Mastodon Feed: Posts

Reblogged by slightlyoff@toot.cafe ("Alex Russell"):

brianleroux@indieweb.social ("Brian LeRoux 💚") wrote:

Lots of us are trying to make sense of the recent EU regulatory rulings and Apples' bad faith letter to the law implementation. To me, it's an excellent demonstration of why browser choice is crucially important as standards participation and legal compliance are clearly not incentive enough.

Reblogged by slightlyoff@toot.cafe ("Alex Russell"):

brianleroux@indieweb.social ("Brian LeRoux 💚") wrote:

I do have one last thing.…What about developers? [applause]…We've come up with a very sweet solution.…We've got an innovative new way to create applications for mobile devices. Really innovative.…The full Safari engine is inside of iPhone. It gives us tremendous capability.…You can write amazing Web 2.0 and AJAX apps that look exactly and behave exactly like apps on the iPhone. And these apps can integrate perfectly with iPhone services.

- Steve Jobs, 2007 at WWDC

#apple #ios

fromjason ("fromjason.xyz 🖤") wrote:

Looking to kill a couple of hours? Enjoy

#WeirdWideWeb #LinksFromJason

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Internet_phenomena

xor@tech.intersects.art ("Parker Higgins") wrote:

i've been thinking about rewriting it as a web site and maybe this is the motivation I needed to finish that!

Reblogged by kornel ("Kornel"):

neuralex@neurodifferent.me ("Alex C") wrote:

@technicat the original Mac UI devs noticed and solved so many problems in *1986* that more recent Web 2.0+ frontend devs just ignore -- like this one, *drag delay* -- solving the problem that when the user moves their cursor towards an item on a popup menu, the mouse may drift outside the lines momentarily *en route*, so you should make sure not to close the menu prematurely; these days lots of popup menus instantly pop closed if you stray outside their bounds #UI #UX

Attachments:

• 969e45e96f682161.png (remote)

collinsworth@hachyderm.io ("Josh Collinsworth") wrote:

A pack of SVG icons for dark UI patterns called DeceptIcons

Reblogged by cstanhope@social.coop ("Your friendly 'net denizen"):

emacsomancer@types.pl ("(mapcar #'emacsomancer objs)") wrote:

on portable EPUBs: https://willcrichton.net/notes/portable-epubs/#epub-content/EPUB/index.xhtml$ , the page itself being a web-based EPUB.

"Despite decades of advances in document rendering technology, most of the world's documents are stuck in the 1990s due to the limitations of PDF. Yet, modern document formats like HTML have yet to provide a competitive alternative to PDF. This post explores what prevents HTML documents from being portable, and I propose a way forward based on the EPUB format. To demonstrate my ideas, this post is presented using a prototype EPUB reading system."

cstanhope@social.coop ("Your friendly 'net denizen") wrote:

Oh wow. These machined sculptural pieces from Chris Bathgate are quite something to behold:

https://chrisbathgate.blogspot.com/

He's got a book out:

https://schifferbooks.com/products/the-machinist-sculptor

And a youtube channel:

https://www.youtube.com/@ChristopherBathgate/videos

xor@tech.intersects.art ("Parker Higgins") wrote:

I don't think this is an X problem, but it's a bummer

xor@tech.intersects.art ("Parker Higgins") wrote:

this week my 78 bot that posted on twitter between 2017-2023 got a bunch of takedown notices and then got suspended 😭

Reblogged by nadim@symbolic.software ("Nadim Kobeissi"):

zombierustpunk@hachyderm.io ("Dana (née Bonnie) K") wrote:

The thing about apps like mIRC, ICQ, and Winamp is that they felt like they were made by people who used them. Apps today feel like they were designed by a committee looking at a spreadsheet.

When an app is missing basic features and still pesters me whenever I open it to try some new AI bullshit, I wonder if the PM got the promotion they were going for.

That’s one of the things I like about open source apps. Even if they’re less polished, you can feel they are made by people who use them.

