Baldur Bjarnason

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

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npub1z8u5kqzzndfhjuhpuj6gtry6ggnrs2tpaavetcah0leqh7fgn8fs27xck7

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baldur_at_toot.cafe@mostr.pub

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relay.mostr.pub

relay.nostr.band

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npub1z8u5kqzzndfhjuhpuj6gtry6ggnrs2tpaavetcah0leqh7fgn8fs27xck7

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Last Notes

2025-03-26 09:42:52

“Something Bizarre Is Happening to People Who Use ChatGPT a Lot”
https://futurism.com/the-byte/chatgpt-dependence-addiction
> Researchers have found that ChatGPT "power users," or those who use it the most and at the longest durations, are becoming dependent upon — or even addicted to — the chatbot.
Possibly related: what I wrote a couple of years ago on how LLM chatbots function like a mentalist's con
https://softwarecrisis.dev/letters/llmentalist/

2025-03-16 17:38:49

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Black and white version of the same
https://assets.toot.cafe/media_attachments/files/114/173/325/469/549/614/original/13f0042fdbb52478.jpg

2025-02-18 11:22:35

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A big chunk of my writing on "AI" is available on my website under the "AI" tag:
https://www.baldurbjarnason.com/tags/ai/
The oldest posts are just over two years old, now, which is why I think I've earned the right to say "I fucking told you so" when "AI" shit happens these days 🙂

2025-01-06 15:33:51

“Instagram blocked teens from searching LGBTQ-related content for months”
https://www.usermag.co/p/instagram-blocked-teens-from-searching
> Meta reversed the restrictions on LGBTQ search terms after User Mag reached out for comment, saying that it was in error.
Companies keep restricting by "mistake" and rolling back once noticed. How long until they stop bothering to pretend it’s a mistake?

2024-12-28 11:55:22

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@nprofile…pr5q It's never been much of a thing here in Iceland. IIRC most of the families that do it are either born again or have spent a lot of time in the states.

2024-12-28 11:54:04

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@nprofile…l6za This is absolutely the case, because the culture here is annoyingly social. 😁 Meeting and visiting relatives is a big part of the Icelandic yule tradition.

2024-12-28 11:52:36

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@nprofile…8ne4 Yeah, the born-again crowd here is a US import whereas mainstream Christianity in Iceland is a fairly liberal variation of Nordic Protestantism.

2024-12-28 11:19:06

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Context here on “saying grace”. It’s not a tradition here in Iceland to say grace before dinner, even among the religious. My late grandmother was a religious fanatic. At one point she had two of her grandchildren christened without their parent’s permission, for example. But she never asked any of us to say grace before dinner at family gatherings
So, when somebody unprompted asks for this at a dinner among relatives here, odds are they’re either born-again or in the early stages of extremism

2024-12-28 10:52:48

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Considering how little patience I have for nonsense like uncles ranting against “wokeism”, born-again cousins demanding that grace be said before dinner, libertarian relatives opining that the arts be completely defunded, or somebody suggesting feminism is overall a bad thing, I’m really just doing them a favour by making sure I’m not there to cause a scene

2024-12-28 10:40:44

Looks like I’ve managed to successfully navigate through this Christmas season without having to engage with reactionary, right-wing, or religious relatives, which is no small feat considering how annoyingly social Icelandic yule traditions can be. 💪🏻

2024-12-17 12:00:48

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Steamy geothermal fields work especially well in B&W, I think
https://assets.toot.cafe/media_attachments/files/113/668/051/073/998/836/original/94c2fd221f54068e.jpeg
https://assets.toot.cafe/media_attachments/files/113/668/051/417/370/978/original/d9af1b5ffc2ab62e.jpeg

2024-12-17 11:57:00

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In doing the b&w pass, I realised that—duh—snow and geothermal steam work well without colour
https://assets.toot.cafe/media_attachments/files/113/668/034/354/312/028/original/8decb338baefadad.jpeg
https://assets.toot.cafe/media_attachments/files/113/668/034/549/852/349/original/0f19a2d08b550fa8.jpeg
https://assets.toot.cafe/media_attachments/files/113/668/034/864/501/180/original/50c5c8f27fb93b25.jpeg
https://assets.toot.cafe/media_attachments/files/113/668/035/143/376/200/original/fd220ecaf31c2dc5.jpeg

