Matt C. A. Smith
@mattcasmith.net
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Cyber security professional writing about technology, business, and culture. mattcasmith.net
pinned post!
A personal tale of flawed bot detection, Kafkaesque customer support threads, and doing whatever it takes to avoid missing a one-off gig – now updated with a (mostly) happy ending... at least until next time.
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Ticketmaster randomly cancelled my gig tickets — twice | MattCASmith
My Muse tickets were cancelled three days before the show because Ticketmaster claimed I was a bot. To make things right, I had to navigate a Kafkaesque web of chatbots, generic responses, and delays.
https://mattcasmith.net/2026/04/19/ticketmaster-cancelled-tickets-bot
6 days ago
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Feels like a good day to repost this piece. What a mess we’re in at Chelsea.
#CFC
add a skeleton here at some point
2 days ago
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One of the worst parts of the blogs-as-newsletters tend of recent years is that you subscribe to a site via RSS and get constant pop-ups asking to let it send you emails.
4 days ago
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A personal tale of flawed bot detection, Kafkaesque customer support threads, and doing whatever it takes to avoid missing a one-off gig – now updated with a (mostly) happy ending... at least until next time.
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Ticketmaster randomly cancelled my gig tickets — twice | MattCASmith
My Muse tickets were cancelled three days before the show because Ticketmaster claimed I was a bot. To make things right, I had to navigate a Kafkaesque web of chatbots, generic responses, and delays.
https://mattcasmith.net/2026/04/19/ticketmaster-cancelled-tickets-bot
6 days ago
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A more positive post this week! I was happy to run across
@kagi.com
, which not only offers a paid search engine free of ads and bias, but also runs an initiative to improve visiblity of small and independent websites.
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Kagi – a paid search engine that supports the small web | MattCASmith
Before algorithmic bias and advertising took over, search felt different. Kagi is trying to take us back — stripping out ads and SEO spam, and actively promoting the small web that most engines quietl...
https://mattcasmith.net/2026/04/12/kagi-search-small-web
13 days ago
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So used to defanging URLs at work that I instinctively went to add brackets when writing a domain down on paper.
13 days ago
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Microsoft's terms of use for Copilot now state that it is "for entertainment purposes only" and shouldn't be relied upon for important advice. Meanwhile, it's forced Copilot into its productivity suite and airs adverts where it's used in high-powered business negotiations.
16 days ago
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Ah, this time it looks like Claude is actually down. Still, I've had to retry certain requests a fair bit in recent weeks.
add a skeleton here at some point
17 days ago
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As well as the lower caps, I'm seeing "taking longer than usual" messages a lot more frequently in Claude conversations these days.
17 days ago
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I’ve been saying this for a while: AI is Uber in 2015. Investment will not flow at current rates forever. Barring some huge technical advancement, higher prices and lower limits will come. If AI is core to your products/workflows, that could spell trouble.
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Monologue: AI Isn't Too Big to Fail
https://open.spotify.com/episode/6DFxIszo6RwlFVshsRTvEZ
18 days ago
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I posted the new edition of Field Notes to the blog early this month, which is definitely a special Easter treat and not at all because I was too busy over the bank holiday weekend to finish my next blog post.
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Field Notes 9 // Museums, Facebook, and new Muse | MattCASmith
An 18th Century plate that keeps returning to mind, Sarah Wynn-Williams' damning account of life inside Facebook, and new music from Muse that takes me back to summer nights in the 2000s.
https://mattcasmith.net/2026/04/06/field-notes-9-april-2026
19 days ago
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Muse were fantastic last night at Brixton Academy, but the Ticketmaster saga just keeps on giving. I’ll write a blog post soon with the whole story, but it’s been incompetence and obfuscation at every turn.
21 days ago
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It’s likely this week’s blog post will be a PSA about Ticketmaster randomly cancelling tickets for “bot activity”. I support their aims, but ticketing for Friday’s Muse gig is a complete mess – many legit fans have lost their tickets at the last minute after making travel plans.
