https://letra.studio/blog/feed.xmlLetra Studio — BlogAbout the web and other things. Mostly links, sometimes articles.2024-03-27T00:02:38+00:00https://letra.studio/assets/icons/favicon-512.pngJoão Beleza Freirehello@letra.studiohttps://letra.studioJekyllhttps://letra.studio/2023/04/internet-algospeak-is-changing-our-language-in-real-time-from-nip-nops-to-le-dollar-bean/2023-04-02T17:28:59+01:00Link: Internet ‘algospeak’ is changing our language in real time, from ‘nip nops’ to ‘le dollar bean’<p>Taylor Lorenz:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>When the pandemic broke out, people on TikTok and other apps began referring to it as the “Backstreet Boys reunion tour” or calling it the “panini” or “panda express” as platforms down-ranked videos mentioning the pandemic by name in an effort to combat misinformation. When young people began to discuss struggling with mental health, they talked about “becoming unalive” in order to have frank conversations about suicide without algorithmic punishment. Sex workers, who have long been censored by moderation systems, refer to themselves on TikTok as “accountants” and use the corn emoji as a substitute for the word “porn.”</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>“One, it doesn’t actually work,” she said. “The people using platforms to organize real harm are pretty good at figuring out how to get around these systems. And two, it leads to collateral damage of literal speech.” Attempting to regulate human speech at a scale of billions of people in dozens of different languages and trying to contend with things such as humor, sarcasm, local context and slang can’t be done by simply down-ranking certain words, Greer argues.</p>
</blockquote>
<p><b>Link: <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/04/08/algospeak-tiktok-le-dollar-bean/">washingtonpost.com</a></b></p>https://letra.studio/2023/02/the-confessions-of-marcus-hutchins-the-hacker-who-saved-the-internet/2023-02-26T03:00:44+00:00Link: The Confessions of Marcus Hutchins, the Hacker Who Saved the Internet<p>Andy Greenberg:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Hutchins hadn’t found the malware’s command-and-control address. He’d found its kill switch. The domain he’d registered was a way to simply, instantly turn off WannaCry’s mayhem around the world. It was as if he had fired two proton torpedoes through the Death Star’s exhaust port and into its reactor core, blown it up, and saved the galaxy, all without understanding what he was doing or even noticing the explosion for three and a half hours.</p>
</blockquote>
<p><b>Link: <a href="https://www.wired.com/story/confessions-marcus-hutchins-hacker-who-saved-the-internet/">wired.com</a></b></p>
<hr>
<p class="post-via"><a rel="via" href="https://waxy.org/2023/02/the-confessions-of-marcus-hutchins-the-hacker-who-saved-the-internet/"><span class="url">Via waxy.org</span></a></p>https://letra.studio/2021/09/25-edits-that-define-the-modern-internet-video/2021-09-19T15:10:14+01:00Link: 25 Edits That Define the Modern Internet Video<p>Vulture:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Suddenly, anybody could shoot and edit a video, building the vocabulary of what that could look like: transition videos, lip syncs, and green-screen-driven storytelling began to cohere as distinct subgenres. That’s only accelerated in the age of TikTok, an app that offers more and easier editing tools for users than any that came before it.</p>
<p>Online video is an inherently communal form; it’s defined by thousands of people iterating on the same idea. Every once in a while, though, there’s a leap forward. Every video on this list represents an evolution in the form or exemplifies a particularly influential editing style — whether the creator was one of the first to attempt it, or just pulled off a jaw-dropping editing feat all their own.</p>
</blockquote>
<p><b>Link: <a href="https://www.vulture.com/2021/05/best-online-videos-tiktok-youtube-vine.html">vulture.com</a></b></p>
<hr>
<p class="post-via"><a rel="via" href="https://waxy.org/"><span class="url">Via waxy.org</span></a></p>https://letra.studio/2021/09/designing-beautiful-shadows-in-css/2021-09-14T22:06:58+01:00Link: Designing Beautiful Shadows in CSS<p>Josh Comeau:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>In this tutorial, we’ll learn how to transform typical box-shadows into beautiful, life-like ones.</p>
</blockquote>
<p><b>Link: <a href="https://www.joshwcomeau.com/css/designing-shadows/">joshwcomeau.com</a></b></p>
<hr>
<p class="post-via"><a rel="via" href="https://adactio.com/links/18456"><span class="url">Via adactio.com</span></a></p>https://letra.studio/2021/09/why-are-hyperlinks-blue/2021-09-01T03:32:35+01:00Link: Why are hyperlinks blue?<p>Elise Blanchard:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>To truly understand the origin and evolution of hyperlinks though, I took a journey through technology history and interfaces to explore how links were handled before color monitors, and how interfaces and hyperlinks rapidly evolved once color became an option.</p>
</blockquote>
<p><b>Link: <a href="https://blog.mozilla.org/en/internet-culture/deep-dives/why-are-hyperlinks-blue/">blog.mozilla.org</a></b></p>
<hr>
<p class="post-via"><a rel="via" href="https://adactio.com/links/18418"><span class="url">Via adactio.com</span></a></p>https://letra.studio/2021/04/lena-things-of-interest/2021-04-16T15:07:11+01:00Link: Lena @ Things of Interest<p>This terrific short story by qntm contemplates the hellish potential consequences of brain uploading, in the form of a typically impassive Wikipedia entry:</p>
<blockquote>
<p><strong>MMAcevedo</strong> (<strong>Mnemonic Map/Acevedo</strong>), also known as <strong>Miguel</strong>, is the earliest executable image of a human brain. It is a snapshot of the living brain of neurology graduate Miguel Álvarez Acevedo (2010–2073), taken by researchers at the Uplift Laboratory at the University of New Mexico on August 1, 2031.</p>
</blockquote>
<p><b>Link: <a href="https://qntm.org/mmacevedo">qntm.org</a></b></p>
<hr>
<p class="post-via"><a rel="via" href="https://twitter.com/JohnDiesattheEn/status/1382343601938706437"><span class="url">Via @JohnDiesattheEn</span></a></p>https://letra.studio/2021/04/microbes-dont-actually-look-like-anything/2021-04-07T21:13:50+01:00Link: Microbes Don’t Actually Look Like Anything<figure class="post-figure embed">
<a class="embed-placeholder" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VBmzwM76V0o" data-embed-id="VBmzwM76V0o" data-embed-provider="youtube">
<img src="https://img.youtube.com/vi/VBmzwM76V0o/hqdefault.jpg" alt="">
</a>
</figure>
<p>Found this wonderful YouTube channel on Kottke.org. I have to admit I wasn’t expecting it to be so thought-provoking:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Our brains play tricks on us to make us believe the world looks one way, but the world looks different at night than in the day, and both of those things have more to do with the physiology of our eyes and brains than with objective reality. Asking what a microbe actually looks like is, to some extent, forcing our own experience onto something that is beyond it.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>If, like me, you somehow recognize the narrator’s voice, that’s because it’s Hank Green (!).</p>
<p><b>Link: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VBmzwM76V0o">youtube.com</a></b></p>
<hr>
<p class="post-via"><a rel="via" href="https://kottke.org/21/04/journey-to-the-microcosmos"><span class="url">Via kottke.org</span></a></p>https://letra.studio/2021/03/metric-paper-and-everything-in-the-universe/2021-03-27T12:33:57+00:00Link: Metric Paper & Everything in the Universe<figure class="post-figure embed">
<a class="embed-placeholder" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pUF5esTscZI" data-embed-id="pUF5esTscZI" data-embed-provider="youtube">
<img src="https://img.youtube.com/vi/pUF5esTscZI/hqdefault.jpg" alt="">
</a>
</figure>
<p>CGP Grey’s take on <cite>Powers of Ten</cite> is very beautiful and evocative and terrifying.</p>
<p><b>Link: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pUF5esTscZI">youtube.com</a></b></p>https://letra.studio/2021/01/newsletters/2021-01-04T19:45:42+00:00Link: Newsletters<p>Robin Rendle:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>It bothers me that writers can’t create audiences on their own websites, with their own archives, and their own formats. And they certainly can’t get paid in the process.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>The web today is built for apps—and I think we need to take it back.</p>
</blockquote>
<p><b>Link: <a href="https://www.robinrendle.com/essays/newsletters">robinrendle.com</a></b></p>https://letra.studio/2020/10/nine-scenes-from-the-recently-discovered-cut-of-flubber-where-flubber-has-bones/2020-10-17T13:33:29+01:00Link: Nine Scenes From the Recently Discovered Cut of Flubber Where Flubber Has Bones<p>Important content.</p>
<p><b>Link: <a href="https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/nine-scenes-from-the-recently-discovered-cut-of-flubber-where-flubber-has-bones">mcsweeneys.net</a></b></p>https://letra.studio/2020/09/workers-durable-objects-beta-a-new-approach-to-stateful-serverless/2020-09-30T09:20:38+01:00Link: Workers Durable Objects Beta: A New Approach to Stateful Serverless<p>Super interesting new stuff from Cloudflare:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Durable Objects provide a truly serverless approach to storage and state: consistent, low-latency, distributed, yet effortless to maintain and scale. They also provide an easy way to coordinate between clients, whether it be users in a particular chat room, editors of a particular document, or IoT devices in a particular smart home. Durable Objects are the missing piece in the Workers stack that makes it possible for whole applications to run entirely on the edge, with no centralized “origin” server at all.</p>
</blockquote>
<p><b>Link: <a href="https://blog.cloudflare.com/introducing-workers-durable-objects/">blog.cloudflare.com</a></b></p>
<hr>
<p class="post-via"><a rel="via" href="https://twitter.com/lorenb/status/1310936764111085568"><span class="url">Via @lorenb</span></a></p>https://letra.studio/2020/09/google-blew-a-ten-year-lead/2020-09-24T18:13:31+01:00Link: Google blew a ten-year lead.<p>Will Schreiber:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I haven’t installed MSFT Office on a machine since 2009. Sheets and Docs have been good enough for me. The theoretical unlimited computing power and collaboration features meant Google Docs was better than Office (and free!).</p>
<p>Then something happened at Google. I’m not sure what. But they stopped innovating on cloud software.</p>
<p>Docs and Sheets haven’t changed in a decade. Google Drive remains impossible to navigate. Sharing is complicated. Sheets freezes up. I can’t easily interact with a Sheets API (I’ve tried!). Docs still shows page breaks by default! WTF!</p>
</blockquote>
<p><b>Link: <a href="https://secondbreakfast.co/google-blew-a-ten-year-lead">secondbreakfast.co</a></b></p>
<hr>
<p class="post-via"><a rel="via" href="https://twitter.com/pierce/status/1275922500690403329"><span class="url">Via @pierce</span></a></p>https://letra.studio/2020/09/what-is-the-value-of-browser-diversity/2020-09-24T00:49:35+01:00Link: What is the Value of Browser Diversity?<p>Dave Rupert:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I’ve thought about these questions for over a year and narrowed my feelings of browser diversity down to two major value propositions:</p>
