Adrian Cochrane

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
#noindex

Liberapay: https://liberapay.com/alcinnz
Rhapsode: https://rhapsode-web.org/
Homepage: https://adrian.geek.nz
Argonaut Constellation: https://argonaut-constellation.org/

Public Key

npub186lgefknfnkgychnfjancqnv4k4yrdzxal486lw0p80z6vmley9qgsnt98

NIP-05 Address

alcinnz_at_floss.social@momostr.pink

Profile Code

nprofile1qqsra05v5mf5emyzvte5eweuqfk2m2jpk3rwl6na0h8snh3dxdlujzs706rmc

Author Public Key

npub186lgefknfnkgychnfjancqnv4k4yrdzxal486lw0p80z6vmley9qgsnt98

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Last Notes

2024-10-04 00:51:53

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They blogged "we don't care what you think, we're doubling down on advertising!"
https://blog.mozilla.org/en/mozilla/improving-online-advertising/

2024-08-23 00:45:51

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depends on your bubble, but...

2024-07-04 21:29:07

If there's one thing I've learned as a browser-engine dev: Everything is political!
The most mundane things (e.g. how we answer "what time is it?") has the weight of historical politics behind it.
Software freedom is a political project, you can't "leave politics out of it"!
It makes a lot more sense to ask "how is this political?" than "is this political?". Because it is!

2024-07-04 01:24:24

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When I thought through reengineering an OS/browser from the hardware on up what made sense to me:
Have large amount of memory with fast burst-transfers, processing the data in it linearly. So we can still process reasonably large files!
And a smaller amount of memory in which we can arbitrarily rearrange data.

2024-07-04 01:15:11

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Besides, how about our software relied less on fast hardware? If we removed a couple layers of abstractions?
Some of these abstraction layers seem to be running around in circles...
A more nuanced memory model could also help...

2024-07-01 00:47:46

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Working on it...

2024-07-01 00:39:48

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In my standards circles... There's efforts to essentially redo media types, just now they're a bit higher-level & called (if I recall correctly) "schemas".

2024-06-30 22:07:52

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Incidentally what XMPP classifies as "advanced" features they don't expect "basic" clients or servers to implement include:
* User avatars (XEP 0084)
* VCard user avatars (XEP 0398, XEP 0153)
* User blocking (XEP 0191)
* Advanced group chat (XEP 0048, XEP 0313, XEP 0402, XEP 0410)
* Persistently store private data via pubsub (XEP 0223)
* Private XML Storage (XEP 0049, legacy)
* Stream management (XEP 0198)
* Message acknowledgements (XEP 0184)
And *so much more*!

2024-06-30 21:11:58

In planning out my next thread...
I'm confident referencing the XMPP specs to cover all the remaining features. Probably preceded by a summary of what I've covered so far.
Looking at authentication meanwhile...
For authentication & multi-account devices I'm thinking of discussing USB keys (looked at some specs, understandably overkill for what our needs would be), fingerprint scanners (which I need to learn!), & passwords. Any others you want?
Any links to share with me?

2024-06-30 19:01:21

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* Network connections capable of creating new sockets.
* Accessors for system/player settings, alongside the clipboard.
* XML parser.
* Richtext.
* Errors to throw.
2.5/2.5 Fin for today! Tomorrow: Rest of these! I think I got halfway through!

2024-06-30 18:53:56

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* Queryable stylesheets storing transformations
* Parsed XML nodes
* Show & hide the mouse cursor
* Buffered & seekable network streams, reading to be hooked up to a media player!
* Numeric constants & conversion to/from strings
* Serializing & deserializing values/objects for sharing across isolated contexts
* String case conversoin, subslicing, indexing, & search
* Loading & playing/stopping audio at a certain volume & matrix transform
* Parse domain out of a URL
* Download movie clips
2/2.5

2024-06-30 18:33:16

Flash AVM1 offered a standard library which Ruffle reimplements, including:
* "Attachable" videos, calling into the compositor.
* Interface to system "Input Method Editors", currently regrettably noops in Ruffle.
* Configuration on what Ruffle allows an applet to do.
* Accessors for various system properties.
* Transformation matrices to apply to visible objects.
* Interface to the window & context menus.
* Streaming XML over the net.
* Text selections.
1/2 for today?

2024-06-30 17:46:33

Commas are Bad - Simon Safar:
https://simonsafar.com/2024/commas_are_bad/
Personally I gravitate towards infix-based syntaxes...

