Saturday 26th February, 2022 - Branding, marketing, the future of tech and cyberwar

Another week of great javascript, tech and web development links

Hello and welcome to my newsletter!

Another season 2 instalment…

I’ve been so thirsty, you don’t realise how great water is until you haven’t got any to drink. Thirst is the worst!

That’s me, taken just now as I finish up this, the fourth edition of 2022. I’ll no doubt be smiling a bit more later when I get some water to drink. Here’s a smile emojis :)

I’ve written 3 blog posts this week:

• Next generation tools and workflows for the creator economy - Reviewing an interesting Smashing Magazine article all about markdown and the future of content writing, editing and automation

• Changes to the blog and newsletter - A quick note about recent changes to the blog and newsletter

• The Mirror - A story about life, and perhaps priorities

I haven’t had a chance to collect much in the way of javascript links this week, but I really enjoyed these two podcasts:

The retail reset (Another Podcast Podcast)

Benedict and Toni do sone great analysis of the possible futures of tech, as we find ourselves in a sort of pre-metaverse limbo. I particularly like their analysis because it’s from an angle I don’t spend much time thinking about. Namely tech but through the lense of marketing and branding. They also talk briefly about Belgian waffles. I’m kinda hungry today, so that sounds amazing.

Nicole Perlroth: Cybersecurity and the Weapons of Cyberwar - Ep #266 (Lex Fridman Podcast)

I’m not at all interested in this area of computing, I’m a webdev guy through and through, but I found it a pretty fascinating conversation nonetheless. One thing that I’ve become much more acutely aware of living in Asia for a number of years is the breadth of what is possible in the social engineering side of the equation. It’s much more just part of everyday life, how people talk and interact, often subtle, easy to miss. It’s not necessarily always bad; in the same way that there are black hats / white hats in cyber. But it could be, and that’s what’s scary.

I honestly don’t know how I feel about it. A lot of times when I figure out what happened in such a situation, the developer in me thinks, dam that was kind of clever. I guess I’m impressed by high skill in any profession or pass-time. Sometimes it’s just someone trying to make contact through the haze of cultural and class differences, other times it seems very malicious. I do know though that they have social engineerings that you can’t even imagine yet. It’s literally insane.

We really really really need to all find ways to avoid cyberwars. Not just by a tiny bit either. There is way too much cruelty in the world already. Cyberwars might not be bloody, but they will be very very unpleasant, in ways none of us can imagine yet. They will affect everything, not just tech. All our future happinesses depends on it.

That’s all from me…

Best reguards,

Mark

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Thanks for reading!

@markjgsmith

If you liked this newsletter you might like my blog, daily linkblog or experimental podcast :)

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Have a great weekend and a fantastic next week!