<ol>
<li>Browser diversity keeps the Web deliberately slow</li>
<li>Browser diversity fosters consensus and cooperation over corporate rule</li>
</ol>
<p>They are similar, but slightly different concepts for me.</p>
</blockquote>
<p><b>Link: <a href="https://daverupert.com/2020/09/the-value-of-browser-diversity/">daverupert.com</a></b></p>https://letra.studio/2020/08/the-ux-of-lego-interface-panels/2020-08-16T08:18:24+01:00Link: The UX of LEGO Interface Panels<p>George Cave:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Piloting an ocean exploration ship or Martian research shuttle is serious business. Let’s hope the control panel is up to scratch. Two studs wide and angled at 45°, the ubiquitous “2x2 decorated slope” is a LEGO minifigure’s interface to the world.</p>
<p>These iconic, low-resolution designs are the perfect tool to learn the basics of physical interface design. Armed with 52 different bricks, let’s see what they can teach us about the design, layout and organisation of complex interfaces.</p>
<p>Welcome to the world of LEGO UX design.</p>
</blockquote>
<p><b>Link: <a href="https://www.designedbycave.co.uk/2020/LEGO-Interface-UX/">designedbycave.co.uk</a></b></p>
<hr>
<p class="post-via"><a rel="via" href="https://twitter.com/helvetica"><span class="url">Via @helvetica</span></a></p>https://letra.studio/2020/08/googles-top-search-result-surprise-its-google/2020-08-16T08:12:26+01:00Link: Google’s Top Search Result? Surprise! It’s Google<p>Adrianne Jeffries and Leon Yin look into how Google search gives preferential treatment to Google’s own results:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>In Google’s early years, users would type in a query and get back a page of 10 “blue links” that led to different websites. “We want to get you out of Google and to the right place as fast as possible,” co-founder Larry Page said in 2004.</p>
<p>Today, Google often considers that “right place” to be Google, an investigation by The Markup has found.</p>
<p>We examined more than 15,000 recent popular queries and found that Google devoted 41 percent of the first page of search results on mobile devices to its own properties and what it calls “direct answers,” which are populated with information copied from other sources, sometimes without their knowledge or consent.</p>
<p>When we examined the top 15 percent of the page, the equivalent of the first screen on an iPhone X, that figure jumped to 63 percent. For one in five searches in our sample, links to external websites did not appear on the first screen at all.</p>
</blockquote>
<p><b>Link: <a href="https://themarkup.org/google-the-giant/2020/07/28/google-search-results-prioritize-google-products-over-competitors">themarkup.org</a></b></p>https://letra.studio/2020/03/dont-forget-disasters-and-crises-bring-out-the-best-in-people/2020-03-14T07:41:29+00:00Link: Don’t forget: disasters and crises bring out the best in people<p>Some welcome positivity from Rutger Bregman:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>For every antisocial jerk out there, there are thousands of doctors, cleaners and nurses working around the clock on our behalf. For every panicky hoarder shoving entire supermarket shelves into their cart, there are 10,000 people doing their best to prevent the virus from spreading further. In actual fact, we’re now seeing reports from China and Italy about how the crisis is bringing people closer together.</p>
</blockquote>
<p><b>Link: <a href="https://thecorrespondent.com/350/dont-forget-disasters-and-crises-bring-out-the-best-in-people/46307515100-1b82207d">thecorrespondent.com</a></b></p>https://letra.studio/2020/03/reply-all-158-the-case-of-the-missing-hit/2020-03-12T02:19:24+00:00Link: Reply All #158: The Case of the Missing Hit<blockquote>
<p>A man in California is haunted by the memory of a pop song from his youth. He can remember the lyrics and the melody. But the song itself has vanished, completely scrubbed from the internet.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>This is a perfect podcast episode, and now I really miss <a href="https://gimletmedia.com/shows/mystery-show">Mystery Show</a>.</p>
<p><b>Link: <a href="https://gimletmedia.com/shows/reply-all/o2h8bx/158-the-case-of-the-missing-hit">gimletmedia.com</a></b></p>
<hr>
<p class="post-via"><a rel="via" href="https://twitter.com/kottke/status/1237090781946466310"><span class="url">Via @kottke</span></a></p>https://letra.studio/2020/03/behind-the-soundtrack-uncut-gems-with-daniel-lopatin/2020-03-03T09:00:53+00:00Link: Behind the Soundtrack: ‘Uncut Gems’ with Daniel Lopatin<figure class="post-figure embed">
<a class="embed-placeholder" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pIAvmtNIx9I" data-embed-id="pIAvmtNIx9I" data-embed-provider="youtube">
<img src="https://img.youtube.com/vi/pIAvmtNIx9I/hqdefault.jpg" alt="">
</a>
</figure>
<blockquote>
<p>Alongside filmmaker Josh Safdie, composer Daniel Lopatin sat down with us to detail the creative discoveries behind his synth-packed score for ‘Uncut Gems.’</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The score is such a big part of the cosmic magic in <cite>Uncut Gems</cite>, and this short documentary does a great job at exploring some of its highlights in detail.</p>
<p><b>Link: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pIAvmtNIx9I">youtube.com</a></b></p>https://letra.studio/2020/03/casino-royale-how-action-reveals-character/2020-03-03T08:50:18+00:00Link: Casino Royale — How Action Reveals Character<figure class="post-figure embed">
<a class="embed-placeholder" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_GdBnwXLJdI" data-embed-id="_GdBnwXLJdI" data-embed-provider="youtube">
<img src="https://img.youtube.com/vi/_GdBnwXLJdI/hqdefault.jpg" alt="">
</a>
</figure>
<p>Lessons from the Screeplay:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>An action scene, just like any other scene, should help expose a character’s true self. But in the case of “Casino Royale,” the opening action sequence needed to do even more than that. It needed to introduce the world to a whole new James Bond.</p>
<p>So today, I want to dissect the film’s freerunning chase sequence to see how it uses action to develop the characters, to examine how it forces the protagonist to make choices which reveal his key characteristics, and to demonstrate how its underlying structure brings Bond’s deepest flaw to the surface.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Casino Royale is the best.</p>
<p><b>Link: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_GdBnwXLJdI">youtube.com</a></b></p>https://letra.studio/2020/02/frustration-grows-in-china-as-face-masks-compromise-facial-recognition/2020-02-06T12:55:55+00:00Link: Frustration grows in China as face masks compromise facial recognition<p>Ah, the irony. Anne Quito:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Face masks are mandatory in at least two provinces in China, including the city of Wuhan. In an effort to contain the coronavirus strain that has caused nearly 500 deaths, the government is insisting that millions of residents wear protective face covering when they go out in public.</p>
<p>As millions don masks across the country, the Chinese are discovering an unexpected consequence to covering their faces. It turns out that face masks trip up facial recognition-based functions, a technology necessary for many routine transactions in China. Suddenly, certain mobile phones, condominium doors, and bank accounts won’t unlock with a glance.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>And beyond quotidian transactions, the technology is a linchpin in the Chinese government’s scheme to police its 1.4 billion citizens.</p>
</blockquote>
<p><b>Link: <a href="https://qz.com/1796833/coronavirus-face-masks-foil-facial-recognition-cameras/">qz.com</a></b></p>
<hr>
<p class="post-via"><a rel="via" href="https://twitter.com/hotdogsladies"><span class="url">Via @hotdogsladies</span></a></p>https://letra.studio/2020/02/google-maps-hacks/2020-02-05T08:59:01+00:00Link: Google Maps Hacks<figure class="post-figure embed">
<a class="embed-placeholder" href="http://www.simonweckert.com/googlemapshacks.html" data-embed-id="k5eL_al_m7Q" data-embed-provider="youtube">
<img src="https://img.youtube.com/vi/k5eL_al_m7Q/hqdefault.jpg" alt="">
</a>
</figure>
<p>Simon Weckert:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>99 second hand smartphones are transported in a handcart to generate virtual traffic jam in Google Maps.Through this activity, it is possible to turn a green street red which has an impact in the physical world by navigating cars on another route to avoid being stuck in traffic.</p>
</blockquote>
<p><b>Link: <a href="http://www.simonweckert.com/googlemapshacks.html">simonweckert.com</a></b></p>
<hr>
<p class="post-via"><a rel="via" href="https://twitter.com/beep/status/1224383161901178882"><span class="url">Via @beep</span></a></p>https://letra.studio/2020/02/the-raccoon-king-of-garbage-mountain/2020-02-03T15:48:15+00:00Link: The Raccoon King of Garbage Mountain<p>Frank Chimero writes about the design process for the header navigation on his personal site:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>You’d imagine that a seasoned and soured designer would side-step all of these complications whenever they could. And indeed, most do. Visit many designers’ websites and you will see two links in the navigation: Work and Info. Bully for them. I am, on the other hand, an unsympathetic and frustrated creative. I have a sprawling empire of conflicted uselessness locked into the coordinates of www dot frankchimero dot com. Welcome to my personal website, my empire of shit.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Oh how I understand Frank’s plight.</p>
<p><b>Link: <a href="https://frankchimero.com/blog/2020/raccoon-king/">frankchimero.com</a></b></p>https://letra.studio/2020/01/wuhan-the-truth-about-dramatic-action/2020-01-29T15:53:10+00:00Link: Wuhan: The Truth About “Dramatic Action”<p>Da Shiji (达史纪) reports on the the Chinese government’s handling of the Wuhan coronavirus outbreak, and the current situation in Wuhan:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Politics first. Stability preservation first. In such an environment, science can only sit by and watch. The scientific results could not be clearer, and the authorities likely had a decent grasp of the real situation. But nevertheless they could not speak the truth, and they spared no effort in keeping the outbreak under wraps. Front-line doctors who spoke up about the outbreak were taken in for questioning. Eight Wuhan citizens who dared to post about the outbreak online were summoned by the police and singled out in public announcements through official media in order to terrify the public and force people to remain quiet.</p>
<p>The focus of restrictions was to prevent the truth of human-to-human transmission of the coronavirus from getting out.</p>
</blockquote>
<p><b>Link: <a href="http://chinamediaproject.org/2020/01/27/dramatic-actions/">chinamediaproject.org</a></b></p>
<hr>
