ordered in secret by the government to censor certain accounts, and their legal representative was threatened with jail time. The government was apparently trying to combat election disinformation and "digital militias", a term that’s likely going to be trending given how much governments around the world are cracking down on online speech. techcrunch.com #

• 15:22:00 +07:00 Beyond Banksy: the other British street artists you should know - I love street art when it’s done right. It can really transform the character and ambience of a place. Nice article though I wish the authors had added more examples www.theguardian.com #

• 15:56:00 +07:00 New Post: The culture jaming qualities of urban art markjgsmith.com #

• 19:27:00 +07:00 New Post: Supercuts show you the manipulation markjgsmith.com #

2024/08/17 #

• 12:45:00 +07:00 🚀 Latest Newsletter: Hyperperversion and All Dimension Controls (Issue #177) markjgsmith.com #

• 15:23:00 +07:00 Actors demand action over 'disgusting' explicit video game scenes - I thought this was a particularly unlikely and strangely synchronous article to be published the same day I’ve written about the really dark and bizare harrassment that’s been happening to me. It often seems like many of the perpetrators are in some way actors. Like they have been given a specific task to do and thing to say but without being aware of the broader context. What on earth is going in with all these weird incidents and synchronicities world? www.bbc.com #

2024/08/16 #

• 04:37:00 +07:00 Crypto executives meet White House officials to discuss policy, grievances during virtual roundtable - Certainly looks like crypto industry is making a lot of progress. Perhaps some of those priveledged bitcoiners with kids will finally be able to up themselves a little bit. Sure hope so, there are a lot of us folks out here that need to up ourselves, but the world sure doesn’t make it very easy. www.theblock.co #

• 17:25:00 +07:00 X’s new AI image generator will make anything from Taylor Swift in lingerie to Kamala Harris with a gun - Seems to be making quite a splash. Yes also controversy, but that tends to work out quite well for Musk, though it will undoubtedly make quite a lot of folks roll their eyes. Regular non-nerds have always liked riské stuff though haven’t they. It’s weird to think there is now a category of software that is a bit like a movie PG13 rating or something. www.theverge.com #

• 17:27:00 +07:00 Kim Dotcom’s Extradition to the U.S. Given Green Light By New Zealand - Weird coincidence / synchronicity, one of the blokes that works in a cafe shop I go to, I realised today, after reading this article, is a total Kim Dotcom doppelganger. Seriously could totally be his brother or cousin or something. Strange world sometimes. Anyhow I hope Kim is okay, he’s one of the early internet heavy weights, both physically but also from an entrepreneurial perspective. Did a lot of crazy stuff. I like his views on free speech and trying to break down old world barriers. From what I’ve read, it appeared he had been somewhat harshly treated, though I don’t know the specifics. Hoping he doesn’t get memory holed. Let’s remember to watch out for updates on this story. torrentfreak.com #

• 17:48:00 +07:00 Zelenskiy: Ukraine’s troops now in full control of Russian town of Sudzha - I know the war is serious business and I don’t mean any disrespect to either side but I have to say this made me smile a bit. It has a certain comedic sense to it. It reminded me of the opening sequence to Dad’s Army a bit. It’s definitely unnexpected. I heard that the Ukrainian moral was very low, because soldiers had basically lost hope of ever returning home, they had resigned themselves that they would likely remain at the frontline for the rest of their lives. So perhaps this will make things somewhat more interesting for them. Who knows maybe it could unlock a whole new dimension to resolving the conflict peacefully. As I understand it Zelenski used to be a comedian after all. Strange, and sometimes good strange things can happen during wars. Here’s to hoping this is one of those times. Also sorry no disrespect to germans either. I have no idea what they think of Dad’s Army. I grew up watching it, so I’m quite fond of it. Easy for me to say, I suppose, since we were on the winning side. I’d love to see any german satire / comedy from that era if any exists. Is that still a sore point? I really don’t know. Update: Was listening to Duncan Trussel’s latest Jamar Neighbors episode while writing this, and there’s a really really bizarely hilariously synchronous relevant bit 1/3 into it. Weird but kind of funny. www.theguardian.com #

2024/08/14 #

• 14:25:00 +07:00 Google’s $1,799 Pixel 9 Pro Fold arrives with 8-inch inner display and Gemini - I’m very intrigued by these new foldable phones from Google. They have almost comparable specs to laptop! 16GB of RAM and 512GB storage. The screen unfolded is small compared to a laptop, but 8inch is huge for a phone. And it appears each pane can operate independently, so you could have an editir in one and a browser in the other. Since it’s Android and thus Linux does that mean you can get a bash shell? A small foldout keyboard and perhaps you could do dev work on it? And the AI features look very snazy in the promo video. Seems pricey though, same price as the MacBook Air! techcrunch.com #

• 14:42:00 +07:00 Sunil Bharti Mittal: who is the Indian tycoon now BT’s largest shareholder? - I’m not saying this is bad per se, but it is a bit suprising that a nation state would allow it’s communications network to be mostly owned by foreign interests. It’s certainly a lot of trust to put in someone. On the other hand, if the trust is merited, having run the main comms network in a country as large as India might be great in terms of experience in getting high performance and value for money. It would be interesting to hear what the sentiment is from current BT staff members. www.theguardian.com #

• 15:07:00 +07:00 How Spotify started -- and killed -- Latin America’s podcast boom - I find the whole Spotify approach to podcasting very puzzling. CEO Daniel Ek has seemed to be in interviews I've listenned to, a complete audio nerd, with tons and tons of great ideas for podcasting, yet his approach has seemed very anti-podcasting, more of a take over of the entire medium, than helping to build the whole ecosystem up. I don’t get it, why isn’t he putting effort into the whole podcasting 2.0 movement? Seems like an opportunity missed for everyone. It will be interesting to see how the podcasting scene in Latin America develops. restofworld.org #

2024/08/13 #

• 10:45:00 +07:00 New Post: Carry trades, far right riots, and upside down flags markjgsmith.com #

• 11:11:00 +07:00 ‘Unforgettable days’: French papers rejoice over successful Olympics - The article’s image of the fireworks display looks pretty spectacular. Snippets from all the major french newspapers. www.theguardian.com #

2024/08/12 #

• 08:55:00 +07:00 Celsius targets Tether, Badger DAO, Compound, and Netanyahu's niece and nephew in lawsuits - It’s been a while since there was some newsworthy excitenent in crypto markets. That’s why these litigation stories stood out a bit. They involve a company well known to have had a big downfall in the previous cycle and several interesting counter parties including the biggest stablecoin issuer, a company run by family members of a very famous politician, and a service provider that got hacked. Likely lots of interesting facts will transpire, interesting things to learn, and will probably have an impact on the current sideways leaning bull market. www.theblock.co #

• 09:19:00 +07:00 The Ticking Yen Time Bomb - James Lavish’s explanations of major market incidents are always top notch, and this look at the recent falling apart of the now infamous Yen Carry trade is no exception. Another cracker of an article that perfectly illustrates the dynamics at play, but also packed full of nuance that I didn’t see in any of the other roundups I read. www.jameslavish.com #

