Saturday 4th May, 2024 - Incredible Devs (Issue #162)
US attacks crypto, government deficits good, buddhism, ugly buildings, visual storytelling, BTC powered elections, WP for lightning, indie podcast development, SSR web components, and communism
Hello and welcome to my newsletter!
Another season 2 instalment…
Tons of great content in this week’s issue.
It feels to me like it’s ended up being a very developer focussed edition. Developers are being arrested simply for writing code, but they are fighting back, they are also making elections more verifiable, improving tech communication via visual storytelling, building cool projects using Wordpress style frameworks for Lightning, making podcasting even better, and finding ways to improve native web platform features. All this and more in this week’s podcasts.
With my Github build minutes having reset, I’ve picked back up development of my static site generator. Running out of minutes is so disruptive each time it happens and causes knock on effects, but I’m making some headway into fixing some issues with how post archives are rendering. There’s a bug that’s causing deploy times to increase.
It feels like I’m quite close to fixing it, and when it’s fixed I should be well on my way to the interleaved posts homepage that I’ve been mentioning for what feels like many months. I’ve also got to return to the work I’d been doing to move to re-usable workflows for build, deploy and backup. It really will be awesome when all repos are using the same workflows. It will be so much easier to maintain.
So as you can probably tell, lots going on. It feels good to be coding again, even if the world has sent me headwinds. It’s like clockwork, everytime I start backup developing after a build minutes situation, weird things start happening as I’m trying to code. Groups of strange people turning up, with their own portable chairs and table, proceeding to have loud arguments, motorbike drive-by harassment increases, the world starts to block me in all sorts of ways.
Anyway, I’ll probably be ok today, but for the upcoming week, I have no idea how I’m going to fare. The world sure does feel very very war pathy at the minute.
Podcasts
David Nichtern (Duncan Trussell Podcast) - This was one of the most fun Trussell episodes I've listened to in quite a while. They go on a meandering conversational trip pondering the bifurcation between some neutral reality situation and what you bring to the table in your mind. How different people can experience the very same situation entirely differently, some seing Nirvana (heaven) while others are experiencing Samsara (hell). It’s a great conversation with lots of delightful anecdotes and examples. Totally worth the price of admission, which is about an hour of your time. Absolute bargain and perhaps a nice break from the tech grind. https://www.duncantrussell.com/episodes/2024/4/27/unlocked-david-nichtern
Professor Tim Spectre, scientist (Desert Island Discs Podcast) - Pretty normal scientist bloke who managed to achieve quite a lot over his career. Diet and health, the fascinating gut microbiome, twins genetic research, Professor of Genetic Epidemiology at Kings College London, founder of the Twins UK Registry, book author, tech entrepreneur, and amateur fermenter. He had quite an unusual and interesting career journey, which they talk about, interspersed with a surprisingly good music selection of tracks that inspired him along the way. https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001xvl5
Why Government Deficit is a Good Thing, Are Algorithms Controlling Our Tastes? (The Daily Show Podcast) - There’s a segment with professor, Stephanie Kelton on making monetary theory approcheable to the every-man/woman. Also a segment all about internet culture, with Filterworld author Kyle Chayka. I think it's notable that monetary theory is now cool. This definitely was not the case when I was growing up. Even if you don't agree with the thesis, that deficits are good, the mere fact that it's in the consciousness of the general population is a net benefit. Also Chieng's faux useful idiot questions are both hilarius and insightful. He totally nails it. It's like he's been burned before trying to understand money, and is trying to step through the algorythm extremly carefully from file1/line1. Something every programmer can relate to. Good, bad, happiness, that's got to be somewhere close to file1/line1. Kyle Chayka is excellent too, I find all his interviews are brilliant. He's so insightful about modern internet culture, aesthetics and other very esoteric things that I suspect he's actually secretly a physicist or buddist monk, or both. https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cub21ueWNvbnRlbnQuY29tL2QvcGxheWxpc3QvZTczYzk5OGUtNmU2MC00MzJmLTg2MTAtYWUyMTAxNDBjNWIxL2U1ZTQ5ZjkxLWJlOWItNDJmMS1hNDI2LWFlM2MwMDAyNmU4Yi8wNGI1MWMzNC04MDI4LTQ5YTMtYjQyZi1hZTNjMDAwMjZlOTUvcG9kY2FzdC5yc3M/episode/MmIyMzRjMTMtYTgwYS00OWIyLTg0N2EtYjE1ZTAxMjVlOWVh?sa=X&ved=0CAYQkfYCahcKEwjIr9uh_PKFAxUAAAAAHQAAAAAQOA
Why It Is Inevitable That Modern Buildings Will Be Ugly (Flying Frisby Podcast) - Dominic makes the case, quite convincingly, that modern buildings will always be much uglier than those from times gone by because of the metric system. This is something I totally hadn’t considered before, but I think his logic stands up. The metric system is based on the Earth’s circumference whereas traditional weights and measures were based around the human body. Using a measurement system based on the human body inevitably leads to aesthetically pleasing design because we are genetically programmed to like the proportions. There’s a bunch more to it of course and Dominic does a fine and eloquent job of outlining the details. Short and sweet, and very interesting.