23 days ago
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reposted by
Matt C. A. Smith
Three races in and I'm still unconvinced by F1's new regulations. Hoping its leadership uses the break before Miami to take stock – although short-term fixes may not be possible.
#JapaneseGP
#F1
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F1's new regulations deliver spectacle without soul | MattCASmith
F1's new rules have given us surface-level entertainment – but the racing feels artificial, the drivers are managing batteries instead of pushing limits, and its leaders seem reluctant to admit there'...
https://mattcasmith.net/2026/03/29/formula-1-2026-regulations
27 days ago
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Nice writeup on subscription bombing – a technique used by threat actors to spam users with signup emails so they miss something important in the noise, like a password reset notification.
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Your sign-up form is a weapon | Bytemash
How bots used our sign-up and forgot password pages to bomb real people's inboxes, and what we did to stop it. A practical guide to subscription bombing for founders and developers who think CAPTCHA i...
https://bytemash.net/posts/subscription-bombing-your-signup-form-is-a-weapon/
23 days ago
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📰 The next edition of Field Notes hits inboxes this week! Sign up here to get it first:
mattcasmith.beehiiv.com/subscribe
add a skeleton here at some point
27 days ago
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Three races in and I'm still unconvinced by F1's new regulations. Hoping its leadership uses the break before Miami to take stock – although short-term fixes may not be possible.
#JapaneseGP
#F1
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F1's new regulations deliver spectacle without soul | MattCASmith
F1's new rules have given us surface-level entertainment – but the racing feels artificial, the drivers are managing batteries instead of pushing limits, and its leaders seem reluctant to admit there'...
https://mattcasmith.net/2026/03/29/formula-1-2026-regulations
27 days ago
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This is the kind of update that would have consumed an entire weekend in years gone by.
30 days ago
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“The problem no longer fits inside one computer, to be accelerated by one GPU,” says Jensen Huang, CEO of Nvidia, a company whose objective is to sell as many GPUs as possible in perpetuity.
about 1 month ago
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RollerCoaster Tycoon was famously written in Assembly, but it’s rare to hear much more detail. So this is a fascinating look at how technical limitations influenced its gameplay, even touching details as small as whether a guest has bought a map.
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The gold standard of optimization: A look under the hood of RollerCoaster Tycoon
Due to some lucky circumstances, I recently had the chance to appear in one of the biggest German gaming podcasts, Stay Forever, to talk about the technology of RollerCoaster Tycoon (1999). It was …
https://larstofus.com/2026/03/22/the-gold-standard-of-optimization-a-look-under-the-hood-of-rollercoaster-tycoon/
about 1 month ago
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Just got an email to say Huel is being acquired by Danone. No immediate changes to subscriptions, but I’ve seen enough acquisitions in my time not to trust that over the long term.
about 1 month ago
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Enzo Maresca has come out of this mess looking really good, huh? Binning him and hiring Rosenior were two gigantic missteps.
#EVECHE
#CFC
about 1 month ago
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Nvidia says DLSS 5 is the best thing since ray tracing – "the GPT moment for graphics" – but graphics alone don't make great games. When AI redraws frames, it makes assumptions about how games should look and overrides developers' creative decisions.
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Nvidia's DLSS 5 swaps artistic vision for AI guesswork | MattCASmith
By redrawing every frame of gameplay using AI, Nvidia's new DLSS 5 technology makes assumptions about what your games should look like and overrides the developers' creative vision in favour of hyperr...
https://mattcasmith.net/2026/03/20/nvidia-dlss-5-ai
about 1 month ago
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An old friend was in town, so made an occasion of it and enjoyed some top-tier steak and wine tonight.
about 1 month ago
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Genius developers, a million frameworks, and AI coding agents… and my success rate sorting tables in SaaS tools is 50 percent.
about 1 month ago
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Modern games are so poorly optimised that a good graphics card already isn't enough to hit decent frame rates. But now we're going to waste some of that processing power to have AI guess what things should look like?