• 10:09:00 +07:00 Imagining a Personal Data Pipeline - Looks at what components you might think of including in an extract, load, transform (ELT) data pipeline for all your personal data. It’s a follow on post expanding on the author’s journey into life logging and quantified self. I found it pretty interesting especially in the context of my static site generator which has some very similar features, but also could interface really easily with something like this. I’ve heard a lot about ELT data pipelines in an enteprise setting, but not much for personal use. Seems very synergistic with my Github powered workflows for content creators idea. www.joshcanhelp.com #

2024/08/11 #

• 06:47:00 +07:00 New Post: Writeup of epic vietnamese bullying mutilation cycle markjgsmith.com #

2024/08/10 #

• 10:26:00 +07:00 Apple Is America’s Semiconductor Problem - There’s definitely some anti-Apple sentiment brewing at the minute. Buffet has been getting out of his Apple position recently. Regulators in the US and EU are going after them for monopoly practices. Add to that they aren’t really innovating products very effectively. This looks at the scale of their market position and influence. www.semiconductor-digest.com #

• 10:46:00 +07:00 Online Safety Act to be reviewed after Sadiq Khan criticism, says minister - I don’t know specifically about Khan’s criticism, but I’ve read and heard about many crack downs that sound very authoritarian. Regular folks being arrested just for sharing links on social media. It’s made me wonder about whether anything I post could be misinterprated in such a way. For years western countries have been pointing out censorship of repressive regimes abroad. Why is it happening in the west now? Strange times. www.theguardian.com #

• 11:02:00 +07:00 Venezuela's Maduro blocks X access in country for 10 days - Two things stand out to me on this. First it’s a bit bizare that Maduro sounds really a lot like Mad euro. Also this whole episode happening in parallel to the sort of similar situation between Elon and UK government, sort of makes the UK seem a bit like Venezuela, doesn’t it? www.reuters.com #

• 11:02:00 +07:00 King Charles sends ‘heartfelt thanks’ to police for restoring order after riots - What worries me about all this is that those that might want to create a widespread chilling effect on online speech, now have a way to do that. The vaste majority of people don’t do all this violence stuff, why should we be paying the price by having our freedoms curtailed? I myself am now worried about what I post, and I in no way consider myself to me part of any extremist groups. Ironically by cracking down on the bullies, you might just be helping them get their way, a repressive society that is inflexible, and can’t handle any sort of disagreement. The internet existed during previous riots, why were there no crack downs on online speech then? Perhaps that was the better approach. Having said all that I like that King Charles is thanking the police, they do in many cases do a very good job under difficult circumstances. www.theguardian.com #

• 12:45:00 +07:00 🚀 Latest Newsletter: Maximum Frontrun (Issue #176) markjgsmith.com #

2024/08/09 #

• 16:20:00 +07:00 Putin signs law on legalizing cryptocurrency mining in Russia - This sounds pretty cool, perhaps nation states really are getting into crypto currencies. How long until they start mining operations themselves I wonder. It’s interesting that the Bank of Russia is involved though somewhat unclear what this means: "the Bank of Russia will have the right to ban the placement of individual issues". tass.com #

• 16:46:00 +07:00 Meta is closing a beloved first-party Quest studio - I don’t know much about the VR side of the tech industry, but it’s an interesting data point. It’s kind of cool that the way the sector appears to be structured is lots of smaller studios rather than one super large mega company. I wonder why most of the tech industry doesn’t take this form. www.androidcentral.com #

• 16:59:00 +07:00 What lies beneath: the growing threat to the hidden network of cables that power the internet - Most interesting fact from the article: an underwater cable is cut on average every 3 days. The vaste majority is accidental rather than planed attacks. Small islands need to get multiple cables to hedge against these types of events since it can take weeks to repair a severed cable. New Zealand for example has 7 different cables, whereas Tonga only has one. I guess many likely also use the new satellite constellations. www.theguardian.com #

2024/08/08 #

• 08:10:00 +07:00 Michael Saylor X Odell Bitcoin Park Fireside (Citadel Dispatch Podcast) - Odell interviews Saylor live at Bitcoin Park. It’s a relatively short interview compared to some of the Saylor interviews I’ve listened to over the years, but it’s interesting because it feels like there’s been a noticeable shift in the overall narrative. This conversation to me felt like it was grounded in actually very practical and immediate topics, rather than a lot of the interesting but sometimes long winded bitcoin philosophy. It seems to coincide with the big recent increase in bitcoin interest from companies and institutions. You get a sense there is a wave coming and people are positioning their businesses for some bitcoin action. It’s not just businesses, countries too. All sorts of useful things talked about including operating companies vs investment trusts, hurdles to companies holding bitcoin treasuries, bitcoin as medium of exchange, stable coin + bitcoin as the perfect combination, building nation State FOMO?, and Bitcoin strategies the US Treasury could take. Great interview. podcastindex.org #

• 08:55:00 +07:00 Edmund Fawsett compares the future of liberalism and conservatism Ep#2151 (Keen On Podcast) - Edmund’s last name makes me think we are in the fractal version of the simulation currently. Regardless it’s an interesting conversation exploring a topic that I’ve always found quite confusing. Deciding if you are liberal or conservative has always seemed to me to be like deciding to be a fast or slow car driver. Surely, it depends? Needless to say Edmund has a much more complete understanding than my overly simplistic take on things. History, ideas, traditions, and how it all relates back to the current day political environment we find ourself in. It’s all very interesting and I feel like I need to listen to this one again because the world ironically was trying to be both at the same time as I was listening to this yesterday, so it was a bit tricky to focus. This feels like a fundamental topic any person operating in the business world today should better understand, and I think this episode lays out the somewhat amorphous problem space pretty well. podcastindex.org #

2024/08/07 #

• 07:45:00 +07:00 Elon Musk calls PM ‘two-tier Keir’ over police response to UK riots - I’m not sure how I feel about the Elon vs The Police situation. I wish people would just get along. One thing though is I’m glad Elon, a person developing both powerful AI tools and powerful brain implants, is very much against the concept of a two tier society. In the overall scheme of things I don’t think it matters that much that he’s defending so called far right folks, or that he’s insulting the new prime minister. In fact it might be the most free speech thing possible. If the government really is against a 2 tier society then perhaps this is an opportunity to explore that idea in public in full transparency, because that IMO is the thing we are all worried about. Show us that you really do have all of our backs long term, even after all the riots have passed. www.theguardian.com #

2024/08/06 #

• 13:28:00 +07:00 Asia stock markets plunge after US shares tumbled - Big downturn across markets globally, crypto is down bigly too. www.bbc.com #

• 13:33:00 +07:00 Bitcoin briefly tumbles below $50,000 for the first time since February - People are starting to doubt Bitcoin’s store of value narrative. In the short term it can be very volatile but over the long term, 3+ years for example, it’s value increases quite consistently. www.cnbc.com #

• 13:33:00 +07:00 Worst far-right violence should be treated as terrorism, says ex-police chief - I’m definitely not a defender of thugery and violence, but at the same time it’s clear that there are many communities that for whatever reason are not able to process the level of change they are being subjected to. The crack down is a short term solution, and of course you have to make sure people are safe, but I hope accompanying this they announce some programs that explore long term how to bring communities that are divided closer together, and ways to stop the festering of resentment. The violence is terrible, but at least you can see where the difficulties are. If all this gets pushed further underground, it might end up being worse long term, for everyone involved. www.theguardian.com #

