Baldur Bjarnason

Writer, web developer and consultant based in Hveragerði, Iceland. Lapsed Interactive Media Academic. Webby Tech Stuff and webby book stuff.

Blog: https://www.baldurbjarnason.com/
AI Book: https://illusion.baldurbjarnason.com/
Pronouns: he/him
Book: https://softwarecrisis.baldurbjarnason.com/

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baldur_at_toot.cafe@momostr.pink

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Last Notes

2024-10-14 17:14:40

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😄

2024-10-11 10:36:34

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😄

2024-10-10 10:02:01

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The lack of interest from FF and Safari in the Navigation API is particularly galling as it's such a massive improvement over existing APIs both in design and accessibility.

2024-10-10 09:55:03

Short list of proposed/in progress web standards I'd love to see get broader support:
- View transitions in Firefox (Safari is in progress AFAICT)
- SharedWorker in Chrome Android
- createWriteable() in Safari. It's ridiculous to force OPFS writing to be done in a worker
- Module support in service workers (FF is the main holdout, I think?)
- integrity property in import maps (FF again, I think)
- Navigation API in both FF and Safari, potentially the "biggest win" API not being implemented IMO

2024-09-14 16:18:04

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I got to have a go at the whole “modify the hardware to install a proper linux” thing with this chromebook at some point. 🙂

2024-09-14 12:47:11

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I genuinely hate ChromeOS. It's a series of horrible design decisions compounded by the fact they keep shifting things around and changing crap so you can't even form decent coping habits for their earlier horrible design decisions.
But we shouldn't lose sight of the fact that it's not just a horrible design, it's also horribly implemented
(The Files app also clearly has a memory leak, but that's a topic for another day.)

2024-09-05 15:16:35

“Threads is trading trust for growth”
https://werd.io/2024/threads-is-trading-trust-for-growth
Threads sounds exactly as unpleasant as I imagined a Twitter clone made by the Instagram team to be.

2024-08-31 15:13:50

Apparently programmer specialities such as "web dev" are about to become obsolete because an experienced dev can quickly become an expert by using LLMs. Tools that are trained almost entirely on code built using principles that I and an increasing number of _web_ devs think are a dysfunctional dead end, even a potential existential threat to the industry itself
But, y'know, maybe I'm wrong and a python dev copying and pasting bloated React code out of ChatGPT is the future of web dev 🤷🏻‍♂️

2024-08-28 11:28:57

I wrote a bit about I've noticed my own behaviour on social media changing
"Bad Faith Burnout"
> So, apologies in advance if I don’t reply to your reply. It’s not you
https://www.baldurbjarnason.com/2024/bad-faith-burnout/

2024-08-27 13:27:24

“Just use fucking paper, man - Andy Bell”
https://andy-bell.co.uk/just-fucking-use-paper-man/
This. Index cards too.
(I alternate between pencil and fountain pen depending on my mood, but the principle is the same in both cases.)

2024-08-26 14:40:32

One of the unexpected side effects of having a newsletter that's based on your blog is the day you've got a newsletter scheduled becomes an unofficial "publish all your drafts" day. 😁

2024-08-26 12:36:56

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https://www.ruv.is/english/2024-08-25-lava-flows-over-old-munitions-420409 😅

2024-08-26 12:25:39

Between the ice cave tragedy and the “we might have some… explosives under the lava” thing, Icelandic tourism (and tourists) doesn’t seem to be having a particularly good week.

2024-08-26 12:20:50

“Lava flows over old munitions - RÚV.is”
https://www.ruv.is/english/2024-08-25-lava-flows-over-old-munitions-420409
> There is a risk of explosion at the eruption site, as lava flows and wildfires burn at a contaminated US military training site. We didn't need the extra work, says the fire chief.
This sounds suboptimal.

2024-08-26 09:19:14

The glacial cave collapse is a horrifying accident. We won’t know what exactly caused it until after the investigation, but I will note that, back in June, RUV reported that glacial experts objected strongly to the decision to allow glacial cave trips in the summer, that it was fundamentally unsafe
https://www.ruv.is/english/2024-08-25-ice-cave-collapses-at-breidamerkurjokull-420425
The original coverage in June, which also notes reports that some of the tourism companies have been going beyond what they’re permitted to do
https://www.ruv.is/utvarp/spila/thetta-helst/33405/9uid5s

2024-08-16 10:58:36

Holy crap, the Wordpress Plugin Directory process is just the absolute worst. Subversion? Seriously?

