Saturday 2nd December, 2023 - Oddball Week (Issue #143)
Change of pace given the thanksgiving holiday last weekend, but actually it’s resulted in quite a varied mix of interesting things. History, AI tech, philosophy, and a touch of politics.
Hello and welcome to my newsletter!
Another season 2 instalment…
Little bit of an odd ball week, with everyone in the US being on thanksgiving holiday last weekend, there hasn’t been as many podcasts as usual. But it’s a nice change of pace, especially after all the recent OpenAI drama. There are several holiday vibe episodes with some cool tech related stories, a bit of politics, some interesting history, and some AI tech & the economy. There’s even a bit of philosophy. It’s a good mix, a tasty knowledge renaissance buffet.
I’ve been super focussed on code the past few days because my build minutes reset so I can build and deploy again. I have a lot of code to integrate into the static site generator and my website. Lots of things to test. Lots of bugs to fix. It’s good to be coding again.
Podcasts
The Gary Kildall Legend (Internet History Podcast) - The man that wrote the first commercially successful operating system, and the man who could have been Bill Gates. It’s crazy that these smaller stories exist among the well trodden narratives of the industry. What a story. https://www.internethistorypodcast.com/2016/03/the-man-who-could-have-been-bill-gates-the-gary-kildall-story
The Inexorable Rise of the Far Right (Flying Frisby Podcast) - It seems everyone is far right these days. Milei won in Argentina, Wilders in Holland, LePenn keeps doing well in France, far right riots in Ireland. There's a pretty clear narrative being pushed that the far right is surging everywhere around the world. Dominic looks into it, and has some interesting takes on the phenomenon. https://www.theflyingfrisby.com/p/the-inexorable-rise-of-the-far-right
Justin Hall: The ‘First’ Extremely Online Person (Internet History Podcast) - This is a cool story. It’s got a very early-web-optimism vibe to it, but of course the story takes some strange twists and turns as everyone involved learns about what it means to publish one’s life on a freely available worldwide medium for the first time. I think I had been to Justin’s site at some point, but I wasn’t a regular reader. Great story. https://www.internethistorypodcast.com/2017/06/the-first-blog-justin-hall
JFK: The Road to the Whitehouse (Rest is History Podcast) - There’s been a lot of media made on this subject over the years, but it’s relevant again because of the current run up to the elections and a Kennedy is running for president. I like Tom and Dominic’s approach, it’s respectful, a bit humorous, not too sensationalistic. I just finished the last episode yesterday, and it actually gets quite dramatic, even a bit somber, towards the end. I felt everything slow down, a liminal moment, even as life continued all around me, like the moment of totality during an eclipse. It really is an important moment in world history. https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9yc3MuYWNhc3QuY29tL3RoZS1yZXN0LWlzLWhpc3RvcnktcG9kY2FzdA/episode/NzYxMDE4YTgtODMwZS0xMWVlLWExM2UtNWJiMDMxYzA2NWI1?sa=X&ved=0CAYQkfYCahgKEwigqK2Xt--CAxUAAAAAHQAAAAAQqAM
Wix CEO Avishai Abrahami isn’t worried AI will kill the web (Decoder Podcast) - This was a much more interesting interview than I had imagined going into it. From a web developer perspective Wix is pretty massive, and like it or not has made a huge impact in the industry. I was struck by how similar in a way Wix is to Wordpress, though of course it’s not open source. https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5tZWdhcGhvbmUuZm0vcmVjb2RlZGVjb2Rl/episode/MmViOTdmNTYtMzUwZi0xMWVkLThkNTItZDc1MzZmOTNmNzUz?sa=X&ved=0CAYQkfYCahgKEwigqK2Xt--CAxUAAAAAHQAAAAAQ5gY
Government Spending Leads to Hyperinflation with Peter St Onge (TFTC Podcast) - Listening to Peter St Onge is a bit like watching a pro video gamer playing his favourite video game. He knows all the combo moves off by heart, and it’s a treat to watch him pulverise the world economy over and over, as his score reaches levels you never dreamed were even possible. He’s so good that I sometimes wonder if he’s an expert scammer, but all his logic checks out as far as I can tell. He sure is very smart. His wallstreet vs bureaucrats analogy is classic, and likely very on point. https://tftc.io/462-government-spending-leads-to-hyperinflation-with-peter-st-onge
John Gray on Pessimism, Liberalism and Theism (Conversations with Tyler Podcast) - Great conversation, and very relevant especially in this age of far right resurgence. The philosophy of liberalism is a very interesting topic. The way he laughs reminds me of Peter St Onge, and I’m not sure that’s a good thing. Do all liberals laugh in this way? It’s a salty sweet sort of laugh. Anyhow, intellectually very interesting discussion. https://conversationswithtyler.com/episodes/john-gray
AGI is a Red Herring with Aleks Svetski (TFTC Podcast) - Probably the best AI focussed discussion I listened to this week. Quite a lot of against the grain views that might very well give you new perspectives on the subject. https://tftc.io/agi-red-herring-aleks-svetski
Links
Building bridges - A Twitter thread from me about how people come together in difficult circumstances and build things that make a real difference to everyone. It's tough going, but little by little progress is made. And then hopefully things get easier. It's worth taking a moment every now and again to reflect, so you can remember how things used to be, and see more clearly how things can be in the future.
https://twitter.com/markjgsmith/status/1729809972471411108?s=46&t=bRj2Jcps7ZVVYpFA7ISZ1A
Lots more interesting links on the daily linkblog, and they often include extra context links which there isn’t an easy way to include in substack.
Please check them out:
https://markjgsmith.com/links
Notes
There’s a lot of cool stuff in the notes this week. Also some dark stuff, that’s life sometimes.
Wasm browser cli
Spirit of computing
OpenAI vs Cortez
Gang stalker mutilation attack
Stories of tech intrigue
Safe zero based budgeting
Code blocks in RSS feeds
Chanting season
Hand mutilation - day 2
Everyone is far right these days
Why not regulate the technology?
Black rock in food
Black rock in food aftermath
Catching up on coding
Notes still appear to be the new blog. I’m still writing notes every day. Maybe when I finish the new interleaved everything homepage I’ll figure out how to get a better blog/notes balance.
Please check them out:
https://markjgsmith.com/notes
That’s all from me…
Best reguards,
Mark
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Thanks for reading!
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Have a great weekend and a fantastic next week!