• 14:15:00 +07:00 No 10 criticises Elon Musk for ‘civil war is inevitable’ post on England riots - Very interesting that Elon is getting involved here. It’s obviously a difficult situation and police are no doubt doing the best they can, but I think it might be short sighted to rebuf this attention. We’ve had riots in the UK several times before, the difference here is I think the wider context and environment is unparalleled. I’m betting that the AI revolution we are in is freaking people out. They don’t want to be left behind, or find themselves at the bottom of an impossible heap to climb just to live a normal life. Yes the tools create the problems or at least give them a way to surface, but they can also be part of the solution. It’s time to be creative about how we respond. www.theguardian.com #

• 14:29:00 +07:00 Banksy confirms new goat mural in south-west London is his creation - Classic header photo in this article. I wonder what Banksy thinks about AI. Cool goat mural btw. Are goats the new polar bears? www.theguardian.com #

• 14:47:00 +07:00 The debauched rise of New York’s wildest bar - The story of one of New York’s most infamous bars where people from Warhol to Lennon went to hang out. I wonder what the equivalent is these days. My sense is that things these days aren’t as drug fueled as they used to be, which is definitely a good thing. Rogan’s got his comedy club which seems to be attaining legendary status. There are quite a lot of Bitcoin related hangout places being setup. What other cultural institutions are springing up these days? www.theguardian.com #

2024/08/05 #

• 05:21:00 +07:00 GitHub Models gives developers new power to experiment with Gen AI - This sounds interesting, I wonder how easy it would be to integrate some AI stuff into some of my static code generator builds. The article mentions you need a codespaces account, and ultimately it seems to be a Microsoft Azure play, so I’m not sure how useful it will be in practice. venturebeat.com #

• 12:33:00 +07:00 Rioters try to torch Rotherham asylum seeker hotel amid far-right violence - The map that shows all the locations quite interesting. The riots appear to have spread across England and into Nothern Ireland. I guess Wales and Scotland for whatever reason don’t have so much pent up resentment. www.theguardian.com #

• 13:00:00 +07:00 OpenAI’s Sam Altman is becoming one of the most powerful people on Earth. We should be very afraid - I haven’t heard much about Altman in the past month or so. I found this hit piece kind of intetesting because (1) he’s still being painted as the bad guy at least in main stream media, (2) it’s actually quite well written, and (3) it really illustrates how main stream loves to turn everything into some sort of Hollywood movie. It feels somewhat comically out of step with what's been happening in Tech IMO. Also I heard that the car he’s driving is the most ridiculous electric vehicle in existence. www.theguardian.com #

• 16:35:00 +07:00 New Post: Max Richter on infusing context into your work markjgsmith.com #

2024/08/04 #

• 08:21:00 +07:00 Norman Ohler (Joe Rogan Experience Podcast) - I thought this was a pretty fascinating look into a side of german cultural history that has been completely missed. It’s about the drugs that germans were taking around the time of the second world war. The attrocities of the war were of course happening but in parallel, psychadellic drugs were literally being discovered by scientists, and they were having hippie like experiences, hoping to spread love and togetherness to the world. These were the origins of the psychadelic movement in the US. It was also a time where mild stimulants like coffee didn’t exist yet, so people took meth instead! Norman’s research adventure took him deep into the archives of companies working on drug programs, and he discovered a treasure trove of information that paints a much more complete picture of what was actually going on around that time. It’s almost as if the seeds of destruction and it’s solution where somehow being created at the same time. And the story of how Norman got to the information, in it’s own way, is as interesting as the stories he eventually found. Really worth listening to this one. podcastindex.org #

• 11:16:00 +07:00 New Post: Trump assassination counter factuals markjgsmith.com #

• 11:49:00 +07:00 Zuckerberg says Meta will need 10x more computing power to train Llama 4 than Llama 3 - We need more power Captain! There’s a dilithium crystals joke in here somewhere. techcrunch.com #

• 11:58:00 +07:00 Why CSV is still king - I’ve really only used CSV a few times personally, but I can imagine that many businesses do use it all the time. The simplest data exchange formats tend to get widest adoption. These days it’s actually quite rare that I need to export and re-import data between applications, which might be a sign that we are far too silo'd. konbert.com #

• 12:08:00 +07:00 Government warns that rioters ‘will pay the price’ as wave of violence sweeps UK - Riots across many cities in the UK. It will be interesting to see how the new government handles the situation. Riots as bad as they are, perhaps are a bit like error logging in an application. You obviously don’t want them to happen but they at least do communicate that there are serious issues that need addressing. If you crack down too hard on them, you are really just turning off error logging without addressing the problem. So the resentment still builds but you won’t even know about it next time. In hell there are no flareups, but everything is resentment, but noone can be sure. www.theguardian.com #

2024/08/03 #

• 10:04:00 +07:00 Kamala Surges, Trump at NABJ, recession fears, Middle East escallations, Ackman postpones IPO (All-in Podcast) - They featured in last week’s newsletter issue, and this latest episode was once again a cracker. The Harris - Trump election build up discussion was great, with some very insightful observations and analysis. That was later followed up with an even better discussion of the Isreal/Mossad/Hamas/Iran assassination situation. The All-In guys are at their best when they are handling geopolitics and relating it back to global macro and Tech. There are some other smaller topics peppered in amongst those. Jason is pulling a Biden this week having caught COVID, but the show was still top notch, though there were signs of a few small resentments festering, which were kind of funny but will no doubt need some fielding from the best moderator in the universe. I bet it’s a tough job keeping the train on the tracks when your team is made up of an alternating current of Sith Lords and Rebel Aliance Jedi knights. Likely that’s why he took the week off in the first place, to see how well balanced everyone is performing. podcastindex.org #

• 10:42:00 +07:00 Alan Graham (The Joe Rogan Experience Podcast) - Interesting exploration of the homeless and poverty situation in the US by talking to someone that has 25 years boots on the ground experience with his Mobile Loaves and the Fishes organisation, has been organising food trucks and programs to promote hope, meaning and purpose for the chronically homeless. They talk about his background, his religious thinking and how he integrates that with the difficulties and contradictions of modern life. Interesting discussion around some of the core drivers in city regeneration, problems with the education system that have all contributed to the homeless situation that has been getting worse since the 70s. Overall will give you a different way to think about some of these highly politicised problems, which underneath are about real people doing the best they can given the circumstances. podcastindex.org #

• 12:45:00 +07:00 🚀 Latest Newsletter: Fractional Reserve Bullying (Issue #175) markjgsmith.com #

2024/08/02 #

• 09:02:00 +07:00 New Post: Stablecoins vs Treasuries vs CBDCs markjgsmith.com #

2024/08/01 #

• 06:13:00 +07:00 Tether Nets $5B Profits This Year, Says Its US Debt Holdings Surpassed Germany's - These stablecoins are making a lot of money, and they are investing heavily in crypto mining and AI companies. They are also becoming the biggest holders of US treasuries, at the same level as nation states. I’m not an expert in all this but that seems like a very very strong position to be in. www.coindesk.com #

