Saturday 8th June, 2024 - Collaborating on a Rocky Road (Issue #167)
Crypto going mainstream, belgians on bitcoin, the etherium vs solana debate, another open source rug pull, superintelligence and digital collaboration in VFX
Another season 2 instalment…
When I started putting this issue together yesterday, I noticed that I had only starred 2 episodes in my podcast player this week. I think that’s partly because I’ve been blogging a lot recently, so I guess I’ve shifted a bit how my time is taken up. It might be that I didn’t listen to as many podcasts as a result. I went back through what I’d listened to and found several that were actually rather a good listen but for whatever reason I hadn’t starred them.
The theme is definitely crypto and AI at the minute. Crypto appears to be making massive strides to becoming mainstream, with it becoming a major point in the US elections. Both parties have realised the crypto vote represents a sizeable amount of the electorate, so they have started being pro-crypto, even promising to pass pro-crypto legislation and get rid of unnecessary red tape that’s been holding the industry back.
And of course AI continues to permeate every aspect of the modern tech landscape. Personally I’m a bit fatigued by much of it. We are at the throw as much spaghetti at the wall and see what will stick phase, which can at times be quite exciting but also, there’s a lot of dejas vue, unimaginative rehashes happening. It’s the first time I think we’ve entered a new frontier of tech where there’s such a big gap between what’s currently possible and what people think will be possible in the future. The landscape is just so vaste, it extends right into infinity, so futurism / science fiction type thinking is merged into current day progress as if it’s all the same thing. It’s a really strange time to be alive.
I’ve been working on getting the archives rendering for my new everything page. The everything page, as great as it is for seing what I’m publishing as I’m publishing it, is still missing individual items, so some links are broken. I hope to have that fixed this week, but it’s a bit tricky because the archives plugin was not written to handle merged data sources, so it mostly works but some links break because each item is located in a different place. Anyway, I’ll figure it out, I hope.
I did a lot of blogging, I’m now getting into a pretty good rythm of notes, links and blog posts, it’s the blogging virtuous circle in action. It works! Here are this week’s blog posts:
The future of iPadOS vs MacOS - https://markjgsmith.com/blog/2024/05/30/the-future-of-ipados-vs-macos
Everything page version 2 - https://markjgsmith.com/blog/2024/06/02/everything-page-version-2
Lex Fridman on human memory - https://markjgsmith.com/blog/2024/06/03/lex-fridman-on-human-memory
Utopias in the age of AI & crypto - https://markjgsmith.com/blog/2024/06/04/utopias-in-the-age-of-ai-and-crypto
EU elections AI analyst bot - https://markjgsmith.com/blog/2024/06/05/eu-elections-ai-analyst-bot
Static site vs dynamic web server - https://markjgsmith.com/blog/2024/06/05/static-site-vs-dynamic-web-server
Some people just want to watch you starve - https://markjgsmith.com/blog/2024/06/05/some-people-just-want-to-watch-you-starve
How digital collaboration works at VFX shop - https://markjgsmith.com/blog/2024/06/06/how-digital-collaboration-works-at-vfx-shops
I’m happy with all of them, but I think my favourite was the one about collaboration in VFX shops. It was a fun one to write because I went down memory lane, remembering my time working in the industry. I think there’s a lot of useful insight people could glean from the VFX world as it pertains to digital transformation in the wider economy.
I’m conscious that there’s quite a lot of dark stuff happening to me at the minute in real life, and I imagine it’s a bit weird reading that in amongst the tech topics I write about. I decided to write about it because that’s what blogging is all about. You get the good stuff and the bad stuff. It’s reality. Writing about it helps me stay sane. I just hope it doesn’t scare people off. It wouldn’t take all that much to improve my situation, it’s totally possible, but for the moment it’s a rocky and bumpy road.
Podcasts
Trump Verdict, COVID cover-up, Crypto Corner, Salesforce Drops 20%, AI correction? (All-in Podcast) - Great show as usual but there’s a particularly interesting segment looking into crypto, specifically about volatility vs cyclicality. They do a bit of a deep dive, with graphs ‘n shit! If they are talking about this on All-in, one of the most popular podcasts worldwide at the minute, then it’s going to be a mainstream thing pretty soon. https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9hbGxpbmNoYW1hdGhqYXNvbi5saWJzeW4uY29tL3Jzcw/episode/ZDZkNzJkMWMtZDFlZC00YzhkLWFlNjYtY2RjYTUwMGFlZWM3?sa=X&ved=0CAUQkfYCahcKEwjY59WQ3sqGAxUAAAAAHQAAAAAQOg
The Bitcoin Powered Revolution with Tuur Demeester (What Bitcoin Did Podcast) - Tuur is from Belgium but now lives in Austin Texas. I spent a lot of time in Belgium in my younger years so I enjoy his accent, but also his take on things. Belgium had a subtle vibe and Tuur is always channeling it in some way. I feel like him and Peter get on very well, they always have very interesting and well balanced discussions that meander a around their lives in general but they always bring it back to Bitcoin in some way. There isn’t anything specific in this episode that I thought was above and beyond the rest, but it was just a really decent and pleasant chat around Bitcoin and life, that’s exactly what podcasting is all about, and sometimes that’s just what you need to listen to. https://www.whatbitcoindid.com/podcast/the-bitcoin-powered-revolution
The Etherium vs Solana Debate | Justin Drake vs Anatoly Yakovenko (Bankless Podcast) - I found this episode pretty mind bending. If you want to hear a conversation that opens a window on the future of crypto and society, this is it. Justin and Anatoly are probably two of the most technically adept at cryoto that I have listened to. They are deeply familiar with all the tech at an incredibly deep level, but also the wider macro environment. Quite a lot of this was over my head, but I know enough to get the main ideas of what they were talking about, and there are tech topics where I can sustain such a level, so I recognise the mastery. It was a very frothy debate in places. There’s something about this discussion that made me think we are solving more that just money with this stuff. From an engineering perspective it was pretty fascinating, looking into the real nitty gritty of optimisation and incentives. I feel like I need to listen to this one a few more times. I feel like if these two talk for a bit longer, we’d figure out solutions to all the horrid wars around the world as a by product. https://www.bankless.com/the-ethereum-vs-solana-debate
Yet another open source rug pull Ep#97 (Changelog News Podcast) - Great short and sweet developer news, touching on a topic that seems to be happening all the time at the minute, namely issues in the open source world. https://changelog.com/news/97
Roman Yampolskiy: Dangers Of Superintelligent AI Ep#431 (Lex Fridman Podcast) - This was a bit dark but fascinating nonetheless. Roman isn’t too happy about the current route we are taking with AI development. He feels we are taking too many risks, because long term AIs are going to be smarter than humans, and broadly speaking, all examples we have from our history of species with differing levels of intelligence encountering each, other have resulted in genocides. There’s lots of insightful discussions, especially towards the end about the simulation hypothesis, virtual worlds, aliens and using AI to help us break out of the simulation we ourselves might be trapped in. I’m not sure I agree with his conclusions, but there’s certainly a lot to ponder in this episode. https://lexfridman.com/roman-yampolskiy
That’s all from me…
Best reguards,
Mark
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