2024-08-15 10:45:46

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So, here are two shots directly out of each app, process zero first form Halide, then out of the box in the Camera app.
The difference is striking on an iPhone as the Camera app HEIC supports HDR, but not really noticeable on a regular screen, which suggests to me that Apple is wasting a lot of its processing thunder on HDR
https://assets.toot.cafe/media_attachments/files/112/965/612/408/622/009/original/848ad8b0b86a7f7c.jpg
https://assets.toot.cafe/media_attachments/files/112/965/612/820/822/191/original/2d7c70275ef68596.jpg

2024-08-15 10:28:42

“Process Zero: The Anti-Intelligent Camera”
https://www.lux.camera/introducing-process-zero-for-iphone/
> Introducing a process that uses zero AI and zero computational photography to produce beautiful, film-like natural photos. Meet Halide 2.15, with Process Zero.
LOVE this idea. Really want to take a walk later today to test this out, despite the rain. We'll see if I have time 😄

2024-07-31 10:12:55

“Opinion: What’s behind the AI boom? Exploited humans”
https://www.siliconvalley.com/2024/07/30/opinion-whats-behind-the-ai-boom-exploited-humans/amp/
> In Iceland, we visited data center workers who documented the energy-intensive nature of these centers, which consume more electricity than Icelandic households combined.
One of the reasons why this shit makes me so angry. This is directly threatening Iceland's energy transition as it's soaking up all excess capacity

2024-07-21 13:14:04

“Fascism Creeps in from Silicon Valley”
https://biblioracle.substack.com/p/fascism-creeps-in-from-silicon-valley
> Calling these people fascist is sometimes derided as scare tactics or alarmism, but I don’t know in what world accuracy is alarmist.
Pretty sure that fascism runs deeper and is much more common among people in tech than is commonly accepted outside of tech

2024-07-08 14:57:34

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Yeah, already checked that. Show all windows for Safari only shows the current window/instance.

2024-07-08 09:53:38

“GitHub - explainers-by-googlers/prompt-api: A proposal for a web API for prompting browser-provided language models”
https://github.com/explainers-by-googlers/prompt-api
> const session = await ai.createTextSession();
No nononono no NO nope NOPE. Fucking hell no. JFC is this week's reading off to a bad start.

2024-07-08 09:09:30

iPad Safari just disappeared dozens of tabs with no indication as to what happened, where they went, or how to recover them. It’s the only fucking browser where this keeps happening to me

2024-06-20 14:18:50

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Yeah, people relying on chatbots for learning and not realising that what they get is both inaccurate and outdated (with training data having an inevitable cut-off date) is something I keep seeing more and more 😕

2024-06-20 09:57:05

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People who know about all of the new and cool features either don’t have the opportunity to use them or are too overworked to use them.
People who don’t know about them aren’t finding out because the field is effectively being dismantled, leading to fewer outlets writing about CSS and next to no conferences dedicated to it.
Businesses don’t want to pay for CSS so they’re basically getting less of it and fewer people who specialise in it.

2024-06-20 09:53:28

At the risk of being labelled a one note pessimist, pretty much everything about the state of CSS—slow uptake of standards, popular reliance on frameworks, the lack of conferences, and the diminishing number of publications—can be explained by the eradication of CSS specialisation from the job market

2024-06-10 12:23:36

One of the jobs I had to pay for college was selling TVs in an electronics store. They had a bonus system where I always came in last because I always advised people to buy within their means and not on credit
Every time I have a meeting where I tell a prospective client that they don’t need my services I reminded of that time when I spent my weekends wearing cheap wrinkle-free shirts and telling divorced dads they could do with a slightly smaller TV

2024-04-17 09:58:16

Seeing tech people’s hyperbolic response to an incredibly kind and generous youtube review of a product that genuinely shouldn’t exist makes me glad I don’t review products for a living. I’d have been much harsher

2024-04-16 10:50:33

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Yeah, I figured.

2024-04-16 10:44:46

Gonna go over to Linkedin and repost some “AI” sceptics to see if that’ll stem the tide connection invitations from AI Dudes.