2024-12-17 11:41:51

Did another pass over yesterday's photos with black and white in mind. This improved some images but not others. For example, the photo of the mountain through the trees doesn’t really change that much and which is preferable is subjective. Whereas in the photo of the geothermally active field, the fence becomes a more distinctive visual feature in the B&W version
https://assets.toot.cafe/media_attachments/files/113/667/974/317/659/830/original/077e31a57e252129.jpeg
https://assets.toot.cafe/media_attachments/files/113/667/974/781/313/280/original/7925ffcdbdfa40fe.jpeg
https://assets.toot.cafe/media_attachments/files/113/667/975/274/630/795/original/bbd4527104cd5247.jpeg
https://assets.toot.cafe/media_attachments/files/113/667/975/650/435/946/original/04aa82d253d88e5d.jpeg

2024-12-01 19:19:30

Whenever I manage to cheer myself up, something happens to remind me that things are... not optimal in the world and there's plenty of reason to believe it's going to get worse and I get depressed again. (Though "depressed" doesn't feel like the right word when you're down for entirely rational reasons.)
I seriously need to figure out a way to shore up my mental and emotional reserves because we're all gonna need them over the next few years

2024-11-15 18:48:15

This week has been one of the rougher ones, emotionally and mentally, I’ve had in a while. So, I’m probably going to tone down my social media participation for a couple of days.

2024-11-07 10:20:05

The deterioration of Google: https://www.baldurbjarnason.com/2024/the-deterioration-of-google/

2024-10-28 09:53:11

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@npub1sky…2hts So do I

2024-10-25 11:22:05

Fuck! Where did the morning go? Feels like it was 9:00 just a couple of minutes ago 😬

2024-10-09 13:26:03

Liskov’s Gun: The parallel evolution of React and Web Components
https://www.baldurbjarnason.com/2024/liskovs-gun/
This is a bit of an experiment. Probably the longest essay I've published directly on my website. 🙂

2024-10-03 10:04:51

“htmx ~ Why Gumroad Didn't Choose htmx”
https://htmx.org/essays/why-gumroad-didnt-choose-htmx/
> AI and Tooling Support: It’s worth noting that AI tools are intimately familiar with Next.js and not so much with htmx, due to the lack of open-source training data.
A risks with "AI" for coding I’ve talked about is that it's trained on legacy code so it's going to be a conservative force in software dev, driving people to use outdated but popular approaches. This is the first time I've seen that happen in the wild

2024-09-17 11:04:31

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Like, people who have been in software dev for over a decade but outright don’t enjoy doing any of the activities that are core to software dev

2024-09-17 11:04:31

One of the divides I encounter whenever I try to talk to somebody about “AI” and the role of LLMs in automation is that I genuinely enjoy coding, figuring out what to code, writing, and even design, so asking something else to do the fun part of the job makes no sense to me in the first place, even if the automation wasn’t horribly flawed…
…but too many people I talk to seem to think those same activities are the worst part of their jobs

2024-09-14 12:40:22

Today's "wow the software industry's really bad at it's job isn't it?" moment:
I have a chromebook "sofa laptop" specifically for non-serious use. It's an over-specced 16GB RAM Google thing. Yet it progressively becomes slower and slower the longer it runs until it becomes unusable, I reboot and everything is fine again
So, a memory leak, right? But where?
Well, thing is, I pretty much ignore notifications on the device but never bothered to turn them off
(You can see where this is going.)

2024-09-13 15:36:03

Back when I was a kid, almost forty years ago (yikes!), one of the jokes we used to say went along these lines:
“Q: What do you do if you get lots in an Icelandic forest?”
“A: You stand up.”
Turns out forty years is enough to turn shrubbery into proper trees.
https://assets.toot.cafe/media_attachments/files/113/130/977/970/132/996/original/a1e0e66b1d6c5a90.jpeg
https://assets.toot.cafe/media_attachments/files/113/130/978/479/930/836/original/87de3ea9aa6a7c5d.jpeg

2024-09-12 14:05:41

My god is discourse a POS PITA pile of garbage. Ugh. The only sites that I have to use regularly that manage to slow a mid-range desktop to a crawl.

2024-09-08 10:20:50

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Whatever else you can say about XML, it’s a thousand times less annoying than TypeScript.

