Bruce Lawson's personal site

(Last Updated on 6 November 2024)

• An Abridged History of Safari Showstoppers – not the mere niggles, but the absolute cesspit explosions. By Roderick Gadellaa, who has seen things you people wouldn’t believe; IndexedDBs on fire off the shoulder of Orion. Scrolling bugs glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate.
• Paul Graham and the Cult of the Founder – “‘Founder Mode’ is such garbage” says this spot-on little essay
• New Values and Functions in CSS – gob-smacking things coming in CSS, detailed in this v nice article by Alvaro Montoro
• Ceefax and the birth of interactive TV – 50 years ago, a new BBC service was launched that gave 24/7 access to on-demand news, info, sports results from your TV and its remote control. It began for accessibilityy reasons: engineers were looking for a way to overlay subtitles for the Deaf.
• Richer Text Fields (Explainer) – Keith Cirkel’s proposal on making it easier to code common “rich” input patterns (think of input masking and the like) without contenteditable or hacks
• Announcing BCD Watch – Eric Meyer on a new service from your chums at Igalia that helps web devs keep up to date on changes to support for web features; you can subscribe to RSS to get weekly reports on BCD changes
• LinkedIn starts training GenAI on users’ personal data – without notification – If you use LinkTin (and why wouldn’t you? Who doesn’t like gormless crypto recruiters or a greeting on their work anniversary?) you can opt-out of being turned into AI fodder (non-EU folks. The EU has laws.)
• Halide rejected from the App Store because it doesn’t explain why the camera takes photos – “Halide may have been featured during the iPhone 16 keynote, but it seems that wasn’t enough to protect it from an over-zealous App Store reviewer”. lol gatekeepers
• Feedback needed: How should we define CSS masonry? – “The CSS Working Group has combined the two CSS masonry proposals into one draft specification. The group hopes that this will make it easier to compare the two, and make a final decision.”
• Google must share the ability to install Web Apps in Android by my old chums at OWA
• FTC Staff Report Finds Large Social Media and Video Streaming Companies Have Engaged in Vast Surveillance of Users with Lax Privacy Controls and Inadequate Safeguards for Kids and Teens – “Report recommends limiting data retention and sharing, restricting targeted advertising, and strengthening protections for teens”
• How I build a button component by Andy Bell and his whippet
• How Big Tech leverages its influence in statehouses – At least a dozen tech trade groups engage in state capitals. “There is no ‘tech industry …Technology is so widely suffused across the economy that everything is part of the tech industry.”
• Worst government use of ChatGPT: in a child protection report by Davif Gerard
• What the AT&T Breakup Teaches Us About a Big Tech Breakup
• The Department of Energy Wants You to Know Your Conservation Efforts Are Making a Difference – “By turning off your lights all day every day for a month, you conserved about 1 percent of the energy needed for AI to generate a picture of a duck wearing sunglasses.”

(Last Updated on 21 September 2024)

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• Apple appears to mislead UK Regulator over deceptive default browser user interface – by pretending a dark pattern documented by several people never existed. Apple denied this, saying that the dark pattern was “never intended to discourage users from setting third-party browsers as the default”, and that anyone who says Apple is beastly is a big fat poo-poo, and so is their mum.
• What is React? – this brief unbiased video should be on syllabus of every coding bootcamp, University CS course and shown every night after the evening news.
• State of HTML 2024 survey – SPEKE YR BRANE!
• Should form labels be wrapped or separate? – should you wrap <input> in its associated <label>? Do you need for= pointing to the input’s id? James Edwards has the answers (you can if you want to but it can be harder to stlyle, and yes)
• CSS finally adds vertical centering in 2024 – align-content:center works in the non-grid/float layout, allowing vertical centering with 1 CSS property
• the audio element – Heydon Pickering’s unofficial guide
• Openly licensed streetview with Panoramax
• Ford seeks patent for tech that listens to driver conversations to serve ads – “Ford Motor Company is seeking a patent for technology that would allow it to tailor in-car advertising by listening to conversations among vehicle occupants, as well as by analyzing a car’s historical location and other data, according to a patent application published late last month”. Just the sort of thing that lovable Uncle Henry would have wanted.
• Apple vs EU Commission: the FSFE intervenes to safeguard Free Software – “The Free Software Foundation Europe is intervening in litigation brought by Apple against the European Commission before the Court of Justice of the European Union. Apple is seeking to avoid DMA obligations related to its App Store and the interoperability of its operating system. The FSFE aims to protect Free Software against monopolistic corporate control.”
• Ten reasons why Apple’s App Store terms are still not compliant with the DMA – from a legal rather than technical viewpoint
• Apple must pay Ireland €13bn in unpaid taxes, court rules – expect even more petulance against DMA from Fruitco
• Analysis of Meta, Apple, Google, Amazon, Bytedance and Microsofts’ implementation of their obligations under the Digital Markets Act non-compliance (PDF) by The European Consumers Organisation. Surprise! “We set out in this paper several ways in which we consider that these companies do not comply”
• On craft and the web by Chris Ferdinandi
• Ansi art Textmode graphics – Rauri Rochford on manipulating pixels in the pre-Cambrian
• Honest privacy policy