add a skeleton here at some point
about 1 month ago
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Every so often I look at tech I take for granted and realise how amazing it would have seemed in 2010. Today it’s being able to hand off a podcast I’m listening to between Spotify on my PC and iPhone.
about 1 month ago
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Loved
@craigmod.com
’s essay about how he vibe coded accounting software for his unique use case. That’s where I see AI’s potential – not replacing professional devs making commercial software where everything must be secure and polished. Building little tools for an audience of one.
about 1 month ago
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✈️☀️📖 The latest edition of Field Notes is now up on the blog – this time covering a short visit to Malta and the sci-fi thriller I read on the trip.
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Field Notes 8 // Malta and the art of needing less | MattCASmith
Between a trip to Malta and a novel about memory-eating monsters, I thought a lot this month about what we actually need. The answer, it turns out, fits in a hotel room with a book and an espresso.
https://mattcasmith.net/2026/03/15/field-notes-8-march-2026
about 1 month ago
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Russell issues aside, it was heartening to see the Ferraris and McLarens challenging the Mercedes more closely at various points today. RUS-ANT is in danger of becoming the new HAM-BOT.
#ChineseGP
#F1
about 1 month ago
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In the history of digital business, has anybody ever needed Outlook to show them their contacts’ birthdays on a side-by-side calendar?
about 1 month ago
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The clipping and reliance on battery feels opaque and out of step with Formula 1’s spirit. But I’m interested in how these regs play out this year. We saw glimpses of wheel-to-wheel battles, close following, reliability chaos – things we’ve missed for decades.
#AustralianGP
#F1
about 2 months ago
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Apple's new MacBook Neo has a spec problem – but it's also an audience problem. Many casual users don't need laptops anymore. My wife does everything on her iPhone and hasn't touched her laptop in years.
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The MacBook Neo is a laptop built for a different era | MattCASmith
At £599, the MacBook Neo is Apple's most affordable laptop in years. The package is stylish, colourful, and compact – but the 8GB RAM cap restricts it to users for whom an iPhone may already be enough...
https://mattcasmith.net/2026/03/08/apple-macbook-neo-target-market
about 2 months ago
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Xbox built itself on an edgy brand that targeted hardcore gamers. It focused on a powerful console and cutting-edge games. New boss Asha Sharma needs to choose – will Xbox return to that core audience, or risk further diluting its brand chasing new fans?
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New Xbox boss Asha Sharma inherits an identity crisis | MattCASmith
For a decade, Xbox built its identity on edge, attitude, and hardcore gaming. Recent attempts to chase broader appeal have muddied the waters, and new CEO Asha Sharma must decide what Xbox actually is...
https://mattcasmith.net/2026/02/28/asha-sharma-xbox-identity-crisis
about 2 months ago
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The key to good business writing is empathy – not emotional, but practical. The easier it is for the recipient to take action, the more likely it is that they’ll do it.
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Good business writing makes the reader's life easier | MattCASmith
The key to good business writing is empathy – not emotional, but practical. Put yourself in the recipient's shoes to make action effortless and eliminate painful back-and-forths, making for more effic...
https://mattcasmith.net/2026/02/22/business-writing-empathy
2 months ago
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I wish it was possible to hide the Read Along sidebar box on Spotify podcasts. It's so distracting when you have a podcast playing on a second screen.
2 months ago
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It’s bad enough that Microsoft used an AI knockoff of somebody’s pre-existing diagram, but the lack of care is painful. Will be sure to “continvoucly morge” all future bug fixes. 👍
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15+ years later, Microsoft morged my diagram
How Microsoft continvoucly morged my Git branching diagram.
https://nvie.com/posts/15-years-later/
2 months ago
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Every unnecessary software feature is not only bloat, but a potential security vulnerability. Why can't we keep it simple?