2024-09-08 10:15:10

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Now the XML paths in browsers are barely maintained. Module JS in SVG, for example, basically doesn’t work. I encounter weird bugs in every browser’s SVG implementation any time I try to load a non-trivial illustration. I would actually love to be able to use XHTML occasionally for project where semantic extension made sense or where interop with EPUB was a plus. 🤷🏻‍♂️

2024-09-08 10:07:26

“Going Buildless | Max Böck”
https://mxb.dev/blog/buildless/
I've gone buildless for personal projects for a long while now and am not going back
Also on HTML includes: it makes me sad to think that XML had standardised includes almost 20 years ago. I wasn't a fan of XML at the time but in hindsight it's looking like we, web devs, dumped an entire ecosystem of tools and standards just out of an annoyance with error handling that we then got a worse version of anyway with JSX, setting us back a decade

2024-09-05 17:32:10

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@npub18y0…dsym Haha, yeah. That really doesn't surprise me at all. My sympathies.
People want their free lunch and really don't enjoy being told There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch.

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.

2024-09-04 10:30:18

The way AI fans keep having to say “AI is not going away” makes me think there’s absolutely a chance it might go away.

2024-09-04 10:08:12

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@npub17hp…f5r7 Mastodon is a product. And OSS product but a product nonetheless.

2024-09-04 09:56:25

“Emily F. Gorcenski”
https://emilygorcenski.com/post/to-forget-is-an-ethical-act/
> Mastodon is not a fun social network. You cannot have fun there without an endless army of pedants dissecting your every post endlessly in your mentions. Its operating model is inscrutable, its moderation metadrama impenetrable, and its product strategy nonexistant.
Mastodon has enough good for me to continue to post here, but damn does it feel like a chore most of the time for all of the reasons Emily outlines

2024-09-02 10:44:43

X: “We need systemic changes to tackle the climate crisis, guilting people into turning off their air con is pointless, we need to address corporate behaviour”
Me: “Totally.”
X: “That’s why it’s okay for me to drive an SUV, fly for weekly for work, gamble on bitcoin, and replace carbon-effective tools with LLMs everywhere I can”
Me: “No… wait, what?”
X: “In fact, implying I have any personal responsibility to do the right thing is ablist, classist, and deeply unethical. You are a bad person”

2024-09-01 16:27:14

“Is AI a Silver Bullet? — Ian Cooper - Staccato Signals”
https://ian-cooper.writeas.com/is-ai-a-silver-bullet
> But the flaw in prompts as a description of the code to be generated tends to be that natural language is a remarkably poor medium for expressing the model that we want to use in our software. Every time we move away from a 3GL to create a more natural interface, we rapidly get diminishing ability to author software.
This entire essay is excellent

2024-08-31 15:13:50

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(Why do I try to keep up with what dev “influencer” types are regurgitating into the world? It just annoys me. 😝)

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 🤷🏻‍♂️

2024-08-31 10:15:50

The iPad literally prompts for permission to paste between the same three apps every single day. If this is by design then the design is utterly broken.

2024-08-28 12:38:51

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@npub1ae8…zhu5 That's a good point. That definitely has an effect.

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 10:02:35

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Anyway, shit like this is why my dad gets a grim look on his face whenever he hears a helicopter overhead here in Hveragerði. We aren’t on a scenic flight route so most helicopters are going to be an air ambulance.

2024-08-24 12:36:45

Self-indulgent rant:
One reason why IMO, the case against "AI" is as cut and dried as the case against cryptocoins is that shutting those two sectors down through government action would immediately solve the household energy transition for Iceland, for example
The maths is fairly straightforward: switching personal transportation over to electricity here would roughly double household power consumption (give or take, with the assumption that current plans to improve public transport pan out)

2024-08-16 10:29:50

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6. Fastspring worked but the checkout was 90s hideous. Like, if you’d seen it back in the 90s, browsing in Netscape Navigator, you’d think to yourself “Wow this is simultaneously extremely ‘with it’ and current but also fucking ugly.”
So, the only two services that have actually worked for me are Fastspring and Lemon Squeezy and LS is prettier with marginally better UX.

2024-08-11 11:14:38

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Addendum: the fucking point of automation in media creation is to make novelty affordable to create, not to crowd it out of existence and make practicing creativity even less economically viable
(Didn’t pace enough. Still angry.)

