markjgsmith

2023/09/30 #

• 16:38:00 +07:00 RSS feed oblivion - I have neglected to maintain my RSS feed collection over the nearly 20 years I've been using feed readers. I have so many feeds that were at some stage interesting but have either disapeared or become uninteresting. I find that I rarely open my RSS reader these days. I miss how it used to be.

  I'm thinking of deleting virtually all the feeds and start fresh. What I'd like is a manageable amount of news sources, both old media and new media publications, as well as a collection of feeds from bloggers that are doing interesting things and publish at least several times per week. I want to be connected to folks that are doing cool things, and writting about it, in the areas that I am interested in.

  But deleting everything is very scary indeed. #

• 19:08:00 +07:00 Banality of local intimidation - People driving past on motorbikes while talking on their mobile phone that just so happen to say "you learn" as they pass me are currently trending. It follows quite an anger goading heavy day, so not much of a suprise. Alk the same, rather unpleasant. #

2023/09/28 #

• 14:04:00 +07:00 Twitter is starting to feel like X. Day to day I still think of it as Twitter, but over the last week or so I've noticed that the amount of people on podcasts using the name X, without going through some kind of explanation, has reached a new level. I wouldn't say it is totally there yet, but it's slowly starting to feel like folks are more comfortable with the new name. #

2023/09/27 #

• 17:53:00 +07:00 Being code blocked is strange. It's the 3rd month in a row that I've run out of build minutes on Github. It means I can't deploy or test any code I write, and I have to change almost everything I do. It happens often that I get a great idea and I have to sit on my hands.

  I really miss not being able to code. Everything seems a little less interesting, the articles I'm reading, the podcasts I'm listening to, and I'm more distracted than when I'm able to code. I'm still publishing links and notes via github. I'll be able to sync them up at the start of the month. But everything feels off, like I've lost my rythm somehow. #

• 18:32:00 +07:00 Offline could be awesome. I have to do a lot of things offline these days because of my internet access situation. I get Wifi a few times a day, in various locations, but mostly I'm offline. It occurred to me today that I actually like that setup quite a lot because it stops you from doom scrolling and you can actually get quite a lot done.

  If apps had better offline features, I think it might be my prefered way of operating. What I really want is for all websites to work properly in read later tools, better audio podcasting tools like show attachments, and importantly the return of video podcasting. That would be awesome. I just want to select a bunch of stuff every morning, load up, then disconnect knowing that I've got a bunch of stuff to read, listen to and watch.

  Working offline could be loads better. Browsers could cache linked pages so you could read links people add to their content, and perhaps you could create an offline list for things you didn't cache that would automatically sync next time you were online. There are so many things that could be made better. Unfortunately no one is going to focus on such an experience unless there was a device that had offline as it's primary use case. #

2023/09/25 #

• 07:11:00 +07:00 FX is where all the missing money is - Peter MacCormack asked on a recent podcast, and unfortunately I can't find exactly where as I write this, he asked where is all the money that regular people have lost on the stock markets in recent years? Good question. Today's Eurodollar University, perhaps not uncoincidentally covers FX, Jeff Snider highlights what this shadowy part of the money system does. It's a vital part of the system, even if it is very opaque. McCormack did an interview with Nik Bhatia covering FX just this week.

  This note birthed the blog post: Where is all the missing money?. #

• 07:31:00 +07:00 G7 strange but true: There is a popular cab company here in Vietnam called G7. On it's own this little oddity doesn't seem particulary important, but the more time you spend here the more of these wierdnesses you notice. Eventually you start to realise none of them are coincidences. I'm not at all saying it's nefarious, but it's certainly noteworthy. #

• 09:19:00 +07:00 Do you believe in free range humans? It might be that much of the worlds problems and disagreements boil down to a difference in opinion on this fundamental question. The reason it is such a challenge is because the extremes on either side of the answer are likely not possible solutions. Yet we live in a world with maximalists on both sides, locked in an eternal war. Which makes you wonder how the majority manage to not be held hostage by this unlikely and bizare partnership. #

2023/09/23 #

• 15:45:00 +07:00 AI activity boosters - I wonder how long until it will be until all entrepreneurs will have AI assistants. Building a business is such a complicated activity, and AIs have such strong pattern matching capabilities, you've got to imagine they would be very good at matching company building activities and personal outside work activities so that one boosts the other. Finding activities that have the same general shape, or complimentary. It wouldn't be without dangers though, tech like that could really get in the way if it wasn't done right. #

• 15:56:00 +07:00 Niche down on action style workflows - There have been quite a lot of companies the past few years doing database SaaS products similar to Salesforce but focussed on a very specific niche. Airtable is a good example. I'm a big user of Github Actions, and I wonder whether there's potential to do something similar. Basically to bring file repository based automated workflows to very specific niche areas. The underlying mechanics would be very similar and familiar to developers, but the UI users interacted with during workflow execution would be very different. #

