Links
Posts about what I read elsewhere. Subscribe with RSS
-
Custom elements in React
It took a while, but it's happening!
React 19 […] will have direct support for custom elements. Developers can expect that all tests on custom-elements-everywhere.com will pass by default going forward, like they currently do in the experimental channels. Release date, as well as docs for what's supported, still to be announced.
(From: RFC: Plan for custom element attributes/properties in React 19 · Issue #11347 · facebook/react)
-
Costs of running Signal
Signal shares what it costs to make Signal:
We estimate that by 2025, Signal will require approximately $50 million dollars a year to operate (…)
Here we review some of these costs and where this money goes, [and] help clarify just what is required to fulfill the dream of privacy-preserving alternative technology, and contribute to establishing a solid foundation from which we can grow alternatives that contest tech surveillance and the incentives behind it.
(From: Privacy is Priceless, but Signal is Expensive on fhe Signal blog)
They do all this with donations, not investors.
-
Work and life
Mandy Brown suggests we should give less fucks about work:
Because here’s what I’ve learned: if you give your fucks to the unliving—if you plant those fucks in institutions or systems or platforms or, gods forbid, interest rates—you will run out of fucks. One day you will reach into that bag and your hand will meet nothing but air and you will be bereft.
(From: A unified theory of fucks)
-
Standards in 2024
In a blog post, W3C's new CEO Seth Dobbs outlines a focus on putting people first. He explains global standards, like the W3C's, are essential to:
[ensure technologies] are accessible by all, secure, maintain privacy, respect the planet, and work anywhere in the world
-
Billions for “AGI” and “metaverse”
“Artificial general intelligence” is a phrase different people assign different meanings to. Few think is actually within the realm of possibility. Yet, Zuckerberg talked to The Verge to announce Meta's new focus on trying to find out:
While he doesn’t have (…) an exact definition for it, he wants to build it.
(From: Mark Zuckerberg’s new goal is creating artificial general intelligence at The Verge)
In the same interview he also wanted to “unequivocally state” they're still focused on “the metaverse” and will spend more than 15 billion dollars per year on that. Imagine that sort of budget to go to solving some of the world's more clearly defined problems.
-
AI images look cheap and easy
iA write excellent posts that put “AI” into context. In their latest, they compare these images, that ‘often miss realness, depth, and originality’, to stock photos. This comes with a business risk: your content looks cheaper, of less value:
using AI images makes all of your content feel ordinary. Good images enrich your article, bad images devalue it. Your audience thinks: “If they use AI for images, they probably use it for content, too.”
(From: AI Art is The New Stock Image)
Unless there's a load of generated images that are so good that we can't recognise them, and we don't realise, I think iA are right: they're super obvious to spot and already look old.
Further down in the post, they predict the lack of creativity in machines may spark more human creativity:
Photography has made us question traditional art. Similarly, AI can make us question empty off-the-shelf communication. Ironically, machine-generated content might catalyze a fresh wave of humane creativity and hand-crafted innovation in verbal and visual storytelling.
I sure hope so. If we are to create things worth having around, we've got to make our choices and intentions matter.
-
Books with music
Melanie made a new website called Lit Tapes:
I read a couple books in the past few months that heavily featured music throughout the plot, and thought it would be fun to create playlists for those books.
(From: New project: Lit Tapes | Melanie Richards)
It looks gorgeous.
Books that feature a lot of music are my jam, so I love this idea. I'm currently reading Whites can dance too by Kalaf Epalanga, but in this genre I also liked Mix tape by Jane Sanderson and everything by Haruki Murakami.
-
A system of common components
In A Global Design System, Brad Frost makes a case to:
centralize common UI components, reduce so much of this unnecessary duplication, integrate with any web-based tech stack, and create a connected vehicle for delivering front-end best practices to the world’s web experiences.
His proposal explicitly isn't “new HTML features”. We're working on that over at Open UI, and it's fruitful and good, but also hard, because web compatibility is complicated. It's challenging to get accessibility “built-in” in: these web platform features, like a fully customisable select, need to be flexible and styleable enough so that people actually want to use them, but also inflexible enough so that people can't accidentally use them to make something inaccessible. Or maybe “inflexible” isn't the right word… it's a matter of adding “guardrails” to these features: what sort of ARIA relationships and states should apply when? Browsers can't guarantee what developers are trying or going to do.
Anyway, Brad's “global design system“ is not that, it's proposed as a layer on top of HTML, a common library between design systems. That too resonates with me. In fact, it is close to what NL Design System is setting out to do. Different government departments and layers maintain their own design systems, but share a common architecture and reuse themeable components and tests from one another.
-
Human curation is best
Cassidy Williams:
In the earlier internet days, you went to a fun website or read the latest thing because you decided to go do it. Now, all of this content is pushed in your face, designed to be as addicting as possible, so you keep coming back.
This is from her recent post in which she explains why she misses human curation, it ties in nicely with why I got into reading (and, as of recently, ow writing) link blogs.
Cassidy is right about algorithmic curation, I feel the same when scrolling modern social media. The sites found out I liked a couple of things, then bombard me with just more of those things. It's better to optimise for human context and intention than for algorithms, they quickly get boring.
-
Meta's Fediverse plans
Tom Coates went to a Meta event about Threads and the Fediverse:
Just before Christmas I was lucky enough to be invited to a Data Dialogue event at Meta’s offices in San Francisco. The event was designed to reach out to people in the ‘Fediverse’ community, tell us their plans for their product “Threads” and get a bit of feedback about the policy and privacy implications.
His post has a detailed analysis of the pros and cons: How Threads will integrate with the Fediverse – plasticbag.org