Saturday 27th May, 2023 - Gifs, culture, media, AI & vegetables (Issue #116)
Another week of great javascript, tech and web development links
Hello and welcome to my newsletter!
Another season 2 instalment…
Note: I had to update the issue numbering because some of the initial issues were not included. This was first published as issue #98, updated to issue #116.
I feel like I’ve been pulled in several competing directions this week while putting together this issue. I’m going to keep the intro short to try to avoid getting into a muddle. It’s mostly podcasts this week, though I have tentatively started posting regular links to the linkblog again, so I’ll include some of those.
This week’s ssg development has been incredibly difficult because I’ve been cleaning up data but having to do it on my mobile device is almost impossible. Evidently I ran into memory and processor limitations while merging somewhere in the region of 16000 markdown files, the editor started to freeze and crash. I ended up getting completely stuck in a feature branch, unable to switch or revert, the app just kept crashing.
I spent several days patiently waiting for the unresponsive UI to do something, while trying to not accidentally delete important data. Harder said than done when literally everything is stuck. I think I’ve gotten it resolved, but now I’ve almost used all my free build minutes for this month, and the atrocious internet connectivity that I have has been making the whole thing even worse. Total bloody nightmare. The actual real world around me has been basically mirroring the whole situation, which I know sounds weird, but that’s what happens.
Anyhow enough about that, here are the podcasts and links…
Podcasts
Montana bans Tik Tok. Also FREE TV (Vergecast Podcast) - There a lot in this somewhat bumpy episode, that is surprisingly cohesive in retrospect, topics include Twitter, section 230, content recommendation & terrorism, copyright, fair use, Andy Warhol & AI, the logistics of banning a social media in just one state, the very varied social media platform cultures, EU AI regulation, Sam Altman in front of congress proposing an AI regulation agency, cultural destruction and the impact of regulation on social media, and platform cultures as the ultimate technology company moat because “you can’t port a culture”. https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5tZWdhcGhvbmUuZm0vdmVyZ2VjYXN0/episode/NzVlNGQyMDAtMzUwZS0xMWVkLWFjNmUtOTc3MjY2ZjVkNmI3?sa=X&ved=0CAYQkfYCahcKEwjwy8WY3JT_AhUAAAAAHQAAAAAQNg
Simon Johnson on Banking, Technology and Prosperity (Conversations With Tyler Podcast) - This doesn’t delve into recent criticisms of the IMF, particularly in Bitcoin circles, but I found this to be an interesting and clear headed discussion nonetheless with some interesting questions asked about bank size, governance, developing countries, AI and ChatGPT, tech giants loosing market share, impact of social media on society and culture, economics of cathedrals in the Middle Ages, collaborative editing documents while on a plane, irish leadership, importance of institutions, the british parliamentary system, science fiction and the metaverse https://conversationswithtyler.com/episodes/simon-johnson
Meet the media insider who makes Succession feel real (Recode Media Podcast) - Interview with speciality media mogul journalist Merissa Marr who became a consultant making sure the script writers made something realistic and authentic. This episode fits in well with last weeks narrative/theme about the recent series of failing digital media companies. https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5tZWdhcGhvbmUuZm0vcmVjb2RlbWVkaWE/episode/OWZhOWNkY2UtMzUwNS0xMWVkLTgzZTgtNWZkZTRlOTk3ZmQy?sa=X&ved=0CAYQkfYCahgKEwjwy8WY3JT_AhUAAAAAHQAAAAAQzQQ
Microsoft CTO Kevin Scott on AI co-pilots, disagreeing with OpenAI and Sidney making a comeback (Decoder Podcast) - I’m usually not too into Microsoft stuff because I’ve had much more of a unix/linux/osx career, but this was a great interview, they are doing a lot of cool AI things at the minute, Kevin Scott also sounds a lot like Andrew Baron who was the guy behind Rocketboom, which I mentioned in a blog post last week, it’s mind boggling to me how often such synchronicities happen to me. https://www.theverge.com/23733388/microsoft-kevin-scott-open-ai-chat-gpt-bing-github-word-excel-outlook-copilots-sydney
Shuttlecock Nabs Giphy 05/22 (Techneme Ride Home Podcast) - The title story is of course interesting to anyone that’s seen the evolution of discourse on the web these past 10-15 years, but there’s also an interesting segment about Max and it’s new emphasis on 4K content which will be the standard going forward, as they have upgraded their production workflows, IMO ultimately this is what’s going to count in how effective they are going forward rather than the name change. https://www.ridehome.info/show/techmeme-ride-home/tue-0523-shutterstock-nabs-giphy
Exciting! Exciting! Exciting! (JS Party Podcast) - The programmer equivalent of vegetables in this week’s podcast selection, but they are quite fancy vegetables, fried in a wok with garlick, soy sauce, a sprinkle of typescript, and possibly also a few lards of bacon. It occurs to me as I write this that it’s probably dinner time about now. https://changelog.com/jsparty/277
Links
View Transitions make it possible to create web apps that feel more like native apps https://daverupert.com/2023/05/getting-started-view-transitions
Meta sells modern web darling Giphy for bargain price following UK antitrust order https://techcrunch.com/2023/05/23/meta-sells-giphy-to-shutterstock-for-53m-after-uk-divestment-order
Regular expressions in Javascript - Great if you are learning or a quick refresher, well written and with good examples https://www.honeybadger.io/blog/javascript-regular-expressions
These new modular open source hardware laptops from Framework sound amazing, my only gripe is that 16 inch is just a bit too big for traveling and 13 inch is just a bit too small for web development, but I’d love to try one https://frame.work/nl/en/blog/introducing-the-framework-laptop-16
laurent22/joplin - Open source note taking and to-do application with synchronisation capabilities for Windows, macOS, Linux, Android and iOS. Notes are searchable, can be copied, tagged and modified either from the applications directly or from your own text editor, and notes are saved in Markdown format. Looks impressively comprehensive. https://github.com/laurent22/joplin
For more links like this, check out the daily linkblog:
https://markjgsmith.com/links
Starvation days this week: 4
Thirst days this week: 1
That’s all from me…
Best reguards,
Mark
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Have a great weekend and a fantastic next week!