Saturday 7th October, 2023 - Walled Gardens and Reality Interfaces (Issue #135)
The motorbike gang stalker intimidation continues, that’s my current reality interface headset. I’m just trying to build a static site generator.
Hello and welcome to my newsletter!
Another season 2 instalment…
Another week goes by and I’m facing more sadly predictable gang stalker intimidation. It’s large rocks being thrown at me in drive by attacks pretty much every night at the minute. It seems to me many of the locals know it’s going on.
I’m simultaneously having access to water and electricity to a large extent cut off. It’s plain and simple intimidation. This is what happens when you get stranded in a developing country (I’m stranded in Vietnam) because of a global pandemic, the locals try to enslave you. Literally.
Anyhow it’s Monday today and I’m putting together this emergency issue so at least something gets sent out.
Here’s the latest podcast I’ve listened to which was a great listen:
The Birth of British Fascism Ep#373 (The Rest is History Podcast) https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9yc3MuYWNhc3QuY29tL3RoZS1yZXN0LWlzLWhpc3RvcnktcG9kY2FzdA/episode/MWI5ZTJmNWEtNWIyYi0xMWVlLWJjNzMtMDNjMDk0N2EyZjA1?sa=X&ved=0CAYQkfYCahcKEwign7_C_tWBAxUAAAAAHQAAAAAQNg
Update: It’s Saturday morning. There were a few days of relative quiet mid week, and I was able to charge my devices too, so I was able to listen to a few podcasts, but I’ve been completely overwhelmed by tsunami after tsunami from the gang stalkers. And that has picked up again as of yesterday evening. Another cycle appears to have started. I’m also still recovering from last cycles mutilations, the raspy cough still lingers, with all it’s very unpleasant yellow flem.
All that said, I’ve managed to compile the list of podcasts, but was royally blocked yesterday when I attempted to write some commentary. Once again I am the most evil person in the universe simply for existing it seems. I had planned on updating this to a regular issue, but that’s no longer going to be possible now. The most honest thing I can do is just to add the update and publish, since that’s the best reflection of what’s actually happening.
The original issue title was “Rocks Thrown” because when I initially put it together at the start of the week, that’s what was happening. I’ve updated the title so it at least looks somewhat appealing to potential new readers. Unfortunately I don’t have time to get into the logic behind the title. What I can say is it’s related to both the Into the Impossible Podcast episodes and also my brief interaction with Andrew Keen during the week. You can read about that in this week’s notes.
There are those out there that don’t believe reality interfaces are worth spending time on, that it’s somehow a waste of time. I disagree and given what I’ve experienced over the past few years it might very well be the most important thing. There is zero doubt in my mind that this sort of thing could, will and perhaps already is being weaponised against real life humans.
Remember it might not be obvious what these will look like, but the notion expressed by scientists and researchers that they could take the form of some kind of AI should give you pause for thought.
Something worth remembering if this is seeming very strange and disheartening is that far from being a knock on science and mathematics, it’s validating that we have the tools to explore the world beyond our ‘headsets’. Indeed it’s the tools that we have built that are making it possible to even know about the whole headset thing. We should be able to avoid the traps that might be lurking.