2024-04-15 09:43:28

“Faster Connectivity !== Faster Websites - Jim Nielsen’s Blog” https://blog.jim-nielsen.com/2024/faster-bandwidth-and-websites/

2024-04-14 11:44:27

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For reference, the actual translations:
These are birds:
Tjaldur = oystercatcher
Skógarþröstur = redwing
Glókollur = goldcrest
Steindepill = wheatear
This is a fish
Loðna = capelin/caplin

2024-04-14 09:18:22

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Google Translate used to get the individual words right for Icelandic and everything else wrong. Now it’s much better at syntax and grammar but so so so many of the words themselves are now outright ridiculous
It thinks that:
“Tjaldur” = tent
“Loðna” = hairy
“Glókollur” = glow sticks
“Steindepill” = gem
And before you ask, yes it gets those wrong in context:
“loðna fannst norðan lands” = fur was found in the north of the country
This is the garbage translators are losing their jobs to

2024-04-14 08:50:45

“Society of Authors survey reveals a third of translators and quarter of illustrators losing work to AI”
We all know how crap generative images are but machine translation seems to be outright declining. Google Translate now thinks “skógarþröstur” in Icelandic means “woodpecker” https://downthetubes.net/society-of-authors-survey-reveals-a-third-of-translators-and-quarter-of-illustrators-losing-work-to-ai/

2024-04-13 16:37:43

Took my camera with an “antique” lens (70s/80s is antique now, right?) out on my “clear my head of anxiety” walk. This might have been a mistake since a funky manual lens isn’t the best for birds and landscapes, but you make do 🙂
https://assets.toot.cafe/media_attachments/files/112/264/888/670/172/075/original/0d9bfe0998f8424c.jpg
https://assets.toot.cafe/media_attachments/files/112/264/888/819/730/309/original/fce7d63511e271df.jpg
https://assets.toot.cafe/media_attachments/files/112/264/888/968/384/904/original/6d88523f3b04b705.jpg
https://assets.toot.cafe/media_attachments/files/112/264/889/142/102/412/original/5cfaa213f883864e.jpg

2024-04-13 10:37:08

For today’s #caturday post, another batch of photos from my sister of her cat Kolka, a black-and-white rescue who has gone from semi-feral to “hey, people give scritches!”
https://assets.toot.cafe/media_attachments/files/112/263/470/956/737/669/original/57a1a31874ad2be6.jpg
https://assets.toot.cafe/media_attachments/files/112/263/471/092/237/598/original/f3d6e3d16d16696f.jpg
https://assets.toot.cafe/media_attachments/files/112/263/471/198/793/956/original/b8bd6d5b74363156.jpg
https://assets.toot.cafe/media_attachments/files/112/263/471/307/296/338/original/1b6f99440c93a019.jpg

2024-04-13 09:50:17

So, it may feel like I’m harping on a bit about JSR—the tech industry’s latest attempt to ‘fix’ the JavaScript ecosystem—but it kind of bugs me how little discussion there is about it
Like, it’s literally a proposal by a VC-funded startup to coopt existing infrastructure and the only comments I’m seeing online are “ooh, they put a lot of work into making it fast.”
There’s no discussion of what it’s for, whether it tells us anything about npm or how that can be improved.

2024-04-12 10:04:46

Posting “Here’s what ChatGPT has to say about your blog post” in a reply that mentions me is an automatic mute or, if I haven’t had my coffee, a block
That is all.

2024-04-11 10:31:05

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Like, you have to make an effort to be this ignorant about so many things:
- Finance
- Copyright law
- Technology
- Software
- Machine Learning
- Neuroscience
- Even on the basic topic of writing and creativity which _should_ be right in their expertise.
Why do I do this to myself? 😩

2024-04-11 10:26:49

Made the mistake of reading through a discussion between publishing types on an “AI”-adjacent topic (rumours about tech cos contemplating buying Simon & Schuster). I’ve rarely seen so much concentrated ignorance on so many topics bundled together in a single thread 🙄

2024-04-10 13:11:24

“Intel is oddly enthusiast about AI replacing everyone’s jobs”
“Oddly”? This is the point and purpose of “AI”. It’s anti-labour. Replacing everybody’s jobs—or at least replacing skilled staff that has leverage with lower-paid “AI wranglers” with no bargaining power—is what it’s for https://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/intel-vision-2024-ai-taking-jobs/

2024-04-09 10:42:17

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So, I've seen a lot of estimates but it's very hard to accurately gauge that without having direct access to actual power usage data.
But we know from how these systems work that their power use is structurally at the very least on similar level to cryptocoins.

2024-04-08 12:51:47

Trying a new thing with the newsletter this week. Instead of bundling everything in the newsletter into a single digest-style blog post, I’m instead breaking the topics up into their own blog posts. The newsletter digest format doesn’t really work for blogs, IMO.
That’s the theory anyway

2024-04-08 10:00:54

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Software usually has extraordinarily high margins. Tech’s nonsense management tactics are contingent on being able to float shit away on a tide of money. You only get away with bullshit software dev, shipping abysmal apps, and constant security lapses if you are making an obscene amount of money

2024-04-08 09:50:41

So far, AI hasn’t been profitable for Big Tech | Ars Technica
"the cost to Microsoft exceeds $20 a month per user on average, according to a person familiar with the matter. In some cases, individual power users have cost the company as much as $80 a month." https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2023/10/so-far-ai-hasnt-been-profitable-for-big-tech/

2024-04-07 12:10:24

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kreisí! 😄

2024-04-07 12:02:00

That feeling when the Icelandic spelling of a word leaks into your English writing.
(The letters ‘C’ and ‘Z’ aren’t in the Icelandic alphabet and when words that include them are adopted into Icelandic the letters get replaced with ‘K’ and ‘S’, respectively.)