Gargron ("Eugen Rochko") wrote:

I got a used fresnel light for indoor photography. These things are really expensive new. Now I just need a stand because this thing gets very hot.

#BelieveInFilm

Attachments:

• An Arri 650W fresnel light on the floor, with a white cat with a pink nose and orange patches also in frame looking up out of the frame.

jsonstein@masto.deoan.org ("Jeff Sonstein") wrote:

petting the Housepanther & sucking on a cuppa… almost time to head out for my Sat AM volunteer gig walking dogs at the #ROC City Pound.

Reblogged by keul@fosstodon.org ("Luca Fabbri"):

Quinnypig@awscommunity.social ("Corey Quinn") wrote:

“For some reason our AWS bill spikes 4% in February once every four years. I don’t understand why.”

Reblogged by collinsworth@hachyderm.io ("Josh Collinsworth"):

neuralex@neurodifferent.me ("Alex C") wrote:

When I was a smartass computer nerd in the 80s and 90s, an eternal theme was friends and family sheepishly asking me for tech support help, and me slowly, patiently explaining to them that computers aren't scary, they're actually predictable, they won't explode or erase your data (unless you really make an effort), and they operate by simple (if somewhat arcane) rules. Edit > Cut, then click, then Edit > Paste. Save As. Use tabs, not spaces. Stuff like that. Maybe not easy, but simple, or at least consistent and learnable.

But that's not true anymore.

User interfaces lag. Text lies. Buttons don't click. Buttons don't even look like buttons! Panels pop up and obscure your workspace and you can't move or remove them -- a tiny floating x and a few horizontal lines is all you get. Mobile and web apps lose your draft text, refresh at whim, silently swallow errors, mysteriously move shit around when you're not looking, hide menus, bury options, don't respect or don't remember your chosen settings. Doing the same thing gives different results. The carefully researched PARC principles of human-computer interaction -- feedback, discoverabilty, affordances, consistency, personalization -- all that fundamental Don Norman shit -- have been completely discarded.

My tech support calls now are about me sadly explaining there's nothing I can do. Computers suck now. They run on superstition, not science. It's a real tragedy for humanity and I have no idea how to fix it.

#HCI #UX #UI #okdoomer

fromjason ("fromjason.xyz 🖤") wrote:

Now, AOL Everywhere 1999:

"Ultimately, though, America Online is betting that the cable companies need it more than it needs them. Mr. Pittman argues that if anyone can sell broadband, it is America Online, because the most likely prospective buyers are its 17 million members. ‘‘We realize that we’re one of the few who can write the big check,’’ he said."

They really thought they could become cable tv. And since then so has every #bigtech company.

https://www.nytimes.com/1999/07/04/business/now-aol-everywhere.html

lloydmeta ("Lloyd") wrote:

You know you live in Japan when your kid, paying with her Lego set, suddenly starts massively shaking the table saying “EARTHQUAKE EARTHQUAKE!”

rmrenner ("The Old Gay Gristle Fest") wrote:

The Human League, seeing that I'm trying to re-learn Cultist Simulator and deciding to sabotage my run with bad advice: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QqqBs6kkzHE

Reblogged by cstanhope@social.coop ("Your friendly 'net denizen"):

annierau@wikis.world ("annie rauwerda") wrote:

My letter to the editor made it into this month's Harper's!! tldr: Wikipedia is great and degrading it is not so great

Attachments:

• Ben Lerner's winding tale about a man who deploys a phalanx of false accounts on Wikipedia in order to defy consensus brought to my mind the countless Wikipedians who have held tight to the pursuit of truth while the semi fictional Lerner, by his own admission, lost his grip..... With each keystroke, my fellow editors and I have contributed to the largest and most accessible -- albeit still imperfect -- source of information humans have ever had. Take the software engineer in washington who has corrected the grammatical incorrect phrase "comprised of" about 90000 times, the librarian in Alberta who doggedly patrols for copyright violations, or the California product manager who guards pages against content that glorifies Nazis. one teenager spent hours each day editing articles about the 472 subway stations in NYC until every one of them had a comprehensive entry. A white-haired retiree I know spends his days cycling around the Tri-State Area, taking freely licensed photographs of infrastructure, and sometimes letting me tag along. Though some of Wikipedia's contributors manipulate the platform, just as Lerner's avatar did in his worst moments, the vast majority of us are shrewd, delightful, and ordinary people operating in achingly good faith (remote)

collinsworth@hachyderm.io ("Josh Collinsworth") wrote:

