sil

sil, 1 year ago to random

Clippy + AI = the death knell of civilisation

sil, 10 months ago to random

“forcing OpenAI to identify its use of copyrighted data would expose the company to potential lawsuits. Generative AI systems are trained using large amounts of data scraped from the web, much of it copyright protected… [disclosing sources leaves us] open to legal challenges.”

Looking forward to new defences in court saying if they’re forced to explain exactly where they got this car boot stall full of nappies and DVDs from, they’ll be subject to “legal challenges”

https://www.theverge.com/2023/5/25/23737116/openai-ai-regulation-eu-ai-act-cease-operating

sil, 9 months ago to random

Hey there! Are you looking to sell services to small businesses? And are you thinking of sending them all spam, and then a few days later sending more automated spam in a chummy voice reading "hi Stuart! just checking in if you read my email! feel free to reply to say no!"

Don't. You are a little piece of sandpaper on everyone's soul. If you think this is a good idea, I hope that every time you put socks on they feel a little bit like they're on wrong for the whole day, forever.

sil, 2 months ago to random

Outside and I can hear Rihanna’s “Umbrella” playing, which obviously made me think of the excellent Tom Holland lip sync video. Does this also trigger the rule about resharing it? Or do I have to have actually seen the video?

Actually, what the hell, let’s trigger another round of sharing, because it’s worth it. https://youtu.be/Brq-exSvB7Q?si=670qju7XRQZ6Gzcz

sil, 2 months ago to random

Apple have backed off; they will no longer be breaking web apps in the EU next week. This is good news! Thank you to everybody who signed the @owa open letter; you helped this to happen. Now we're back to where we were in January before this kerfuffle; we still want web app equality on all platforms, and the fight continues.

https://open-web-advocacy.org/blog/apple-backs-off-killing-web-apps/

sil, 11 months ago to random

"CSS is now the most powerful design tool for the Web." -- @matthiasott https://matthiasott.com/notes/the-new-css

I really like that all the proper innovation and attention is going into CSS right now. I spoke with a cohort of learners at School of Code and suggested to them that they should spend attention on understanding modern CSS, because 2 years from now when the industry gets on board, they'll be experts and in high demand.

sil, 11 months ago to Steamdeck

People who dig the #SteamDeck: here's @bkardell and @Meyerweb from @igalia, who I did not know were doing lots of work on the Deck, talking to other Igalia people who are doing lots of work to make the Steam Deck better. Interesting podcast!

https://www.igalia.com/chats/steam-powered-open-source

sil, 6 months ago to random

“But the core of the web, the design for deploying a network of linked documents, of words and ideas, remains simple enough that most people can create a web page in day and many people could build a rudimentary but functional client or a server in a weekend.”
It’s about museums. But also about the web. This is good stuff (via @beep)
https://www.aaronland.info/weblog/2023/11/11/therapy/

sil, 2 months ago to random

"decadent" -- has ten teeth
"diffident" -- has complicated teeth
"indent" -- fillings
"codependent" -- teeth with editable JavaScript
"student" -- my teeth

simon, 4 months ago to random

If someone wants to start a blog, and they'd like the content they publish to stick around on the internet for as long as possible into the future, what are their best options?

Buying a domain is tricky because domain names expire

GitHub Pages is pretty great, because GitHub is free and has, to-date, a great track record of not breaking *.github.io content

What are other great options? WordPress.com I think are good on this front

I don't trust anyone with less than 10 years of track record

sil, 1 month ago to random

Excellent write up on why the EU is actually doing tech legislation, and why it can be difficult to understand if coming from a different place. (And the reverse is true as well, as @film_girl pointed out recently; people who aren’t steeped in the US system tend not to understand how and why US tech regulators are doing what they’re doing, too.)

From: @ianbetteridge.com@ianbetteridge.com
https://ianbetteridge.com/2024/04/01/antitrust-meta-apple-and-more/

sil, 10 months ago to random

Nice to see that real places recognise that the web is best and “install an app” is not something that actual people really want to do for something they’ll do once.

sil, 1 year ago to random

No voting for me today (there's no election in Birmingham). But for the rest of you, remember to go and vote, remember to take photo ID with you (even though you should not have to do so, you do have to), and remember to not vote for Tories.

https://stopthetories.vote/ for who to best tactically vote for in your area, if you don't have a preference yourself.

