@alcinnz@floss.social
@alcinnz@floss.social avatar

alcinnz

@alcinnz@floss.social

A browser developer posting mostly about how free software projects work, and occasionally about climate change.

Though I do enjoy german board games given an opponent.

Pronouns: he/him

This profile is from a federated server and may be incomplete. Browse more on the original instance.

alcinnz, to random
@alcinnz@floss.social avatar

I've just started tackling parsing CSS colours! There's a fair bit of syntax to get through, but the "colour" module can help handle most the features!

Feel free to contribute to https://hackage.haskell.org/package/colour to make it trivial for me to support the entire spec!

This starts my work on "Mondrian"! https://git.argonaut-constellation.org/~alcinnz/Mondrian

ReticentTurnip, to random

I believe it is time to ban advertising. Now, I realize that much of the internet depends on advertising for its revenue, but that is offset by the fact that I don't give a fuck

alcinnz,
@alcinnz@floss.social avatar

@ReticentTurnip As an amateur browser dev... I have some very different opinions from what I often see in the Chromium project!

lightweight, to random
@lightweight@mastodon.nzoss.nz avatar

Just listening to RNZ and Peter Griffin. Why does anyone think 'Startups' are a) a good idea, and b) deserving of taxpayer funding? Isn't that just trickle down economics?

alcinnz,
@alcinnz@floss.social avatar

@lightweight As I said yesterday: Our politicians are star-struck.

They think Silicon Valley is a good thing to emulate!

alcinnz,
@alcinnz@floss.social avatar

@lightweight Credit to @aral for the term "Stay-up"!

https://moo.nz/@j

alcinnz,
@alcinnz@floss.social avatar

https://moo.nz/@j Regarding this concept of "commercial viability", as business owners that's not what me or @lightweight are complaining about under the term "startup".

It may now be fashionable to use the term for any young business, but that's not what it meant when Silicon Valley coined the term.

In complaining about "startups" we're specifically wanting businesses to be commercially viable under their own merits!

alcinnz,
@alcinnz@floss.social avatar

https://moo.nz/@j @lightweight At least when it comes to software companies, I think practically none of this money is doing any good.

As I tooted earlier, I tend to be quite skeptical at what gets labeled "innovation" in my industry!

alcinnz,
@alcinnz@floss.social avatar

https://moo.nz/@j @lightweight I've been through a startup incubator, one I relatively like. I've seen this sausage being made!

dcseifert, to random
@dcseifert@mastodon.social avatar

we made a human create this https://www.theverge.com/2023/5/10/23718654/sundar-is-pumped-about-ai

alcinnz,
@alcinnz@floss.social avatar

@dcseifert And now no one's missing out on the Google I/O announcements?

alcinnz, to random
@alcinnz@floss.social avatar

More links from my latest blogpost: https://argonaut-constellation.org/2023/05/08/lists.html

https://www.romannumerals.org

CSS Counter Styles Level 3 - Tab Atkins Jr. (Google, editor) @ W3C: https://www.w3.org/TR/css-counter-styles-3/
@counter - MDN: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/@counter-style

Children's educational resources:
What are prefixes? - BBC Bitesize: https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/topics/z8mxrwx/articles/z9hjwxs
What are suffixes?: https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/topics/z8mxrwx/articles/zwgbcwx
Negative Numbers - Cue Math: https://www.cuemath.com/numbers/negative-numbers/

alcinnz, to random
@alcinnz@floss.social avatar

A theme I saw yesterday & unwittingly contributed to: Old protocols are perfectly satisfactory. The issue is that as technology is brought to the masses it gets filtered through the lens of capitalism!

Personally I quite like:

  • HTTP
  • HTML (caveats)
  • CSS (caveats)
  • RSS
  • XMPP
  • eMail

I tend to be quite cynical about what gets sold as innovations, but I won't say there ever was a golden era of computing we've fallen from grace from.

~2000 had good standards though!

alcinnz,
@alcinnz@floss.social avatar

O.K., I admit as a protocol suite email is atrocious security wise. It is an ancient protocol that did not age well.

But I love the experience, & I wish replacements would stop trying to "fix" the part of email which is not broken. I don't want something more live and/or short-form!

alcinnz,
@alcinnz@floss.social avatar

@Adam Yes, there were lots of well-needed security fixes bolted on to make email half-decently secure.

