matsdis

Do you remember the <blink> tag, or pages that wouldn’t work without a Java applet or Flash plugin? Good times ;-)

The article presents a few HTML features. (From the title I didn’t know what to expect.) Summary:

• There are new HTML attributes (popover) that help with modals/popups/menus.
• You can toggle (show/hide) content with HTML. (The summary/details elements have been around for a long time.)
• For text input, you can provide a datalist of entries to auto-complete. It isn’t supported by Firefox yet.

Ironically, the article showed a blank space where a graphic would go before I bothered to enable Javascript. On the plus side, it was readable regardless.

I’ve only crossed the “slight overweight” line now. But in the past 15 years I have monitored my weight while trying gentle changes: eat healthier, no added sugar, more exercise, build a small amount of muscle. Nothing has made a difference. I was gaining weight slowly, year by year.

Now I’m finally doing what I wanted to avoid for 15 years: stop eating while still slightly hungry. It was a psychological exercise: To focus on the feeling of hunger so I stay aware of it, so I don’t automatically walk into the kitchen. To convince myself that I’m okay with it, this is how it has feel, no need to panic. There was some resistance, but in the end it was easier than expected. I mostly do this towards the evening, and not every day, and when I’m more than just a bit hungry I still eat.

The effect on my weight was almost a shock after the non-effect of all my previous attempts. I feel like I can keep this up easily. In fact I had to dial it back, losing weight faster than I intended. And I did keep my healthy habits from earlier: especially I try to be active one hour each day, and if I wasn’t I usually go for a late walk.

Picture from 2002. This was a 2D plotter made from the motors of a CD-ROM drive. The open wires connected to a copper coil that smashed a pencil up and down. A hard-disk magnet was glued to the pencil. 3D printing wasn’t a thing back then, otherwise I probably would have started a fire with an improvised heater on top of this.

Yes, IIRC Undertale it will only taunt you a bit at first, you have to play almost to the end before you really notice. But then it masterfully beats you against the 4th wall, hard, several times. (Speaking about eating the wrong cookies, yes it does feel like that.)

And then, when you start a second play-through, the 4th wall stays broken. (Personally I didn’t care enough for the game for a second play-through, but if you read it up it’s a whole thing, the game will not simply reset.)

Are we hardwired to want social status?

Yes. Like many animals, we primates have a psychology of dominance. It helps to prevent constant daily fights over everything, so a group can function. You defer to the strong leader, or else. And you try to become the leader to get the benefits.

Unlike other primates, we have a second social status called “prestige” which is used for cultural learning. So you should upvote this post, like and subscribe, give me some virtual prestige. I may not be able to beat up your leader, but I can write eloquent posts such as this one, get more back from the hunt than others (see all those feathers and bones I’m wearing?), and everyone knows that I weave those useful baskets you use daily. Do what I do, and maybe you’ll become just as capable and healthy as I am. Defer to me to get access to me, to watch and learn from me, to copy everything I do. Which books to read. Whom to to vote for. Eating one carrot a day. You never know which of those is the secret ingredient. Better just copy everything this healthy-looking human does and believes.

I ca̴n’̸t rea̵d wha̴͌t ̸̈́y̶o̵u̷͆’r̴̚e̸ ̷s̴à̴y̵i̵͛n̴̓g̴͑ ̵f̶ró̵m̸̜̎ ̴̊ơ̴v̵e̴͂r ̵͎̽h̷̛̺̀͑̃er̵̆e̴…̴. But not sure what thé solutïon would be. Forbiddíng non-english text would be even worse UI.

Yes. Tech-savvy users should not run a script like the one below from extensions like open-with or similar. Be it on youtube or other music sites.

#!/bin/sh
yt-dlp --extract-audio --embed-metadata --no-playlist \
    --exec 'notify-send "download finished."' \
    -o ~/music/new/"%(album_artist)s - %(artist)s - %(title)s.%(ext)s" \
    -f"bestaudio[ext!=flac][ext!=wav]"\
    -- "$1"

That’s a good book, not terribly deep but very much fun to read. I’m sure bots thinking they are human has been done several times. First show that comes to mind is Westworld, which is kind of centered around that idea.

If you’re interested in human intelligence, don’t miss Joseph Henrich’s book, “The Secret of Our Success: How Culture Is Driving Human Evolution, Domesticating Our Species, and Making Us Smarter”.

It has a few fun examples where historical people follow seemingly absurd complex instructions/traditions that are actually beneficial, while nobody ever designed them or knows what they do. It puts logical thinking into perspective.