Podcasts
The Free Market For Money with Peter St Onge (What Bitcoin Did Podcast) https://www.whatbitcoindid.com/podcast/the-free-market-for-money
Eric Elliott: SudoLang (Devtools FM Podcast) https://www.devtools.fm/episode/68
Weekly Roundup 10.02.2023 Ep#24 (Peter St Onge Podcast) https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5idXp6c3Byb3V0LmNvbS8yMTc2NTAyLnJzcw/episode/QnV6enNwcm91dC0xMzY5MTUxNw?sa=X&ved=0CAUQkfYCahcKEwiw7P73w-KBAxUAAAAAHQAAAAAQNg
Blog Redesign, Sounds on a Website, Accessibility Tests and Safari 17 Ep#585 (Shop Talk Show Podcast) https://shoptalkshow.com/585
Stuart Hameroff - Is the Human Brain a Quantum Computer (Into the Impossible Podcast) https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5tZWdhcGhvbmUuZm0vaW50b3RoZWltcG9zc2libGU/episode/YTlhYTYzZDYtNWQ2MC0xMWVlLWI4MWEtMTNkNWYzOGQyNjA1?sa=X&ved=0CAYQkfYCahcKEwiw7P73w-KBAxUAAAAAHQAAAAAQZA
Story: Sloot Digital Coding system (Corecursive Podcast) https://corecursive.com/sloot-digital-coding-system
Amazon, Google and Crypto on trial (Vergcast Podcast) https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5tZWdhcGhvbmUuZm0vdmVyZ2VjYXN0/episode/MmNkNGJkMjgtNDlhZS0xMWVkLWE2ZGMtZDM1YTk0NGU2OTQ5?sa=X&ved=0CAYQkfYCahcKEwiwl6z9xOKBAxUAAAAAHQAAAAAQNQ
Donald Hoffman Has Proof That Reality is an ILLUSION! (Into the Impossible Podcast) https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5tZWdhcGhvbmUuZm0vaW50b3RoZWltcG9zc2libGU/episode/ZDAxMzUxZDQtNjEyYy0xMWVlLTg0MjktYzNkN2QwYjExMjI3?sa=X&ved=0CAQQ8qgGahcKEwiw7P73w-KBAxUAAAAAHQAAAAAQWg
Links
Lessons From Debugging - Debugging is absolutely crucial to any code writing. A lot of the items on Matt Rickard's list rang true to me. One thing that I have found useful is to add flags that turn major features on/off so you can quickly rule out big sections of code. Be able to run the code with a mininal set of data so you don't get completely overwhelmed with logs, and a way to only print debug logs for specific files. Log verbosity levels can be useful too. https://matt-rickard.com/lessons-from-debugging
More links like this on the linkblog, please check them out, though to be honest they are a bit thin this week given all the sludge:
https://markjgsmith.com/links
Notes
Podcasting walled gardens - I noticed the latest episodes of the Keen On podcast had increased in size from MBs to GBs. They had been taking an age to download, and in fact often seemed to get the client stuck in a loop, restarting the download for no apparent reason. I emailed Andrew to ask if he'd noticed. Got an answer from him, turns out he's started publishing video instead of audio. That at least explains the larger file sizes.
Apparently he's still publishing just the audio on Spotify, and he asked why don't I try Spotify. I replied that my instinct is to avoid Spotify. My impression is that they are a bit of a walled garden when it comes to podcasting. But to be honest I'm not sure where that comes from. Likely it's just an overall impression from many things I've read online over the years. I asked on Mastodon and people do still have that impression.
I was previously using Apple's Podcasts app, but it started not updating some shows, and was generally being quite flakey. So a few months ago, somewhat hastilly, I changed to Pocket Casts. It's been mostly a pretty good experience, though I've had to email them a few times to ask why a particular show didn't appear in the app. Each time they've ended up adding said show a few days later. The other annoyance is show pages listed in the app are generated by Pocket Casts. I didn't think much about it when I was forced to switch, but actually both these things suggest walled garden.
The point is that it isn't fully open because they are putting themselves in between listener and podcaster. Should they choose to, they could just not add some shows. If they supported RSS then they wouldn't have a veto on what shows you could add to the app. As for show pages they are inserting their own show pages which is a bit off. Arguably it does make the UI look a bit more consistent, but really they could also include a link to the actual show page. By only showing their version you are stuck in their ecosystem.
All this got me thinking, what exactly makes a podcasting app a walled garden?
My first attempt at an answer would be the following:
Lack of support for RSS
Internally generated show pages
General distain for anything outside the app
It feels like we should be very good at identifying walled gardens but also at explaining why they aren't a good thing. It's not a great analogy when you think about it because most actual gardens, at least in cities, are walled, so a lot of folks might expect it to be a feature. https://markjgsmith.com/notes/2023/10/06/081400-markjgsmith.com
Check out the rest of this week’s notes:
https://markjgsmith.com/notes
I hope you are well.
That’s all from me…
Best reguards,
Mark
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