Saturday 3rd June, 2023 - Quite A Lot Of History (Issue #117)
Another week of great javascript, tech and web development links
Hello and welcome to my newsletter!
Another season 2 instalment…
Note: I had to update the issue numbering because some of the initial issues were not included. This was first published as issue #99, updated to issue #117.
This week there’s quite a lot of history and culture in the podcasts, all very interesting, and often relevant to the tech conversations du jour. The links have some good tech and javascript items.
This week feels like I’ve reached the summit of a big hill, but I can see a lot more hills on the horizon. It’s been very tough. The people that help are often totally oblivious to the people that harm, and so are upset and surprised when things go wrong. Reality is often much stranger than what you can see directly. You have to keep an open mind.
I’ve gotten quite close to finishing the big data cleanup I was doing last week. It was delayed somewhat because I ran out of build minutes. It’s very tricky tidying up 10 years of blog, linkblog, podcast, and newsletter data. Lots of custom nodejs and bash scripts, and being very careful to test everything thoroughly.
I’ve kept up with posting to the daily linkblog. I don’t yet have the bookmarklet working, which is how I used to do it before the site migration. That means it’s a bit slower than what I’m used to, but it’s good to know I can post links just using regular git. I’ve got into a rythm of queuing up about 5 links for each day ahead of time that I post all in one go each morning. Yey git repos and markdown files!
On with the newsletter…
I wrote 3 blog posts, one on culture, one on macro vs AI and one about RSS, maybe / hopefully some of you will like them:
What makes culture so fascinating? - A quick exploration into the notion of culture, why is it so fascinating and what is it actually? https://markjgsmith.com/blog/2023/05/28/what-makes-culture-so-fascinating
When will AI start to affect macro? - Macro is all the rage these days, especially with the many problems with banking and the economy. The other thing that we never stop hearing about at the minute is AI. I'm wondering if the two will ever intersect in a meaningfull way, and whether we should prepare for that. https://markjgsmith.com/blog/2023/06/01/when-will-ai-start-to-affect-macro
Organising my RSS feeds - Some thoughts about my ideal RSS feed setup. tldr; I wish I could host my own list of feeds. https://markjgsmith.com/blog/2023/06/02/organising-my-rss-feeds
Podcasts
Russell Brand (Duncan Trussell Podcast) - I like Russell Brand he’s kind of out there being overly spiritual sometimes, but that’s ok, and actually he’s thought about some of this stuff more than most and he’s very eloquent. He uses fancy words and is sort of both posh and common at the same time, which I find fascinating. It’s like he is himself a sort of strange walking talking magic trick. It’s also really interesting listening to him and Duncan get to know each other because they are so similar yet also really really different. Anyway this episode is well worthy of your time, they do talk a bit about tech topics but it’s more cultural than tech, and that’s what’s nice about it, you can get a sense of where we might be heading with things. https://www.duncantrussell.com/episodes/2023/5/27/russell-brand
Ireland: Celts, Conquest and Cromwell Ep#336 (The Rest is History Podcast) - There is such a rich history that these two little islands have gone through together, so much pain, yet this series filled me with hope because it’s such a fascinating conversation with everyone genuinely happy to be together looking back at the past with their immense intellectual curiosity shining through. https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5hY2FzdC5jb20vcHVibGljL3Nob3dzLzAzMWMyZGNiLWM2NmMtNDJiNS04MTllLTI0NTIwMzFmZTRmOQ/episode/NjQ3MzcwMWUwODdiZjQwMDExYjllZjBm?sa=X&ved=0CAYQkfYCahcKEwjAvLGX26X_AhUAAAAAHQAAAAAQNQ
Ireland: Union, Famine and Parnell Ep#337 (The Rest is History Podcast) - Listening to this, and the other one in the series had me feeling that some old wounds are healing even if we’ve all had to, and perhaps for some of us, are still going through, what has been an awfully difficult time. Things are going to be better for the next generation, I think you can hear it in both these episodes. https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5hY2FzdC5jb20vcHVibGljL3Nob3dzLzAzMWMyZGNiLWM2NmMtNDJiNS04MTllLTI0NTIwMzFmZTRmOQ/episode/NjQ3ODJmMTU1ZmFjMjUwMDExMzQ5OWYy?sa=X&ved=0CAYQkfYCahcKEwjAvLGX26X_AhUAAAAAHQAAAAAQNQ
CZ and the state of Binance (Bankless Podcast) - I thought this was a surprisingly good episode. Surprising because CZ is nothing like how people talk about him online. He seems quite level headed and sensible. Perhaps I’m missing something. http://podcast.banklesshq.com/173-cz-the-state-of-binance
