Links and Photos (19 February 2024)
– Baldur
Bjarnason
Software Dev #
- "dax-sh - npm". 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.
- "Don’t Disable Form Controls — Adrian Roselli"
- "Apple Releases macOS Sonoma 14.3.1 With Fix for Text Overlapping Bug"
- "Apple Releases iOS 17.3.1 With Fix for Text Bug - MacRumors"
- "The Truth™ about encoding SVG in data URIs / Stoyan’s phpied.com"
- "Miniver Cheevy: Decision-based evidence-making"
- "I think about AI like I do Plastics. | Apple Annie’s Microblog"
- "The web is mostly links and forms | Go Make Things". And many devs grossly underestimate the power of links and forms.
- ’No, AI user research is not “better than nothing.” It’s much worse. | by Pavel Samsonov’
- "Tailwind marketing and misinformation engine"
- "Syntax highlighting code blocks with Prism and the Custom Highlight API"
- "Zero to Unmaintainable in 1.2 Commands - Jim Nielsen’s Blog"
- "Against Technoableism | A Working Library"
Yikes #
- "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.”
- "A crowd destroyed a driverless Waymo car in San Francisco - The Verge"
- "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.
- "Séamas O’Reilly: If it feels like scams are thick on the ground - it’s because they are".
- "Looney Tunes Movie Coyote vs Acme Expected to Be Destroyed Forever".
- "The Rot Economy - Ed Zitron’s Where’s Your Ed At".
- "Apple broke web apps in iOS 17 beta and hasn’t fixed them - The Register".
- "FTC files complaint against Microsoft for recent Xbox layoffs". The thing about developing a reputation, as an organisation, of dishonesty is that it makes it harder to resolve future issues amicably. And there will be future FTC issues for Microsoft.
- "Maybe it’s not us who are broken. Maybe it’s the system.". “The creative industries, like so many others, have individualised risk and privatised profits.”
- "The State of the Culture, 2024 - by Ted Gioia". This turned out to be a better read than I expected. A few years ago I would have dismissed its observations out of hand, but today they have the weight that can’t be denied.
- "What’s the fun in writing on the internet anymore?". The purpose of expression is expression.
- "‘Novel’ AI-made materials not actually new – study". “Published report ‘should be retracted as the main claim of discovery is wrong’, UCL chemistry professor tells us.” These kind of shenanigans are the norm for “AI” research, which is why you should not trust any study that feeds the hype.
- "ChatGPT 4 fails at solving a Captcha and progress is slow". “Some things feel fast because they are being completely misrepresented and don’t work the way they are portrayed. More often than you think there is a person behind the curtain playing the role of the computer.”
- "AI hiring tools may be filtering out the best job applicants - BBC Worklife"
- "Rotten Apple". “All Apple is being asked to do is offer the same level of choice on mobile that everyone already enjoys on their computers. Rather than comply reasonably, Apple have found a way to throw their toys of the pram.”
- "The digital equivalent of wearing a fake Chanel bag"
- "‘AI’ is pretty much just shorthand for mediocre". This happened more quickly than I had expected, but it’s a pretty darn mainstream sentiment by now. Even talk radio personalities here in Iceland make “AI” quips now when they talk about how mediocre something is
- "Air Canada found liable for chatbot’s bad advice on plane tickets | CBC News". Now that we’re in a bubble, regular companies are diving into the chatbot hype and they’re discovering that non-US countries have actual consumer protection laws.
- "Advocating for Protections for the Information Ecosystem | by Emily M. Bender | Feb, 2024 | Medium"
- "Apple makes it official: No Home Screen web apps in the EU - The Register". This is disappointing. This effectively kills off iOS web apps in the EU because iOS wipes regular web data for a site after a week of inactivity. The only way to get around that was with installation
- "Bootstrapped to death: why America’s favourite saying is strangling mobility — Joan Westenberg".
- "Achievements will no longer be available in the Community - community - Discussion #106536 - GitHub". Dollars to donuts that the rise in spam posts is directly caused by the availability of LLM chatbots.
Photos #
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.)
Seeing more ravens in the area lately.
Took these two photos just for fun.
This is one of the houses that the cat rescue, Villikettir Suðurlands, uses to shelter cats until they find homes. You can see a couple of cats lounging in the window and enjoying being inside.
(This is the rescue where my sister got her cat Kolka.)
There are few things more relaxing than listening to a waterfall, even a small one like this one in Varmá. I should do this more often.
Friðmundur’s cat is on Þorvaldur’s tractor again.