Tuesday 21st March, 2023 - Mid-week special: Catching up

Another week of great javascript, tech and web development links

It’s been a colossal week in tech, particularly on the finance side of things. Lots of funding problems for tech companies because of issues in the banking sector. Governments and central banks have stepped in to ensure things keep ticking along. But folks are kind of spooked. It’s difficult to sort hyperbole from reality, there are a lot of vested interests. This comes at the same time as a wave of AI software is taking the world by storm.

I suspect a lot more will ultimately need to be found to help the folks in trouble. How that happens, and what the safest way to do that is unclear. Move too quickly and we break the existing fragile system, move too slowly and people will continue to suffer. And a lot of people are suffering. Are we ready to accept that it will take 1000X, possibly a lot more, to get things to a stable place? That’s the reality.

It’s a very difficult time.

Things for me have been particularly narly, and last week’s issue suffered considerably, hence this midweek special with a bunch of the links and podcasts that I had planned to include but had to be jettisoned just to be sure something got sent out.

I’ve also removed most finance / monetary system / bitcoin stuff because I’m conscious that the last few issues have been way too much in that arena and way too little about web development. The finance stuff is super interesting, and right now is definitely the best time to learn all about that, it’s fascinating, but it ain’t tech, javascript and the web.

I recommend subscribing to some of those podcasts in your podcast client of choice, if you are still interested in those topics. You’ll find many of those shows in the past few issues. These are important topics to be aware of, especially if you plan on running a business in the future.

I suspect I’ll need to do the same for AI related content some time in the future, but for now that stuff is what’s happening in tech even if it isn’t web development related much of the time.

I hope you find something interesting in this week’s podcasts and links…

Podcasts

• Reliable Serverless Functions with Tony Holdstock-Brown of Inngest Ep#121 (Jamstack Radio Podcast) https://www.heavybit.com/library/podcasts/jamstack-radio/ep-121-reliable-serverless-functions-with-tony-holdstock-brown-of-inngest/

• Spotify’s Redesign, Streaming Boxes Suck, and Gigi Sohn withdraws from FCC nominations (Vergecast Podcast) https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5tZWdhcGhvbmUuZm0vdmVyZ2VjYXN0/episode/NzRmY2JiMTQtMzUwZS0xMWVkLWFjNmUtYzMxY2IyMmNhZThj?sa=X&ved=0CAYQkfYCahcKEwjQv43vtuz9AhUAAAAAHQAAAAAQBQ

• Celebrating Eleventy 2.0 Ep#266 (JS Party Podcast) https://changelog.com/jsparty/266

• Fine Hypertext Products with Jason Kottke Ep#370 (The Talk Show Podcast) https://daringfireball.net/thetalkshow/2023/03/11/ep-370

• The Business of War (Flying Frisby Podcast)

The Business of War

• David Sedaris, writer (Desert Island Disks Podcast) https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001j3ld

• Who Owns the Internet of the Future? (TED Talks Daily) https://www.ted.com/talks/ordinary_things_who_owns_the_internet_of_the_future?rss=172BB350-0207

• Sam Harris Ep#365 (Trump, Pandemic, Twitter, Elon, Bret, IDW, Kanye, AIs and UFOs (Lex Fridman Podcast) https://lexfridman.com/sam-harris-2/

• The Goliath is Amazon: After 100 years Barnes and Noble Wants to Go Back to It’s Indie Roots (Decoder Podcast) https://www.theverge.com/23642104/barnes-and-noble-amazon-bookshop-ecommerce-decoder-podcast

Links

• Government to meet tech firms following collapse of Silicon Valley Bank UK https://stocks.apple.com/Audt09vrdSDqNJrTR5oDWXw

• HSBC swoops in to rescue UK arm of Silicon Valley Bank https://www.bbc.com/news/business-64937251

• The fault, dear VCs, is not in your stars https://www.ft.com/content/6ba95c9b-9be6-4d62-b4ac-b12e1e7ed68e

• Rishi Sunak: China represents challenge to world order https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-64943445

• Silicon Valley Bank: Global bank stocks slump despite Biden reassuranceshttps://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-64935170

• Ask HN: Has your view of Silicon Valley changed in the last 72 hours?https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35146563

• Meta announces plans to stop working on NFTs https://www.theblock.co/post/219462/meta-announces-plans-to-stop-working-on-nfts

• US court rules Uber and Lyft workers are contractors https://www.bbc.com/news/business-64947695

• Introducing Microsoft Dynamics 365 Copilot, the world’s first copilot in both CRM and ERP, that brings next-generation AI to every line of businesshttps://blogs.microsoft.com/blog/2023/03/06/introducing-microsoft-dynamics-365-copilot

• WhatsApp: Rather be blocked in UK than weaken security https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-64863448

• Elon Musk thinks Twitter has “a shot at being cash flow positive next quarter.” https://www.theverge.com/2023/3/7/23629442/elon-musk-thinks-twitter-has-a-shot-at-being-cash-flow-positive-next-quarter

• Web Stable Diffusion This project brings stable diffusion models to web browsers. Everything runs inside the browser with no need of server support https://mlc.ai/web-stable-diffusion

• Paul Graham on Twitter: "We can't all use AI. Someone has to generate the training data."

Paul Graham @paulg

We can't all use AI. Someone has to generate the training data.

• Low Background Steel For AI - Some known good data https://lowbackgroundsteel.ai

• OpenAI announces GPT-4 AI language model https://www.theverge.com/2023/3/14/23638033/openai-gpt-4-chatgpt-multimodal-deep-learning

• Google announces AI features in Gmail, Docs, and more to rival Microsoft https://www.theverge.com/2023/3/14/23639273/google-ai-features-docs-gmail-slides-sheets-workspace

• Kottke.org Is 25 Years Old Today and I’m Going to Write About It https://kottke.org/23/03/kottke-is-25-years-old-today

• William says Diana would be disappointed at level of homelessnesshttps://www.bbc.com/news/uk-64970278

• TikTok: UK ministers banned from using Chinese-owned app on government phones https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-64975672

• Bandcamp United - Employees of the music social media site have unionised, it’s important because the site  is very influential in the music/bands/gigs space https://www.bandcampunited.org