• 16:07:00 +07:00 I wish there was a Markdown editor that was also an outliner, to have the power of an outliner but when you are editing markdown files. You would be able to output markdown files, but you could also output OPML files. It would make it easy to work with both formats side by side. It would support yaml frontmatter and have a plugin system so you could add support for different flavors of markdown. It would have an easy to use mobile app. #

2023/09/22 #

• 14:56:00 +07:00 The world will help you but you have to climb into one of it's traps. If you refuse to climb into a trap, then one (or more) will be constructed around you. That's been my experience. This has happened again and again and again. It happened again over the past few days. It must have been the end of some sort of mega configuration, with several story lines that had been running in parallel intersecting. Huge amounts of circularity. The level of planning that must have gone into all this is mind boggling. Just a quick note about it now, so I have something to point to later if I need to. It's going to take a while to fully process. Not exactly improving my situation, which is most likely the point. #

• 15:31:00 +07:00 The dark irony of these trap building cruscendoes is that they are a sort of denouement. You finally see all the pieces slot into place, all the oddities you thought were a bit off at the time, suddenly make sense. You finally see their purpose. The lies that were invisibly and insidiously tieing your hands together, are revealed, your hands untied, even as the walls close in on you. #

• 16:36:00 +07:00 Mindboggling is the new super easy peasy. #

2023/09/21 #

• 16:12:00 +07:00 It's that time of year where I get to flip another year on the old calendar. I've actually lost count at this stage and have to use a calculator to figure out the exact number. I always seem to be out by a year or two. Anyway, this is what mid forties looks like. I hope you are all doing well.

  My backup power cable stopped working today, but I did have tart. That was quite nice. #

2023/09/19 #

• 06:24:00 +07:00 In bitcoin circles they speak of "orange pilling" people. It's suppsedly a reference to the red pill / blue pill scene from the matrix. The idea being that you need to convince regular non bitcoiners to try bitcoin. The problem is that the expression comes with a lot of baguage. Matt Odell cover this in some detail on the latest Ep#111 of Citadel Dispatch, it's a very interesting conversation. No one in bitcoin has ever questioned that expression before. I always felt it was a little odd. They absolutely get to the heart of the issue.

  Interestingly in the early days of RSS we all had orange xml buttons that link to our feeds. I've always wondered if there was a connection. The sort of irony in all this is that, whatever you think about the bitcoin orange pilling, that is in effect orange pilling people into podcasting. #

2023/09/15 #

• 11:55:00 +07:00 Typescript makes community programming mire difficult - Rich Harris makes an interesting point about how Typescript has changed how we interact with the libraries we use in our code. Since there's a compilation step required, people are much less likely to explore the libraries they use, adding console.log statements and such. That's a big net loss to the ecosystem when it comes to community open source programing. He makes the case for why it would be better for library authors to use Typescript via JSDOC comments. Great point.

  One aspect that I think Typescript devs are very hypocritical about is the extra cognitive load and tooling complexity Typescript adds. It's like now that they have mastered JS and Typescript, they are pulling up the ladders so to speak, making it significantly harder to learn the language. I'm not saying Typescript is bad, but you should not require people building sheds to have to use skyscraper building tools. There's clearly a huge conflict of interest that they fail to disclose. Typescript is really an elitist extension that is only for people with space and time to learn, who are not immersed in chaos. By imposing Typescript early you are effectively shutting out a huge swoth of humans who's lives are not as afluent.

  Keep javascript something anyone can learn. Then if you want to go on to build sky scrappers with it, have the tooling available to make that possible. Just my two cents. #

• 12:57:00 +07:00 Make javascript easy again - It occurs to me that calling Typescript elitist is perhaps an over-simplification of a more complicated dynamic. It's entirely possible that those insisting on Typescript are from under-priveledged backgrounds. Perhaps their difficult path is the thing that causes the hypocracy in the first place. It might very well be that the very afluent don't behave this way.

  That would make sense since their path would have been comparatively easier, and so they would not see the need to make it more difficult for the competition. Of course that might just be elitist apologist tosh. Maybe elites really are all evil. Ultimately there's no way to know.

  But it's not really that important. What's important is having a language that is easy to learn and experiment with.

  If anything, we need to make it easier to learn, not harder. #

• 18:42:00 +07:00 I've fixed the notes ordering issue and day pages now look much nicer. It only affects the notes and links pages. It just means that when you click through to a particular day, the way the content is displayed remains the same.