sil, 27 days ago to UKpolitics

OK, UK types, it’s council elections day. When you go out to vote, remember that you need to take photo ID with you. Yes, it is bad that you have to do so because it harms people without IDs more than it helps stop basically-nonexistent “voting fraud”, and yes this is a flagrantly partisan measure to benefit the Tories, and yes it was put through Parliament with barely any discussion or opposition, but you still have to do it. Don’t take it out on polling station volunteers, either. #UKpolitics

sil, 8 months ago to random

Molly died. That sucks. I knew she was ill, and I hadn't spoken to her much in recent years, but she played a part in making the open web what it is today. She could be a pain, but she was funny and loud and very dedicated to doing the right thing. And most importantly, my daughter liked her and still remembers her despite only having met her once, 13 years ago. That's good enough for me. Surprisingly bummed out by this.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/drewm/4674634187/
https://www.tucsonsentinel.com/local/report/090523_molly_holzschlag/tucsons-molly-holzschlag-known-as-the-fairy-godmother-web-dead-60/

sil, 5 months ago to random

Amazing how fast a big company can move when they're fixing a thing that's important to them, rather than important to you. You want fast action from Apple, Nintendo, Google, whoever; make a thing that circumvents something they consider important and there's none of this "silence and ignore everyone's requests for six months" lark
https://www.theverge.com/2023/12/8/23994089/apple-beeper-mini-android-blocked-imessage-app

sil, 3 months ago to random

Apple are breaking web apps in the EU, because they don't want them and so don't want anyone else to have them either. If this affects you, maybe you want to sign up to our open letter to Tim Cook from @owa and the web community who don't want to see this happen, and think they'll listen. Sabotaging web apps is indefensible. And pass it on. Even Batman agrees, look.

https://letter.open-web-advocacy.org

Batman, on a rooftop, holds a criminal out over the edge. "I want you to tell all your friends about me," he growls. "W...what are you?" stutters the mugger. "I'm -" starts Batman, and is then interrupted by an obviously-computer-generated voice saying "Open Web Advocacy's open letter to Tim Cook". On the screen a message fades in reading "Sign it today." along with the URL, letter.open-web-advocacy.org.

sil, 1 year ago to random

It's the tenth anniversary of me working for myself. Blimey. Happy anniversary to me.

(If you've got a project that would benefit from me, do keep getting in touch!)

sil, 3 months ago to random

#soocon24 is like open source conferences used to be.

This is more of a compliment than it may sound like.

sil, 8 months ago to random

I am not a believer in browser choice screens. But putting some decent research into this to work out why they failed in the past and what might be changed is certainly worth the effort from @mozilla and having more detail on this can only help the discussion.
https://research.mozilla.org/browser-competition/choicescreen/

sil, 6 months ago to random

“Asking people to approve access that they know they don't fully understand and that they couldn't monitor even if they did understand it does not empower them. On the contrary, it trains them to be despondent, helpless at the hands of the High Priesthood of Computer Whisperers. And our job as technologists building a better world is to eradicate the High Priesthood.”

100% agree with @robin. Anybody who disagrees with that view of our job should be viewed with suspicion.
https://berjon.com/web-tiles/

sil, 3 months ago to random

We're getting lots of feedback at @owa about Apple's response to the law, both publicly and privately, and me just chatting to people seems the same. Completely apart from how you feel about the browser ban, or about what's best to do technically, the disdainful attitude of malicious compliance sure does make it hard for even fans of Apple to defend their actions. Don't take it out on the Safari team, though; they don't make decisions about what their browser can do.

https://open-web-advocacy.org/blog/developers-react-apple-eu-dma-compliance/

sil, 2 months ago to random

"US Department of Justice files Antitrust lawsuit Against Apple". This is a pretty big deal, and hard on the heels of the EU starting to enforce the DMA in Europe. Dominoes beginning to topple, maybe. Bring on the web.
https://open-web-advocacy.org/blog/us-doj-files-apple-antitrust-case/

sil, 2 days ago to random

Tonight's discovery: in the US, the symbol for healthcare and medicine is snakes wound around a winged staff, right? A caduceus, the symbol of Asclepius, the rod he carried as the god of healing?

Well... no. The rod of Asclepius only has one snake. The caduceus, with its two snakes, is a symbol of Hermes, the god of commerce.

This explains quite a lot.

(all credit to Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caduceus_as_a_symbol_of_medicine)

sil, 4 months ago to random

In the pub with friends for early birthday celebrations in advance of Tuesday. Happy days.