• 10:48:00 +07:00 The US government needs Bitcoin with Luke Gromen & Preston Pysh (What Bitcoin Did Podcast) - I wasn’t able to follow everything in this episode, it rapidly gets pretty complicated, but IMO there’s some very important information in there. It’s basically a macro discussion around how Bitcoin is intersecting with the old school financial system, how the interplay between stablecoins and treasuries is shaping up, and how this might affect and be affected by geo-politics. It gets very abstract in places, but they always bring the discussion back to grounded truths and examples. I think even if you don’t fully understand everything, seeing things through a Bitcoin lense gives you the ability to see where things are moving at least directionally. I’m wondering if there are stablecoins backed by chinese treasuries, that’s were the biggest productivity gains from recent years are currently. Somewhat sad to hear that it’s one of the last WBD episodes, it appears they are moving onto other ventures still to be announced. www.whatbitcoindid.com #

• 11:10:00 +07:00 RA.947 Lydo (Resident Advisor Podcast) - I listenned to this mix by vietnamese - america electronic music artist last night. It’s pretty great, hard techno, gets pretty dark, especially at the end, I could totally imagine listening to this in a club with an incredible sound system. Probably quite good music to code to also. ra.co #

• 14:42:00 +07:00 Michael Malice (Joe Rogan Podcast) - I think Malice was previously on Rogan, and I think I really enjoyed their conversation. They are very well balanced together, I feel like they bring out the best in each other. It’s a very conspiracy heavy episode, so if you’re into that, you’ll enjoy this episode. All sorts of topics including the Biden body double, deep fakes & cheap fakes, sceptical being the new norm, Elon and free speech, Harris wine mom, Google memory holing, Trump shooter weirdnesses, Silk Road Ross Ulbricht, Prince Charles’ sausage fingers, aristocrats being perverts, prince Andrew loosing ability to sweat, 1000 space monkeys writing the Art of the Deal, and a whole lot more. If you have a few hours to chill, worth listening to. podcastindex.org #

• 15:35:00 +07:00 New Post: Bitcoin strategic sovereign reserves markjgsmith.com #

2024/07/31 #

• 05:21:00 +07:00 The New Internet - Well written piece, entertaining read, by an internet old timer building new technology. It’s an interesting vision of a different type of internet that’s more peer to peer, less client server. The are trying to get rid of many of the layers of gunk that have accumulated into modern software stacks. I keep hearing about Tailscale, I think the Changelog guys mention it a bunch. Might be worth knowing about. tailscale.com #

• 16:31:00 +07:00 California DMV puts 42 million car titles on blockchain to fight fraud - Interesting to see some large scale non-money blockchain projects. It’s using the Avalanche blockchain. Also includes a client that end users install to browse the cars that have been registered. www.reuters.com #

• 16:31:00 +07:00 Labour’s defining moment and the next Tory leader (The Rest is Politics Podcast) - Great episode with thorough analysis and roundup of UK politics, how the government handover is going, who is up for the Conservatives leadership position. Also what’s going on with the Bangladesh riots, the Olympics in France, Maduro in Venezuela. Rory has a bit of a man crush on Tom Tugendhat! But in all seriousness his Tugendhat review is quite spectacular. I thought he looked the part last week. Very interesting background, especially with his european connections and being bilingual, but kind of a scary vibe, which might make him the perfect opposition leader. Oh and a fascinating look at Pretty Patel’s Essex - Hertfordshire Christopher Walken style accent. More accent reviews please! podcastindex.org #

2024/07/30 #

• 04:12:00 +07:00 StreamPot/StreamPot - "StreamPot is a project that provides scaffolding for transforming media in your app (e.g. trimming a video, stripping the audio from a video, transcoding a video from mp4 to webp). We are building this because an increasing number of projects are transforming media as part of their workflow." - I thought this looked pretty interesting. Uses ffmpeg and can be fully self hosted, but they also have a hosted service. github.com #

• 04:20:00 +07:00 Western DJs accused of ‘normalising war’ for playing at Russian techno events - It’s really a tricky one this situation because I think a complete boycot from western DJs would likely make the divide wider, especially as the war is so protracted. I tried to think of a creative way to do this but ultimately the west is worried that the war spreads and turns into something bigger, perhaps even with North Korea and China joining in, so westerners playing DJ sets in Russia are really playing with fire, especially if you are getting paid extra, that’s pretty gross. www.theguardian.com #

• 17:45:00 +07:00 Switzerland now requires all government software to be open source - Overall I think this is really good news, I’m a big fan of open source software. The one thing that makes me incomfortable is that open source is not a panocea in every dimension. There are some aspects of open source that aren’t very desirable for society at large. I’m thinking specifically about the tendency for project maintainers to get abused. There is a tendency for exploitation to happen. It would be great if these government projects tried to tackle such issues. They are well positioned to do so. Generally though, more OSS in government is very cool, but let’s do it in a responsible way. www.zdnet.com #

2024/07/29 #

• 12:46:00 +07:00 Mag-7 sell-off, Wiz rejects Google, UBI, Kamala in, China’s nuclear buildout, Sachs responds to PG (All-In Podcast) - I was pretty beat up when I listened to this on Saturday, having been starved for several days, and tsunami tsunamied several times by the gang stalkers, so I found it really difficult to concentrate while listening to this episode. The two standout things for me were the discussion around UBI and the later discussion around power comparing US and China capabilities and future plans. It’s all somewhat of a blur but I feel like it was a pretty good episode even if I didn’t agree with several things they brought up. It’s good insight and perspective. podcastindex.org #

• 13:38:00 +07:00 Bitcoin War Games with Matthew Pine (What Bitcoin Did Podcast) - I listened to this yesterday evening and much the same as the previous podcast, I was in quite a state from all the sustained bullying and starvation, so I didn’t take notes. I think I’m still shaken by last week’s physical assault or maybe I've got PTSD or something. I could hardly concentrate on any of it, but two things stood out. First was after Matthew got through much of his macro analysis, Peter commented something like "It feeld like we are living in a scripted reality". This is exactly how everything feels to me at the minute. The second thing was his roundup of the US aliens situation. I remember last time he was on, his aliens analysis was amazing, there’s also probably the best quantum physics roundup I’ve heard and though I didn’t retain much from this episode, I remember very much enjoying it. I like aliens stuff. I guess this isn’t the best review ever, but it was a good episode, totally check it out. www.whatbitcoindid.com #

2024/07/28 #

• 11:03:00 +07:00 Trump tells supporters they won’t have to vote in the future: ‘It’ll be fixed!’ - This is definitely a weird thing to say, and pretty sure he knows what he’s saying. "We’ll have it fixed so good" is one of his classic turns of phrase. There might be a simple explanation. He likes to give the crowd what they want to hear, so could be this is him testing to see if there are people that would prefer non-democratic governance. Definitely worrying. I wonder what the Silicon Valley elites crowd, that have recently stood behind him, think of this bizare thing to say. www.theguardian.com #