  Previously the day pages had no date link at the top of the page, so it was a bit jarring. Small change, but huge effort. Readability is important on text based websites. #

2023/09/14 #

• 11:26:00 +07:00 What if the debasement of money that has gotten much much worse recently was just the beginning. What's to stop other things getting debased? What's to stop AIs monitoring anything that you show interest in, and debasing it as soon as you ascribe some value to it? #

2023/09/13 #

• 12:12:00 +07:00 It occurs to me that many people that behave with hypocracy, not only don't see their own hypocracy but believe it to be something good, like that's just how one does business effectively. We need more examples of doing business effectively that don't require hypocracy. Even better would be examples where non hypocracy is demonstrably better. #

2023/09/12 #

• 16:39:00 +07:00 Last Man Standing Tech - Eventually there will be AI that will be so powerful they will be able to decide who will be the winner in a death match between 2 humans. They will be able to do it with accuracy and precision comparable to chess players playing chess.

  Except they will be able to basically see infiniti number of moves into the future, in infinite dimensions. And people simply won’t interact with those that the AI tells them that they can’t beat.

  Last man standing tech will be a very big sector indeed.

  At least this is a possible scenario we need to consider. #

• 16:45:00 +07:00 The Mental Health Deception - When I was young we simply never spoke about mental health. There were normal people, and there were a very small amount of people that had mental disorders, and those people usually got locked away in mental asylums. That’s just how it was pretty much. It’s horrible to think that it was like that, but it was. In some places it might still be like this.

  We’ve progressed a long way from those days. People realise that mental health is something that can affect everyone. Folks that used to bully others, calling them crazies and mental, are now understanding that the way they treated people before wasn’t very nice. They have seen friends or family members be affected by these issues, or indeed have experienced something similar themselves.

  In part this is because the modern world is ever more complicated and this is reflected in the stress experienced by the average person. In the modern world people have more mental health issues.

  We are due another step forward in how we view such conditions, and it’s around the realisation that the notion of mental health issues is still very antiquated way of looking at it. The problem is that it is implicit in the term that the fault is the person with the mental health issues. That somehow they have brought this condition on themselves by the way they lived their life. That’s the unspoken piece, the unspoken belief that’s never said. It’s something ‘they’ have.

  If you spend a little bit of time thinking about it, this notion is absurd. There are a very very small amount of people that perhaps have a physical abnormality in the brain, but the vaste majority do not, yet there are many many people with mental health issues.

  The fact is that by definition these people that have no physical disability and have mental health issues, have these issues because of the people they interact with. It must be the case that these interactions are causing the so called mental health issues. In short we must realise that mental health issues are really issues of the group bullying individuals. The environment creates the mental health issues not the individual.

  Even if they have substance abuse problems, why do they have these problems in the first place?

  Mental health issues is really a failure of the group.

  It’s likely that it’s a system level problem where to the total information processing capacity of the system is being reached, and for whatever reason these folks always find themselves as the pressure cooker release valve. It’s not a coincidence. One day we will look back at our primitive understanding of group dynamics and realise that groups can turn into a mob and they might not even realise they are doing it, though they also might. Ultimately it doesn’t matter though. What matters is noticing it is happening and course correcting collectively in a way that de-escalates and moves the unhealthy dynamics to a safer configuration.

  In the present day, "mental health issues" is a euphemism for someone that the group systematically and relentlessly bullies. We need to evolve this understanding into a more truthful and effective model. #

2023/09/10 #

• 12:54:00 +07:00 Two nights of gang stalker sleep depravation in a row so I'm quite exhausted today. Possibly made worse by endless softly softly murmurers today :( #

2023/09/08 #

• 10:22:00 +07:00 Peter Levels: "Is the MacBook Air 15" w/ M2 a good replacement for MacBook Pro 16"?" #

• 10:24:00 +07:00 It's possible to easily run MacOS VMs on Mac using something like Vimy. What's the current state of affairs running MacOS VMs when you are on Windows or Linux?

  Important question if you are a web developer. It used to be that it simply wasn't possible. I wonder if that is still the case. #

• 10:58:00 +07:00 Framework have been on a tear recently with lots of product annoucements, and it seem's their new modular laptops are quietly becoming very popular. I love the philosophy behind these devices. What I want to know is to what degree the modularity gives you freedom. In practice is it possible to buy and use comodity hardware or do you end up having to buy everything from them? #

• 12:39:00 +07:00 Just because they aren't being violent doesn't mean they aren't forcing you. #

2023/09/07 #

• 13:02:00 +07:00 Back when I started linkblogging about 10 years ago, one of the benefits I noticed was that it frees you up from the tyranny of choice that comes with the web. The web is so overwhelmingly vaste and full of interesting things that there is a tendency to get pulled in too many directions. I discovered that by posting links to the things I found noteworthy during the day, I was able to move on with the day much more easily. If something really was important then I could circle back around to it later. As it happens most stuff isn't, so there's just no point worrying about it. On the other hand, very often you end up finding synergies between linked items that you wouldn't have otherwise noticed.