2024-06-30 17:36:36

Why Have a Personal Site Instead of Social Media? - Kev Quirk:
https://kevquirk.com/blog/why-have-a-personal-site-instead-of-social-media

2024-06-30 17:23:37

The new Fantasy Steampunk Storybundle, with orcs! - Michael Lucas:
https://mwl.io/archives/23665

2024-06-29 20:12:36

As I wrote my last toot(s) on Ruffle, I've been going back over the last month to gather my writing on databases (including datastructures chats with @npub1k5e…jges & @npub1a36…07t5 ), PeePDF, LibFFI, Twisted, Ruffle, & Flit.
And boosting other toots that caught my eye!
I'll be getting into a shape for publishing, upload it, & then start discussing richer instant messaging & multi-user systems!

2024-06-29 20:04:09

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Alongside that register machine it tracks stackframes & "activation" state.
1.1/1.1 Fin for today!
Tomorrow: Tackle AVM1's standard lib!

2024-06-29 20:01:38

Today I'll study a couple more core components of Ruffle's Rust/WebASM reimplementation of Flash AVM1!
It includes a tagged enum holding an interpreted data value (undefined, null, bool, double, string, object with properties, or movie clip. Which can be converted to/from the Rust equivalent types, including parsing numbers from strings. Or call builtin type-coercion & comparison methods.
There's a register machine with methods for the different opcodes, & (looped) methods to dispatch to them!

2024-06-29 17:46:35

A Eulogy for DevOps -
Mathew Duggan:
https://matduggan.com/a-eulogy-for-devops/

2024-06-29 16:58:05

Instability - Robin Rendle:
https://robinrendle.com/notes/instability/

2024-06-29 16:48:18

[css-animation] Motion Blur - initially Adam Argyle:
https://github.com/w3c/csswg-drafts/issues/3837 (GitHub issue)
Boosted by Robin Rendle "The Cascade":
https://csscade.com/motion-blur/
Interesting idea!

2024-06-28 22:21:42

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...
* Added a bitflag to control the endianness of the output from my "Arithmetic Core".
* Some minor grammatical corrections.
I'll gather my threads (tomorrow) from whilst I was preparing this, proofread everything again, & publish it!
Then move onto my next hypothetical thread (now what did I have planned? I'll see!).
1.5/1.5!

2024-06-28 22:18:20

I made a couple tweaks to my hardware-browser hypothetical writeup including:
* It occurs to me (having written about my "Parsing Unit" can optimize its own code) that it'd be potentially useful to repurpose it as a garbage collector. Expanded on freeing data.
* Tweaked pull pipelines to make use of task-switching.
* Suggested that I'd add a 2nd Parsing Unit core to help address freezes.
* Suggested that multi-core parsing & pull-pipelines can aid decompressing CRDTs.
...
1/1.5!

2024-06-28 22:09:37

Studying more of Ruffle's Flash AVM1 reimplementation (more complex core components) there's...
* Functions for the scripting language to call, whether data to help populate an interpreter stackframe or a Rust function.
* Some standard library facilities mostly dealing with timeouts & numbers & string formatting (looks like JS!), I'll be saying a whole lot more about this soon!
* Various GC'd globals for the interpreter, including event dispatch.
1/1 Fin today! Tomorrow: Values & activations!

2024-06-28 20:46:33

Some of my fav shows:
Horror: The Magnus Archives
Superheroes: The Red Panda Adventures; The Bright Sessions
Gangster: Lackadaisy
Ensemble Comedy: Magus Elgar
Fantasy: Pepper & Carrot
Space Adventure: Wolf359
Animal PoV: Scurry
Melancholy: Zero Hours
Time Travel: ars Paradoxica
Detective Noir: Black Jack Justice
WTF!: Welcome to Night Vale
Conspiracy: Lime Town
Currently listening to...
Tragic-Comedy: Wooden Overcoats
Fantastic Investigation: Hi Nay
Check them out!
Your favs?

2024-06-28 20:15:58

Announcing Canopy v0.4 - James Coglan:
https://blog.jcoglan.com//2022/04/01/announcing-canopy-0-4/

2024-06-28 20:14:37

Invisible success - Eric Bailey:
https://ericwbailey.website/published/invisible-success/
Boosted by Robin Rendle "The Cascade":
https://csscade.com/invisible-success/

2024-06-28 20:10:43

Can you build a web app with vanilla Web Components in 2024?!? - Go Make Things:
https://invidious.private.coffee/watch?v=2S4-42vjZwY (YouTube via Invidious)
Can you build a web app with vanilla Web Components in 2024 - PART 2!:
https://yewtu.be/watch?v=6pttzPPtiFA (YouTube via Invidious)