• 11:39:00 +07:00 Trump proposes strategic national crypto stockpile: 'Never sell your bitcoin' - It’s very strange seing all these politicians suddenly turn pro-bitcoin. The fact some want to increase US holdings to approx 1/5 of all bitcoin in existence and use it to pay the national debt is deeply weird. Surely that would kill the dollar? How would we value bitcoin? This is starting to feel like a startup that promises it’s staff loads of options, only for them to end up being worthless after working there for a decade. On the other hand maybe it could trigger a gold rush as all nations worldwide try to buy bitcoin with their fiat while it still has some value. www.cnbc.com #

• 16:12:00 +07:00 New Post: Fractional reserve thinking markjgsmith.com #

2024/07/27 #

• 06:34:00 +07:00 The Kidnaping of Ape #8398 (Search Engine Podcast) - I listened to this yesterday evening, I was super tired so found it a bit difficult to focus, but it’s a very interesting episode all about the NFT craze that swept past us last year. That has sort of subsided for the minute, but I think perhaps NFTs will make a come back after the bull market when people need to park their millions. People like Raoul Pal seem to think so. The back story is kind of fascinating involving comedian Seth Green trying to create a genuinely new form of series using a blend of celebrities and the NFT characters he owns. The twist to the story is that his NFT wallet got hacked, so he had to figure out how to get back the NFTs that were stolen or the show couldn’t be made. Interesting that Quentin Tarantino and Paris Hilton are bigtime into NFTs. podcastindex.org #

• 06:31:00 +07:00 Gerry Gets Savage Ep#295 (Punk Till I Die Podcast) - Since last week’s issue had a big segment all about electronic music, I thought I’d check in with the PYID guys. It’s an awesome show, they have on Gerry who organises Savage Mountain which I gather is some sort of underground punk focussed music festival. I though his music selection was awesome, it’s got a very distinct vibe, quite pop punk in places but not scared to go off piste into some pretty dark metaly stuff. And I say pop punk, but it’s not bubblegum, it all has an edge to it. Like I said, I thought all the tracks were great. Gerry really reminds me of Anthony Scaramouchy from the Rest is Politics US Edition for some reason, so maybe he knows why many Americans think MI6 are behind the Trump assassination? I think maybe the Mooche’s wife might be a fascist communist so maybe we’ll get some interesting new punk tunes at some point, hopefully before WWIII starts. podcastindex.org #

• 12:45:00 +07:00 🚀 Latest Newsletter: Kicking Poverty’s Ass (Issue #174) markjgsmith.com #

2024/07/26 #

• 06:00:00 +07:00 New Post: Why people aren’t into politics markjgsmith.com #

• 09:44:00 +07:00 Facing American Poverty and Global Supply Chain Issues (The Daily Show Podcast) - John Stuart chats with Rev Doc William Barber about poverty in America. The very well spoken and knowledgeable reverend is endearingly religious, polite and pretty funny too. The numbers speak for themselves: 41% of Americans are poor and low wage people, that’s 135 million people, shockingly over 50% of children. It’s not even a race thing, 60% are white. These numbers are at least double what I had assumed was the case. 295000 people die each year from poverty, that’s 800 people a day. It’s the 4th leading cause of death in the country. Higher than respiratory disease, higher than gun violence. It’s unbelievably shocking that this is happening in the richest country on the planet. It’s a great interview that will let you see how bad the situation really is. It’s a bit strange to hear all this on a comedy channel, but it’s no joke. I think the humour helps us hear and see the size of the problem without our brains shutting it out. IMO this isn’t a partisan issue, both sides should make this a priority. Trump showed us that he spoke to regular folks that are getting screwed by the system, and the Democrats have historically been the party that championed and stood behind the poor. The reality is poverty will only get worse if it isn’t addressed, and that ultimately affects everyone. The sad thing is that there is technically plenty for everyone. Put aside your political views for a few minutes and listen to this short episode. It will be worth it. podcastindex.org #

• 09:44:00 +07:00 Bridget Phetasy (Joe Rogan Experience Podcast) - Great episode that takes a somewhat winding path covering all sorts of social issues of the day, a bunch of conspiracy theories, all with loads of humour and curiosity. Topics including solving starvation, reproduction & pro-choice, menstrual cycle synchronisation, creepy government and commercial tracking, 40 year old in a fake Biden suit, the entertainment business and AI, seeing behind the curtain of the fakers that run the world, trans craziness and puberty blockers, and the strange outdated sex laws that still exist in some US states. There’s a lot in there, but it’s a good mix of the latest current zeitgeist, the stuff you won’t hear on main stream media, what people are likely talking about in the interesting conversations down the pub. podcastindex.org #

• 16:57:00 +07:00 New Post: Solving poverty even cooler than rocket science markjgsmith.com #

2024/07/25 #

• 14:13:00 +07:00 InteractiVenn - Web tool to create Venn diagrams interactivenn.net #

• 14:18:00 +07:00 Google's Exclusive Reddit Access - Only Google can now scrape Reddit content, they are blocking most other crawlers. They have a multi million dollar deal with Google, and don't want bulk access without setting up a deal in order to protect reddit users from having their content used to train other people’s AIs. www.404media.co #

• 14:32:00 +07:00 Tom Tugendhat enters race for Conservative party leadership - In addition to looking very much like a bond movie villain, he says he would be prepared to take the UK out of the European convention on human rights in order to restore full control of the countries borders. Seems kind of hardcore, is there something up ahead they can see that we can’t? www.theguardian.com #

• 15:14:00 +07:00 Germany challenges Turkey’s protected status claim for the doner kebab - Kind of a bold move by Turkey. Is the US going to do the same thing with the hamburger? www.theguardian.com #

2024/07/24 #

• 05:56:00 +07:00 Spot Ethereum ETFs get final sign off to begin trading Tuesday - Good news for crypto in general, my guess is that many folks will re-allocate some of their Bitcoin to Eth, so not necessarily lots of new inflows. Longer term though there might be especially is Options and staked Eth become a reality. TradFi people are really into yield generating assets. www.theblock.co #

• 10:30:00 +07:00 Apple Reportedly Working on Foldable iPhone With Similar Design as Samsung's Galaxy Z Flip - Rumours sparked by leaks from production partners, looks like they are figuring out supply chain, parts and that sort of stuff. I always though foldables were a cool idea. They will have arrived properly if Apple release one. Code name is apparently V68. Could be a couple of years until they are in stores though. www.macrumors.com #

• 11:01:00 +07:00 So you think you know box shadows? - This is about as far away from the type of code I write as a web developer. It’s true that I mostly do backend but still I find it pretty crazy that web development is so broad. Interesting in any case just to get a vague idea of what’s possible. dgerrells.com #

• 11:09:00 +07:00 DeFi Giant dYdX Says Its v3 Platform Is Compromised – Just as It's Reportedly Up for Sale - Very scary compromise where the hacker got control of the entire domain and put up a fake site looking entirely like the old site. Users were then asked to approve a transaction that stole their funds. www.coindesk.com #

• 11:33:00 +07:00 Open Source AI Is the Path Forward - Leaving aside for a second this crazy world we now live in where everything imaginable is tracked and monetized which Zuck helped create, I think most of his thinking about AI that he writes about in this post seems well thought out, and generally in the right direction. I still though would like to read critiques from other industry leaders. He seems to be mostly talking about inference. What about training? about.fb.com #