Gary Flake on the search wars (Internet History Podcast) - Great interview, very topical considering where we are at with AI and search currently colliding. Yes it’s more history, but it’s relevant and important tech history. https://www.ridehome.info/show/techmeme-ride-home/ihp-gary-flake-on-the-search-wars
OK we’ll never have another Twitter (Have a Nice Future Podcast) - Big social media, online public squares, small conversations being the future, politics and Twitter, and more but I didn’t take that many notes. Enjoyable listen. https://www.wired.com/story/have-a-nice-future-podcast-8
Seth Godin on Marketing, Meaning, and the Bibs We Wear Ep#180 (Conversations with Tyler Podcast) - I do like listening to Seth Godin, though I will say that he does at times sound like he’s just reading the response from an LLM because his answers always flow so perfectly. They all have the same rythm, perhaps it’s just because he does so much public speaking. I really enjoyed the bits about art, learning and education, subscription based business models, motivational speakers, cooking as dancing with recipes, spending time with Isaac Asimov, anthropologists, tips on writing a book, creating the conditions for people to have the best job in the world, and the perhaps outdated view of content needing to be meaningful. I find the way he looks at things to be refreshing, nicely out of the technical weeds. https://conversationswithtyler.com/episodes/seth-godin
Links
The blink element is being removed from MDN - Whatever happened to HTML's legendary reputation for backwards compatibilty? Seems really odd to remove something that was so prominant in the early web from view https://github.com/mdn/content/pull/26904
CSS Blend Modes - At first these don't look that impressive but as you go through the examples you eventually realise the examples look pretty darn cool, and you realise they could have called this feature CSS Andy Warhol, or CSS Cartoon Strips https://garden.bradwoods.io/notes/css/blend-modes
WPP one of the world’s largest advertising groups, is teaming up with Nvidia to use AI to create in minutes campaigns that would have previously taken weeks. The system will be able to generate fully photorealistic images using 3D software which can then be used in AI generated video or 2D, eliminating the need for filming or green screens. 10000 variations of a car advert can be generated in a couple of minutes, varying all elements. https://www.ft.com/content/87511db5-a844-425b-9c2f-661ac6c3faa3
Advanced Fastify: Hooks, Middleware, and Decorators - It's been a while since I've looked at the fastify project, really liking the plugin and hooks systems, not to mention express compatibility https://blog.appsignal.com/2023/05/24/advanced-fastify-hooks-middleware-and-decorators.html
Japan Goes All In: Copyright Doesn’t Apply To AI Training - Very topical with the writers strike in Hollywood, and also really important for all, there's a new arms race beginning, we need to ensure we don't inadvertently destroy entire culture ecosystems https://technomancers.ai/japan-goes-all-in-copyright-doesnt-apply-to-ai-training
The new Motorola Razr Plus looks kind of amazing. It's foldable with a pretty big outside screen that you can use with most apps, and it opens from clam shell to a massive screen. Great tech specs, and has the vibe of the old Razr flip phone but modern. https://www.theverge.com/2023/6/1/23744843/motorola-razr-plus-2023-screen-price-cameras
Elon Musk: Twitter boss reclaims title of world's richest person - At $192 billion net worth, it's mind boggling to me that Elon could buy 128 million Macbook Airs. What is this world we are living in? https://www.bbc.com/news/business-65781534
For more links like this, check out the daily linkblog:
https://markjgsmith.com/links
I hope to be with you again next week, though given that next week is issue #100 and given the visibility I currently already have of the week ahead, where access to water and electricity are likely going to be used against me, I have a good sense at this point when the universe is going to be playing cruel tricks on me, and that seems highly likely over the next 7 days. I can literally see those conspiring and arranging things so as to push me into a corner, and historically speaking that hasn’t ended well.
I hope the storm dissipates rather than escalates and intensifies. The world gives, but in my experience it often takes away in equal measures right afterwards.
Update: As I publish this I noticed Substack has updated their UI so it’s a lot easier to see how many issues have been previously published. According to their stats I’ve published 119 issues to date. That makes this issue #120! It’s going to take me a while to figure out where the missing issues disappeared to. I compiled the list originally from the links I posted to the linkblog, but it’s totally possible that in the beginning I wasn’t posting the links to the linkblog. If you notice the numbers change over the next few weeks, please bear with me while I work through these glitches.
Starvation days this week: 5
Thirst days this week: 3
That’s all from me…
Best reguards,
Mark
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