<p class="post-via"><a rel="via" href="https://twitter.com/benthompson/status/1222131397705383936"><span class="url">Via @benthompson</span></a></p>https://letra.studio/2020/01/shopping-sucks-now/2020-01-24T16:12:34+00:00Link: Shopping Sucks Now<p>Casey Johnston tries to come to terms with a problem that I, too, suffer from — if you’re trying to buy the <em>right</em> thing, there’s no longer any limit to the amount of work you can put into research:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>For a long time, our problem was there were not enough things to choose from. Then with big box stores, followed by the internet, there were too many things to choose from. Now there are still too many things to choose from, but also a seemingly infinite number of ways to choose, or seemingly infinite steps to figuring out how to choose. The longer I spend trying to choose, the higher the premium becomes on choosing correctly, which means I <a href="https://flipboard.com/article/i-m-upset-i-have-wasted-years-of-my-life-reading-product-reviews/a-loQsJsnERYa8a8oHezjp_A%3Aa%3A220507260-babb322d01%2Ftheoutline.com">go on not choosing something I need pretty badly</a>, coping with the lack of it or an awful hacked-together solution (in the case of gloves, it’s “trying to pull my sleeves over my hands but they are too short for this”) for way, way too long, and sometimes forever.</p>
<p>The degree to which you feel this problem definitely depends on your income, or at least, being in the privileged position of not having to make do with the only thing you can afford. But for people with even a limited ability to make an investment purchase, if it’s worth it, there’s even more pressure to get it right. Knowing you wasted a big chunk of money on a cheaper, worse thing that falls apart when you could have spent a little more money on a thing that is good and lasts feels like failure. You’ve then wasted your money, wasted your time, you’ve contributed to global warming, and now you have to start the entire thing over again and hope you don’t somehow end up making the exact same mistake.</p>
</blockquote>
<p><b>Link: <a href="https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/9399mp/im-fed-up-with-shopping-it-blows-so-hard-why-cant-i-buy-anything-someone-help-me">vice.com</a></b></p>https://letra.studio/2020/01/what-did-we-just-watch-a-guide-to-tv-shows-in-the-2010s/2020-01-08T16:22:56+00:00Link: What Did We Just Watch? A Guide to TV Shows in the 2010s<p>This is a great overview that truly puts the entire decade in perspective. The only show missing is <cite>Patriot</cite>, but, well, of course.</p>
<p><b>Link: <a href="https://www.vulture.com/article/tv-shows-of-the-2010s.html">vulture.com</a></b></p>
<hr>
<p class="post-via"><a rel="via" href="https://twitter.com/tvaziri/status/1207703055652675584"><span class="url">Via @tvaziri</span></a></p>https://letra.studio/2020/01/how-bong-joon-ho-designed-the-house-in-parasite/2020-01-08T15:28:13+00:00Link: How Bong Joon Ho Designed the House in “Parasite”<p>Chris O’Falt interviews Bong Joon Ho and production designer Lee Ha Jun about <cite>Parasite</cite>’s brilliant set design:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>According to Bong, the challenge he gave his “Snowpiercer” production designer was not only to create a believably “visually beautiful” set, but a stage that served the precise needs of his camera, compositions, and characters, while embodying his film’s rich themes. In an interview with IndieWire, Bong described the home as “its own universe inside this film.” He added that he took pleasure in hearing that the famous directors on this year’s Cannes jury — which included Alejandro Gonzalez Iñarritu, Yorgos Lanthimos, and Kelly Reichardt — were all convinced that the movie took place in a real home. In truth, Bong asked his production designer to create an “open set,” built on an outdoor lot.</p>
</blockquote>
<p><b>Link: <a href="https://www.indiewire.com/2019/10/parasite-house-set-design-bong-joon-ho-1202185829/">indiewire.com</a></b></p>
<hr>
<p class="post-via"><a rel="via" href="https://twitter.com/tvaziri/status/1204814929556992000"><span class="url">Via @tvaziri</span></a></p>https://letra.studio/2019/12/link-in-bio-is-a-slow-knife/2019-12-11T05:45:45+00:00Link: “Link In Bio” is a slow knife<p>Anil Dash:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>And the ultimate triumph of being anti-web is to make links <em>scarce</em>. The smallest possible number of links a platform could allow is zero, so Instagram gets as close to that theoretical limit as possible, and gives you… one. You can have one link. Aren’t you grateful? One!</p>
</blockquote>
<p><b>Link: <a href="https://anildash.com/2019/12/10/link-in-bio-is-how-they-tried-to-kill-the-web/">anildash.com</a></b></p>
<hr>
<p class="post-via"><a rel="via" href="https://micro.inessential.com/2019/12/10/anil-dash-link.html"><span class="url">Via micro.inessential.com</span></a></p>https://letra.studio/2019/12/why-journeys-last-song-was-the-hardest-to-compose/2019-12-01T19:01:18+00:00Link: Why Journey’s last song was the hardest to compose<figure class="post-figure embed">
<a class="embed-placeholder" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iUaPHTC2TjI" data-embed-id="iUaPHTC2TjI" data-embed-provider="youtube">
<img src="https://img.youtube.com/vi/iUaPHTC2TjI/hqdefault.jpg" alt="">
</a>
</figure>
<p><b>Link: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iUaPHTC2TjI">youtube.com</a></b></p>https://letra.studio/2019/11/who-can-use/2019-11-16T17:19:28+00:00Link: Who Can Use<p>Great site by Corey Ginnivan for testing color contrast under different vision conditions like color blindness, cataracts, and glaucoma, and situational conditions like direct sunlight.</p>
<p><b>Link: <a href="https://whocanuse.com/">whocanuse.com</a></b></p>
<hr>
<p class="post-via"><a rel="via" href="https://twitter.com/css/status/1195443866918412292"><span class="url">Via @css</span></a></p>https://letra.studio/2019/11/how-nyt-cooking-became-the-best-comment-section-on-the-internet/2019-11-16T15:08:34+00:00Link: How NYT Cooking Became the Best Comment Section on the Internet<p><a href="https://twitter.com/helvetica/status/1195693880777330688">Zach Gage tweeted</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>i wish all internet comments were like the comments on nyt recipe pages</p>
</blockquote>
<p><a href="https://twitter.com/EricBrookfield/status/1195701736767406083">Turns out</a> a big part of why they’re so nice has to do with nomenclature:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>This might be because <em>Cooking</em>’s comments aren’t comments at all—they’re <em>notes</em>, a distinction Times food editor Sam Sifton emphasizes several times over the course of our conversation. “We made the conscious decision not to call them comments,” Sifton tells me. “The call to action was to leave a note on the recipe that helps make it better. That’s very different from ‘Leave a comment on a recipe.’ And the comment might be ‘I hate you.’ ‘You’re an asshole.’ ‘This is bad.’ And that’s helpful to no one. I see that on other recipes, and I’m glad that we don’t have those comments, because we don’t have comments. We have notes.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>While it’s delightful to think that that could be enough, human moderation is also involved:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>On the internet, moderation is something of a dying art, often outsourced, automated, or even discontinued altogether by resource-strained news outlets. At <em>Cooking</em>, however, every single note is approved or rejected by an actual human being.</p>
</blockquote>
<p><b>Link: <a href="https://www.theringer.com/2019/2/7/18214477/nytcooking-comment-section">theringer.com</a></b></p>
<hr>
<p class="post-via"><a rel="via" href="https://twitter.com/EricBrookfield/status/1195701736767406083"><span class="url">Via @EricBrookfield</span></a></p>https://letra.studio/2019/11/16-inch-macbook-pro-first-impressions-great-keyboard-outstanding-speakers/2019-11-16T14:52:25+00:00Link: 16-Inch MacBook Pro First Impressions: Great Keyboard, Outstanding Speakers<p>John Gruber spent some time with the new MacBook Pro:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>It feels a bit silly to be excited about a classic arrow key layout, a hardware Escape key, and key switches that function reliably and feel good when you type with them, but that’s where we are. The risk of being a Mac user is that we’re captive to a single company’s whims.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Great that they fixed the keyboards, but I’m guessing repairability hasn’t improved. My 2014 MacBook Pro’s battery started expanding recently, and I was surprised to learn that a battery replacement isn’t a simple job, even for this older generation. The battery is glued in place, so replacing it means an entirely new top case, keyboard, and trackpad — and in my case a week without my computer. That’s bad design too, and a side of it that Apple isn’t getting enough flak for.</p>
<p><b>Link: <a href="https://daringfireball.net/2019/11/16-inch_macbook_pro_first_impressions">daringfireball.net</a></b></p>https://letra.studio/2019/11/the-new-dot-com-bubble-is-here-its-called-online-advertising/2019-11-07T07:02:49+00:00Link: The new dot com bubble is here: it’s called online advertising<p>Jesse Frederik and Maurits Martijn:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>It might sound crazy, but companies are not equipped to assess whether their ad spending actually makes money. It is in the best interest of a firm like eBay to know whether its campaigns are profitable, but not so for eBay’s marketing department.</p>
<p>Its own interest is in securing the largest possible budget, which is much easier if you can demonstrate that what you do actually works. Within the marketing department, TV, print and digital compete with each other to show who’s more important, a dynamic that hardly promotes honest reporting.</p>
<p>The fact that management often has no idea how to interpret the numbers is not helpful either. The highest numbers win.</p>
</blockquote>
<p><b>Link: <a href="https://thecorrespondent.com/100/the-new-dot-com-bubble-is-here-its-called-online-advertising/13230718600-5d15791f">thecorrespondent.com</a></b></p>
<hr>
<p class="post-via"><a rel="via" href="https://twitter.com/rcbregman/status/1192051610555494400"><span class="url">Via @rcbregman</span></a></p>https://letra.studio/2019/11/tech-and-liberty/2019-11-06T05:19:43+00:00Link: Tech and Liberty<p>Ben Thompson defends Facebook’s recent decision to let politicians lie in ads, arguing that free speech should be considered in terms of culture, not law.</p>
<p>Here are his concluding remarks:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Facebook, obviously, is not the government, and thank goodness: the fact that Zuckerberg answers to no one is deeply concerning to me. To be fair, in the case of political ads, this was arguably a benefit: I think he is making the right decision in the face of massive resistance. In the long run, though, it is very problematic that such a powerful player in our democracy has no accountability. Liberty is not simply about laws, or culture, it is also about structure, and it is right to be concerned about the centralized nature of companies like Facebook.</p>
<p>To that end, the fact that this debate is even occurring is evidence of the problem: those opposed to Facebook’s decision about ads wish the company would wield its power in their favor; my question is whether such power should even exist in the first place. Facebook can close Munroe’s door on anyone, and there is nothing anyone can do about it.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Ben makes a good case, but I have conflicting feelings about it. These last few moves by Twitter and Facebook have left me hopelessly lost in this debate. When does a lie become fraud?</p>