• 11:46:00 +07:00 Spotify CEO confirms a ‘deluxe’ version with hi-fi audio is coming soon - A deluxe product for music would of course be awesome. I’m also interested in their plans for product offerings in the podcast space. I listened to several podcasts about a year ago where CEO Daniel Ek was talking about all sorts of cool new podcast features. There’s no mention of that in this article though. www.theverge.com #

2024/07/23 #

• 08:38:00 +07:00 After years of uncertainty, Google says it won’t be ‘deprecating third-party cookies’ in Chrome - I still don’t really understand what’s going on after reading this article. I can see why advertisers might be annoyed. As a developer I’m now wondering if it affects anything I might need to do. digiday.com #

• 08:44:00 +07:00 Node.js 20.6.0: Say Goodbye to 'dotenv' - Tutorial on how to use the new --env-file nodejs flag to set environment vatiables from a file. Something the article doesn’t mention which could be useful in unixy environments, the 'export' keyword is ignored when prepended to a variable, which means you can use the env file from a shell script as well as via node command line argument. Might be useful in development or in places where you need to use the settings in other non-nodejs places. See nodejs docs for details. dev.to #

• 08:58:00 +07:00 Oxygen discovery defies knowledge of the deep ocean - "About half the oxygen we breathe comes from the ocean" - That’s mental. The article describes they have found oxygen being produced without light, therefore without photosynthesis. Apparently mining companies want to extract various metals from these sites, but scientists warn it could kill local life. I would have thought a bigger concern would be that it could kill humans since so much of the oxygen we breath comes from the sea, but that doesn’t appear to be a concern. www.bbc.com #

• 13:58:00 +07:00 New Post: Balaji on civil wars, nations and the state markjgsmith.com #

2024/07/22 #

• 08:00:00 +07:00 Selects: The Duality of Caffeine (Stuff You Should Know Podcast) - Very useful episode, especially since I started drinking coffee again this week. Just another what are the chances. Turns out there are quite a few health benefits to caffeine, but also downsides. I’ve been finding it definitely improves my ability to write blog posts, especially in adversarial environments. The science behind how caffeine works is kind of fascinating. If you drink coffee definitely worth listening to this episode. podcastindex.org #

• 09:00:00 +07:00 What do small businesses think about the new worker’s rights? Ep#77 (The Rest is Money Podcast) - Robert and Steph have on Dragon’s Den dragon Deborah Meaden. A load of interesting discussion around the change in government and what it means for small businesses. Why the need for employment rights, pros/cons of zero hour contracts, weening employers off of their reliance on immigration to keep wages lower, and betting on the green economy future. They then have a more personal chat with Deborah about her entrepreneurial journey, touching all sorts of topics including running your own business, franchising if you don’t have money, investing in other entrepreneurs, scaling up, British risk aversion vs US risk appetite, dealing with business failures, time value vs impact value, technical vs instinct when making investing decisions, crowd sourced investment, looking beyond the pitch deck, meeting founders and other investors, and the importance of shared values. Great episode with a good mix of the current business zeitgeist and more general long term advice for entrepreneurs. podcastindex.org #

• 10:42:00 +07:00 The all-seeing AI webcam (Vergecast Podcast) - Will Poor piece that looks at Dries Depoorter, who not only includes Will’s family name in his family name, but also creates weird absurdist internet based AI / surveillance themed art and installations. He’s flemish belgian so has a cool accent and a downtempo kind of vibe. His projects tend to turn the tables on power, highlight important aspects of modern society that we aren’t considering, and create tools that use the latest AI models to create delightfully odd tools that make you think. podcastindex.org #

• 13:43:00 +07:00 ROLLUP: Trump Pump | ETH ETF Next Week | Mt. Gox & Germany | Crypto Wars 2.0 (Bankless Podcast) - They are all about crypto but I feel that the Bankless guys are often a bell weather for what’s going on in the wider world. Their takes are often sensible yet also they regulary appear to notice important trends before others do. This Rollup episode has all sorts of interesting titbits from commentary on the Trump assassination and it’s aftermath, but also prediction markets becoming more mainstream, top bitcoin holding countries worldwide, ETF and Larry Fink fully orange pilled and maybe opening the door for etherium, bullish miners, uniswap browser wallet improvements, legal cases changing the playing field and tracking the growing crypto lobby. www.bankless.com #

• 17:03:00 +07:00 Joe Biden withdraws from presidential race following debate debacle - Not much to say about this. Can’t say I’m all that enthusiastic about it. I was never really into Biden, but still it feels like when they replace the lead singer in a band. Or a lead actor in a film or TV series. It rarely works. Can I really be arsed to invest time learning about a whole new cast of characters right now? Nope not really is how I feel about it today. I bet many feel similar to me. www.theguardian.com #

2024/07/21 #

• 08:00:00 +07:00 The Academics That Think ChatGPT is BS (Better Offline Podcast) - I didn’t take detailed notes on this one, and probably should have, because it was packed with very insightful and well thought out hypothesis’ about how LLMs work but also about how we should view them, whether they are actually thinking, how they differ to human learning, and how they are impacting academia. These researchers highlight some of the most important things to consider, such as lying vs bullshitying vs hallucinating, and the danger of anthropomorphising them. It vears into philosophy and psychology, but grounded in computer science and mathematics. You'd think these boffins would have the whole thing figured out, but even these guys occasionally run into difficulty describing what’s going on. LLMs seem to be teaching us humans about our own cognition and consciousness. It’s the sort of episode that should be required listening when using these tools, they are powerful but could be detrimental to your abilities if used in the wrong way long term. IMO, use them as a booster rather than a crutch, imagine they could be taken away at anytime, you still need to be able to function at a high level without them. podcastindex.org #

• 09:47:00 +07:00 Donald Trump and Silicon Valley's Billionaire Elegy - Steven Levy looks into the recent trend of Silicon Valey big wig VCs like Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz changing their allegiance from the Democrats & Biden to the Republicans & Trump. It appears to centre around Biden’s idea to impose 25% capital gains tax on unrealised assets for folks earning more than $100 million per year. They are trying to close a loop hole where the very rich never pay taxes by never realising their assets but monetize them by borrowing against them. They argue that it’s a slipery slope that starts with the very rich, but eventually canibalises wealth from all wealthy households. The argument is that it destroys philantropy and ultimately Silicon Valley itself. Interesting article, no less because Levy appears to be a staunch Democrat. Big changes in the tectonic plates of the tech industry. www.wired.com #

• 10:00:00 +07:00 J. Malcolm Garcia on the humanity of San Fransisco's homeless community (Keen On Podcast) - Homelessness is a difficult subject to talk about and I think Andrew and Malcolm manage to have an interesting conversation, while being respectful to the people they are talking about. Many have experienced significant trauma, there is mental illness, sometimes drugs or alcohol, but they are real people with both happy and sad stories, and they can be very interesting and even fun to talk to. It can be awkward at first to strike up a conversation, and it can be risky as you might end up liking them, and feel a responsibility, but the truth is regular folks "need some skin in the game". It’s worth breaking down the barriers, they are within the community even if they aren’t a part of it. Waiting for the government to fix things in many places might be unrealistic. I think it’s worth remembering the world they live in is very different to the one lived by the housed, so they will likely be in a very different mindset to you. They spend most of their time thinking about things you probably never even have to consider. Things you take for granted that take minutes can take days to accomplish for them. Their timelines are very different. They might not trust you initially, they have likely had many bad experiences talking to housed people in the past so they might be cautious, not wanting their situation to get any worse than it already is - Malcom ends by reminding us that "they are great people". podcastindex.org #

