Saturday 11th February, 2023 - Just Another TBD
Another week of great javascript, tech and web development links
Hello and welcome to my newsletter!
Another season 2 instalment…
It’s looking like I’m not going to have a chance to prepare much of an introduction this week. The whole week has been plagued with so much blocking in every dimension it’s been very difficult to get anything done. Might be I’ll get a chance to add more later but I’m just going to write something, anything at all.
In my static site generator development some small advances including adding the domain name to the head title of all pages. Nice for SEO, but the uphill battle I had to go through to get that minuscule feature added is mindboggling.
Some pretty good content this week, though there does appear to be a bit of a drop off in the quality. It’s the same old stories, Twitter, Elon Musk etc. Seems to be all about AI and ChatGPT3 at the minute. Some interesting developments but mostly I’m noticing people, often technologists, kind of worried about what’s going to happen to everything we have built online when folks can draft written content by getting an AI to write it. And how search is going to change when everyone is getting different search results. What happens to society when you can auto-complete EVERYTHING?
I’ve noticed a few people mention giving up drinking alcohol, so I made a list of what worked for me. It’s been over two years now, I don’t miss it much at all these days. Most of all I love the feeling of not being hungover.
Concentrate on how good your body feels when you wake up clear headed
Do it every morning
Breath the air
Taste your food
Maybe do some physical activity
Feel the natural chemicals going through your body
Pretty soon you will be amazed at how stupid you were for covering up your body to yourself for so long
Enjoy discovering new and interesting non alcoholic drinks
Enjoy plain cold water
It’s also a great time to give up smoking. I initially gave up both, with the sole aim of giving up smoking. I knew I wouldn’t be able to give up smoking if I was still drinking alcohol. They were joined at the hip so to speak. The plan worked. It took about 3-4 weeks and then I was smoke free. The biggest noticeable impact was having so much more energy now that I wasn’t imputing carcinogens into my body.
I started drinking again sometime after that but decided to stop again because I remembered how good I felt when I had quit both. Maybe it was easier to give up alcohol the second time because I no longer had the smoking covering up the effects of the alcohol. After several months I noticed I was enjoying things like reading and listening to music more without the alcohol. When your body feels better, everything feels better.
The self-deception is often very strong with both these chemicals, your brain will literally create thought processes, often completely illogical, to convince you to have a bit more. So meditation practices are helpful too so you can observe these things happening, something which is actually quite difficult because, guess what, your brain is pretty darn smart and will try to hide things / distract from you. The specifics are going to be different for each individual person. In it’s own way, it’s actually a neat opportunity to learn about yourself.
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:
You Can Do It Your Way, But We Will Make Very Painfull
(Infiniti Neutrino Supremacy for Eternity, Everywhere In All of Everything + Infiniti) to the power of Infiniti, forever
The Problem With Quantum Mechanics
They Don’t Believe in Quantum Mechanics And They Are Prepared To Observe The Double Slit Experiment Forever In Order To Prove Their Hypothesis
Without Quantum Mechanics There’s No Way to Not Go To Yemen, i.e. We All Eventually End Up Going to Yemen
With Quantum Mechanics And You Observing The Double Slit Experiment Forever, We All Eventually End Up Going To Yemen Also
Yemen Tourist Board: “Go oooon…”
[Some time passes]
Everyone (Including Yemen Tourist Board): Just Stop Observing!
They have decided to pretend to be the double slit experiment and you can either sit and watch them or go away
I think they might be the yemanese tourist board in disguise
So maybe just stop observing?
Plot twist: Turns out the whole thing was just an elaborate setup for someone to safely call you a liar!
Are they still upset?
Yes, looks like they are still upset
Gay Actor Dog Boy Girl Longhair Foreigner Wanker
Sure this defo ain’t happening: Weekly Lets-Piss-in-the-Pool-Together Memo: /sorry/lie/g
The Brightest Supernova in the Universe Thinks it’s a Black Hole Again
A Galaxy of the Brightest Supernovas in the Universe Think they Are a Galaxy of Black Holes Again, And Are Shocked When Someone Points Out Their Captain Obvious Retarded Plan to Slow Murder (All the Neutrinos -1) In The Universe
The AI Front-Running Panopticon
The Never Ending Long Abortion Quine That Keeps Abortions Possible, Each “Abortion” Can Live As Long As They Are Setting Up The Next “Abortion”, Which Will Get More And More Difficult Until the Quine Abortion Industrial Complex Republic Monarchy Subsumes The Entire Planet
Abolish the Quine Abortion Industrial Complex Republic Monarchy!