2024-06-28 19:43:01

P&B: Alison Wilder - Manuel Moreale:
https://manuelmoreale.com/@/page/6gM21s63wmAbvbPb

2024-06-28 19:36:00

Out of the Software Crisis: membership library - Baldur Bjarnason:
https://www.baldurbjarnason.com/membership-library/
Help me help you: building a library of useful software development writinga;
https://www.baldurbjarnason.com/2024/help-me-help-you/

2024-06-27 22:14:03

The reason why I've been sharing daily audioshows/webcomics over the past couple weeks is to show: Superb independently-published fiction (writing, audioshows, webcomics, & increasingly cartoons) exist online!
Seek it out!
There's no need to continue letting Hollywood guide what we consider "pop culture". We can make our own, & increasingly so!
(Please don't recommend bullshitting linguistic averagers as a solution...)

2024-06-27 20:31:37

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Addendum:
When I say this hypothetical hardware is almost entirely memory...
The "Parsing Unit" is a lookuptable determining the next lookuptable to consult. A couple twists on that concept, but still... This is the bulk of compute!
The "Output Unit" is another lookuptable & a couple decoders.
I chose an NPU that's a twist on flash memory.
The Tree-SIMT "Layout Coprocessor" has a large shift memory per core, powering tree traversals.
Arithmetic Core has more RAM than ALU...
5/4 Fin!

2024-06-27 20:14:19

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I found it to be a stretch to get that "Layout Coprocessor" to render networks since it was instead designed to handle trees. And international text rendering (not to mention editing) is inherently complex regardless of hardware!
I specifically didn't include a coprocessor that's great at training neuralnets. Or switching between them.
I strongly suspect that discussing video creation will necessitate me restarting from scratch...
4/4 + addendum!

2024-06-27 19:58:45

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Diffing was a real weakness, it required significant optimization to get the algorithms to fit in my hypothetical hardware! Even with boosted Arithmetic Core RAM! Nothing Git's not already doing, just more vital.
For many other weakpoints I added coprocessors. There's occasional bulk calculation tasks (asymmetric crypto, media analysis for compression, GPS triangulation, etc), evaluating neural nets (text prediction, machine translation, speech reconition, etc), & ofcourse graphics+layout!
3/5

2024-06-27 19:41:43

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I included a bare-bones 16bit RISC "Arithmetic Core" with a couple K of dedicated RAM in my hypothetical. Even this *largely* filled my remaining needs!
Though sorting was vital enough sorting to let my "Parsing Unit" branch over the Arithmetic Core's flags register. Amongst other optimizations...
LZ-compression prompted me to add a mode with a full 64k of 16bit RAM. Having the Arithmetic Core feed strings to the Parsing Unit for it to match would be an elegant implementation!
2/4?

2024-06-27 19:23:06

Perhaps more informative than exploring what my hypothetical "string-centric" hardware's strengths, is to explore its weaknesses!
Though its interesting that many of its strengths (equality/prefix/suffix/infix checks, dictionaries, graph analysis, CSS styling, decompression, & USB; in turn caching, identifier resolution, event dispatch, etc) relies on metaprogramming (dynamically generate code which computes the real answer)!
1/4?

2024-06-27 18:38:42

My last link harvest for a bit...
I finished linkifying my writing on devtools for my hypothetical hardware-browser! Today specifically: a (minimally-used in hypothetical) "secure boot"!
https://www.copetti.org/writings/consoles/playstation-3/#security-foundation-overview
https://cendyne.dev/posts/2022-03-05-why-dsa.html
https://aosabook.org/en/v2/ffreleng.html
https://pluralistic.net/2024/06/26/unplanned-obsolescence/
http://cheapskatesguide.org/articles/uefi.html
https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/developer/articles/guide/getting-started-with-active-management-technology.html
My stance: Its all a matter of who controls the (cryptographic) keys to the lock added to our computer. The tech's fine, the deployment isn't!