Maggie Appleton - Visual Storytelling in Tech, Designing for AI, and the Future of Coding (Devtools.fm Podcast) Maggie is a proponent of personal website gardening, a way to manage a personal knowledge base online. She’s also a blend of graphics designer and developer, and has a really good handle on how to effectively communicate technical topics using visual mediums. I liked this episode because it highlights that tech isn’t all about geeky programming and algorithms, there’s a huge and important human component involved that us programmers sometimes forget about. Local first development, designing for AI, and coding tools. Refreshingly curious, and with a penchant for structured thinking in an area that isn’t known for that. Great episode. https://www.devtools.fm/episode/96
Using Bitcoin to Make Elections More Secure With Carlos Toriello Ep#128 (Citadel Dispatch Podcast) - Carlos is from Guatemala and has first hand experience running elections the old school way, with paper ballots. He has made a proposal called Digital Witness, which is a way to audit elections using timestamps on the Bitcoin blockchain. The interesting thing about the project is that it doesn’t seek to change the existing voting system, but merely to enhance it, adding verifiability to key steps, as well as some OCR automation. It also seeks to minimise the impact on the blockchain with quite an interesting design. The digital workflow builder in me really found this episode and use case very appealing, great use of modern tech that could improve our everyday lives. https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9zZXJ2ZS5wb2Rob21lLmZtL3Jzcy9jOTBlNjA5YS1kZjFlLTU5NmEtYmQ1ZS01N2JjYzhhYWQ2Y2M/episode/OTRmYzY5N2QtNDc3My00YzBkLWFiNjItNTkyNmU3MTI2MmVm?sa=X&ved=0CAUQkfYCahgKEwjIr9uh_PKFAxUAAAAAHQAAAAAQzQc
First They Came for Samourai with Seth for Privacy & Bitcoin Q+A (What Bitcoin Did Podcast) - Discussion about the recent arrest of the Samurai wallet developers, who are being charged with money laundering and money transmission, even though the self custody wallet that they build never takes procession of any funds. There appears to be a move by some parts of the US government to clamp down on Bitcoin as a medium of exchange. These new attempted classifications of Bitcoin businesses could affect many of Bitcoin’s key freedom related features by an effective ban on self custody. https://www.whatbitcoindid.com/podcast/first-they-came-for-samourai
Why ConsenSys is Suing the SEC | Joseph Lubin & Matt Corva (Bankless Podcast) - There’s a coordinated effort by the securities and exchange commission (SEC) to go after many of the biggest names in crypto including Kraken, Coinbase, Uniswap, Metamask and looks to be trying to classify all non-custodial wallets into broker dealers. Now they are apparently threatening Etherium core developers. This episode is an interview with the founder and legal council of ConsenSys that have decided to take the SEC to court in order to get regulatory clarification. It’s an interesting discussion, covering all the important angles of this latest government assault on crypto currencies. https://www.bankless.com/why-consensys-is-suing-the-sec-joseph-lubin-matt-corva
Lnbits, Bitcoin and Nostr with Ben Arc Ep#130 (Citadel Dispatch Podcast) - I haven’t quite finished listening to this episode. It gets quite technical so I’ve been listening in shorter stints, trying to find quiet times in my day so I can fully concentrate. Ben develops LNBits which is essentially an API for lightning nodes. It’s similar to how Wordpress is a platform for developing websites, but for developing Lighting based integrations. He has all sorts of cool examples from DIY Jukeboxes, to self service community electronic ad boards. There’s also some really interesting discussion around Nostr for IoT projects, the increase in Orwellian home listening devices, and building a marketplace for making and developing freedom tech. https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9zZXJ2ZS5wb2Rob21lLmZtL3Jzcy9jOTBlNjA5YS1kZjFlLTU5NmEtYmQ1ZS01N2JjYzhhYWQ2Y2M/episode/Y2UxNTJiYzgtODg2OC00M2U2LTk2M2YtYmI1ODkxYWU4OGY3?sa=X&ved=0CAUQkfYCahgKEwjIr9uh_PKFAxUAAAAAHQAAAAAQzQc
Castro leans into indie Ep#589 (Changelog Interviews Podcast) - Dustin Bluck, previously a longtime employee of Instagram, decided to get into the indie developer scene by buying the Castro podcast client. It’s a really interesting conversation about podcasting in general, podcasting 2.0, developing indie software from a tech perspective but also from the business side. Lots of useful and practical information about what it’s like buying and taking over a small digital asset business. Also stuff about making money, open source, Android vs iOS, and more. Perhaps a viable late stage career alternative to buying and running a restaurant or farm. https://changelog.com/podcast/589
SSR web components for all (JS Party Podcast) - Interview with Brian LeRoux developer of Enhance, a WASM based framework for building websites using web components, which interestingly supports server side rendering (SSR), something which until now hasn’t been possible for web components. There’s a lot of interesting discussion about web development in general, web components, and example apps. I’m wondering now if there would be a way to integrate it into my static site generator. Could be pretty cool. https://changelog.com/jsparty/321
Communism Is Infiltrating the World BECAUSE of Economies (Eurodollar University Podcast) - Makes the case that marxists, communists and socialists don’t disagree that capitalism generates wealth, but that they believe the capitalist system inevitably fails and will need to be taken over by them, with them taking over the wealth and re-distributing it. It’s something that has happened before and happens each time capitalism runs into difficulties. It’s all just part of a mega cycle that world economies go through in a hyper-connected, globally synchronised world. https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy50cmFuc2lzdG9yLmZtL21ha2luZy1zZW5zZQ/episode/ZWM5NTcyY2EtZTcxMC00N2Y3LTk5MjUtMGM1ZTU2NzQ4ZjM3?sa=X&ved=0CAYQkfYCahcKEwiQ1u2c_vKFAxUAAAAAHQAAAAAQCg
That’s all from me…
Best reguards,
Mark
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