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Notepad flaw shows why software bloat matters | MattCASmith
Notepad used to do one thing: edit plain text. Microsoft's insistence on adding formatting and Copilot led to a perfect example of why simplicity matters – an RCE vulnerability in its Markdown renderi...
https://mattcasmith.net/2026/02/15/notepad-vulnerability-software-bloat
2 months ago
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AI discourse is in a weird place right now. As the tech continued to develop, I thought (perhaps naively) one of the pro- and anti- camps would fade away as its trajectory became clearer. Instead, they're both at fever pitch.
2 months ago
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Uploaded the latest Field Notes to the blog on Thursday. Normal article service will resume next Sunday, and I’ve got some great stuff jotted down for March’s newsletter – sign up to get it first.
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Field Notes 7 // Caffeine, meditation, and Japan | MattCASmith
My findings after drastically cutting my caffeine intake and introducing meditation to my morning routine, and Craig Mod's unusual book documenting his long walks across the Japanese countryside.
https://mattcasmith.net/2026/02/05/field-notes-7-february-2026
3 months ago
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This applies just as much to journaling as it does to public writing, btw. You can have an awful day and think: “This will make a hell of a journal entry to look back on in ten years.”
add a skeleton here at some point
3 months ago
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One of the understated benefits of writing is perspective. Events that would be quite unfortunate for most people are just new material for a writer.
3 months ago
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We debate whether AI will take our jobs, but what about the jobs that remain? Knowledge workers could end up simultaneously bored and overwhelmed – reduced to typing prompts and reviewing output, with the value of the process lost.
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AI could commodify thinking and destroy deep work | MattCASmith
Tools like Claude Cowork risk condemning knowledge workers to endless reviews of AI-generated work. We must use AI to augment human thinking – not replace it – and preserve the value and craft of the ...
https://mattcasmith.net/2026/02/01/ai-deep-work-craftsmanship
3 months ago
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Just uploaded January's edition of my Field Notes newsletter to the blog. To receive February's first (next Sunday!), subscribe via the link in the replies.
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Field Notes 6 // Christmas, reflection, and bowling | MattCASmith
I took some time off this Christmas to relax, reflect, and review my notebooks from 2025, and came away with inspiration about where to take the blog in 2026. I also did a lot of ten-pin bowling.
https://mattcasmith.net/2026/01/25/field-notes-6-january-2026
3 months ago
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I’m so used to reading people’s Substack blogs now that I clicked a Medium link this morning and did a double take. It felt wrong somehow.
3 months ago
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We’ve got bigger, higher resolution screens than ever before. There’s so much potential for beautiful interfaces. Yet information density seems to be dropping everywhere from social networks to RSS feed readers. So many of those extra pixels hold nothing of value.
3 months ago
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Discovered an SEO error that was on my site since sometime in 2020 when I hadn’t had enough coffee. The cool thing is that search engines are indecipherable black boxes, so I have no idea how this has damaged my reach for the last six years. 🙃
3 months ago
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When the X algorithm is serving up slop, it's time to return to a classic 2007-style feed with the help of lists and aggressive curation.
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How to opt out of X's engagement-first algorithm | MattCASmith
The new X algorithm, which prioritises virality over personal preferences, has been met with a huge backlash. But it's possible to take back control of your feed using Lists, strategic muting, and rut...
https://mattcasmith.net/2026/01/18/x-algorithm-lists
3 months ago
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Pizza date with colleagues.
3 months ago
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Certain football clubs are following the same enshittification playbook used by so many tech companies – the problem is there's no audience more captive than football fans. Users can jump ship, but we're stuck with it.
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Enshittified football needs its Steve Jobs moment | MattCASmith
Elite football clubs are being run down by the same model of enshittification that ruined tech products. Owners, safe in the knowledge they have a captive audience, prioritise profits over sporting su...
https://mattcasmith.net/2026/01/11/enshittification-football-chelsea-man-utd
3 months ago
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I love how action-oriented Claude is. I'm working on a blog post and it told me to "stop asking me questions and publish the damn thing".
3 months ago
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