2024-06-27 18:05:30

Looking over some Ruffle's AVM1 less-trivial core components I see...
A parsed "movie clip" dot-separated path & a wrapper which adds cached network fetches, access control + versioning bitflags, named & dynamically-typed "declaration" with thoes access-control/versioning bitflags, mapping from indexed properties to generically-typed values, serializing debug output, tagged enum representing native or dynamic "objects" for Flash code to interact with including property & method lookups.
1/1Fin

2024-06-27 17:11:31

Quick binary diffs with XDelta - James Coglan:
https://blog.jcoglan.com//2024/01/04/quick-binary-diffs-with-xdelta/

2024-06-27 17:09:24

How to create CSS utility classes - Robin Rendle "The Cascade":
https://csscade.com/how-to-create-css-utility-classes/

2024-06-27 17:07:57

MIME, RSS, and existential torment - Xe:
https://xeiaso.net/blog/2024/fixing-rss-mailcap/

2024-06-27 16:47:47

ForEveryone.Design - G&Sans:
https://www.foreveryone.design/
Some of its latest links...
Inclusive Color Sequences for Data Viz in 6 Steps - Cameron Calder @ IBM Design:
https://scribe.rip/design-ibm/inclusive-color-sequences-for-data-viz-in-6-steps-712869b910c2 (Medium via Scribe)
A guide to designing accessible, WCAG-conformant focus indicators - Sara Soueidan:
https://www.sarasoueidan.com/blog/focus-indicators/

2024-06-27 16:29:57

Ads hypocrisy - Manuel Moreale:
https://manuelmoreale.com/@/page/4DdokDfMsxRrNBWS

2024-06-27 16:26:27

The Shadow DOM is an antipattern - Go Make Things:
https://gomakethings.com/the-shadow-dom-is-an-antipattern/

2024-06-27 02:55:42

I've been looking over @npub1ncs…a6v8 's online course teaching HTML/CSS.
https://thebasics.dev/ ($149 one-off payment, never expires)
I'm extremely pleased to see this, and as far as I can tell it looks very solid! Though its trivial for me to overlook things on this subject.
I think most devs (other than me) can get a lot out of this!

2024-06-27 00:09:35

Wow, I loved this talk! I'm glad to hear this message, this enthusiasm spread!
Web Design Engineering With the New CSS - @npub1spt…wwgs @ CSS Day 2024:
https://invidious.materialio.us/watch?v=su6WA0kUUJE (YouTube via Invidious)
I was thinking about giving my own talk on the subject, but noone can do it justice. I'll probably point my audience to e.g. Ott's talk!

2024-06-26 23:19:02

If you want a great detective noire show, Black Jack Justice is excellent!
Plenty of that protagonists narrating over smooth jazz in it, solving plenty of great mysteries which stick with me!
https://decoderringtheatre.com/shows/black-jack-justice/
Though if you want to treat it as a puzzle, I think half-hour episodes might not be long enough to give you chance to get ahead of Jack Justice & Trixie Dixon.

2024-06-26 22:44:57

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Same! Can be difficult to parse these distinctions out though, when so many are hellbent on ignoring them...

2024-06-26 22:41:12

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I've been having plenty of luck with https://stract.com/ !

2024-06-26 22:14:07

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Bentley-Ottmann maintains a priority queue of upcoming line-start/intersect/end events & a sorted doubly-linked-list of all drawn linesegments intersecting the currently-considered horizontal "scanline". Each event informs how to update this list. From this we pair up linesegments to form trapezoids our hypothetical "Compositor" (and some IRL) hardware can directly render!
Our Tree-SIMT provides each core 2 binary (sub)trees to use.
Other algorithms are arguably better suited to text.
6/6Fin

2024-06-26 22:04:39

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* Determining which font features to enable
* Lookup "glyphs" for each "character" + its features & their positioning info, interpreting any bytecode instructions
* "Script" (a.k.a. ~alphabet) specific logic
* Rasterize the glyphs from vectors
And this all must be very fast, since its the performance bottleneck in webpage layout!
For the rasterization, the Bentley-Ottmann Algorithm suits my hypothetical Layout & Compositing Coprocessors very nicely!
5/5.5!

2024-06-26 21:54:56

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Building upon this hardware, tasks a text layout engine must tackle include:
* Querying which fontfile to use (if no underlying OS to worry about stick to webfonts, with user/useragent styles samediff!)
* Parsing said font, & its "tables" at specified offsets (add an opcode for this...)
* Normalizing text direction
* Segmenting text by equivalent styles
* Line splitting (running-sum + compare hardware-accelerated)
* Normalize charset to that supported by font
* Gather "grapheme clusters"
4/6!

2024-06-26 21:39:38

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To address this I'd let the Layout Coprocessor consult a shared lookup table, possibly with some tricks to utilize its binary-tree concurrency model. With some preprocessing we should be able to get those lookuptables down to a reasonable size!
Similarly we may lookup (stack-based) microcode from those lookuptables to aid implementing bytecode interpretors for programs frequently embedded in fonts.
And we'll parse Binary Search Tries from the font to query.
3/5?