My toxic dev trait is I love getting myself into situations where I can use ridiculously complicated math in CSS to achieve a desired visual effect.

jsonstein@masto.deoan.org ("Jeff Sonstein") wrote:

this is pretty amazing, lays to rest the European image of Amazonia as bare of culture, tech development, & urbanization

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/23/science/ecuador-amazon-cities-discovery.html?unlocked_article_code=1.Q00.e-MR.DehTK_YKSNzP&smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare

Reblogged by slightlyoff@toot.cafe ("Alex Russell"):

tojiro ("Brandon Jones") wrote:

Put up a page about attaching PIX to Chrome for WebGPU debugging/profiling. Working on similar ones for other major graphics debuggers too.

https://toji.dev/webgpu-profiling/pix

Reblogged by slightlyoff@toot.cafe ("Alex Russell"):

owa ("Open Web Advocacy") wrote:

For Browsers, Apple's compliance plan is "unworkable", "as painful as possible", "a massive problem for us", "doing everything they can to make the DMA fail".

THIS is the feedback from our industry.

Read More: https://open-web-advocacy.org/blog/apple-dma-changes/

Gargron ("Eugen Rochko") wrote:

If #Apple continues on this path I’m going to have to switch back to Android. The idea that they deserve a fee from developers for people simply running programs on their operating system is unhinged. The App Store fee is justified because it’s a distribution channel. But whatever this is, is nonsense.

pzmyers@octodon.social ("pzmyers 🦑") wrote:

Rapist gets $83.3 million dollar fine instead of the imprisonment he deserves.

https://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2024/01/26/83-3-million/

jsonstein@masto.deoan.org ("Jeff Sonstein") wrote:

Jury award in #TrumpTrial in NYC:

emotional damage: $7.3M
reputational harm: $11M
punitive damages: $65m

Total: $18.3M

jsonstein@masto.deoan.org ("Jeff Sonstein") wrote:

Jury is apparently returning to the courtroom in the #TrumpTrial in NYC

Reblogged by jsonstein@masto.deoan.org ("Jeff Sonstein"):

yurnidiot@mstdn.social ("Mandu 🥟") wrote:

when you're not in the mood for small talk with the chatty neighbor

#Caturday #dogs

Attachments:

• as cat and dog walk down street approaching each other, cat lays down and slides into a sewer drain opening on the curb (remote)

Reblogged by jsonstein@masto.deoan.org ("Jeff Sonstein"):

thehill@press.coop ("The Hill :press:") wrote:

NRA head confirms he used company funds for private trips, gifts in court testimony

Wayne LaPierre, the head of the National Rifle Association (NRA), confirmed in court Friday that he used company funds for personal trips and gifts. New York Attorney General Letitia James (D) sued the NRA in 2020, alleging LaPierre and other... #press

https://thehill.com/regulation/court-battles/4432187-nra-head-confirms-he-used-company-funds-for-private-trips-gifts-in-court-testimony/?utm_source=press.coop

Attachments:

• 79799850e1b99750.jpeg (remote)

Reblogged by nadim@symbolic.software ("Nadim Kobeissi"):

ZachWeinersmith ("Zach Weinersmith") wrote:

Stuff like this is what gets me really interested in AI: https://www.quantamagazine.org/new-theory-suggests-chatbots-can-understand-text-20240122/

Like, how cool would it be if some computer science stuff helped us understand why consciousness and language evolved, because it turns out there are meaningful scaling laws.