<p><b>Link: <a href="https://stratechery.com/2019/tech-and-liberty/">stratechery.com</a></b></p>https://letra.studio/2019/11/cgp-grey-which-planet-is-the-closest/2019-11-01T03:46:21+00:00Link: CGP Grey: Which Planet is the Closest?<figure class="post-figure embed">
<a class="embed-placeholder" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SumDHcnCRuU" data-embed-id="SumDHcnCRuU" data-embed-provider="youtube">
<img src="https://img.youtube.com/vi/SumDHcnCRuU/hqdefault.jpg" alt="">
</a>
</figure>
<p>This is one of the most incredibly delightful and mindblowing Turns Outs.</p>
<p><b>Link: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SumDHcnCRuU">youtube.com</a></b></p>https://letra.studio/2019/10/this-essay-is-just-harry-potter-for-people-who-think-comparing-things-to-harry-potter-is-stupid/2019-10-30T14:21:40+00:00Link: This essay is just Harry Potter for people who think comparing things to Harry Potter is stupid<p>Rosa Lyster:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“Fight club is just the matrix for incels.” “Big Thief is just Fleetwood Mac for sad bois.” “The Handmaids Tale is just Harry Potter for middle aged liberals.” “Otessa Moshfegh is just Mary Gaitskill for girls who talk too much about how they sometimes miss their periods due to being so waifish and slender.” “Bob Dylan is just Joni Mitchell for men who beat their wives.” “American Psycho is just the Joker movie for older white perverts.” “ABBA is just Fleetwood Mac for middle-aged suburban housewives whose drug of choice was cocaine instead of marijuana.” “Billie Eilish is just Avril Lavigne for girls who have too many cups in their bedroom.” This is fun to do, and definitely hilarious for people who love zingers, but it also sucks, and replaces the flash of real insight with the far cheaper thrill of recognizing things. It turns a constellation of possible meanings through which we might better know each other and ourselves into a vast Extended Universe.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Damn, that’s pointed.</p>
<p><b>Link: <a href="https://theoutline.com/post/8161/x-is-just-y-for-z">theoutline.com</a></b></p>
<hr>
<p class="post-via"><a rel="via" href="https://twitter.com/mrgan/status/1189266408011685889"><span class="url">Via @mrgan</span></a></p>https://letra.studio/2019/10/ai-is-coming-for-your-favorite-menial-tasks/2019-10-22T17:28:58+01:00Link: AI Is Coming for Your Favorite Menial Tasks<p>Fred Benenson:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>When people talk about the effects of automation and artificial intelligence on the economy, they often fixate on the quantity of human workers. <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2016/10/the-robot-paradox/505973/">Will robots take our jobs?</a> Others focus instead on threats to the quality of employment—the replacement of middle-class occupations with lower-skill, lower-wage ones; the steady elimination of human discretion as algorithms <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/03/business/economy/amazon-warehouse-labor-robots.html">order around warehouse pickers</a>, ride-hailing drivers, and other workers.</p>
<p>What’s less understood is that artificial intelligence will transform higher-skill positions, too—in ways that demand more human judgment rather than less. And that could be a problem. As AI gets better at performing the routine tasks traditionally done by humans, only the hardest ones will be left for us to do. But wrestling with only difficult decisions all day long is stressful and unpleasant. Being able to make at least some easy calls, such as allowing Santorini onto Kickstarter, can be deeply satisfying.</p>
<p>“Decision making is very cognitively draining,” the author and former clinical psychologist Alice Boyes told me via email, “so it’s nice to have some tasks that provide a sense of accomplishment but just require getting it done and repeating what you know, rather than everything needing very taxing novel decision making.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p><b>Link: <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/09/artificial-intelligence-will-make-your-job-even-harder/597625/">theatlantic.com</a></b></p>
<hr>
<p class="post-via"><a rel="via" href="https://twitter.com/helvetica/status/1171499415401455617"><span class="url">Via @helvetica</span></a></p>https://letra.studio/2019/10/better-than-human-why-robots-will-and-must-take-our-jobs/2019-10-22T17:05:52+01:00Link: Better Than Human: Why Robots Will — And Must — Take Our Jobs<p>Kevin Kelly:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>In the coming years our relationships with robots will become ever more complex. But already a recurring pattern is emerging. No matter what your current job or your salary, you will progress through these Seven Stages of Robot Replacement, again and again:</p>
<ol>
<li>A robot/computer cannot possibly do the tasks I do.</li>
<li>OK, it can do a lot of them, but it can’t do everything I do.</li>
<li>OK, it can do everything I do, except it needs me when it breaks down, which is often.</li>
<li>OK, it operates flawlessly on routine stuff, but I need to train it for new tasks.</li>
<li>OK, it can have my old boring job, because it’s obvious that was not a job that humans were meant to do.</li>
<li>Wow, now that robots are doing my old job, my new job is much more fun and pays more!</li>
<li>I am so glad a robot/computer cannot possibly do what I do now.</li>
</ol>
</blockquote>
<p><b>Link: <a href="https://www.wired.com/2012/12/ff-robots-will-take-our-jobs/">wired.com</a></b></p>
<hr>
<p class="post-via"><a rel="via" href="https://twitter.com/andrewparker/status/1171275888823922688"><span class="url">Via @andrewparker</span></a></p>https://letra.studio/2019/10/the-sound-of-the-spider-verse/2019-10-22T16:49:00+01:00Link: The Sound of the Spider-Verse<figure class="post-figure embed">
<a class="embed-placeholder" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ozbKHKntpCc" data-embed-id="ozbKHKntpCc" data-embed-provider="youtube">
<img src="https://img.youtube.com/vi/ozbKHKntpCc/hqdefault.jpg" alt="">
</a>
</figure>
<p><i></i></p>
<blockquote>
<p>What happens when you get a kid from Brooklyn, a radioactive spider, and some leitmotifs and mix them all together?</p>
</blockquote>
<p><b>Link: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ozbKHKntpCc">youtube.com</a></b></p>
<hr>
<p class="post-via"><a rel="via" href="https://twitter.com/DANIELPEMBERTON/status/1113116038772686849"><span class="url">Via @DANIELPEMBERTON</span></a></p>https://letra.studio/2019/10/the-world-wide-work/2019-10-22T15:52:08+01:00Link: The World-Wide Work<figure class="post-figure embed">
<a class="embed-placeholder" href="https://ethanmarcotte.com/wrote/the-world-wide-work/" data-embed-id="7nQu-NwSyCQ" data-embed-provider="youtube">
<img src="https://img.youtube.com/vi/7nQu-NwSyCQ/hqdefault.jpg" alt="">
</a>
</figure>
<p>Finally watched Ethan Marcotte’s talk from this year’s New Adventures conference. It’s as good as everyone said.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The sewing machine was introduced to the public in the middle of the 19th century. When it was made commercially available, it was advertised as an appliance that would free women from the routine drudgery of hand-sewing.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>A few short decades later, this pamphlet said that a female operator could use a Singer sewing machine to produce 3,300 stitches per minute.</p>
<p>That shift in tone is really intriguing to me: as the technology improved, the messaging around sewing machines shifted from <em>personal liberty</em> to <em>technical efficiency</em>.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>People are promised that technology will free them; ultimately, as the technology matures, it captures them.</p>
<p>I’d like to propose that what happened with the sewing machine is currently happening with the Web: that the Web is becoming industrialized in the same way that the sewing machine was.</p>
</blockquote>
<p><b>Link: <a href="https://ethanmarcotte.com/wrote/the-world-wide-work/">ethanmarcotte.com</a></b></p>https://letra.studio/2019/10/coffee-and-chocolate-make-you-smarter-according-to-the-latest-neuroscience/2019-10-21T15:06:23+01:00Link: Coffee and Chocolate Make You Smarter, According to the Latest Neuroscience<p>Geoffrey James:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Neuroscience continues to uncover new ways that coffee and (to a lesser extent) tea and chocolate, tend to make brains healthier and more resilient.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>When studies prove my habits are good, I believe them.</p>
<p><b>Link: <a href="https://www.inc.com/geoffrey-james/coffee-chocolate-make-you-smarter-according-to-latest-neuroscience.html">inc.com</a></b></p>
<hr>
<p class="post-via"><a rel="via" href="https://shapeof.com/archives/2019/10/three_out_of_three_aint_bad.html"><span class="url">Via shapeof.com</span></a></p>https://letra.studio/2019/10/catalina-vista/2019-10-17T19:41:09+01:00Link: Catalina Vista<p>The macOS Catalina situation seems to be pretty bad. My biggest reasons for upgrading are Apple Arcade and Reminders, but in return I’d have to:</p>
<ul>
<li>give up Photoshop CS6</li>
<li>give up a bunch of games on my Steam library</li>
<li>deal with my old Aperture libraries as the app is finally broken</li>
<li>learn a new shell, or replace it</li>
<li>fix all the tooling stuff that will break due to the new read-only system volume</li>
<li>put up with all the permission annoyances</li>
<li>deal with all the damn bugs</li>
</ul>
<p>Marco Arment’s take on ATP is right: <a href="https://atp.fm/episodes/347">“not enough carrot to take the stick”</a>. For the first time ever I might actually skip a major version of macOS.</p>
<p><b>Link: <a href="https://mjtsai.com/blog/2019/10/16/catalina-vista/">mjtsai.com</a></b></p>https://letra.studio/2019/10/are-chinas-tantrums-signs-of-strength-or-weakness/2019-10-16T14:59:44+01:00Link: Are China’s Tantrums Signs of Strength or Weakness?<p>Zeynep Tufekci wonders about China’s motivations around the Hong Kong situation:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>So why is China demanding significant censorship from Western companies—as in the case of this app—in the absence of a real threat? One thing to note is that while the original events being censored are minor to the point of trivial, the backlash creates a huge amount of publicity. You might be tempted to think that China has a Streisand-effect problem, in which trying to censor an event creates even more publicity. But that assumes the Chinese government doesn’t understand the Streisand effect, and that can’t be right, because if one government understands attention dynamics online, it’s China’s.</p>
<p>Significant amounts of scholarship show that the Chinese government has been very good at burying important news by distracting from it with other, flashy but unrelated news. This shows a subtle and powerful understanding of the Streisand effect: Instead of censoring, China diverts attention.</p>
</blockquote>
<p><b>Link: <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2019/10/why-does-china-care-about-daryl-moreys-hong-kong-tweet/600001/">theatlantic.com</a></b></p>
<hr>
<p class="post-via"><a rel="via" href="https://twitter.com/zeynep/status/1184173042571890688"><span class="url">Via @zeynep</span></a></p>https://letra.studio/2019/10/youtubes-biggest-lie/2019-10-11T00:36:01+01:00Link: Youtube’s Biggest Lie<figure class="post-figure embed">
<a class="embed-placeholder" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ll8zGaWhofU" data-embed-id="ll8zGaWhofU" data-embed-provider="youtube">
