Saturday 4th February, 2023 - An accelerator for the accelerator & a leash for the leash

Another week of great javascript, tech and web development links

Feb 04, 2023

Hello and welcome to my newsletter!

Another season 2 instalment…

Some ideas are incredible, others not so much, sometimes it depends on the circumstances. How to evaluate if we are doing things ’right’? It’s not so obvious sometimes.

It’s been a week of contradictions and weirdnesses, of being blocked, of being yah-ed, and being blocked and yah-ed by the very same people at the same exact time. I don’t have much else to say about it. There’s some great links and podcasts nevertheless.

Two noteworthy developments in my static site generator. The first is that I created a WebFeedList component which creates an OPML of rss files like it’s 2006. I’ve added one to my site, technically if your feed reader supports it you could subscribe to that and always be sure to get all the posts I make, whether they are on the blog, linkblog or podcast. I’ll keep it updated with any new feeds I create. In practice I don’t know how useful it will be.

Here’s the feeds page in case you want to add them to your reader, the OPML file is there too:

https://markjgsmith.com/feeds

The other thing is, I was able to make some changes to the page rendering to improve SEO on site pages. So if you look in the page HTML, you’ll notice that the head has several additional <meta> tags including ones for canonical url, Twitter cards, and RSS feeds. The title and description are now also correctly filled out with relevant info. This should help with discovery. It was quite tricky to get it working for all pages and setting sensible defaults.

I haven’t migrated the RSS feeds just yet, I wanted to ensure all the SEO was looking good, so I’ll likely get that done in the next few days.

As I write this I’m sitting next to a chap that’s had some cuts and scrapes from somewhere. He’s looking a bit worse for wear. I’ve helped him disinfect some of his wounds. Very difficult to communicate. The sun is blazing hot, but we are in the shade. It’s a crazy world we live in.

Here’s the list of titles that didn’t make it. If you are wondering what that is, here’s a blog post about that:

The list of titles that didn't make it https://markjgsmith.com/blog/2023/01/07/the-list-of-titles-that-didnt-make-it

Here’s the list:

Perfect Pictures, For Everyone, All The Time, Easy Peezy + 1
Temporarily Become AIr By Smart Statistical Sampling, then Walk Through Walls, Teleport and Fun TBD
Be Careful, the World (Universe?) Doesn’t Like Statistical Sampling
Ok you have an african upside down tree, a floppy piece of styrofoam, and.a crumbly old brick, ready…steady…cook the most incredible meal of all time! (Or you die! (probably)) …oh one more thing, I forgot to mention, you are in cookery mordoor
Have You Tried Just Making Better Pictures?
That thing where you realise the only mathematically possible move is 100% neel, 100% of the time, for everyone, forever
Learn how to eat entire best elephant in the world in order to create custom elephant foot OR just try to create custom elephant foot directly?
Amino Acid Gibberish
No mind control, but then massively slow internet connection
The City of Kings
Someone Created a PI = LIE T-shirt And Shit Got Super Fucking Unreal, Super Fucking Quickly
Family of Kings in a City of Normies
In a Perfect World Hurry Up IS Blocking
Who’s Perfect Is It Anyways?
Blocky McBlockies Being Blocknam Style Maniacs Again
The Double Layer Entrapment Long Con: That Thing Where Somebody Tries to Frame You Entrapping Them by “Pretending” to Entrap You
Intel: Literally Even the Backdoor has Backdoors
The accelerator pedal has an accelerator pedal
The accelerator pedal paradox: accelerator pedals controlling other accelerator pedals
Circular accelerator pedal squad
Some people will make you cut off your arm in order to escape an obstacle they setup and be infinitely offended that you aren’t grateful
An accelerator for the accelerator & a leash for the leash

Hope you enjoy the newsletter. Be kind to each other.