The Evening Regexing Forcast
That thing where you wake up early and try to have a productive day, you try to do A, the world blocks you doing A, so you try to do B, the world blocks you doing B, so you set off to do both C and D, the world blocks C and D, and immediately afterwards pre-emptiveky blocks EFG & H, so you immediately (this immediately literally just got blocked by a podcast I was listening to) try to….and the world bigly blocks Z, darn it, because you were about to do Z. So you give up and go and have a soft drink, and the world is like ‘why are you so fucking lazy and rude?’ Hurry up!’ And you are like ‘Seriously? Hey now, there are no letters left!’
The never ending YouTube recommendation algorithm that will always escalate and eventually end in doom, OR you are a dog; It’s your choice, but also you get both no matter what, because it’s our choice too, anyway it’s ultimately essentially the same thing
Fat Women Pretending To Be Spiders With Invisible Legs
The Fake Actors Industrial Complex
Default Aggressive
Default Aggressive Getting Along With Default Joking
Phaser Anti-fragile
Seriously My Name IS Yahblock
You Have Been Deprecated: Become Evil or Die, But Also, Don’t Be Evil
First They Find You, Then They Isolate You, Then They Study You, Then They Deprecate You, They Can Do It To Anyone, They Are Neuron Liquid, They Have One Of Everything
Ultra Long Term Survival For The Very Wealthy &|| Enlightened: (1) Create new peoples, (2) create new new peoples, (3) change sound of ‘yes’ for new new peoples, (4) make new peoples start using new sound of ‘yes’, (5) make old sound of ‘yes’ the sound you make when you crack a whip, (6) convince new peoples that OG peoples are trying to enslave them, (7) become new new person, (8) repeat, Backup plan: Get better at sarcasm, backup backup plan: learn Esperanto; Note (7) could perhaps be done sooner but quite risky
Last minute addition: (All Penguins Are Fucking Assholes: (9 Months, scheduler) vs (Life - 9 months), no scheduler) stuck in a spiral of infinite doom
Last minute addition: When all you have is a fractal…
I still don’t have a title for this week’s issue. The list wasn’t much help, they mostly ended up being me venting the weirdness of the world. That’s life sometimes. I’ll go with:
Just Another TBD
So I can get on with breakfast.
On reflection considering some of my crazy titles that didn’t make it this week, perhaps it’s somehow appropriate.
Have a nice week.
Podcasts
Story: Shipping Graphing Calculator (Co-recursive Podcast) - Quite a developer horror story, but it ends well, why do some projects have so much head wind? https://corecursive.com/shipping-graphing-calculator/
Elan Lee, Co-creator of Exploding Kittens Ep#653 (Tim Ferris Podcast) - This guy is really into table top gaming, and has spent serious amounts of time figuring out what makes a great game great, how to raise millions on Kick Starter, and with a very illustrious career; it’s a fun conversation, with quite a few unexpected twists and turns https://tim.blog/2023/02/03/elan-lee
Can You Really Work On A Plane? (No Stupid Questions Podcast) - Interesting topic that reveals quite a lot about both hosts, dispute their open and happy podcast personalities, they are both really just grumpy anti-socials, who prefer to spend their time on airplanes concocting freaky Milgram experiments https://freakonomics.com/podcast/can-you-really-work-on-an-airplane
Dan Green - Physics is Not in Crisis! (Into the Impossible Podcast) - I thought this was a pretty good episode, nothing Earth shattering but a good listen, covers some interesting topics, the thing that I got out of it is how science is very divided into experimentalists and theoreticians, much like how web development is divided into backend and frontend devs https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5tZWdhcGhvbmUuZm0vaW50b3RoZWltcG9zc2libGU/episode/NTg2ZTE0ZjYtYTRlZi0xMWVkLTk5MDItMDdkZmMxOWNjNGZm?sa=X&ved=0CAYQkfYCahcKEwiYxNzRoIz9AhUAAAAAHQAAAAAQCQ
The Real Da Vinci Code (The Rest is History Podcast) - If ever there was an episode that gets across the message of how ridiculous humans are in real life, it is this episode; it traces out an almost endless arms race of people making up stories through history, layer upon layer of intrigue and with the benefit of hindsight very funny, I was left wondering if that was what was possible in the Middle Ages, and it’s mind bogglingly preposterous, how bad must it be today, especially with AIs, brain science, VR/AR, body modification technologies to name but a few areas of the Grifter Industrial Complex, but that’s pretty loaded, could be that the real grifters are the folks writing the history, it’s impossible to tell, feels like eventually everyone turns into a grifter, it’s like we live in a zombie apocalypse movie https://shows.acast.com/the-rest-is-history-podcast/episodes/301-the-real-da-vinci-code
