tomw

tomw, 6 months ago to random

Imagine you accidentally come into possession of a pineapple.

You don't currently have any way to slice, cook or otherwise prepare the pineapple. Also, you don't like eating pineapple anyway.

What do you do with the pineapple?

tomw, 6 months ago to random

I use vanilla JS because I want nothing to do with absurd 'modern' JS jenga towers. I'm just going to wait for the pendulum to swing back this way

tomw, 6 months ago to random

"Focusing on doomsday scenarios in artificial intelligence is a distraction that plays down immediate risks such as the large-scale generation of misinformation, according to a senior industry figure attending this week’s AI safety summit."

Yeah - it is frustrating that there's so much focus on silly sci-fi threats when right now, LLMs are being used to fill the web with spam.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/oct/29/ai-doomsday-warnings-a-distraction-from-the-danger-it-already-poses-warns-expert

tomw, 6 months ago to random

Confuse your friends by giving them measurements in square millimetres

tomw, 6 months ago to random

On current trends the average movie will soon be 4 hours long
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2023/oct/28/uk-cinemagoers-hail-return-of-intermissions-as-films-hit-three-hour-mark

tomw, 6 months ago to random

When a web thingy you use puts on its homepage that it is "for enterprises", that's probably time to stop using it, isn't it?

tomw, 6 months ago to random

Not often you use markercluster in anger, but I just did

tomw, 7 months ago to random

Got a new lowish-end PC in a standard tower type case (it's not for me... reasons) and what struck me is: the thing is practically empty!

I can see motherboard, processor, hard drive, several fans and a chonker of a graphics card, but there is so much unused space in the case. It's like 80% air.

Whatever happened to all the... computery gubbins that PCs used to have inside?

tomw, 7 months ago to random

The 'relatable' thing to say on social media is that you never make phone calls with your phone and the mere thought is terrifying, why do phones even have a Phone app, etc... especially if you are under 40 or so.

So for balance, I just want to say that I make and receive several phone calls per day, on a range of mundane topics, thank you.

tomw, 7 months ago to random

Saw a thread with loads of boosts and positive comments recommending GNU Mailman as an open source substitute for Mailchimp and... what? What??

Anyone recommending this has no clue where the difficult part is today in sending emails at any list size over ~100. (Clue: it's the bit where people actually receive any of the emails.)

tomw, 7 months ago to random

This is so commonplace on the web that it's not even interesting any more... but this is an SMS.

tomw, 7 months ago to random

List of countries that use the term "zip code":
USA
Philippines
Er, that's it

Do not use the term "zip code" in any form that is going to be used internationally, thank you. (The most neutral term is "postal code".)

tomw, 7 months ago to random

Why are all these billionaires racing to space, yet there's zero interest in building a real-life Atlantis?

I mean, if you were that rich, how hard could it even be?

tomw, 7 months ago to random

Oat formats

tomw, 7 months ago to random

This is interesting – I've been involved a couple of times in a "let's turn off comments" decision and it was always partly spam, partly that all real discussion of posts/articles had moved to social media. As that discussion fragments across platforms, it makes sense to try to bring back on-site commenting.

https://kottke.org/23/10/introducing-the-new-kottke-comments

tomw, 7 months ago to random

I can't stand how so much of the energy that once went into blogging now goes into closed-platform email 'newsletters' (remarkably similar to blog posts) because they come with a lottery-ticket chance of making some money. Argh, it's so awful.

tomw, 7 months ago to random

There should be a name for when you say something on social media knowing full well that it is NOT about, but adjacent to, something that lots of people have heard of and will tell you about in the replies

tomw, 7 months ago to random

My Facebook account got suspended.

This turned out to be no big deal as, despite the scary email, they just asked for a phone number then turned it back on. And I don't care about Facebook really. But!

At the stroke of a misfiring algorithm, two things I do care about were at risk: admin rights over some pages and ability to send messages to some people who still use FB Messenger.

And it made me realise how much worse it would have been if FB and WhatsApp accounts were tied together.

tomw, 7 months ago to random

It's 2023 and Apple thinks I am excited about screensavers

tomw, 7 months ago to random

One upside to never posting on Twitter is that you don't have to remember to post about a passing topic just to avoid someone later saying "oh so you posted about x but you never mentioned y".

tomw, 7 months ago to wordpress

It's funny how people who talk about web dev believe that a very particular set of "modern", JS-heavy, build-heavy practices are the only thing worth discussing, while #wordpress continues to quietly take over everything.

https://wptavern.com/why-nasa-chose-wordpress-for-revamping-its-flagship-website

tomw, 7 months ago to random

SURPRISE!

(It is not a surprise.)

Copilot AI frequently generates insecure code.

https://arxiv.org/abs/2310.02059

tomw, 7 months ago to random

If you ever have imposter syndrome as a web developer, you can just visit basically any other website. They all barely work.

tomw, 7 months ago to random

Email attachments are a silly hack but it's now just considered routine and even reliable. Base64? We're seriously still transforming multi-megabyte binaries to alphanumeric encoding for transmission? multipart/alternative; boundary=[random garbage]? Just an absolute joke of a hack.

tomw, 7 months ago to random

You can really tell that whoever wrote this is not a Mastodon user