<img src="https://img.youtube.com/vi/ll8zGaWhofU/hqdefault.jpg" alt="">
</a>
</figure>
<p>Nerd City:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>We tested fifteen thousand common words and phrases against YouTube’s bots, one by one, and determined which of those words will cause a video to be demonetized when used in the title.</p>
<p>If we took a demonetized video and changed the words “gay” or “lesbian” to “happy” or “friend”, every single time, the status of the video changed to advertiser-friendly.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>YouTube’s apparently unassailable dominance over web video is a real shame. I dream of a world where web video is like podcasts: a decentralized system where anyone can participate without ceding control to a giant corporation with black box policies.</p>
<p>Monetization is already going the way of podcasts: crowd-funding and ad reads. Big video creators just can’t afford to trust that YouTube’s ever-changing policies will be on their side. The next step is decentralizing distribution, which seems like a harder problem to solve. But we’ve done it before: let’s bring back video podcasts. Let me get my video subscriptions in my RSS reader. Let’s take video away from YouTube and give it back to the web.</p>
<p><b>Link: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ll8zGaWhofU">youtube.com</a></b></p>
<hr>
<p class="post-via"><a rel="via" href="https://twitter.com/cgpgrey/status/1179842928837087234"><span class="url">Via @cgpgrey</span></a></p>https://letra.studio/2019/10/the-china-cultural-clash/2019-10-10T23:55:49+01:00Link: The China Cultural Clash<p>Ben Thompson:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I am increasingly convinced this is the point every company dealing with China will reach: what matters more, money or values?</p>
</blockquote>
<p><a href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2019/10/09/thompson-china-cultural-clash">John Gruber summarizes Ben’s points really well</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The gist of it is that 25 years ago, when the West opened trade relations with China, we expected our foundational values like freedom of speech, personal liberty, and democracy to spread to China.</p>
<p>Instead, the opposite is happening. China maintains strict control over what its people see on the Internet — the Great Firewall works. They ban our social networks where free speech reigns, but we accept and use their social networks, like TikTok, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/sep/25/revealed-how-tiktok-censors-videos-that-do-not-please-beijing">where content contrary to the Chinese Community Party line is suppressed</a>.</p>
<p>Worse, multinational mega corporations like Apple and Disney are put in a bind — they must choose between speaking up for values such as the right to privacy and freedom of speech, or making money in the Chinese market.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>And <a href="https://twitter.com/reckless/status/1181904413331460096">Nilay Patel makes a great comparison</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>It’s not hard to understand that carmakers in the US market build to California emissions standards because they are the strictest - it’s the most efficient choice.</p>
<p>Not a leap to think global companies will hold themselves to China’s speech restrictions for the same reason.</p>
</blockquote>
<p><b>Link: <a href="https://stratechery.com/2019/the-china-cultural-clash/">stratechery.com</a></b></p>https://letra.studio/2019/10/a-like-cant-go-anywhere-but-a-compliment-can-go-a-long-way/2019-10-10T23:11:16+01:00Link: A Like Can’t Go Anywhere, But a Compliment Can Go a Long Way<p>Frank Chimero:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The features of software with massive reach always have unintended consequences. For instance, social media, by making positivity easy and quantifiable, has ensured that negativity looms large. It’s become a place where we count the good things and experience the bad things.</p>
</blockquote>
<p><b>Link: <a href="https://frankchimero.com/blog/2019/like-compliment/">frankchimero.com</a></b></p>https://letra.studio/2019/10/the-imitation-game/2019-10-03T14:53:01+01:00Link: The imitation game<p>Jeremy Keith:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Jason shared some thoughts on designing progressive web apps. One of the things he’s pondering is how much you should try make your web-based offering look and feel like a native app.</p>
<p>This was prompted by an article by Owen Campbell-Moore over on Ev’s blog called Designing Great UIs for Progressive Web Apps. He begins with this advice:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Start by forgetting everything you know about conventional web design, and instead imagine you’re actually designing a native app.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>This makes me squirm. I mean, I’m all for borrowing good ideas from other media—native apps, TV, print—but I don’t think that inspiration should mean imitation. For me, that always results in an interface that sits in a kind of uncanny valley of being almost—but not quite—like the thing it’s imitating.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>People have been gleefully passing around the statistic that the average number of native apps installed per month is zero. So how exactly will we measure the success of progressive web apps against native apps …when the average number of progressive web apps installed per month is zero?</p>
</blockquote>
<p><b>Link: <a href="https://adactio.com/journal/11130">adactio.com</a></b></p>https://letra.studio/2019/10/the-nerdwriter-the-real-fake-cameras-of-toy-story-4/2019-10-03T06:19:50+01:00Link: The Nerdwriter: The Real Fake Cameras of Toy Story 4<figure class="post-figure embed">
<a class="embed-placeholder" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AcZ2OY5-TeM" data-embed-id="AcZ2OY5-TeM" data-embed-provider="youtube">
<img src="https://img.youtube.com/vi/AcZ2OY5-TeM/hqdefault.jpg" alt="">
</a>
</figure>
<p><i></i></p>
<p>Toy Story 4 looks incredible, almost hyper-realistic. And it’s not a simple matter of technology getting better; there is artistic intent in the imperfections that give it that edge. Among other techniques, Pixar is simulating real-world camera lenses (along with their limitations). Evan Puschak explains:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Animation has always drawn from the lessons of live action film, from the visual language of cinematic storytelling. Everyone who worked on Toy Story 4 understands that the imperfections — the way a lens distorts, or a camera operator shakes, or a light bounces — contain their own expressive potential. And when you combine these with the limitless world of animation, the results can be stunningly tactile.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>I hadn’t noticed that split diopter shot — it’s brilliant.</p>
<p><b>Link: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AcZ2OY5-TeM">youtube.com</a></b></p>https://letra.studio/2019/09/the-hard-truths-of-climate-change-by-the-numbers/2019-09-26T01:10:40+01:00Link: The hard truths of climate change — by the numbers<p><cite>Nature</cite> has put together a comprehensive series of charts that do a really great job at showing just how fucked we are.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Whatever they decide, nations will have to reckon with some difficult numbers that will ultimately determine whether the world can avoid the rapidly approaching climate meltdown. <em>Nature</em> documents the scale of the challenge in an infographic that explores energy use, carbon dioxide pollution and issues of climate justice. At a time when countries have pledged to curb greenhouse gases sharply, the data show that annual emissions spiked by 2.1% in 2018 — owing in part to increased demand for coal in places such as China and India.</p>
</blockquote>
<p><b>Link: <a href="https://www.nature.com/immersive/d41586-019-02711-4/index.html">nature.com</a></b></p>
<hr>
<p class="post-via"><a rel="via" href="https://twitter.com/kottke/status/1176849718095355905"><span class="url">Via @kottke</span></a></p>https://letra.studio/2019/09/accessibility-wins/2019-09-16T13:58:30+01:00Link: Accessibility Wins<p>Marcy Sutton is collecting good examples of websites and interfaces where accessibility and beautiful design go hand-in-hand. Subscribed.</p>
<p><b>Link: <a href="https://a11ywins.tumblr.com/">a11ywins.tumblr.com</a></b></p>
<hr>
<p class="post-via"><a rel="via" href="https://twitter.com/heydonworks/status/1173208583598727168"><span class="url">Via @heydonworks</span></a></p>https://letra.studio/2019/09/simplicity-ii/2019-09-15T12:51:25+01:00Link: Simplicity (II)<p>Bastian Allgeier:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I have a simple rule of thumb when it comes to programming:</p>
<p><code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">less code === less potential issues</code></p>
<p>This rule of thumb controls my own feelings towards a solution. It shouldn’t take 120 MB of code to uglify some JS. But maybe I’m wrong.</p>
<p>In practice, this dependency hell has bitten me so often already that my life expectancy probably sank by 2-3 years. You want to build a JS file? Please update Webpack first. Oh, that new version of Webpack is no longer compatible with your Node version. Oh, your new Node version is no longer compatible with that other dependency. Oh, now you have 233 detected security issues in all your node_modules but you can’t fix them because that would break something completely unrelated.</p>
</blockquote>
<p><b>Link: <a href="https://bastianallgeier.com/notes/simplicity-part-2">bastianallgeier.com</a></b></p>
<hr>
<p class="post-via"><a rel="via" href="https://css-tricks.com/simplicity/"><span class="url">Via css-tricks.com</span></a></p>https://letra.studio/2019/09/5g-will-definitely-make-the-web-slower-maybe/2019-09-15T12:42:56+01:00Link: 5G Will Definitely Make the Web Slower, Maybe<p>Scott Jehl:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Faster networks should fix our performance problems, but so far, they have had an interesting if unintentional impact on the web. This is because historically, faster network speed has enabled developers to deliver more code to users—in particular, <strong>more JavaScript code</strong>.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Ugh. <a href="https://adactio.com/links/15808">Jeremy Keith comments</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The longer I spend in this field, the more convinced I am that web performance is not a technical problem; it’s a people problem.</p>
</blockquote>
<p><b>Link: <a href="https://www.filamentgroup.com/lab/5g/">filamentgroup.com</a></b></p>https://letra.studio/2019/09/the-myth-of-the-pixel-perfect-grid/2019-09-15T04:40:43+01:00Link: The Myth of the Pixel Perfect Grid<p>Terence Eden explains how different screen technologies, human biology, and fingerprint grease make “pixel perfection” a pointless goal:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>There is no grid. There never has been. You can align to theoretical pixels - but as soon as the image hits a physical screen, it will be adjusted to best fit reality.</p>
<p>An obsession with pixel perfect rendering is futile.</p>
</blockquote>