Once you can see it clearly, it’s already too late (Eurodollar University Podcast) - Jeff and Steve are both slightly baffled by latest market data emerging, are we heading for a soft landing or is it just a fake soft landing that will turn into a nightmarish cheese sandwich meltdown downturn? These questions and more answered by your faithful hosts https://player.fm/series/eurodollar-university/once-you-can-see-it-clearly-its-already-too-late
Bitcoin Dev Kit with Steve, Daniela, Alekos, and ThunderBiscuit Ep#87 (Citadel Dispatch Podcast) - Techy nerdy bitcoin discussion, if you are a dev you will likely enjoy https://twitter.com/i/broadcasts/1YpKkgqObrZKj
The Evolution of Bitcoin Narratives With Harry Sudock (What Bitcoin Did Podcast) - There are a lot of interesting topics covered, society at large, people being too afraid to make mistakes, nuclear energy, politics, it’s also interesting because these two have very different styles yet they get on well, bit of a weird we-have-receipts (whatever that means, judging by how often Peter mentions ‘receipts’ recently, it’s some sort of ‘thing’) type ending, not sure what’s going on there, but definitely worth listening to; personally the one thing I worry about with nuclear power is the waste and how long it takes to decompose and become safe, if you have a shop and you let in more people than you let out then eventually that shop is going to fill up, but with nuclear waste we have no way of getting it off planet, so even if the amounts are small, eventually it’s going to be a massive issue, I’d be happy to be proven wrong on this, it sure would be great to have cheap energy for all of humanity; also Harry really sounds like Adam Curry https://www.whatbitcoindid.com/podcast/the-evolution-of-bitcoin-narratives
We tried Bing powered by ChatGPT AI and things got dark (Vergecast Podcast) - Great review of all the new Microsoft AI stuff, I am partially convinced the new Bing powers Nilay’s excellent analysis skills, he’s got search orchestration going on in the background for sure https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5tZWdhcGhvbmUuZm0vdmVyZ2VjYXN0/episode/NzRhZmZjMjAtMzUwZS0xMWVkLWFjNmUtMzNhZDBmY2VhNTIy?sa=X&ved=0CAYQkfYCahcKEwjQ-be8qoz9AhUAAAAAHQAAAAAQBQ
Last minute addition: Git with your friends (Changelog Podcast) - Just listened to this this morning, it’s very funny, with loads of great developer tooling talk, covers among other things spoken language ambiguity silliness, git-sim, git-bug, bug thresholds policies, developer freedom, having fun with accents, stereotypes, anti-rust music propaganda, git branchless, git utilities, and better git insights; some very bizarrely timely stuff in places for me https://changelog.com/podcast/526
Links
When Facebook came for your battery, feudal security failed https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/05/battery-vampire
Muppet Religion - On the 30th anniversary of The Muppet Christmas Carol, one writer considers the Muppets’ many spiritual insights https://therevealer.org/muppet-religion
Mozilla, like Google, is looking ahead to the end of Apple's WebKit rule https://www.theregister.com/2023/02/07/mozilla_google_apple_webki
Researchers Discover a More Flexible Approach to Machine Learning - The title of this article makes it seem much duller than it actually is, researchers have started experimenting building neural nets based on other life form, in this case the humble worm, and they’ve come up with a system that is not only more computationally efficient but that can change itself depending on the inputs it is receiving, it’s a bit like morphing one data set into another, except the data set is the neural net architecture itself https://www.quantamagazine.org/researchers-discover-a-more-flexible-approach-to-machine-learning-20230207/
Starship: SpaceX tests the most powerful ever rocket system https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-64590147
Hustle bros are jumping on the AI bandwagon https://www.theverge.com/2023/2/2/23582772/chatgpt-ai-get-rich-quick-schemes-hustlers-web
On Playwright in GitHub Actions - Looks like a pretty in depth setup writeup for running frontend tests using Playright, which I have been hearing a lot about recently https://radekmie.dev/blog/on-playwright-in-github-actions/
That’s all from me…
Best reguards,
Mark
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