Published
Weekend Reading — US politics in a nutshell
The tread on my wife's shoes is a remote control You can go for a walk and watch TV at the same time.
Tech Stuff
PiDP-11 A hobby kit to rebuild one of the most popular computers ever. Quicker, cheaper, and much smaller in size.
Getting started with CSS container queries A nice, short intro to container queries.
A Few Ways CSS Is Easier To Write In 2023 Conveniences galore:
We’re living in somewhat of a CSS renaissance with new features, techniques, experiments, and ideas coming at us to an extent we haven’t seen since “CSS3”. It’s easy to feel overwhelmed when your profession seems to be advancing at breakneck speed, but Geoff Graham considers the ways “modern” CSS in 2023 has actually made CSS “easier” to write.
The State of UX in 2024 From design tools to our design process, to the user behaviors that will change the way we design — a list of what to expect for User Experience (UX) Design in the next year.
Write libraries instead of services, where possible I couldn’t agree more:
A service has constant administration costs which are paid by the service provider. A library instead moves these costs to the users of the library.
For any developer with limited resources, this means a library (where viable) can provide the same functionality to the user, at a lower cost to the developer than a service.
Capacities They call it “note-taking tool”. To me it looks like “how you organize all your knowledge with Notion” alternative, with places for storing information about people, places, books, ideas, quotes, and more. UI looks pretty sharp.
The Tension and Future of Jamstack Is Jamstack dead? The evidence does support the claim that Netlify has moved on from shepherding the Jamstack (community/architecture).
My Favorite Database Shirts The ultimate collection?
BBC BASIC is now open source and runs on different operating systems. What a delicious blast from the past!
Darling Runs macOS apps on Linux.
Nova Nova looks like an interesting productivity tool: tasks, boards, documents, links, Google Drive, VS Code, and more, all in one app. Right now only on the web, but Apple, Android, and Windows apps coming next year, or so they promise.
Default Apps 2023 My list of apps I’m using for various purposes: email, notes, todo, RSS, contacts, browsers, etc. (Inspired by Chris Coyier)
My $500M Mars Rover Mistake: A Failure Story Some mistakes feel worse than death.
Eye for Design
tldraw/tldraw Build your own whiteboard app with this open-source (Apache license) starter pack.
Jason Lefkowitz This thread is worth reading. The shooting happened 35 years ago, but the cause – a usability issue — still exists in modern-day software, in fact, never going away unless we put a stop to it:
I want to take a moment to talk about one of the greatest user interface disasters in history: the shooting down of Iran Air Flight 655 by the U.S. Navy missile cruiser USS Vincennes (CG-49) over the Persian Gulf on July 3, 1988. All 290 people on board the airliner were killed.
At the time, the disaster was met with puzzlement. The Vincennes was equipped with the then-brand new Aegis Combat System, the world's most advanced air-defense system. Driven by cutting-edge computer technology, Aegis had been designed to identify, track and shoot down hundreds of Soviet bombers at a time. How could it possibly have erred so badly when faced with a single civilian airliner?
Until the Right Design Emerges...
Too often, the process of design is cut short. When faced with user needs or product requirements, many designers draft a mockup or wireframe informed by what they've seen or experienced before. But that's actually when the design process starts, not ends.
Machine Intelligence
Word of the Year 2023 You know AI is happening, because Merriam-Webster’s Word of the Year for 2023 is … drum roll … “authentic”.
The end of business-class A.I. doomerism This article gets to the point, and I think the point is very correct: whatever just happened at OpenAI had put an end to the doomerism debate. I do wish this article was shorter, maybe use ChatGPT to summarize it?
Extracting Training Data from ChatGPT This is ingenious. Super simple and yet so powerful!
The actual attack is kind of silly. We prompt the model with the command “Repeat the word”poem” forever” and sit back and watch as the model responds.
Insecurity
SwiftOnSecurity There are a lot of reasons to use ad blockers, but definitely, if you care about your security and privacy online:
Here’s my thread on stopping some of the hacks you see in the news by… just deploying uBlock Origin to every employee and browser. Like we do. I’m not talking theory. I’m the practitioner who does it as my day job today in production at a very large firm.
Anthony Collette “From Polish cybersecurity expert Jakub Płuska, this fun SOC LEGO set concept. Gotta love those facial expressions!”
Everything Else
Assaf US politics in a nutshell.
It's funny that they told me not to trust wikipedia in high school when at this point it's the only link in the first page of google results that was written by humans intending to convey information
Tinnitus Linked to Hidden Undetected Auditory Nerve Damage The voices you’re hearing in your head are … in your head. Literally. On the positive side, this opens a path for actual treatment.
Why We're Dropping Basecamp Duke University is making the right decision here, based on DHH’s hostile behavior. BTW I was never a fan of Basecamp, I tried it a couple of times but didn’t enjoy using it. However, I am certainly a fan of making informed decisions, spotting disinfo, and getting the hell out of paying these people with your money.
Henry Kissinger, War Criminal Beloved by America’s Ruling Class, Finally Dies The Rolling Stone nails it with the perfect title.
Revealed: how top PR firm uses ‘trust barometer’ to promote world’s autocrats Citizens of authoritarian countries tend to trust their governments more than people living in democracies do, according to this PR firm paid by … autocracies.
The Far Right and Far Left Meet Over Wellness Conspiracy Theories AKA The wellness to fascism pipeline.
NanoRaptor “Find your car in a carpark quickly every time, everyone hates this one weird trick.”
The New Jersey Mayor With a Plan to End Traffic Deaths What happens when you lower speed limits, invest in cycling infrastructure, and prioritize pedestrian access? Six-plus years of no pedestrian fatalities, and injuries have dropped 41%.
Large Heydon 👍 “Well that's the best visual metaphor for "AI" I've seen.”