<p><a href="https://every-layout.dev/rudiments/units/">Every Layout expands on this idea</a>, specifically as it pertains to CSS:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Suffice it to say that, while screens are indeed made up of pixels, pixels are not regular, immutable, or constant. A <code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">400px</code> box viewed by a user browsing <em>zoomed in</em> is simply not <code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">400px</code> in CSS pixels. It may not have been <code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">400px</code> in <em>device pixels</em> even before they activated zoom.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>See also: Ian Mallett’s <a href="https://geometrian.com/programming/reference/subpixelzoo/index.php">Subpixel Zoo: A Catalog of Subpixel Geometry</a>.</p>
<p><b>Link: <a href="https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2018/11/the-myth-of-the-pixel-perfect-grid/">shkspr.mobi</a></b></p>
<hr>
<p class="post-via"><a rel="via" href="https://twitter.com/heydonworks/status/1081481752143630336"><span class="url">Via @heydonworks</span></a></p>https://letra.studio/2019/09/styling-links-with-real-underlines/2019-09-15T03:13:37+01:00Link: Styling Links with Real Underlines<p>Ollie Williams welcomes the new CSS properties for styling underlines:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Finally we can demarcate links without sacrificing style thanks to two new CSS properties.</p>
<ul>
<li><code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">text-underline-offset</code> controls the position of the underline.</li>
<li><code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">text-decoration-thickness</code> controls the thickness of underlines, as well as overlines, and line-throughs.</li>
</ul>
</blockquote>
<p>I’ve been working on a blog post about this topic, and Ollie does a good job of covering some of the points I want to make. But I want to go further and explore implementation quirks, the details where the new properties don’t quite go far enough, and make a case for why underlines shouldn’t be pixel-aligned.</p>
<p><b>Link: <a href="https://css-tricks.com/styling-links-with-real-underlines/">css-tricks.com</a></b></p>https://letra.studio/2019/09/introducing-caniemailcom/2019-09-10T02:48:27+01:00Link: Introducing caniemail.com<p>Rémi Parmentier:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Last march, I wrote a proposal for Can I email, a website similar to caniuse.com dedicated to support in email clients.</p>
<p>Today, barely six months after, I am really happy and pleased to announce that with the help of my colleagues and members of the email geeks community, we’re officially launching caniemail.com.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Wow, this was sorely needed.</p>
<p><b>Link: <a href="https://www.caniemail.com/news/2019-09-09-introducing-caniemail/">caniemail.com</a></b></p>
<hr>
<p class="post-via"><a rel="via" href="https://twitter.com/zachleat"><span class="url">Via @zachleat</span></a></p>https://letra.studio/2019/09/hackers-hit-twitter-ceo-jack-dorsey-in-a-sim-swap-youre-at-risk-too/2019-09-06T15:49:07+01:00Link: Hackers Hit Twitter C.E.O. Jack Dorsey in a ‘SIM Swap.’ You’re at Risk, Too<p>Nathaniel Popper:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Called SIM swapping, it allows hackers to take control of a victim’s phone number. In recent months, SIM swapping has been used to hijack the online personas of politicians, celebrities and notables like Mr. Dorsey, to steal money all over the world and to simply harass regular people.</p>
<p>Victims, no matter how prominent or technically sophisticated, have been unable to protect themselves, even after they have been hit again and again.</p>
<p>“I’ve been looking at the criminal underground for a long time, and SIM swapping bothers me more than anything I’ve seen,” said Allison Nixon, the director of research at the security firm Flashpoint. “It requires no skill, and there is literally nothing the average person can do to stop it.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>We’ve been hearing about this exploit for years. Of course, things seem to only have gotten worse.</p>
<p><b>Link: <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/05/technology/sim-swap-jack-dorsey-hack.html">nytimes.com</a></b></p>
<hr>
<p class="post-via"><a rel="via" href="https://twitter.com/zeynep"><span class="url">Via @zeynep</span></a></p>https://letra.studio/2019/08/less-data-doesnt-mean-a-lesser-experience/2019-08-31T00:22:39+01:00Link: Less Data Doesn’t Mean a Lesser Experience<p>Tim Kadlec explores strategies for dealing with the Save-Data header without degrading the experience, because not every user that enables it will be aware of the potential consequences:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The possibilities are endless. If you treat data as a constraint in your design and development process, you’ll likely be able to brainstorm a large number of different ways to keep data usage to a minimum while still providing an excellent experience. Doing less doesn’t mean it has to feel broken.</p>
</blockquote>
<p><b>Link: <a href="https://timkadlec.com/remembers/2019-08-30-less-data-doesnt-mean-a-lesser-experience/">timkadlec.com</a></b></p>https://letra.studio/2019/08/lucas-pope-on-the-challenge-of-creating-obra-dinns-1-bit-aesthetic/2019-08-28T09:23:21+01:00Link: Lucas Pope on the challenge of creating Obra Dinn’s 1-bit aesthetic<p><i></i></p>
<p>PC Gamer’s Steven T. Wright interviews Lucas Pope on the process of creating <cite>Return of the Obra Dinn</cite>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“When you’re developing a game as one person, you have a lot of advantages and a lot of disadvantages,” he says. “One of the advantages is that you can afford to make a game for two years without even really knowing what it is, which is exactly what I did. One of the disadvantages is that you have to do something different visually to stand out. This means I have to solve all sorts of problems that nobody else has solved, at least recently. But I think that can be fun in its own right.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The game’s development seems to have been more of a process of discovery and improvisation than one of decisive creativity. That <a href="/2019/08/27-return-of-the-obra-dinn/">explains a lot</a>.</p>
<p><b>Link: <a href="https://www.pcgamer.com/lucas-pope-on-the-challenge-of-creating-obra-dinns-1-bit-aesthetic/">pcgamer.com</a></b></p>https://letra.studio/2019/08/netnewswire-50-now-available/2019-08-27T01:39:58+01:00Link: NetNewsWire 5.0 Now Available<p>Brent Simmons:</p>
<blockquote>
<p><a href="https://ranchero.com/netnewswire/">NetNewsWire 5.0</a> is shipping!</p>
<p>In case you haven’t been following along until just now: NetNewsWire is an open source RSS reader for Mac. It’s free! You can just download it and use it. No strings.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>My RSS reader of choice.</p>
<p><b>Link: <a href="https://inessential.com/2019/08/26/netnewswire_5_0_now_available">inessential.com</a></b></p>https://letra.studio/2019/08/what-i-like-about-eleventy/2019-08-25T00:24:21+01:00Link: What I Like About Eleventy<p>Dave Rupert is, like me, a longtime Jekyll user. He’s trying out Eleventy — which I’m super curious about — and getting good results. The massive performance difference when compared to Jekyll is very compelling to me, but so is the flexibility to write little bits of code to extend functionality without much fuss:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>On the Cathedral vs. Bazaar spectrum, Eleventy operates more on the bazaar end. By that I mean it doesn’t prescribe much. You want a bunch of filters? Write your own, Eleventy only comes with two. You want multiple layouts? Write a bit of JS to get those registered. Did you remember to setup an <code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">.eleventyignore</code>? Even the Sass and JS pipelines are BYO.</p>
</blockquote>
<p><b>Link: <a href="https://daverupert.com/2019/08/what-i-like-about-eleventy/">daverupert.com</a></b></p>https://letra.studio/2019/08/altruism-still-fuels-the-web-businesses-love-to-exploit-it/2019-08-20T18:52:55+01:00Link: Altruism Still Fuels the Web. Businesses Love to Exploit It<p>Zeynep Tufekci on the miracle of open source software:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>As a social scientist myself, I can say that convincing a colleague from the past that Wikipedia and Linux actually work the way they do would be a pretty huge lift. Given the assumption, common to many 20th-century schools of thought, that humans act in incorrigibly selfish ways, the notion that tens of thousands of people would collaborate to create, respectively, a living monument to human knowledge and a foundational piece of computing infrastructure, free of charge, simply sounds too fanciful.</p>
</blockquote>
<p><b>Link: <a href="https://www.wired.com/story/altruism-open-source-fuels-web-businesses-love-to-exploit-it/">wired.com</a></b></p>
<hr>
<p class="post-via"><a rel="via" href="https://twitter.com/zeynep"><span class="url">Via @zeynep</span></a></p>https://letra.studio/2019/08/indieweb-link-sharing/2019-08-12T10:11:53+01:00Link: IndieWeb Link Sharing<p>Max Böck:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Posting a new short “note” on my site currently requires me to commit a new markdown file to the repository on Github. That’s doable (for a developer), but not really convenient, especially when you’re on the go and just want to share a quick link.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>It me.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The new link sharing basically has three main parts:</p>
<ul>
<li>a small Javascript bookmarklet to act as a “share button”</li>
<li>a form that collects and sends the shared link data, and</li>
<li>a serverless function to process it and create a new file.</li>
</ul>
</blockquote>
<p>Gotta get on this train! I’m already working on it, though my solution will be based on the <a href="https://indieweb.org/Micropub">Micropub</a> spec. But that live preview is <em>sweet</em> and now I want it too.</p>
<p><b>Link: <a href="https://mxb.dev/blog/indieweb-link-sharing/">mxb.dev</a></b></p>https://letra.studio/2019/08/a-framework-for-moderation/2019-08-07T21:18:06+01:00Link: A Framework for Moderation<p>Ben Thompson on internet content moderation:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The top of the stack is about broadcasting — reaching as many people as possible — and while you may have the right to say anything you want, there is no right to be heard. Internet service providers, though, are about access — having the opportunity to speak or hear in the first place. In other words, the further down the stack, the more legality should be the sole criteria for moderation; the further up the more discretion and even responsibility there should be for content.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>This passage made me feel a little queasy but I think I agree?</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I ultimately reject the idea that publishing on the Internet is a right that must be guaranteed by 3rd parties. Stand on the street corner all you like, at least your terrible ideas will be limited by the physical world. The Internet, though, with its inherent ability to broadcast and congregate globally, is a fundamentally more dangerous medium that is by-and-large facilitated by third parties who have rights of their own.</p>
</blockquote>