2024-08-11 10:59:49

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Short version: novelty and creativity is not rare; it’s unfunded.

2024-08-11 10:56:39

Every time I hear the “novelty and creativity is rare” line I get so angry I have to stand up and pace to calm down
Language, art, and media are massively combinatorial. We’ve barely been able to scratch the surface of what’s possible because we’re locked in economic systems built on uniformity and in industries that always choose the broken and bland to boost short term profits
The absence of novelty is down to economics and your mindsets. The media themselves are as unexplored as the galaxy

2024-08-09 12:23:24

“Chinese rocket breaks apart after megaconstellation launch, creating cloud of space junk | Space”
https://www.space.com/china-megaconstellation-launch-space-junk
I really feels like we're speedrunning every possible nightmare scenario experts have been worrying about in recent decades, from zoonotic pandemics, to the Kessler syndrome, to the global climate crisis, to pervasive software insecurity, and the rise of fascism.

2024-08-05 11:27:28

For some unknown reason, my iPhone and iPad either don't seem to be doing any spell checking any more. Or they do, but only if you switch away from the app and then switch back. If you write and don't leave the app, the spell check underlines never appear.
This is happening consistently on both devices.

2024-08-04 11:45:59

Only now realising that I’ve been feeling so discouraged over the past year or so because I’ve a number of friends who both read my book on “AI” risks, agreed with its assessment, but have since then gone on to become either “AI” enthusiasts or to profit from the bubble in some way
That this number isn’t zero makes me feel like there's no point to writing. People are fixed in their beliefs and will do whatever the fuck they want. What they read is just mental window dressing 🤷🏻‍♂️

2024-08-03 11:38:07

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@npub1jpv…0l9y They are the best. 🙂

2024-07-31 11:43:03

A few more photos from the walk yesterday. This time focusing on the juxtaposition between town and nature
https://assets.toot.cafe/media_attachments/files/112/880/917/552/069/706/original/8903695bbcfd70e4.jpeg
https://assets.toot.cafe/media_attachments/files/112/880/918/114/024/020/original/47941bb0d9a0d5e0.jpeg
https://assets.toot.cafe/media_attachments/files/112/880/918/622/162/707/original/82ef55837c200541.jpeg
https://assets.toot.cafe/media_attachments/files/112/880/919/173/036/233/original/70ac791c8b7b6fa4.jpeg

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

2024-07-30 14:52:58

“Notes – 13:44 Tue 30 Jul 2024 – David Bushell – Freelance Web Design (UK)”
https://dbushell.com/notes/2024-07-30T13:44Z/
> But there is something off with the Deno ecosystem
I noted this a while back and I think Deno's ecosystem has only gotten worse since. Focusing on node compatibility might look on paper like a good strategy for adoption, but it both sabotages your own ecosystem and condemns you to forever follow, not lead, node

2024-07-28 11:31:29

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JFC, how can anybody only break even with 125K newsletter subscribers and a sizeable youtube channel whose ad revenue pays for the production costs? How shit does your strategic planning and organisation have to be?
What is it they’re selling again?
(Sorry, sorry. I’m not being fair because I’m grumpy today. I’m sure the company’s “second brain” helped them think of so many ways to spend a million fucking books producing a book.)

2024-07-28 11:26:56

“Did My Bestselling Book Turn Out to Be a Financial Failure? - Forte Labs”
https://fortelabs.com/blog/did-my-bestselling-book-turn-out-to-be-a-financial-failure/
> we’ve spent $1.13 million dollars ($570,000 on staff costs plus $560,000 on everything else) on its creation and promotion so far
I admit that I'm predisposed to be annoyed at Forte Labs but this? I don't even know what to say. Spending a million bucks on making a book? Compounded by a bunch of hairbrained business decisions? That they still almost broke even? All just...
Annoying.

2024-07-25 16:31:15

Testing out zed with all of the AI garbage turned off and a bunch of the keyboard shortcuts break as soon as you switch to a non-US keyboard layout.
I thought we covered this years ago? There are other languages than English.
(To be fair, this is a common issue among text editors.)

