Reading List 349
(Last Updated on )
This reading list is courtesy of Vivaldi browser, who pay me decent money to fight for a better web and don’t moan at me for reading all this stuff. If you prefer to keep browsing human, without planet-burning plagiarism-filled Generative AI inserting itself between you and the Web, Vivaldi has you covered.
- The present and potential future of progressive image rendering – Jank Architect compares JPEG XL and AVIF. TL;DR: AVIF is better.
- Masonry: Watching a CSS Feature Evolve– “At the end of the day, standards get shaped by a mix of politics, technical trade-offs, and developer feedback. Consensus is messy, and it’s rarely about one side “winning.””
- Keep Android Open – “In August 2025, Google announced that starting next year, it will no longer be possible to develop apps for the Android platform without first registering centrally with Google.” What this means for your rights, and how you can help.
- Meta is axing 600 roles across its AI division – the first, faint popping sound?
- Mediabunny – “A JavaScript library for reading, writing, and converting video and audio files. Directly in the browser, and faster than anybunny else.”
- Falsehoods programmers believe about languages – “This is what we have to put up with in the software localization industry.”
- The PSF has withdrawn a $1.5 million proposal to US government grant program – Python Software Foundation says that the U.S. government’s requirement that it does not “advance or promote” diversity, equity, and inclusion “would be a betrayal of our mission and our community.” Applause.
- Austria’s Ministry of Economy takes decisive steps toward digital sovereignty – “Within just four months between Proof of Concept and rollout, the ministry went live with a secure Nextcloud environment, operated on its own infrastructure in Austria and designed to meet strict transparency and compliance requirements.”
- Microsoft in court for allegedly misleading millions of Australians over Microsoft 365 subscriptions – Consumers were told they must accept Copilot and pay more, or cancel. There was a secret third option to carry on as before, but only if they began cancellation process. Classy.
- FFmpeg Receives $100K in Funding from India’s FLOSS/fund Initiative – FFmpeg is set to receive $100,000 from FLOSS/fund, a program launched by Indian stockbroking firm Zerodha to give back to the ecosystem that made its success possible. The team noted that, while welcome, this funding “does not solve the funding problems behind FFmpeg and Open Source in general.”
- The Human Only Public License – “while nobody cares about robots.txt, people care about licenses. There are automated tools to find and check software licenses and raise alarms if ‘bad’ ones are used. And I can guarantee that HOPL will brightly flash red.”
- The first ever banner ad: why did it work so well? – 31 years ago this week, on 27 October 1994, the first ever banner ad went live (on hotwired.com). For over four months, 44% of those who saw it clicked on it. An article by the person who wrote that banner.
Buy "Calling For The Moon", my debut album of songs I wrote while living in Thailand, India, Turkey. (Only £2, on Bandcamp.)