<p><b>Link: <a href="https://stratechery.com/2019/a-framework-for-moderation/">stratechery.com</a></b></p>https://letra.studio/2019/08/introducing-the-pika-repl/2019-08-06T18:43:37+01:00Link: Introducing the Pika REPL<blockquote>
<p>Test packages directly in the browser, without installing anything locally. Perfect for quickly evaluating packages before bringing them into your important projects.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Taking npm packages for a test drive: incredibly useful.</p>
<p><b>Link: <a href="https://dev.to/pika/unrolled-introducing-the-pika-repl-1pbh">dev.to</a></b></p>
<hr>
<p class="post-via"><a rel="via" href="https://twitter.com/zachleat/"><span class="url">Via @zachleat</span></a></p>https://letra.studio/2019/08/the-web-without-the-web/2019-08-05T17:22:34+01:00Link: The web without the web<p>Laura González:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>In elevating frontend to the land of Serious Code we have not just made things incredibly over-engineered but we have also set fire to all the ladders that we used to get up here in the first place.</p>
</blockquote>
<p><b>Link: <a href="https://dev.to/walaura/the-web-without-the-web-aeo">dev.to</a></b></p>
<hr>
<p class="post-via"><a rel="via" href="https://adactio.com/links/15583"><span class="url">Via adactio.com</span></a></p>https://letra.studio/2019/08/why-dont-i-read-all-my-books/2019-08-04T02:55:46+01:00Link: Why Don’t I Read All My Books?<p>Karen Olsson thinks about the importance of the many books she owns but will never read:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Perhaps in some cases it has actually meant more to me to possess a book than to read it, because as long as its contents remain unknown to me, it retains its mystery. The unread book is a provocation, a promise of something that might dissipate if I slogged my way through the text. I’ve read a little of <i>Cave, City, and Eagle’s Nest: An Interpretive Journey Through the Mapa de Cuauhtinchan No. 2,</i> a sumptuous art book about a 16th-century pictorial manuscript from Mexico […]. I keep this book around even though I don’t wish to make anything of it in a literal sense—I don’t want to write fiction or nonfiction or a nutty screenplay about a mesoamerican document, but I wish for it to somehow whisper in my ear while I write something not at all about the map, for its enigmatic presence to leave some ineffable trace.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>I love this idea, and I must admit that I suffer from the same affliction. Design books, self-help books, nonfiction books… I want them to somehow transmit that “ineffable trace” to me just by virtue of sitting on my desk, mostly unread; no matter how many cookbooks I buy, it seems I always end up going to <a href="https://www.seriouseats.com">Serious Eats</a> when I need a recipe.</p>
<p>I’m trying to read more by divorcing the physicality of owning a book from the process of reading it, so I bought an eReader. Now I get paper versions of the books I want to <em>own</em>, and digital versions of the ones I want to <em>read</em>. Totally normal, I know.</p>
<p><b>Link: <a href="https://lithub.com/why-dont-i-read-all-my-books/">lithub.com</a></b></p>
<hr>
<p class="post-via"><a rel="via" href="https://kottke.org/19/07/ghosts-on-her-shelves"><span class="url">Via kottke.org</span></a></p>https://letra.studio/2019/08/truths-about-digital-accessibility/2019-08-04T02:38:27+01:00Link: Truths about digital accessibility<p>Eric Bailey posted a terrific list of principles that should be kept in mind when working on web accessibility.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Digital accessibility work is not easy, but it is vital. It is a holistic, multifaceted discipline that touches on multiple interconnected social and technological issues.</p>
</blockquote>
<p><b>Link: <a href="https://ericwbailey.design/writing/truths-about-digital-accessibility.html">ericwbailey.design</a></b></p>https://letra.studio/2019/08/fast-software-the-best-software/2019-08-03T13:38:32+01:00Link: Fast Software, the Best Software<p>Craig Mod:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Software that’s speedy usually means it’s focused. Like a good tool, it often means that it’s simple, but that’s not necessarily true. Speed in software is probably the most valuable, least valued asset. To me, speedy software is the difference between an application smoothly integrating into your life, and one called upon with great reluctance. Fastness in software is like great margins in a book — makes you smile without necessarily knowing why.</p>
</blockquote>
<p><b>Link: <a href="https://craigmod.com/essays/fast_software/">craigmod.com</a></b></p>https://letra.studio/2019/08/ooops-i-guess-were-full-stack-developers-now/2019-08-01T15:11:56+01:002019-08-03T00:00:00+01:00Link: Ooops, I guess we’re full-stack developers now.<p>Chris Coyier’s latest talk puts all the complexity of modern front-end development in perspective:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>All the very huge responsibilities front-end developers already have:</p>
<ul>
<li>Pulling of the design</li>
<li>Making the design part of a system</li>
<li>Making sure it is accessible</li>
<li>Worrying about the performance</li>
<li>Testing things across browsers</li>
<li>Testing things across devices</li>
<li>Sweating the UX</li>
</ul>
<p>Oh hello, big pile of new responsibilities</p>
<ul>
<li>Component-driven design, designing our own abstractions</li>
<li>Site-level architecture</li>
<li>Routing</li>
<li>Fetching our own data</li>
<li>Talking to APIs</li>
<li>Mutating data</li>
<li>State management</li>
</ul>
</blockquote>
<p>Oof.</p>
<p><b>Link: <a href="https://full-stack.netlify.com/">full-stack.netlify.com</a></b></p>
<hr>
<p class="post-via"><a rel="via" href="https://twitter.com/chriscoyier/status/1156691494595629056"><span class="url">Via @chriscoyier</span></a></p>https://letra.studio/2019/08/the-real-dark-web/2019-08-01T06:45:48+01:002019-08-03T00:00:00+01:00Link: The Real Dark Web<p>Charlie Owen:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The vast majority of respondents are still using Sass and vanilla CSS? Wow! This made me pause and think. Because I feel there’s an analogy here between that unseen dark matter, and the huge crowd of web developers who are using such “boring” technology stacks.</p>
<p>These developers are quietly building their sites and apps, day in, day out. But they are rendered invisible as they are not making use of the cutting-edge technologies that the 1% of the bleeding edge love to talk about.</p>
<p>They are the 99% of the web universe that is quietly getting on, not blogging about their technology stack, not publishing amazing new tooling. Simply building things.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Sass and not much else? It me. Though I <em>am</em> using some state-of-the-art tech like the fancy underlines made possible by <a href="https://drafts.csswg.org/css-text-decor-4/">CSS Text Decoration Module Level 4</a> 😎</p>
<p><b>Link: <a href="https://www.sonniesedge.net/posts/real-dark-web/">sonniesedge.net</a></b></p>https://letra.studio/2019/07/self-care-for-men/2019-07-29T22:35:15+01:00Link: Self-Care for Men<p>Megan Amram:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Men and women have completely different needs in the skin department. While a woman’s skin is soft like a dying flower and barely strong enough to keep her insides in, a man’s skin is thick like the door to a safe. We men need makeup that covers our hungry-boy blemishes and larger-than-average pores. There’s a reason they call those sewer things manhole covers—it’s because they’re thick like a man and big enough to cover a man’s holes (“pores”)!</p>
</blockquote>
<p><b>Link: <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/08/05/self-care-for-men">newyorker.com</a></b></p>
<hr>
<p class="post-via"><a rel="via" href="https://twitter.com/meganamram/status/1155872845584404481"><span class="url">Via @meganamram</span></a></p>https://letra.studio/2019/07/chinese-vertical-dramas-made-for-phone-viewing-show-the-future-of-mobile-video/2019-07-29T15:41:34+01:002019-08-03T00:00:00+01:00Link: Chinese vertical dramas made for phone viewing show the future of mobile video<p>Henry Sung:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>What’s remarkable about vertical drama is that it’s not just any scripted content cropped for a vertical aspect ratio. These shows are specifically imagined for the mobile screen from the ground up. This is evident in three features they all share.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>I am fascinated by vertical video — it feels like a completely different medium. To me, horizontal video always represents a very deliberate choice to “make a video.” Vertical video is much more spontaneous, like a long photo that lives on your phone.</p>
<p>Seeing the vertical format used for more serious scripted stuff is still uncanny, but I suspect there’s a lot to explore there.</p>
<p><b>Link: <a href="https://thenextweb.com/world/2019/07/17/chinese-vertical-dramas-made-for-phone-viewing-show-the-future-of-mobile-video/">thenextweb.com</a></b></p>
<hr>
<p class="post-via"><a rel="via" href="https://kottke.org/19/07/verticality-media-and-china"><span class="url">Via kottke.org</span></a></p>https://letra.studio/2019/07/the-possibility-gap-its-time-to-label-this-dark-pattern/2019-07-27T02:03:33+01:00Link: The Possibility Gap: It’s Time to Label This Dark Pattern<p>Quinn Keast:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The Possibility Gap is a dark pattern that arises when a product takes advantage of <em>unknown unknowns</em> on the part of their users, as it relates to their understanding of what is possible in digital products today.</p>
</blockquote>
<p><b>Link: <a href="https://quinnkeast.com/writing/the-possibility-gap-its-time-to-label-this-dark-pattern/">quinnkeast.com</a></b></p>
<hr>
<p class="post-via"><a rel="via" href="https://twitter.com/css/status/1154780940733952002"><span class="url">Via @css</span></a></p>https://letra.studio/2019/07/motion-smoothing-is-ruining-cinema/2019-07-25T03:06:43+01:002019-08-04T00:00:00+01:00Link: Motion Smoothing is Ruining Cinema<p>I’m linking to this just so I can go on the record on this here blog and say: motion smoothing is an abomination.</p>
<p><b>Link: <a href="https://www.vulture.com/2019/07/motion-smoothing-is-ruining-cinema.html">vulture.com</a></b></p>
<hr>
<p class="post-via"><a rel="via" href="https://twitter.com/tvaziri/status/1154074127147257861"><span class="url">Via @tvaziri</span></a></p>https://letra.studio/2019/07/intrinsically-responsive-css-grid-with-minmax-and-min/2019-07-20T17:20:24+01:002019-08-04T00:00:00+01:00Link: Intrinsically Responsive CSS Grid with minmax() and min()<p>Evan Minto:</p>
<blockquote>
<p><code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">min()</code> accepts one or more values and returns the smallest value. The magic of the function is that, just like <code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">calc()</code>, the arguments can use different units, which allows us to return values that change dynamically based on context.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p><code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">min()</code> is one of three new comparison functions introduced as part of the <a href="https://drafts.csswg.org/css-values-4/#comp-func">CSS Values and Units Module Level 4</a>. There’s also <code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">max()</code>, which naturally does the inverse of <code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">min()</code>. Finally <code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">clamp()</code> is a convenience function that applies both a minimum <em>and</em> a maximum to a single value.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>This is brilliant and I can’t wait until I can change my <code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">@supports</code> queries from <code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">display: grid</code> to <code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">min()</code>.</p>