2024-07-24 10:13:20

Sudden random thought: Deno’s standard library might be JSR’s killer app.
https://jsr.io/@std
These modules all look decently maintained, tested, self-contained, and useful. They work both in the browser and on the server
I still think JSR itself is kinda pointless, but I’m tempted to use it for my next personal project just for the deno std modules.

2024-07-24 09:26:38

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The DMA is, in my personal opinion, less problematic as it specifically applies to markets and big companies and, honestly, fuck big cos
(Americans also overestimate how invested Europeans are in their own big companies)
The DSA attempts to regulate “harmful content” and that’s when things get a bit iffy as a politician’s idea of harmful isn’t the same as that of a child welfare organisation, researcher, or education expert.

2024-07-24 09:26:38

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(It’s always a bit weird when I feel the urge to explain EU stuff on social media as Iceland isn’t in the EU and the EEA doesn’t have to adopt all EU regulations. Neither the DSA or the DMA are in effect here, for example, and even if they do get adopted, they might well take a different form.)

2024-07-24 09:26:37

For those trying to keep up with various regulatory debates, it’s useful to remember that the EU’s DMA (Digital Markets Act) is not the same as the DSA (Digital Services Act) even though they were passed at the same time
Both are extensions of pre-existing EU principles, for better or for worse

2024-07-23 18:10:18

After thinking that Hveragerði was a suburb of New York for several days, for the second time this month, Google has finally realised that I’m not an American soccer mom (best guess as to what it thought based on the Youtube ads it showed me) and I no longer have to set the time zone on the chromebook manually.

2024-07-22 12:38:52

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@npub1dq6…kl95 Yeah, that’s my worry as well. Though, it might just be a question of dropping out of the blockbuster movie business. Argylle’s budget on its own would probably pay for a bunch of HBO-level series.

2024-07-22 12:30:52

“Apple TV Plus budgets come under close scrutiny from top exec - The Verge”
https://www.theverge.com/2024/7/22/24203423/apple-tv-plus-tighten-budget-streaming-losses
I'd been wondering whether Apple TV+ roster of obviously too expensive and unprofitable original movies and series was a deliberate strategy or not. I guess I have my answer.

2024-07-15 16:03:04

That feeling when you send out a newsletter that not only gets a few immediate unsubscribes, one of the even felt compelled to write me an email explaining how disappointed they were in me
Ugh.

2024-07-12 12:37:42

The nightmare days of Hveragerði are over. Finally, after having to suffer for several days through the absolute awfulness that is US Youtube, Google has finally realised that Hveragerði is not a suburb in Chicago and I no longer have to suffer through the atrocity that is US advertising
(I never imagined I’d miss the nonsense that is Icelandic advertising.)

2024-07-11 10:03:33

Iceland has amazing musicians, but few non-Icelanders realise that Icelandic listeners and music critics have the absolute worst taste in music
We have amazing musicians like Björk and Laufey who at home constantly lose out in awards and popularity to absolute garbage like Prettyboitjokko
Most of the genuinely great Icelandic musicians also had to be discovered abroad first because locals just dismissed Sigurrós as noise, Björk as a bad singer, and Laufey as boring.

2024-07-07 10:18:38

“Open Source Software: The $9 Trillion Resource Companies Take for Granted - HBS Working Knowledge”
https://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/open-source-software-the-nine-trillion-resource-companies-take-for-granted
> Many companies build their businesses on open source software
All of them. Not "many". ALL of them are built on Free/Open Source. It's just a question of degree. Pretty much all of software is built on looting the commons.

2024-07-06 10:54:12

Spotted this cat sneaking through the bushes #caturday
https://assets.toot.cafe/media_attachments/files/112/739/166/759/729/810/original/8c6ff0312abbcf4d.jpeg
https://assets.toot.cafe/media_attachments/files/112/739/167/337/025/268/original/8ad9468c875faa61.jpeg
https://assets.toot.cafe/media_attachments/files/112/739/168/006/126/419/original/1293dacbb6a10880.jpeg

2024-07-04 11:55:21

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@npub1xl4…p6vx They're literally offering this garbage as an API https://developers.google.com/maps/documentation/geolocation/overview 😑

2024-07-04 11:52:58

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So, based on what I've found out online, Google uses some form of machine learning to guess an IP address's physical location, unlike every other service. And this process getting locations horribly massively wrong seems to be a common problem.
My guess it that the number of US tourists with Android devices staying in Hveragerði might have had something to do with this utter bullshit.