• 10:58:00 +07:00 A guide to reading and writing Node.js streams - Great tutorial by Matteo Collina that looks at how to use Streams in NodeJS. The article focusses on readable and writable streams, backpressure, handling errors, and advanced techniques like async iterators. The render pipelines concept I introduced to my static site generator is only partly realised, I only introduced the minimum needed to get the job done. I have partially implemented a more complete version of the feature and it’s crazy how similar in shape it is to the streams examples here, but it just uses the fs module. It would be very cool to explore using streams in the render core, certainly would be a good way to reduce memory consumption, and maybe even give a speed boost. Streams also support HTTP as well as files on the filesystem. Maybe one day ... :) blog.platformatic.dev #

• 13:28:00 +07:00 How to Build a JavaScript UI Component-First DevTool Startup in 2024 - Well writen article, and the modularity of their final solution is pretty cool, and understandable given current state of things. However it all feels so complicated. Why can’t the next cohort of Facebook type startups take up the mantle for building the next React ontop of Web Components? Why can’t Lit, which looks very cool btw, be worked on to get it to be comparable in features to Vue and React? www.corbado.com #

• 13:54:00 +07:00 Promises From The Ground Up - Josh Comeau summarises pretty succinctly how javascript promises work, with just the right amount of detail, without getting caught up in the weeds. This enables you to get to grips with async / await, which the article finishes with. I’ve found async / await to be one of the more useful primitives for simplifying my code. It did take a little while to get to grips with though. Reading existing code bases for popular libraries that use it helped too. I don’t miss callbacks in my NodeJS code at all. www.joshwcomeau.com #

• 18:46:00 +07:00 New Post: An architecture for art markjgsmith.com #

2024/07/20 #

• 06:00:00 +07:00 Quantum computers aren’t what you think...they’re cooler | Hartmut Neven (TED Talks Daily Podcast) - A look into the weird science behind quantum computing where huge computations can be carried out using parallel universes. It’s very early days for this technology, but we will soon be able to use quantum computers to solve problems in medicine, AI, neuroscience and more. All sorts of interesting examples of what we might be able to do in the future. We might even be able to discover the dynamics of consciousness, and perhaps even ways to expand it. www.ted.com #

• 07:00:00 +07:00 Caitlin Long and the Conundrums of Europe Ep#183 (Goats Gold 'n Guns Podcast) - Caitlin Long who runs Custodia Bank is on the show to discuss the recent elections in the UK and France, and how they have been affecting the markets. She also goes into her difficult experiences trying to setup a crypto focused full reserve bank, Trump and crypto, Tether & US treasuries, and the unconstitutional structure of the FED. podcastindex.org #

• 08:00:00 +07:00 Bicep Ep#722 (Resident Advisor Podcast) - Interview with Irish duo Andrew Ferguson and Matthew McBriar. Setting up a label, their background in graphic design and advertising, tech gear, the writing process, live shows vs writing albums, mixing seminar at Abbey Road, upping their game and working with tech wizards, working as a duo, Belfast vs London, people’s differing views on emotions, writhing with purpose, being maximal with minimal, negative spaces, giving your brain space, taking the essence out and striping it back, teasing the audience, harnessing energy, 1 word song titles, the Brit awards, creativity during the pandemic, fear & worry in the community, signing with Ninja Tune, performing live vs DJing, being on the road, Glastonbury, first Essential Mix, first Beats in Space mix, first show in Japan, rave energy and clubs in general, blogging their sets, artistic kinship, making tunes and getting them out as quick as possible, collaborating, and shooting video for visuals. ra.co #

• 11:14:00 +07:00 Cafes to work from in Chiang Mai - I miss Chiang Mai, it’s been so many years since I was last there. James Clark has re-written one of his oldest cafe review pieces. I'm linking to it because in a freakish bit of synchronicity, I started drinking coffee again this week and it’s resulted in me writing loads of blog posts. Some of these new places sound awesome. www.nomadicnotes.com #

• 11:40:00 +07:00 Nvidia and Mistral’s new model ‘Mistral-NeMo’ brings enterprise-grade AI to desktop computers - This feels like it could be one of those low key announcements that goes mostly unnoticed but then ends up being quite important. The model is not anywhere near as powerful as the latest OpenAI models but it’s open source, and runs on your own personal hardware, rather than on a data centre monster GPU. Turns out there are many applications that don’t require the bestest model, but do require much more privacy, because small busineses want to be in control of their data. venturebeat.com #

• 12:10:00 +07:00 Bicep - Bicep 2017 - A Pitchfork review of their self titled debut album. I couldn’t find anything in podcast form that I could download, but this review popped up. I love reading electronic music reviews, they are often pieces of art in their own right, capturing the vibe in textual form, of something that attempts to capture the vibe of something in audio form. There’s something very magical happening when it works. It’s funny because I imagine they probably read like total gibberish to folks that are not familiar with the genres. I assure you though, there really is an undiscovered parallel dimension, or several, to all this modern electronic stuff. pitchfork.com #

• 12:18:00 +07:00 Zelenskiy to attend UK cabinet meeting in effort to disrupt Russian oil sales - He attended the European Political Community summit and will address the new government caninet. It’s intetesting to see Zelenskiy in the UK but also how the UK will operate on european matters while outside the EU. www.theguardian.com #

• 12:45:00 +07:00 🚀 Latest Newsletter: Fiction, Art, Music, Aliens & Evolutionary Biology (Issue #173) markjgsmith.com #

• 12:46:00 +07:00 Working with Pasted Content in JavaScript - Nothing earth shatering but useful to know. Depending on what you add to the clipboard, say HTML text or files for example, you get different data in the event object, which you then need to handle in some way. www.raymondcamden.com #

• 12:56:00 +07:00 A Developer's Review of a Snapdragon X Laptop (Lenovo Yoga Slim 7x) - Interesting to see a price and spec comparison with MacBook Air and MacBook Pro. Looks like, as I suspected, 16GB RAM is pretty much the minimum these days for a development machine. Makes sense, even my now defunct MacBook Pro from 2013 had 16GB of RAM, and these days they need to run AI coding copilot tools. Any less RAM just isn’t viable. www.wezm.net #

• 13:04:00 +07:00 SqLite for NodeJS - They are adding Sqlite to nodejs core, so you’ll be able to write database driven apps right out of the box. Very cool! github.com #

• 18:20:00 +07:00 New Post: Rogan’s secret to building cool businesses markjgsmith.com #