2024-06-26 21:20:13

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Fundamentally these concerns necessitate parsing/transforming text in my hypothetical "Layout Coprocessor" (a tree-SIMT) which concurrently runs the same set of programs across numerous nodes in pre/post-order. I already have hypothetical hardware specifically tuned for parsing/transforming, which we would use for preprocessing to make the tasks more manageable. But it needs to run inside those threads!
I'd have it consult shared lookup-tables!
2/5?

2024-06-26 20:55:23

What'd it take to build a full-Unicode text renderer on my hypothetical hardware?
There's a couple inherent challenges here... For starters in Unicode's attempt to cover every written language used anywhere/anywhen on Earth fonts & character-classification tables can get quite massive! The other is that this impacts & is impacted by the layout of its parent nodes, & so must be run on the "Layout Coprocessor"!
Then there's rasterizing the vector fonts...
1/4?

2024-06-26 19:49:42

Today's link harvest:
http://cheapskatesguide.org/articles/forum-list.html
https://archive.ph/20130112225523/http://www.eros-os.org/essays/capintro.html
https://www.thewindowsclub.com/is-microsofts-recall-ai-safe-for-privacy
https://seirdy.one/posts/2022/02/02/floss-security/#good-counter-arguments (2nd time linking to that page...)
I have to stop here... Any links on Secure Boot you like?
Oh yeah, Coppetti's...

2024-06-26 18:43:32

In my dissatisfaction that The Web decided it needed to become Flash to kill Flash today I'll start studying Ruffle's reimplementation (in Rust) of Flash's v1 VM. Starting with core components.
Amongst these I see error codes indicating which limits were breached, "parse" (strip prefix) & dispatch (via another object) command strings, constructor functions, a VM value with or without an "object" to call, clamp-to-range, stackframes, tests, & test-environment builders.
1/1 Next: Nontrivial 1s!

2024-06-26 17:53:45

A guide to designing accessible, WCAG-conformant focus indicators - Sara Soueidan:
https://www.sarasoueidan.com/blog/focus-indicators/

2024-06-26 17:46:21

IdealOS Thinking - Josh On Design:
http://joshondesign.com/2024/06/25/idealos_thinking

2024-06-26 17:17:01

Minsuk Kang's personal site: https://kangminsuk.com/

2024-06-26 17:15:08

XAES-256-GCM - Filippo Valsorda:
https://words.filippo.io/dispatches/xaes-256-gcm/

2024-06-26 17:08:55

Five Things: June 20, 2024 - Guy LeCharles Gonzalez "Loud Poet":
https://loudpoet.com/2024/06/20/five-things-june-20-2024/
A couple links from it...
Tech is Cool, Business is Boring -
Justin Pot:
https://justinpot.com/tech-is-cool-business-is-boring/
Notes From “You Are Not A Gadget” - Jim Nielsen:
https://blog.jim-nielsen.com/2024/notes-from-you-are-not-a-gadget/

2024-06-26 16:43:16

Crash's personal site: https://crashhh.xyz/

2024-06-26 16:40:08

It lets me write less JS - Go Make Things:
https://gomakethings.com/it-lets-me-write-less-js/

2024-06-26 04:18:18

A couple articles I just enjoyed...
How to Design an ISA - David Chisnall @ ACM:
https://cacm.acm.org/practice/how-to-design-an-isa/
&
There's No Such Thing as a General-purpose Processor - @ University of Cambridge:
https://queue.acm.org/detail.cfm?id=2687011
Guess why?

2024-06-26 01:51:14

How does listening to mental health counselling sessions with superhumans (a.k.a. "atypicals") sound?
Then you should hear The Bright Sessions! https://thebrightsessions.com/
Quite mundane, & plenty of drama with superpowers bouncing off each other in interesting ways.
I think it resembles a better version of Bryan Singer's X-Men without the bombastic fights. Sam Barnes (voiced by the author) remarks that she doesn't find those movies very escapist...

2024-06-25 23:55:53

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Typical computers: Intermingle control flow with computations, uses a branch predictor to maintain performance.
My hypothetical: Consolidates basically all control flow into nigh unpredictable "Parsing Unit" relying primarily on code density, not sure if better: just different!
Typical: Designed to frustrate reprogramming.
Mine: I ended up still using Secure Boot to protect particularly sensitive data, but otherwise all its source code would be editable on-device!
4/4 Fin!

2024-06-25 22:59:27

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Typical computers: Focuses on delivering a single multi-core CPU fast enough for all your computing. Mobiles less so, though not evident to app devs.
Mine: Heterogeneous architecture, especially for arithmetic.
Typical: Preemptive multi-tasking implemented by that "kernel".
Mine: Cooperative multi-tasking with firmware mainloop, risks freezes (may wish to tweak...).
I'm adhering to existing external protocols, to keep grounded & since my only complaint is how capitalism deployed them.
4/4!