2024-07-04 11:50:18

Google still thinks I'm in the US. The Chromebook has automatically switched to Central Eastern Time, forcing me to manually set the time zone.
And now I'm discover that a bunch of stuff I was following on Youtube isn't available in the US and it pushes commercial Youtube TV stuff much much harder making the overall experience worse (makes sense since much of it isn't available in Iceland)
And US ads absolutely suck. (The TV and iOS apps don't have ad blockers.)

2024-07-02 22:23:12

All of a sudden Youtube thinks I'm in the US and is showing me all sorts of US-only stuff.
Not complaining, but kind of wondering how much had to go wrong on their end for this to happen.

2024-06-28 14:38:11

So, I'm doing an experiment with making web-based versions of my book as a part of a membership program.
"Help me help you: building a library of useful software development writing"
https://www.baldurbjarnason.com/2024/help-me-help-you/

2024-06-26 15:39:44

“Researchers Prove Rabbit AI Breach By Sending Email to Us as Admin”
https://www.404media.co/researchers-prove-rabbit-ai-breach-by-sending-email-to-us-as-admin/
Honestly? This is exactly the kind of crap that happens if you're all-in on LLMs for coding. All sorts of basic stuff falls by the wayside

2024-06-26 15:36:01

Honestly still quite bitter about Brexit. I lived in the UK for close to twenty years, assuming I would never be treated as a second class citisen. Then the referendum was announced and the campaign immediately turned vicious where people like me were compared to vermin and it became obvious that no matter how the vote would go, it was time to leave. The UK had become a much more hostile and bigoted country. And, if anything, it only looks like it’s gotten worse since.

2024-06-25 15:06:29

“Amazon Web Services dark patterns”
https://lapcatsoftware.com/articles/2024/6/7.html
> I used the so-called "free" tier of AWS for one day and got charged over a hundred dollars?!?!? How is that even possible?

2024-06-24 10:21:27

The iPhone camera becomes much more interesting if you use manual controls to prevent it from imposing the flat lighting, hypersaturated sitcom look that algorithmic photography tools love so much
https://assets.toot.cafe/media_attachments/files/112/671/084/860/026/429/original/121541be2f36141d.jpeg

2024-06-22 10:14:15

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Also also, I’d say the odds are 50/50 that they’ll end up shipping at least some of these features unmodified in the EU because Apple’s culture of secrecy means they didn’t bother to actually talk to EU reps about what is or isn’t compliant.
Then they’ll spin that as a PR win: “we made the EU change its mind!”

2024-06-22 10:08:42

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Also, those of us living in Europe already know that “you would have gotten these features at the same time as the US if it weren’t for the EU” is a fucking lie. The US always gets features first, and we only get them later… if we’re lucky
(Iceland still doesn’t get Apple TV Plus.)

2024-06-22 09:53:11

“Your iPhone won’t get AI features because of the EU” is not the PR triumph Apple thinks it is.

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 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

2024-06-18 13:07:25

Visual Studio Code extensions are much less secure than browser extensions or even npm packages: https://www.baldurbjarnason.com/2024/vscode-extensions-are-insecure/

2024-06-18 12:13:11

That feeling when a blackbird glares at you through the window because you forgot to refill the bird feeder

2024-06-18 11:53:39

There's something rotten in the kingdom of Wordpress: https://www.baldurbjarnason.com/2024/rotten-wordpress/

2024-06-18 09:46:02

“Justice Department Sues Adobe for Hidden Fees and Difficult Cancellations | PetaPixel”
https://petapixel.com/2024/06/17/justice-department-sues-adobe-for-hidden-fees-and-difficult-cancellations/
So, this is one of the reasons why I don't get my Lightroom subscription directly from Adobe. You can always cancel an app store subscription without hassle

2024-06-16 11:09:49

“Perplexity AI Is Lying about Their User Agent • Robb Knight”
https://rknight.me/blog/perplexity-ai-is-lying-about-its-user-agent/
> So they're using headless browsers to scrape content, ignoring robots.txt, and not sending their user agent string
Today is the day for Perplexity AI fuckups.