2024-04-05 15:12:30

“Inconsistency is a feature, not a bug – Terence Eden’s Blog”
The thing that makes Google’s later icons extraordinarily incompetent is that the old icons were consistent in terms of style, colours, shading, etc. The new icons are worse because they are less identifiable https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2024/04/inconsistency-is-a-feature-not-a-bug/

2024-04-04 09:13:11

“Thoughts on embedding alternative text metadata into images – Eric Bailey” https://ericwbailey.website/published/thoughts-on-embedding-alternative-text-metadata-into-images/

2024-04-03 13:56:52

Just saw somebody on a mailing list describe “AI” sceptics as performative contrarians and I guess they mean people like me. 🤷‍♂️

2024-04-01 11:34:45

Once I realised that quite a few people not only don’t enjoy reading or writing, many actually resent it and consider one, the other, or both to be the biggest chore at work, a lot of things clicked into place about both generative models and how people read

2024-03-30 11:20:46

At some point, all these articles analysing LLMs by comparison to this or that prior tech will force me to write a post on how to use E.F. Schumacher’s framework of convergent vs divergent problems as a lens to analyse tech and with that I’ll alienate every non-academic reader I have for good 😝

2024-03-27 09:38:01

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Also, do all these pundits really think that Apple could pull out of the EU without also destroying their relationship to the EEA (which is likely to adopt the DMA/DSA in due course) or the UK (which itself has been trying to pass similar legislation)
Do they really think that regulators in other countries won’t notice that a company is so reliant on anti-competitive practices that they’d be willing to nuke their business in an entire region?
These dudes are straight up off the rails

2024-03-27 09:26:32

Because the pundits are unclear on this
A non-compliance investigation by a regulator is not done to find excuses for a fine
The point is to change behaviour
If Apple and the rest change their behaviour before the end of the investigative period, odds are they’ll only get a slap on the wrist

2024-03-25 12:23:38

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It’s kind of funny to see all of these trillion dollar companies all make the same mistake of believing that EU regulators behave like US regulators and that EU law works exactly like US law.

2024-03-25 12:18:15

“Apple, Meta, and Google targeted by EU in DMA non-compliance investigations - The Verge”
Apple fans: “The EU must approve of Apple’s plans, otherwise Apple wouldn’t have announced them”
The EU: “Hang on a minute…” https://www.theverge.com/2024/3/25/24111232/european-commission-digital-markets-act-investigation

2024-03-22 09:17:54

Not going to comment on the US vs Apple lawsuit, but I will say this: a big corporation doesn’t get into lawsuits and regulatory trouble with several countries on several continents without severe misbehaviour. Nobody sues a multi-billion dollar multinational just for fun. Apple earned this

2024-03-21 16:48:32

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Ah, damn! Sorry, I've been up to my eyeballs over the past few days finishing a project and I completely forgot. I'll have to stroll by the Greenhouse tomorrow and see if it's still there 😅
Hope your trip back home was pleasant! 🙂

2024-03-21 14:38:00

The one about the web developer job market: https://www.baldurbjarnason.com/2024/the-one-about-the-web-developer-job-market/

2024-03-21 14:36:33

I’m guessing Gruber will find some way to blame this on the EU
“Apple sued by Biden administration over alleged iPhone ‘monopoly power’” https://www.nbcnews.com/business/business-news/apple-sued-doj-antitrust-monopoly-biden-rcna144424

2024-03-20 13:20:25

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People are replying to this post with links to their own sporadically-updated blogs...
Which is great! Keep 'em coming 🙂
Can't promise that I'll subscribe to any of them, but I'll definitely have a look at each when I have the time
And hopefully others will click through and have a look as well.

2024-03-20 10:04:26

I’ll let you in on a secret: I love sporadically updated weblogs. I subscribe to over 1200 feeds and most of them are sporadic or even technically “inactive”. Months often pass between updates
It means that every post published was important to the writer
Back in the days of snail mail, letters that began with “It’s been a while since I last wrote to you” were the ones people cherished the most
You don’t need to post every day or even every week to have a blog that matters