This does not make its security good!

alcinnz,
@alcinnz@floss.social avatar

@Adam As for what's missing: No one seems to really get anywhere on adding end-to-end encryption. Webmail gets in the way...

And if we (civilians) knew how to encrypt when email started, it wouldn't have needed quite as many security patches!

alcinnz,
@alcinnz@floss.social avatar

@Adam Autocrypt does sound interesting! This might finally do it!

Many will insist on webmail, but maybe if we can get this widely adopted amongst mail clients that'd encourage their adoption?

I won't say email's an elegant protocol from a technical perspective due to how many basics needed to be bolted on, but...

alcinnz,
@alcinnz@floss.social avatar

@spearmintwarlock As an amateur browser dev... I'd say this is a fair assessment.

Typography has improved to be more inclusive, & I'd take modern CSS layout any day over what we had back then.

But I really don't like the complexity the web's ended up with...

At the same time 90's HTML had it's issues too! Which we've managed to mostly move away from (Substack gripes...).

alcinnz,
@alcinnz@floss.social avatar

@dragfyre Now that's a protocol I haven't used in a long time... Cannot comment!

I mostly use SCP, though I probably should use RCP.

alcinnz,
@alcinnz@floss.social avatar

@DrFriendless @spearmintwarlock Easier than hacking around with float & position, & easier for me to implement!

Incredibly well thought through!

alcinnz,
@alcinnz@floss.social avatar

@spearmintwarlock Now we've got CSS3 Grid, so you can use the same intuition used for table layouts. Just expressed more directly!

alcinnz,
@alcinnz@floss.social avatar

@spearmintwarlock @DrFriendless I strive to reopen this window!

You know. I think the issue isn't so much CSS's current complexity (boy do I have thoughts there!), but the fact we're expected to know it for pages to look halfway decent.

Browser defaults were designed for that late 90's time, & display technology evolved beyond it. If we had decent fallback style for unstyled pages...

alcinnz,
@alcinnz@floss.social avatar

@twipped @nedfed @rysiek I was talking all these protocols under a single label!

Yeah, I have a follow up toot admitting that these protocols are not elegant. They did not age well.

That spiralled into discussing getting Autocrypt adopted for end-to-end encryption.

alcinnz,
@alcinnz@floss.social avatar

@DrFriendless @spearmintwarlock Here's the one I had my eyes on: https://simplecss.org

alcinnz,
@alcinnz@floss.social avatar

@nedfed @twipped @rysiek Until then we're stock bolting basic features onto a protocol from the dawn of the internet.

That said it is incredible it lasted this long! And I do like the UX.

alcinnz, (edited )
@alcinnz@floss.social avatar

@nedfed @twipped @rysiek Besides the fact I gave that project up in favour of GNOME Web, & in favour of tackling deeper complexities!

ajroach42, to random
@ajroach42@retro.social avatar

Is there a good way to own digital comics that isn't piracy?

I want to start reading comics again, but I don't want to give money to Amazon.

alcinnz,
@alcinnz@floss.social avatar

@ajroach42 It's possible to download webcomics...

tbroyer, to climate
@tbroyer@piaille.fr avatar

What if I told you that most promoted actions about climate-friendly software are misguided?

Backing data for that claim and my opinion on the low-hanging fruits:

https://blog.ltgt.net/climate-friendly-software/

Key takeaways:

  • Pick servers in carbon-neutral or low-carbon datacenters first
  • Optimize for the perceived performance and battery life
  • Don't be the one that will make your users change their device
  • Sometimes, ideas aren't even worth their impacts

alcinnz,
@alcinnz@floss.social avatar

@tbroyer You know, I suspect that perceived performance & battery life would be a decent proxy metric... But agreed: That's not what's important!

As you say what is important is not being the one leading users to upgrade their devices!

  • All
  • Subscribed
  • Moderated
  • Favorites
  • •
  • JUstTest
  • Durango
  • DreamBathrooms
  • everett
  • osvaldo12
  • ngwrru68w68
  • magazineikmin
  • thenastyranch
  • Youngstown
  • ethstaker
  • rosin
  • slotface
  • mdbf
  • kavyap
  • megavids
  • cisconetworking
  • InstantRegret
  • cubers
  • tester
  • Leos
  • tacticalgear
  • khanakhh
  • GTA5RPClips
  • modclub
  • normalnudes
  • provamag3
  • anitta
  • lostlight
  • All magazines
    •