2024-06-15 18:10:51

Went on a bit of a mental health/photography walk. Did the trick.
https://assets.toot.cafe/media_attachments/files/112/621/976/359/126/069/original/e84228bfb63fa242.jpeg
https://assets.toot.cafe/media_attachments/files/112/621/977/283/634/034/original/c686a2f626e6fd4a.jpeg
https://assets.toot.cafe/media_attachments/files/112/621/977/990/092/094/original/cec9036f3f2b404b.jpg

2024-06-15 12:06:16

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@npub1z3u…eq3s Oh, definitely. I was being a bit flippant as it’s a Saturday and the weather’s nice. You were genuinely making a good point that people should be aware of 🙂

2024-06-12 11:12:10

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@npub1wf8…nnes Yeah. Turns out that's actually rare. 😐

2024-06-12 11:03:48

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Dark mode isn't the default in OSes for a reason folks. It's one of those accessibility aids that's grossly inaccessible to a ton of people.
Respect the OS settings if you're making an app!!!!!!!
If a user has chosen light mode and reduced motion, don't fucking launch with dark mode and swishy animations!
Don't be an asshole!
Too many devs are being absolute assholes!

2024-06-12 11:01:34

Decides to try a trendy new open source text editor
It launches in dark mode with tiny font sizes because the devs are obviously all teenagers with perfect vision and no astigmatism
Change the font size. Seems to work
Change to light mode. Seems to work
Touch another setting. App immediately switches back to dark mode and default font size and stays there
Coolcoolcool. I don't actually need to be able to read the fucking text to work on it, right?

2024-06-11 09:26:15

“Generative AI Is Not Going To Build Your Engineering Team For You - Stack Overflow”
https://stackoverflow.blog/2024/06/10/generative-ai-is-not-going-to-build-your-engineering-team-for-you/
> By not hiring and training up junior engineers, we are cannibalizing our own future. We need to stop doing that.
Any industry that stops hiring entry-level workers is in for a very, very bad time a decade down the line.

2024-06-08 18:41:09

Guys my dad's age tend to do the opposite of infodumping: extended explanations of obvious things that are near-universal common knowledge. Like slow elementary-level exposition of the basic outline of WW2 until you blurt out "I'm familiar with the concept of World War 2!" in an annoyed tone. 😝

2024-06-06 10:53:35

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For example, the latest modelling on North Atlantic convection streams puts the odds of them shutting down within my lifetime at around 35-50%, rendering Iceland much less habitable.
And, honestly, I'm perfectly fine with wiping out entire industries if that's what it takes to prevent that from happening.

2024-06-06 10:35:34

Sometimes it feels like half of my social media is annoyed because they think climate activists are making unreasonable demands
While the other half is near-panic because they've done the research and realise that, in the understated words of the Magic Eight Ball, "outlook not so good"

2024-06-04 10:18:07

“Witnessing the death of the web as a news medium | Christian Heilmann”
https://christianheilmann.com/2024/06/03/witnessing-the-death-of-the-web-as-a-news-medium/
> Almost every social platform now ranks posts with links lower than posts that are just statements.
I know this but I still can't bring myself to not add links to most of what I write.

2024-06-02 10:15:49

“VCs are selling shares of hot AI companies like Anthropic and xAI to small investors in a wild SPV market | TechCrunch”
https://techcrunch.com/2024/06/01/vcs-are-selling-shares-of-hot-ai-companies-like-anthropic-and-xai-to-small-investors-in-a-wild-spv-market/
Looks a bit like we're heading into the "cash out" or "quick! find the greater fool" portion of this bubble

2024-05-27 12:22:54

Not going to link to the actual review because I don’t care and will not care about the movie in question, but I find it interesting how quickly and thoroughly the meaning of “AI” in the public vocabulary as shifted from “futuristic automated intelligence” to “bad and lazily made”
https://assets.toot.cafe/media_attachments/files/112/513/021/991/732/600/original/dd47ec5cd93656c7.jpeg

2024-05-26 16:58:30

“AI engineers face burnout in 'rat race' to stay competitive hits tech”
https://www-cnbc-com.cdn.ampproject.org/c/s/www.cnbc.com/amp/2024/05/03/ai-engineers-face-burnout-as-rat-race-to-stay-competitive-hits-tech.html
> He said he often has to put together demos of AI products for the company's board of directors on three-week timelines, even though the products are "a big pile of nonsense."