  I'm noticing something similar with writing notes using my new notes feature. It happens a lot that while I'm listening to a podcast, or reading an article, that my brain suddenly gets interested in some related aspect. It just won't let it go, and eventually it starts to affect the consumption of said bit of media. It's related to my surroundings, if I'm feeling stressed, or hungry, or in some other way imbalanced. It can be very frustrating.

  With the notes feature, when I notice that happening, that I've had to pause and rewind a podcast a few times or re-read a part of an article only to be interrupted again by the thought which is suddenly the most important thing in the universe, I just switch over to notes, write down the main thing of the thought, and I can move on. It seems to be important that it's very non-formal. A blog post is too much effort because I have to think of a title, and write a description and a bunch of stuff. A note isn't much more effort than a tweet. However notes tend to be less well thought out, and probably have more spelling mistakes. #

• 13:52:00 +07:00 Given yesterday's close encounter with what amounted to a time traveling family member doppelganger, this article linked to on hacker news today stood out.

  Human Embryo Models Grown from Stem Cells: Scientists have created what amounts to a fake 14 day old human embryo. No fertilized eggs or a womb required. Just lab cultured and human skin stemcells.

  "When the scientists applied secretions from these cells to a commercial pregnancy test, it came out positive."

  We will soon have the ability to synthetically create intelligences and biologies. That's going to be quite a big change. Things are going to get very weird. #

• 13:37:00 +07:00 AI pain strategy - Sam Altman's OpenAI has provisions in company founding documents for if AGI is created.

  Steven Levy: "Somewhere in the restructuring documents is a clause to the effect that, if the company does manage to create AGI, all financial arrangements will be reconsidered. After all, it will be a new world from that point on."

  Sandhini Agarwal: "Look back at the industrial revolution -- everyone agrees it was great for the world… but the first 50 years were really painful… We’re trying to think how we can make the period before adaptation of AGI as painless as possible." #

2023/09/06 #

• 13:12:00 +07:00 Chris Coyier [~31:57] on the present state of syndication: "We are in a rough spot".

  That pretty much sums it up. We've spent the last 10 years happily enjoying the convenience of Twitter, and we've left many of the open alternatives wither by the wayside. Many of us are realising now that it's actually harder to syndicate content into several networks than it used to be back in the era of ubiquitous APIs.

  I have things I post flowing in some way through Twitter, Mastodon and LinkedIn, but it's not ideal because I don't currently have a way to have full posts in my RSS feeds. I can't figure out how to add code syntax highlighting into the feeds, so at the minute I only include the description and a link to avoid a broken reading experience.

  I like the new fancy federated protocols but I'd feel better if I had a robust setup for RSS reading, newsgroups/IRC and forums. #

• 13:31:00 +07:00 My RSS reading experience is quite bad at the minute. Organising all my feeds feels like a gargantuan task. With 15 or so years of feeds that have accumulated, many of which are defunct, there is just so much to wade through. There is also no clear way to categorize any of them in a useful way.

  I wish there was more automation. For instance for any site that I link to on the linkblog, I'd like to automatically subscribe to their RSS feed if one exists. Then after a week or so let me review the ones I want to keep subscribed to. I also want more feed readers to support OPML reading lists, so it's easy to move between readers, and I can manage my subscriptions in a similar way that I manage blog and linkblog posts.

  Also I'm wondering when AI powered tools will make their way into our feed readers. #

2023/09/04 #

• 11:21:00 +07:00 I've setup a nip5 on my Nostr account. It's the way they verify accounts. Once you get past the ambiguities in the instructions, it basically boils down to putting a file containing some json formatted text on a server accessible at a known path and add it to a domain name that you control. The difficult part is that it's not very obvious what text exactly you have to put in the file. You have to add your 'name', but your Nostr profile has 3 fields that look like names.

  Here is my nip5 config.

  This note birthed the blog post: I’ve setup a nip5 on my Nostr account. #

2023/09/01 #

• 20:14:00 +07:00 Strange exchange between David Sacks and Jason Calacanis in this week's All-in podcast, centering around a disagreement while talking about geo-politics and BRICS nations. Jason repeatedly miss-hears Sacks, quite clearly purposely trying to put words in his mouth. Saying his opinion was disgusting, when in fact he had been describing the opinion of others (~58:00), not his own. Very weird interaction in an otherwise enjoyable and informative show.

  It had a sort of joking-not-joking kind of vibe to it, though Sacks wasn't overly eager to correct the mis-understanding, which makes me think there could be more to it. I think Jason came away from it looking like a power hungry moderator doing a flex. But he also changes his tact right at the end trying to get Sach's opinion on the subject. Seems like a very underhand way to get someone to reveal their cards. Why is he picking a fight, why is he playing a bad guy here? #