... works as a web developer in Hveragerði, Iceland, and writes about the web, digital publishing, and web/product development
These are his notes
“Is AI leading to a reproducibility crisis in science?”
“AI” research itself has had a massive reproducibility crisis for years. But the more these tools spread into other fields, the more those fields will be affected by the inherent snake-oil nature of “AI”
Who ever got promoted for deleting Google code? We revel in the code we have. It’s huge and complex.
A talk that Rob Pike held at Google in 2009
This one’s dedicated to all of the reply-guys on Mastodon 🙂️
“NLRB Files Case Against Mozilla for Not Hiring Apple Labor Activist - Bloomberg”
The possibility that an ostensibly open and independent organisation like Mozilla has blacklisted a potential hire because of labour activism at Apple is very disconcerting
“Five-Second Testing: Taking A Closer Look At First Impressions (Case Study) — Smashing Magazine”
Surprisingly in depth.
“Fediverse Governance Successes & Gaps | Tiny Subversions”
Then we are going to make strong recommendations for how open source projects, philanthropic funders, civil society organizations, and others can co-create a Fediverse that is safer and better for humanity
“Root & Branch - Erin Kissane’s small internet website”
This sounds cool.
“Baseline’s evolution on MDN | MDN Blog”
This is really useful, but it feels a bit weird that it took them a couple of iterations to arrive at a definition for “widely supported” that actually meant widely supported.
The interesting thing about the Invokers proposal isn’t just the ability to wire together existing elements without JS but that it introduces a new standard contract for invocations that you can use in your own custom elements
A slightly simpler newsletter entry this week: links, so many links. And a few of the photos I posted on social media as a bonus.
“Code smell, Gall’s Law, the rule of least power, and a bunch of links”
Really would like to find the time to restart work on this in the new year. I have an idea for rethinking the concept from a simpler foundation which might make the whole thing more “bootstrappable.”
That thing where a bug in Apple’s software catches the public’s attention and the usual suspects spin up a dozen conspiracy theories in order to shift blame from Apple.
“Silicon Valley vs. teenage girls - by Ryan Broderick”
That even with the hundreds of millions of users and billions of dollars that Silicon Valley is generating by forcing your search engine to talk to you, it still can’t automate coolness.
Went on public transport here in Iceland yesterday and, again, was the only person masking
Everybody I know is either complaining about being sick or expecting to catch something, but nobody is taking even the simplest step to do something about it
“Why Do Pigeon Nests Look So Shitty? An Investigation | Defector”
“Professionalism And The Software Industry – Flameeyes’s Weblog”
I can’t believe I watched and enjoyed an entire four-hour video on plagiarism among youtube creators.
“Let’s learn how modern JavaScript frameworks work by building one | Read the Tea Leaves”
“1824831 - Can’t sign in with FIDO2 key on office.com”
If this bug report is to be trusted, it looks like Microsoft is blocking FIDO2 hardware keys if you’re trying to use them to log in to office.com with Firefox
“Microsoft’s new Outlook client quietly moves your email to the cloud”
We do all realise that this is worse, right? It doesn’t matter if these apps or the new version of Windows have fewer bugs, they’re now objectively worse in every way that matters
“You don’t need JavaScript for that - HTMHell”
The rule of least power
It’s one of the core principles of web development and it means that you should Choose the least powerful language suitable for a given purpose.
My sister sent me a new batch of photos of her cat, Kolka, a rescue who was originally found outside a mushroom farm in the south of Iceland
Now a sweet cat who loves scritches.
#caturday
This is good advice.