2024/07/19 #

• 10:53:00 +07:00 Andrew O'Hagan goes up the Caledonian Road in search of Truth, Justice & a Man in Blue Ep#2027 (Keen On Podcast) - I really enjoyed this interview, on many levels. The fact it’s about a novel written about a place in London I’d spent some time in, the fact that the novel is a rich tapestry, weaving together stories and characters from different walks of life, and class, together with contemporary topics, and even the diverse real life cast of the podcast interview itself. It’s like some sort of giant living jigsaw puzzle, where the interesting pieces find each other and intertwine like a patch of garden in a bigger patch of a larger garden. Fascinating waters in which to go for a swim, with so many different cultural topics intersecting, the novel really gives a sense, a multi-dimensional snapshot of a place in time. Local pubs, politics, austerity, Brexit, migrants, fake news, fake life, global vs local, renters vs home owners, big city, urban vs country side, art, perspective, concreteness, optical illusions, capitalism, englishness, the working class, unions, working men’s clubs, the miners strikes, russian oligarchs, aristocrats, crypto utopianism, landlords, paying your taxes, beaurocracy, gangsters, Balzacian & Kafkan nightmares, Britain, the similarity of father & sons relationships across classes, all with the backdrop glow from a distant US culture. The complexity of modern life in all it’s imperfect glory. Seems like a really wonderful example of the art and stories the technologies we build everyday now make possible. podcastindex.org #

• 16:05:00 +07:00 The Jonathan Haidt Interview (All-in Podcast) - New interview format for the All-in pod. They interview writer and evolutionary biology and psychology specialist Jonathan Haidt. All sorts of interesting topics covered, including the origins of sociology, a somewhat dubious social media drugs analogy but kind of interesting comparison nonetheless, how the human brain and mind evolved, the dopamine reward system, hacking evolutionary biology, Boomers vs GenX vs Millennials vs GenZ, Buddhism, the alleged perils of desire and dualistic thinking, influencer culture, collective action traps, oppressor / oppressed mindset, the 3 great untruths, how the political left has changed since the 70s, traditional liberalism and conservatism, boredom & creativity, and some things to be aware about video games. Very much recommended if you spend a lot of time thinking about the future. podcastindex.org #

• 16:25:00 +07:00 New Post: GenZ vs evolutionary biology markjgsmith.com #

• 17:14:00 +07:00 Resisting a Surveillance Technocracy with NVK (What Bitcoin Did Podcast) - Great discussion with always in a good jovial mood NVK, all about the future of society with AI, language models, cryptography, and bitcoin, focusing on how it will affect government surveillance. Topics including talking with AI, natural language translation, non carbon based alien intelligences, open source models, creating business AIs using your own data with really good privacy, how AIs "think" using vector maps, AI in government and politics, pattern matching and pre-crime, anyone being able to fake anything, digital signatures, Nostr and private keys, data sharing between agencies, and chain analysis using AI. Worth the listen to get a reslistic idea of where we are heading, while trying to not get too depressed about it all. www.whatbitcoindid.com #

• 17:41:00 +07:00 Is SOL Undervalued? 83% discount to ETH? | Michael Nadeau (Bankless Podcast) - Solana is generally considered to be the 3rd most popular blockchain after Bitcoin and Etherium. Micheal comes from a TradFi background but has been into crypto for a number of years. He’s identified some interesting things about Solana by doing a classic TradFi analysis of core fundamentals. He presents his findings. He looks at things like total value locked, number of active users, number of transactions, number of developers, fees, to where investment capital is flowing, DEX trading volumes and more. It would seem to still be somewhat undervalued. He makes some predictions for the future. Good solid episode. www.bankless.com #

2024/07/18 #

• 09:30:00 +07:00 Samsung’s new image-generating AI tool is a little too good - These new tools are indeed very impressive. The democratisation of imagination and even art creation is going to be a massive shift. It won't be revered as much. What will that do to the value of real high end artworks I wonder? www.theverge.com #

• 09:55:00 +07:00 New Post: Competition for criminals markjgsmith.com #

• 10:00:00 +07:00 New Post: Bitcoinifying arguments markjgsmith.com #

• 10:54:00 +07:00 New Post: The real vs digital assets equilibrium markjgsmith.com #

• 11:38:00 +07:00 Against choosing your political allegiances based on who is "pro-crypto" - Vitalik outlines many reasons why you shouln’t just vote based on whether a candidate is pro-crypto. As with many things in life, it’s a lot more nuanced, and pro-crypto candidates might turn out to be very much the opposite in the long term. vitalik.eth.limo #

2024/07/17 #

• 09:41:00 +07:00 Why Facebook doesn’t use Git - I’m rather heavily invested in git. I use it to write all the software I write, but also for all my blogging. So this was a super interesting article. It’s a great writeup and very interesting software story. Turns out FB use Mercurial which apparently is written in Python, and is very extensible. At the time they chose it, it was way better at handling very large monorepos with many files. Thinking about it, there isn’t any reason I can think of that would stop you from using alternative version control tools with my static site generator, at least not clientside. If I ever do get some form of product off the ground, I might consider adding support for other DVCS’ than git. graphite.dev #

• 10:35:00 +07:00 Apple, Nvidia, Anthropic Used Thousands of Swiped YouTube Videos to Train AI - How long until this training theft sweeps into the wider society? It’s going to have a much bigger impact than we are currently aware, as many realise they are being exploited by thieving infiniti liars. And the infiniti liars could very well be the most exploited of all. This is going to make Gaza - Isreal seem like a walk in the park. It will be like mini Gaza - Isreals literally everywhere, like fucking Gremlins. That was quite a fun film though. Not so sure it would be fun in real life though. www.proofnews.org #

• 10:53:00 +07:00 Thoughts on Node.js, Deno, and Bun - Some pretty solid advice about writting code that’s portable between javascript runtimes. ckarchive.com #

• 14:11:00 +07:00 New Post: Just ignore them virtually impossible markjgsmith.com #

• 16:30:00 +07:00 New Post: Kings and Queens and politics markjgsmith.com #

• 16:45:00 +07:00 Stocks Up & Crypto Flat...Why? (Bankless Podcast) - There’s a whole lot of interesting and very practical stuff discussed in this episode, including how crypto must outperform AI, that 7 companies account for most of the equity markets, the internet bubble vs the AI bubble, money market funds, the disappointment of ETFs, what stablecoins bring to the table, the often forgotten yet very compelling TradFi promise. www.bankless.com #

• 17:07:00 +07:00 My search for proof aliens exist (Ted Talks Daily Podcast) - Astrophysicist Avi Loeb talks about the possibilities of alien civilisations existing in other places in the universe, and describes an expedition he led to find reminents of the first detected interstellar asteroid that crashed into the ocean in the last few years. It’s quite a humorous talk, scientists can be quite funny too :), definitely worth the listen. www.ted.com #

• 17:56:00 +07:00 Why a Bitcoin Treasury is the Winning Strategy with Eric Semler (TFTC Podcast) - I listenned to this earlier under pretty extreme conditions so it was very difficult to concentrate. The part I found very interesting was around why holding Bitcoin in a company treasury can be very beneficial in some circumstances, especially for high margin businesses that tend to hold a lot of cash on their books. It’s an interesting discussion, I wish there were more examples of businesses integrating crypto and Bitcoin into their operations and talking about it. www.tftc.io #

• 18:21:00 +07:00 New Post: The offline video cache web browser markjgsmith.com #