... works as a web developer in Hveragerði, Iceland, and writes about the web, digital publishing, and web/product development
These are his notes
People keep defending Mozilla along these lines:
“This single thing you’re criticising them for isn’t as bad as you make out”
What the defenders don’t get is that the angry reactions are backlash pars pro toto. The individual fuck-up is a stand-in for years of constant fuckery
“Bootstrapped to death: why America’s favourite saying is strangling mobility — Joan Westenberg”
Dollars to donuts that the rise in spam posts is directly caused by the availability of LLM chatbots.
Anybody who’s had to deal with software over a meaningful period of time knows this to be true, but I struggle with how to apply this to web-based software in a world where neither Firefox nor Safari are interested in the show*Picker family of APIs
“Mozilla downsizes as it refocuses on Firefox and AI: Read the memo | TechCrunch”
Going forward, the company said in an internal memo, Mozilla will focus on bringing “trustworthy AI into Firefox.”
Well fuck. That’s my preferred browser going down the toilet.
“Immutable array updates with Array.prototype.with | Blog | web.dev”
Today I learned about this.
I’m a big fan of CSS layers. Hope to ship a project built using them in the near future (weeks, probably)
“I Stopped Using Passwords. It’s Great—and a Total Mess | WIRED”
I remain sceptical about passkeys. Their usability is so poor and inherently complex to set up that I doubt they’ll ever be a functional replacement for passwords. Not without a dramatic UX improvement
“The Case For Design Engineers, Pt. II - Jim Nielsen’s Blog”
I know it’s probably just the season (near-peak SAD in Iceland) and the times (gestures vaguely at the world) but everything feels just a little bit harder at the moment than they used to.
“How does Plastic get into the Ocean – Plastic Pollution from Roads - Celtic Water”
The ICUN estimates that 28.3% of primary microplastics worldwide that end up on the oceans are from synthetic rubber in tyres.
This package demonstrates Deno’s problem in a nutshell. Anything nice built for the Deno ecosystem will be available for node. Even their nice standard library isn’t a competitive advantage as DNT effectively ports it to node.
“A crowd destroyed a driverless Waymo car in San Francisco - The Verge”
I have no doubt that we’re going to see more of this.
“Literacy crisis in college students: Essay from a professor on students who don’t read.”
If you’re like me and your livelihood consists of either selling textual objects or using textual objects to sell services to a youth-obsessed sector (tech) then this is seriously bad news
My sister sent me these three photos of her cat listening intently to the barks of the dog next door. The dog was being taken out for a walk, so a bit too close for comfort. (It’s an Icelandic Sheepdog. They are very bark-y.)
“Séamas O’Reilly: If it feels like scams are thick on the ground - it’s because they are”
Seeing more ravens in the area lately.
“Apple Releases macOS Sonoma 14.3.1 With Fix for Text Overlapping Bug”
could cause text to get randomly replaced while typing
This was happening on macs as well? Kinda glad I’m not a mac user. Having this bug on my work computer would cause me to pitch it out the window.
“Apple Releases iOS 17.3.1 With Fix for Text Bug - MacRumors”
could cause text to unexpectedly duplicate or overlap while typing.
Could? COULD? This happens in every single fucking sentence I write on the iPad! How did this garbage ever get shipped. WTF is going on at Apple?
“The Truth™ about encoding SVG in data URIs / Stoyan’s phpied.com”
Though, if you’re going to include the SVG directly in the page, you might as well inline it completely as a part of the HTML’s markup tree, right?
“Looney Tunes Movie Coyote vs Acme Expected to Be Destroyed Forever”
The feel-good story of a cancelled movie being saved? Well, it seems like that’s not happening
If this happens then it’s the final nail in the coffin of Hollywood dominance over global cinematic culture
“The Rot Economy - Ed Zitron’s Where’s Your Ed At”
Today’s must-read.