2024-06-25 22:31:11

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Typical computers: OS split primarily into "apps", as well as behind-the-scenes "daemons".
My hypothetical: OS split *primarily* into "transcoders" (defined loosely), barely any concept of apps. Aims to deliver a cohesive featureful document-centric experience! And contact-centric, for an Internet Communicator.
Typical: Updates require restart, of at least an app.
Mine: Hotswapped updates, risks crashes if we don't religious adhere to Postels Law!
2/3?

2024-06-25 22:12:21

How does the hypothetical hardware I've been describing compare to typical computers?
Typical: Focuses on processing numbers & pointers, other types abstract upon these.
Mine: Focuses on strings & parsers/regexps, followed (partially aided by firmware) by tries, graph analysis, & task switching. Minimal need for abstractions!
Typical: Requires complex "kernel" to configure "privileges" of running code.
Mine: OCaps
cc: [@theruran](https://hackers.town/@theruran ) for expressing an interest in atypical architectures.
1/? slowly

2024-06-25 22:03:44

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At least they claim to not be as pushy as others... Emphasizing the freedom to not use...

2024-06-25 20:08:07

I've been linkifying more discussion of codeforges, mostly linking to SourceHut & my own pages (to show I'm being consistent in my hypothetical).
Wrote a bit about crash reporters, adding a remark that I might not want to hear about crashes caused by hotswapped updates. Here's a great link on the crash reporter subject: https://hacks.mozilla.org/2024/04/porting-a-cross-platform-gui-application-to-rust/
On static site generators: https://gomakethings.com/the-different-static-site-generators-and-which-one-to-choose/
Content negotiation: https://http.dev/content-negotiation
Others have good links on OCaps or forums?

2024-06-25 19:47:15

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A last couple links from Bjarnason's linkdump...
Why Passkey Implementation is 100x Harder Than You Think – Misconceptions, Pitfalls and Unknown Unknowns - Vincent @ Corbado:
https://www.corbado.com/blog/passkey-implementation-pitfalls-misconceptions-unknowns
I gather it regretfully needs more bikeshedding... Authentication seems to incur a lot of it...
Fast Crimes at Lambda School - Sandofsky:
https://www.sandofsky.com/lambda-school/

2024-06-25 19:25:44

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A few more links from Bjarnason's linkdump...
Apple delays AI in the EU. Maybe. - Ian Betteridge:
https://ianbetteridge.com/2024/06/22/apple-delays-ai-in-the-eu-maybe/
Public CDNs Are Useless and Dangerous - Tim Perry @ HTTP Toolkit:
https://httptoolkit.com/blog/public-cdn-risks/
Should this be a map or 500 maps? - Elan Ullendorff "escape the algorithm":
https://escapethealgorithm.substack.com/p/should-this-be-a-map-or-500-maps (Substack)

2024-06-25 18:32:59

Links (24 June 2024) - Baldur Bjarnason:
https://www.baldurbjarnason.com/2024/links-22/
Includes commentary (e.g. remarking on the deteriorating CSS community; which I find especially sad due to the superb direction CSS is moving!) & quotes.
*Some* of those links I haven't already boosted...
The overlap between search bots and AI scrapers - Paul Watson "The Lazaras Corporation":
https://www.lazaruscorporation.co.uk/blogs/artists-notebook/posts/overlap-between-search-bots-and-ai-scrapers
Knowledge of feelings - Mandy Brown "A Working Library":
https://aworkinglibrary.com/writing/knowledge-of-feelings

2024-06-25 17:39:48

Pivoting From React to Native DOM APIs: A Real World Example - Richard MacManus @ The New Stack:
https://thenewstack.io/pivoting-from-react-to-native-dom-apis-a-real-world-example/
Boosted by Go Make Things:
https://gomakethings.com/removing-react-dramatically-improves-performance-a-case-study/
Because ofcourse Chris would, its what he's been advocating all along!

2024-06-25 01:28:37

My work experience today: Why is there a 2nd copy of this HTML template to confuse me!? And to confuse Git?!
Its a public opensource project btw...
This took a bit of head banging to debug...

2024-06-24 23:03:29

The most humorously absurd show I've heard has got to be Welcome to Night Vale! This is a community radio news show from the thankfully fictional town of Night Vale, where every conspiracy theory is true.
Its humor comes from over-the-top vilifying everything! Except queerness.
Its quite a long-running show so I'd understand if you want to skip aside to the latest episode, but I do encourage at least listening to the first one!
https://www.welcometonightvale.com/

2024-06-24 22:19:59

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I've got an idea how could write an algorithm which synthesizes regular expressions from sample text! The trick would be design one which doesn't overfit...