Podcasts

Mainframes are still a big thing (Changelog Podcast) - The guy interviewed really reminded me of Vergecast regular Richard for some reason, even though they have very different styles, anyhow interesting episode about very old school computing, how strange that such old software is still used in many mission critical places, it’s all about efficiency with mainframes, and cobalt, but apparently also some Python more recently, not exactly into change though, communism of the computer industry? They have a program to scoop up homeless people into their sector which *seems* like a good thing but the way they spoke of it felt a bit weird to me https://changelog.com/podcast/524
5 values for repairing the harms of colonialism - I guess I needed another club to hit myself over the head with https://www.ted.com/talks/jing_corpuz_5_values_for_repairing_the_harms_of_colonialism?rss=172BB350-0207
Apple M2 Reviews, DOJ sues Google, and this week in Elon (Vergecast Podcast) - Some great analysis by Nilay on Google and Elon/Twitter, I hadn’t appreciated how precarious Google’s situation is right now, the balance between the hosts is becoming a bit weird imo, I love the show so hope it’s nothing serious, it feels like it’s the Nilay show, which it is off course, but there’s Cranz who has to (?) constantly play a sort of Smithers off of the Simpson’s character while everybody else only pitches in occasionally, I dunno maybe it’s nothing, just me talking out load https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5tZWdhcGhvbmUuZm0vdmVyZ2VjYXN0/episode/NzQ4YWE3OWEtMzUwZS0xMWVkLWFjNmUtMGJkODRjYjdlMGNh?sa=X&ved=0CAYQkfYCahcKEwjw9Ka__vr8AhUAAAAAHQAAAAAQCQ
David Kipping - Alien Civilisations And Habitable Worlds #Ep355 (Lex Fridman Podcast) - There’s so much awesome stuff in this episode, definitely one of my favourites this week, astronomy is so mind blowing when approached with a bit of imagination and combined with data + science, the episode was a bit like climbing into an Arthur C. Clark novel, but for reels; incidentally I’ve noticed a bit of negativity towards Lex on some other podcasts lately, I think some people are finding his earnestness a bit annoying or something, I get it, sometimes he does get a bit heavy in the everything-is-beautiful front but his podcasts are mostly still very good quality imo https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9sZXhmcmlkbWFuLmNvbS9mZWVkL3BvZGNhc3Qv/episode/aHR0cHM6Ly9sZXhmcmlkbWFuLmNvbS8_cD01Mzc0?sa=X&ved=0CAUQkfYCahcKEwjw9Ka__vr8AhUAAAAAHQAAAAAQEw
It’s really a bad sign for everyone. Just don’t call it unexpected (Eurodollar University) - I’m starting to notice a bit of a pattern in Jeff’s show titles :), I saved this one so must be that it was one that was particularly good / relevant, though I can’t exactly remember why now https://share.transistor.fm/s/35be8b26
Is it Wrong to Enjoy Yourself While The World Is Burning? (No Stupid Questions Podcast) - A difficult topic but important and I think they covered it well https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5zaW1wbGVjYXN0LmNvbS9kZmhfdmVyVg/episode/ZWI1NGRlY2MtYWMxZi00ZGY3LTg4ZjUtMWViNTZlNzVkMjc1?sa=X&ved=0CAYQkfYCahcKEwjw9Ka__vr8AhUAAAAAHQAAAAAQHA
Lil Yachty Ep#545 (Duncan Trussell Podcast) - This was a bit of a weird episode, Duncan’s music intro is actually particularly good, not funny, just like it could be a song from an alt rock band, but he goes on to describe it as creepy, so maybe I’m missing something; anyhow the interview was cool overall but these two are a bit awkward together, which actually is the thing that made this episode interesting, I also like Yachty’s fierce defence of personal freedoms, even if it might be a bit idealistic, sometimes we need to be a bit idealistic, I like his questioning of social norms and assumptions, hope I’ll get a chance to listen to some of his psychedelic music; overall sort of a fun collision of two very different but also very similar worlds https://www.duncantrussell.com/episodes/2023/1/29/lil-yachty
The Rise & Fall of the Russian Empire with Michael Malice (What Bitcoin Did Podcast) - This was interesting because it at least attempts to look at a part of history that isn’t covered all that much, my sense is that it gets some things right, but also not exactly accurate, anyway it was an interesting discussion; quite a lot of waffle at the start https://www.whatbitcoindid.com/podcast/the-rise-fall-of-the-russian-empire
Every Platform is Hustling to Unveil an AI plan Mon 01/30 (Ride Home Podcast) - I think Brian is likely right that we are going to see a big wave of AI tech this year, I bet lots of companies already had a lot of secret AI projects going on, some insightful analysis in this episode https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9yc3MuYXJ0MTkuY29tL3RlY2htZW1lLXJpZGVob21l/episode/Z2lkOi8vYXJ0MTktZXBpc29kZS1sb2NhdG9yL1YwLzRSZ3Nrdm1EcGNvM0k2RGR2ZlZxSGdSeUNNT1JkcEVVeVFGdWtYTm5wVk0?sa=X&ved=0CAUQkfYCahcKEwjw9Ka__vr8AhUAAAAAHQAAAAAQKw
America’s Role in the New World Order with Natalie Smolenski (What Bitcoin Did Podcast) - I liked Natalie’s clear understanding of world politics and history, she’s very good at talking about the macro side of things, and her polish background gives her an intuitive understanding of places outside the US that do things very differently, they speak about america’s role in the world and how it’s changing, worth listening to https://www.whatbitcoindid.com/podcast/americas-role-in-the-new-world-order
The Real Downton Abbey (The Rest is History Podcast) - Before listening to this episode I had approximately zero interest in Downton Abbey, but Tom’s re-enactment has me thinking I might have been too quick to judge; gets into the nitty gritty of what life was like during the industrial revolution, lots of things I had no idea about, there are some aspects of their description that perhaps are in some way similar to how things are here in Vietnam, particularly the difficulties and societal contradictions that emerged during that period, I’ve been in shops and cafes where the staff are plainly yah-ing the customers, some things just make no sense whatsoever https://shows.acast.com/the-rest-is-history-podcast/episodes/300-the-real-downton-abbey
Aliens are Out There! Lisa Kaltenegger (Into The Impossible Podcast) - Lisa sounds like a guest I’ve heard on several other non science podcasts, I think the other Lisa was in the tech / vc space, anyway Astro Lisa is able to make all things outer space and aliens very interesting, she has a tendency to speak like she’s talking to young children, maybe she spends a lot of time with kids? It’s not that annoying, anyway the subject matter is what’s important, and she knows a lot about that; strange how all these star systems with high concentration of earth sized planets are named after belgian food and drink products, what’s up with that? https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5tZWdhcGhvbmUuZm0vaW50b3RoZWltcG9zc2libGU/episode/NGY0M2UzNGMtYTM0Yi0xMWVkLTg2NTEtM2I4NmZhYWQ2YTFl?sa=X&ved=0CAYQkfYCahcKEwjw9Ka__vr8AhUAAAAAHQAAAAAQNA

Mark Smith’s Newsletter

Saturday 4th February, 2023 - An accelerator for the accelerator & a leash for the leash

Another week of great javascript, tech and web development links

Hello and welcome to my newsletter!

Podcasts

Links