My impression is that writing “pure CSS” has been replaced by writing !important selectors that undo all of your component library’s auto-generated CSS, and then write your own CSS selectors on top, after trying to figure out the theming system for half a day… /rant

If you want to try another, maybe Material. (The design guidelines or the components. But IMO the component docu has gotten worse.) But if you are going to overwrite the styles anyway, it may be easier to write your own CSS instead of debugging someone else’s.

So learn the HTML/CSS basics that you are missing, mostly on MDN. (CSS: selectors, pseudo-classes, flexbox, grid, css variables, units like rem/px/vh, media queries, collapsing of the margin, css reset and box-sizing, overflow, display, positioning, …; HTML/Web APIs: CSP, self-closing tags, fetch() API, querySelect(), URL.parse(), sessionStorage, form submit, form validation, blob, event bubbling, your browser’s inspect tools, …).

Even if you use a framework you will generally have to learn all this stuff anyway.

This is orthogonal. If you want to do anything custom, it will often be easier to not use your JS framework at all for that part of the App. If you are going to use Tauri you will be using the Tauri API not the API of your framework. If you want stuff like touch input or show system notifications, you’ll use the browser’s APIs for that. If anything the framework will be in the way for lower-level stuff, and you always have the option to not use it for some part of your App.

Maybe you are looking for a component library, something like Bulma or Bootstrap, rather than a JS framework. Your primary problem may be design, UX layout and learning basic CSS/HTML.

But if you want one of the lighter frameworks, I’d try Vue. But it is increasingly possible to do stuff without a framework, especially if your needs are not too complex. I’d start by looking into Vite, and use one of its simpler templates. You may want to select typescript instead of JS if you get the option.

Also… when you say “Frontend” we don’t know if you’re going to do a visualization-rich 3D application with touch gestures, or a business CRUD applications with lots of forms and tables and paginated lists filtered server-side, or a content-heavy web page with lots of articles to read…?

Telemetry is in Server -> General -> Allow Anonymous Usage Collection. When you opt-out, it also send a final message to the server that you’ve opted out. The the telemetry itself looks reasonable, I don’t mind sending it. It’s really just the dark pattern of opt-out vs of opt-in that bothers me.

The donate button is the heart in the bottom left menu (not visible in the settings). It’s unobtrusive. I wouldn’t bother to remove it, except the tooltip says that I have to pay to remove it - now it has to go. Asking for donations is fine, but asking for money to remove a button is disgusting.

I’ve set up Kavita for my e-books. Nice UI, looks promising, and I’ve added some books. I haven’t really used it yet, because half of this was just an excuse to try podman (instead of docker). I wanted to set it up to run as unprivileged user, without the docker daemon running as root. That wasn’t too hard, but it was definitely a few extra steps.

But something about Kavita didn’t sit well with me. Maybe I don’t self-host enough stuff to know what’s normal, but there is a donate button, which I don’t mind, but its tooltip says: “You can remove this button by subscribing to Kavita+.”

I’m donating to a few software projects already, and I have developed a substantial amount of free software myself. There is nothing wrong with asking for money. But what I cannot stand is when software running on my own device is intentionally acting against my interests. And this tooltip was very clear about not letting me do something that I might want to do.

So I checked the source code for more. I found another anti-pattern: telemetry is opt-out instead of opt-in. But that seems to be it, I didn’t find anything worse than that. So… fair I guess, if the author wants it that way. It’s still free software. It looks like I could delete all the Kavita+ stuff myself and re-build. Which I’m going to do if I keep using it. But this is now an extra step that prevents me from just using it, because I need to feel in control of what I run. Kind of self-inflicted, I guess…

That’s a good article. Here is a related deep dive: Pineapples! (PDF)

Because the pineapple leaves close their stomata during the day they don’t have the benefits of evaporative cooling! Plants heat up and unless there is a breeze to move the heat out of the field they are prone to plant damage, fruit sunburn and “cooking” or “boiling”. Growth slows when temperatures exceed 36°C and stops at about 40°C.

More silly fun with types: (4min video) https://www.destroyallsoftware.com/talks/wat
(It starts with Ruby, but hang on.)

Protip: (kinda half rant too) Join a general software consulting company. You will then have the opposite problem, you will be seen as ANYTHING dev. Whatever combination of os, language, framework and domain you have the least experience with, you will be picked for that project because you’re available. The dice will be re-rolled every 6 months. Until then you’ll be the Angular dev. Oh wait you didn’t mention Angular. Tough luck. This is the protip, not the amateurtip.

Amateurtip: (kinda half joking) You don’t need a job to be Vue or Svelte developer…

And when the opportunity comes to select the tech stack, or switch teams/jobs, having any hands-on experience (even if it was just the tutorial) will be a huge plus, compared to nothing. You will know better what you’re talking about, and it proves that you are seriously motivated. (Of course, you can also mention your side-project to your colleagues once or twice.)