2024-06-24 22:16:27

How'd we implement that DSL upon the hypothetical hardware I'm discussing?
While it does simplify hardware requirements, thinking it through I still found we'd need a non-trivial compiler. Maybe bootstrap from another language?
Also this build-a-browser hardware-on-up hypothetical did not afford me the luxery of Harfbuzz language bindings. So instead... Future topic!
Bright side: CSS syntactic sugar could make for a nice graphics library! Outputting multiply-sums for our "Compositor"!
4/4Fin

2024-06-24 22:16:02

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A couple more notes which didn't fit in the last couple toots:
This DSL's compiler would ask you how to break the cyclic dependencies in CSS's standard formulas, so I'd need to add syntax for your answers.
Then there's the question of CSS properties which hold multiple values, I'm not sure whether to define those as their own collection type...
And it'd be nice to generate tentative CSS property parsers from this DSL's symbol table!
3/4!

2024-06-24 21:54:50

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Code reuse would be vital, so I'd introduce glob-matching of properties & types.
And we'd need a "collection" type which we can concatenate, map (possibly referencing previous item), filter/query (possibly referencing candidate response), & sort. Primarily this would be used for process a node's children (incurring postorder traversals), as well as at-rules & maybe parsed url()-referenced resources.
Also include pseudo-elements & literal text, so they can be spliced into the children.
2/3?

2024-06-24 21:41:40

What sort of Domain-Specific Language would, judging by my personal experience, best suit implementing CSS layout?
I'd want to write formulas for the CSS different CSS units & keywords & functions, thus relating the different CSS properties, etc including those of the parent node. Without worrying about in which order they are computed or the surrounding preorder & postorder traversals!
We may need to choose these formulas based on e.g. which keywords other properties are set to.
1/4?

2024-06-24 20:00:27

For today's link harvest...
I'm mostly referring to various pages on https://sourcehut.org/ & https://git-scm.com/docs/ to discuss how I'd self-host my own codeforge upon my hypothetical hardware!
Though I found a spot for https://tonsky.me/blog/crdt-filesync/
For discussing tarballs I'm landing on: http://offog.org/notes/tarballs-to-git/
Does anyone have a more interesting link?
I also briefly discuss implementing webfeeds, so:
https://www.youneedfeeds.com/
https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc4287

2024-06-24 19:07:20

To help parse its configuration file Python's FLIT packaging tool uses a vendored version of TomLi.
TomLi reads/decodes a file into memory & parses it char-by-char into a Python dictionary. Utilizing utility classes for nested dicts & parsing flags. Handwritten code resembles a pushdown automaton.
The major advantage of TomLi is that it parses values to more sophisticated datatypes, which may (for datetimes) be done via regexp.
1/1 Fin on Flit! Tomorrow: Ruffle AVM2!

2024-06-24 18:44:49

https://nowebwithoutwomen.com/

2024-06-24 18:41:44

Local, first, forever - Nikita Prokopov:
https://tonsky.me/blog/crdt-filesync/

2024-06-24 18:39:15

The ultimate error message UX writing guide - Slater Katz:
https://www.theuxgal.com/ux-writing-error-messages/
A Guide To Accessible Form Validation - Sandrina Pereira @ Smashing:
https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2023/02/guide-accessible-form-validation/
What does aria-hidden=true actually do to interactive elements? - Bogdan Cerovac:
https://cerovac.com/a11y/2024/06/what-does-aria-hiddentrue-actually-do-to-interactive-elements/
Intro to Colour Contrast - Javier Cuello @ Design Good Practices:
https://goodpractices.design/articles/colour-contrast
Blazing Fast Websites with Speculation Rules - Umar Hansa @ DebugBear:
https://www.debugbear.com/blog/speculation-rules
https://alttextselfies.net/

2024-06-24 18:29:32

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Bjarnason was expanding upon...
Born sloppy - Rob Horning:
https://robhorning.substack.com/p/born-sloppy (SubStack)
And since I referenced it...
ChatGPT is Bullshit - Michael Townsen Hicks, James Humphries & Joe Slater @ Glasgow University:
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10676-024-09775-5
Well worth a read! "Bullshit" is the technical term...

