Saturday 20th January, 2024 - Quite Quiet (Issue #150)
Sort of a quiet week but still a few interesting and important topics: Bitcoin scaling, HTMX, regulation in the EU and open source AI.
Hello and welcome to my newsletter!
Another season 2 instalment…
There’s stuff going on of course but for some reason there seems to be a bit of a content lul this week. I’ve listened to quite a lot of podcasts this week, but to be honest, there haven’t really been that many that stood out as noteworthy.
I’ve also been really quite ill this week, so perhaps that’s worth factoring in. I don’t mind slow news weeks, you can often find time to explore fun stuff in such times. But when it coincides with continuously coughing flem for hours on end, that’s not really an option, especially if you have to use the internet while standing, as I do. At the minute if I stand for too long I literally get dizzy.
The only tech story I’m at all interested in is the Vision Pro, and even that’s more of a peripheral curiosity. There isn’t a whole lot of interesting information available yet. It’s just technical mumbo jumbo and is a giant yawn after a while. The one somewhat disheartening thing I heard, I think it was on the Techmeme Ride Home Podcast was that they haven’t really invested a lot of time to create some apps that make you go wow. So it might be a little underwhelming on release if you are expecting something more than just watching movies. But who knows, maybe I’ve got that all wrong, maybe it will be awesome from day 1. That’s why it’s peripherally interesting and intriguing.
As for my static site generator development, I decided to pause on new features and do a bit of a re-organisation. It’s worth doing this every now and then. Especially if you are about the make some big changes. My instinct was that the setup was a bit too inflexible for the new interleaved posts homepage. So I’m midway through the re-org. The beginning was quite simple and formulaic but now I have to update the build and deploy workflows, and that’s going to take a bit of precision.
After the re-org it will be much easier to test out small ideas, which will make finding the right development paths less risky.
Enough preamble…here are the podcasts…
Update: After writing this issue it’s apparent the already practically impossible Substack interface just got even more worse. There is now an “Ask a question” button that is directly ontop of the settings button. So it’s literally impossible to open the settings now. I have no idea if I’ll be able to schedule this issue.
Podcasts
htmx: a new old way to build the web (JS Party Podcast) - It’s kind of odd, yet also kind of cool. I’m still not completely convinced but definitely more interested than before. I’m waiting to read some good example tutorials before making my mind up. The only htmx related thing I read since listening to this episode was kind of boring and convoluted. I’m not mad about the name to be honest, but if it’s great tech then that shouldn’t matter. Definitely worth being aware of, and it’s a good in depth discussion. https://changelog.com/jsparty/307
The Economics of Bitcoin Scaling with Lyn Alden (What Bitcoin Did Podcast) - It’s strange, Lynn Alden is clearly super knowledgeable of financial / money topics, but for whatever reason my brain always found it difficult to concentrate on what she was saying. I literally have no idea why this happened. I’ve written about this before. Anyway I’ve listened to her many many times now, and all that stuff appears to have completely disappeared. And of course my instinct was right, not only is her analysis spot on but, her way of explaining things is invaluable. Brains are so weird sometimes. This episode is all about scaling, and it’s an important topic. I’ve been pleasantly surprised that bitcoiners have been willing to talk about the topic in depth. There’s a lot of nuance, and I think for some that might be very important information. I’m not completely settled on layer 2’s and scaling but this episode clarified a lot of things for me. https://www.whatbitcoindid.com/podcast/the-economics-of-bitcoin-scaling
An exit interview with Europe’s most powerful privacy regulator (Politico Tech Podcast) - Though I had heard of some of the people involved, I wasn’t aware of how things are currently structured. This is definitely worth being aware of because it’s a significant change in how tech is going to be regulated in the EU. https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5zaW1wbGVjYXN0LmNvbS95MnJxWWJwNA/episode/YjViYTEzMjgtNGY4Ni00MjBmLWJiNWYtNTA0ZTlmODBlMzFm?sa=X&ved=0CAYQkfYCahcKEwjAo6mE0-qDAxUAAAAAHQAAAAAQNg
Albert Wenger: A venture capitalist imagines a world after capital (Keen On Podcast) - “We are in this stupid tribal dialog now where if you say ‘hey just open sourcing everything right now without thinking about how that technology can be abused, and what kind of society we need so we can open source all this technology’. If you say this, then you get accused of being some sort of deccelerationist, or a neo-ludite of some form.” - I thought this was a particularly interesting way of thinking about the problem. Bizarrely the day before I watched this, I crossed eyes with a bloke in a taxi that was a total Albert Wenger doppelgänger. It always amazes me how often this sort of thing happens to me. Anyhow, it’s worth a listen / watch. https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy56ZW5jYXN0ci5jb20vZi9QSWFNTl9BZC5yc3M/episode/MmY0ZDRjODgtODk2Mi00NzBjLTg1YTgtZmI5NWE4ZTdiYWNh?sa=X&ved=0CAUQkfYCahgKEwjAo6mE0-qDAxUAAAAAHQAAAAAQpAU
Links
Lots of interesting links this week. You can find them all by scrolling up. Please check them out:
https://markjgsmith.com/links/2024/01/#14Jan2024
Notes
The new permalinks also work for notes, you can see them all here. There quite a lot of difficult stuff in this week’s notes. That’s how it is sometimes. Again to see the notes for the whole week just scroll up:
https://markjgsmith.com/notes/2024/01/#13Jan2024
That’s all from me…
Best reguards,
Mark
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Have a great weekend and a fantastic next week!