2024-06-24 18:06:08

'Slop': the rhetorical gambit of framing failure as partial success - Baldur Bjarnason:
https://www.baldurbjarnason.com/2024/slop-framing-failure-as-success/
A bit tangentially I prefer the term "bullshit" to "hallucination". Have since ChatGPT started, but now there's a Glasgow paper "ChatGPT is Bullshit"!
"Hallucination" refers misperceptions, but gen-AI don't perceive so they don't misperceive. "Bullshit" refers to talking without regard for the truth, which is how LLMs works.
I hear objections about implied sentience, a lost battle!

2024-06-24 17:43:10

Fighting bots - Manuel Moreale:
https://manuelmoreale.com/fighting-bots
Kev Quirk commiserating:
https://kevquirk.com/fighting-bots

2024-06-24 17:35:53

A Brief Introduction to Keyboard Accessibility - Karl Groves @ AFixt:
https://afixt.com/a-brief-introduction-to-keyboard-accessibility/
Helping Users Prevent Input Errors - Maggie Vaughan @ DubBot:
https://dubbot.com/dubblog/2023/prevent-input-errors.html
The Anatomy of Accessible Forms: Error Messages - Raghavendra Satish Peri @ Deque:
https://www.deque.com/blog/anatomy-of-accessible-forms-error-messages/
How to Provide Accessible Form Error Identification - level access:
https://www.levelaccess.com/blog/how-to-provide-accessible-form-error-identification/
Your eight-step PDF accessibility checklist - Kyle Paciello @ deque:
https://www.deque.com/blog/your-eight-step-pdf-accessibility-checklist/

2024-06-19 22:06:36

A fun sci-fi romp I love is Wolf359: Its about a small isolated crew orbiting the titular red dwarf looking for signs of alien life, yet all they keep picking up is classical music & jazz tunes. As they survive a surprising amount of wackiness.
Its humorously relatable, & when the plot gets going it does so at a delicious pace!
And may I say Michaela Swee's HERA is the best AI from fiction? I love episode 41 "Memoria"!
https://wolf359.fm/

2024-06-19 18:21:48

Flash (personally I mostly remember it being used to reimplement arcade games) serves as a boogey man to many web developers & standardizers. I won't claim to be a fan, but neither am I fan of how pulled several of its drawbacks over to HTML/CSS/JS in order to kill it! Obfuscation, DRM, feature bloat leading to large security surface, etc.
The silly thing is thanks to WebASM & the Ruffle project we once again support Flash applets in-browser! Just now you needn't install Flash Player!
1/?

2024-06-16 20:12:07

One technology which I think deserves more hype (it is getting a *little*) are Conflict-free Replicated Data Types (CRDTs)!
I made sure to include it in my exploration of a minimal yet inclusive OS (upcoming page), quote:
"In just the past decade Computer Science brought us the concept of CRDTs! Which represents your document as a series of edits, which combine such that no matter in which order these edits you recieved we get the same result!
1/2

2024-06-13 21:33:15

Trickster-hero quotes:
Eiffel: "Why am I one of the 2 morons out here?"
Minkowski: "Because Eiffel, if there's some breaking & entering to do I want my mischief specialist with me."
Or:
Red Panda: "When have I ever told you a lie which isn't in service of thwarting one of your evil schemes?"
Prof. Zombie: "A lie is a lie! And when have we seen each other when you weren't thwarting one of my evil schemes? Just another of your irritating habits!"

2024-06-09 21:21:06

The (surface-level) software industry makes its money through some combination of:
* Surveillance advertising
* Telling investors stories
* Exploiting the well meaning & the desperate
* Skirting laws
* Paywalls (least objectionable, if it weren't for the DRM)
In every case the vast majority of our computing effort goes towards extracting an income, not towards any tasks with any real value!
Yet politicians hope that the software can continue (green) economic growth for them?
1/1.5!

2024-06-02 19:27:17

The limitless potential of humanity will grow exponentially!
#BullshitBingo
Quoting Dr Chronopolis from The Red Panda Adventures, who regrets the line...

2024-05-30 22:18:59

Some ideas I'm considering for my next hypothetical device to explore, now that I've finished discussing a hardware-Internet Communicator with self-hosted maintenance:
* Continue that hypothetical to add multi-accounts, mapping, richer IM, publishing, and/or painting images.
* modern CDi (could draw plenty of other retro comparisons...) equivalent running LÖVE & Lua on a RISC32fimv; with hardly a graphics or sound card!
* How much computational power is desired for video creation?
Thoughts?

2024-05-14 03:33:32

I'm a little surprised noone picked up on me mention that Linux vendors compression libraries into kernel-space, & asked "does that include XZ?".
The answer is: Depending on build flags, yes!