<p><b>Link: <a href="http://evanminto.com/blog/intrinsically-responsive-css-grid-minmax-min/">evanminto.com</a></b></p>
<hr>
<p class="post-via"><a rel="via" href="https://adactio.com/links/15522"><span class="url">Via adactio.com</span></a></p>https://letra.studio/2019/07/what-i-like-about-vue/2019-07-18T04:47:18+01:00Link: What I Like About Vue<p>Dave Rupert:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Upgrading legacy applications was one of the usecases Vue was designed around. It means that developers can piecemeal upgrade bits of an application as necessary.</p>
<p>In my experience Angular, React, and a lot of other frameworks ultimately require you to go all in early and establish a large toolchain around these frameworks. Angular prescribes a lot with its amazing CLI. React on the other hand doesn’t prescribe anything, but requires you to self-assemble and wield a somewhat complex toolchain. But as Evan put it in <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ANtSWq-zI0s">his JSConf Asia talk</a>, Vue sits in the middle of the “Cathedral and the Bazaar”. Vue has useful tooling, but it’s all optional and you can use only what you need. In some ways, Vue’s grafting capabilities really does make it seem like a jQuery replacement you can drop in to give your components superpowers as needed.</p>
</blockquote>
<p><b>Link: <a href="https://daverupert.com/2019/07/what-i-like-about-vue/">daverupert.com</a></b></p>https://letra.studio/2019/07/how-to-kill-ie11-what-the-deaths-of-ie6-and-ie8-tell-us-about-killing-ie/2019-07-16T14:10:06+01:002019-08-04T00:00:00+01:00Link: How to Kill IE11 - What the Deaths of IE6 and IE8 Tell Us About Killing IE<p>Mike Sherov:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>In order to understand how best to kill IE11, we need to look back to how 2 previous versions of IE met their fate: IE6 and IE8. By examining the strategies employed to kill browsers, we can look at current efforts to sunset IE11. We can predict and evangelize for what may ultimately do it in, finally freeing the JS community from the burden of ES5.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Interesting historical analysis but I think that attempting to “kill” browsers is a misguided goal. I think the right way to move forward here is Oliver Williams’ idea of <a href="/2018/05/the-slow-death-of-internet-explorer-and-the-future-of-progressive-enhancement/">applying the “mustard cut” technique to all versions of Internet Explorer</a> and serving those users just barebones (but useful) HTML and CSS.</p>
<p><b>Link: <a href="https://mike.sherov.com/ie11-countdown/">mike.sherov.com</a></b></p>
<hr>
<p class="post-via"><a rel="via" href="https://adactio.com/links/15507"><span class="url">Via adactio.com</span></a></p>https://letra.studio/2019/07/the-accessibility-of-styled-form-controls/2019-07-12T22:05:34+01:00Link: The Accessibility of Styled Form Controls<blockquote>
<p>A repository of styled and “styled” form control elements and markup patterns, and how they are announced by screen readers.</p>
</blockquote>
<p><b>Link: <a href="https://scottaohara.github.io/a11y_styled_form_controls/">scottaohara.github.io</a></b></p>
<hr>
<p class="post-via"><a rel="via" href="https://twitter.com/css/status/1149737688230240257"><span class="url">Via @css</span></a></p>https://letra.studio/2019/07/jony-ives-fragmented-legacy-unreliable-unrepairable-beautiful-gadgets/2019-07-07T21:53:12+01:002019-08-03T00:00:00+01:00Link: Jony Ive’s Fragmented Legacy: Unreliable, Unrepairable, Beautiful Gadgets<p>Kyle Wiens makes a great point:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>[Dieter] Rams loves durable products that are environmentally friendly. That’s one of his <a href="https://readymag.com/shuffle/dieter-rams/ten-commandments/">10 principles for good design</a>: “Design makes an important contribution to the preservation of the environment.” But Ive has never publicly discussed the dissonance between his inspiration and Apple’s disposable, glued-together products.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>When a single broken key requires replacing a laptop’s entire top case, there is no denying that Apple has given too little consideration to the durability of its products.</p>
<p>I’m extremely curious to find out how (if?) Apple’s design philosophy will change with Ive gone.</p>
<p><b>Link: <a href="https://www.ifixit.com/News/jony-ives-fragmented-legacy-unreliable-unrepairable-beautiful-gadgets">ifixit.com</a></b></p>
<hr>
<p class="post-via"><a rel="via" href="https://twitter.com/marcoarment/status/1147935056301891584"><span class="url">Via @marcoarment</span></a></p>https://letra.studio/2019/07/maybe-you-dont-need-a-date-picker/2019-07-06T21:28:29+01:00Link: Maybe You Don’t Need a Date Picker<p>Adrian Roselli:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>What we know is that native and custom calendar controls are often a problem for users and applied where they are not needed. Before dropping the code on a screen as a matter of habit, consider if it genuinely helps the user or just your workflow.</p>
</blockquote>
<p><b>Link: <a href="http://adrianroselli.com/2019/07/maybe-you-dont-need-a-date-picker.html">adrianroselli.com</a></b></p>https://letra.studio/2019/07/eberts-walk-of-fame-remarks/2019-07-04T23:21:08+01:002019-08-03T00:00:00+01:00Link: Ebert’s Walk of Fame remarks<p>Thanks Todd Vaziri for <a href="https://twitter.com/tvaziri/status/980575646807080960">tweeting about</a> this great Roger Ebert quote that I had forgotten about:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Movies are the most powerful empathy machine in all the arts. When I go to a great movie I can live somebody else’s life for a while. I can walk in somebody else’s shoes. I can see what it feels like to be a member of a different gender, a different race, a different economic class, to live in a different time, to have a different belief.</p>
</blockquote>
<p><b>Link: <a href="https://www.rogerebert.com/rogers-journal/eberts-walk-of-fame-remarks">rogerebert.com</a></b></p>
<hr>
<p class="post-via"><a rel="via" href="https://twitter.com/tvaziri/status/980575646807080960"><span class="url">Via @tvaziri</span></a></p>https://letra.studio/2019/07/accessibility-support/2019-07-04T10:26:55+01:002019-08-03T00:00:00+01:00Link: Accessibility Support<p>An open-source community effort to map support for web accessibility features across different Assistive Technologies. It’s still early days, but I hope this flourishes — accessibility interop is a complex topic in dire need of de-mystification.</p>
<p><b>Link: <a href="https://a11ysupport.io/">a11ysupport.io</a></b></p>
<hr>
<p class="post-via"><a rel="via" href="https://andy-bell.design/links/200/"><span class="url">Via andy-bell.design</span></a></p>https://letra.studio/2019/07/we-are-tenants-on-our-own-devices/2019-07-04T10:03:14+01:002019-08-03T00:00:00+01:00Link: We Are Tenants on Our Own Devices<p>Zeynep Tufekci is worried about what ownership means for always-connected products:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Today, we may think we own things because we paid for them and brought them home, but as long as they run software or have digital connectivity, the sellers continue to have control over the product. We are renters of our own objects, there by the grace of the true owner.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>I worry about this a lot, maybe too much. Unless I don’t have a choice, I avoid any device that superflously requires an internet connection (or worse, a smartphone app) like the plague.</p>
<p><b>Link: <a href="https://www.wired.com/story/right-to-repair-tenants-on-our-own-devices/">wired.com</a></b></p>
<hr>
<p class="post-via"><a rel="via" href="https://twitter.com/zeynep/status/1130448187117002753"><span class="url">Via @zeynep</span></a></p>https://letra.studio/2019/06/frank-chimero-on-causing-good-trouble-and-re-imagining-the-status-quo-to-combat-achievement-culture/2019-06-29T20:44:02+01:00Link: Frank Chimero on causing ‘good trouble’ and re-imagining the status quo to combat achievement culture<p>Great interview. Frank Chimero is always thought-provoking:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Everyone has their lean years, but I think they make a poor compass. You can always work more. We need to disabuse ourselves of the thought that work is the solution to our problems, or that by keeping up we are getting closer to something worth having. Being more active is not being freer. I won’t romanticise those months on peanut butter and jelly as freedom, but I can confidently say that in retrospect the problems of that time were no better or worse than the ones I’ve experienced at the peak of my successes.</p>
</blockquote>
<p><b>Link: <a href="https://www.creativeboom.com/features/frank-chimero/">creativeboom.com</a></b></p>
<hr>
<p class="post-via"><a rel="via" href="https://twitter.com/frank_chimero/status/1143206083038781440"><span class="url">Via @frank_chimero</span></a></p>https://letra.studio/2019/06/every-layout/2019-06-20T17:31:26+01:00Link: Relearn CSS layout: Every Layout<p>Heydon Pickering and Andy Bell have created a terrific resource for CSS layout patterns following algorithmic design principles.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>We make many of our biggest mistakes as visual designers for the web by insisting on hard coding designs. We break browsers’ layout algorithms by applying fixed positions and dimensions to our content.</p>
<p>Instead, we should be deferential to the underlying algorithms that power CSS, and we should think in terms of algorithms as we extrapolate layouts based on these foundations. We need to be leveraging selector logic, harnessing flow and wrapping behavior, and using calculations to adapt layout to context.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>This approach is precisely what I’ve been striving for ever since <a href="/2018/04/intrinsic-web-design/">Jen Simmons’s Intrinsic Web Design talk</a> from last year.</p>
<p><b>Link: <a href="https://every-layout.dev/">every-layout.dev</a></b></p>
<hr>
<p class="post-via"><a rel="via" href="https://twitter.com/brad_frost/status/1139554838067449856"><span class="url">Via @brad_frost</span></a></p>https://letra.studio/2019/06/drop-caps-and-design-systems/2019-06-17T23:31:15+01:00Link: Drop caps & design systems<p>Ethan Marcotte:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>When I’m asked to describe design systems work, I say the word that springs immediately to mind is mapmaking. As designers like Matthew Ström and Alla Kholmatova have argued, every website has a design system underneath it. Take yours, for example: your website’s interface is built from a library of components, each shaped by a series of design decisions and business needs. Your design system may not be explicit—maybe you don’t have a polished pattern library, or a set of well-defined design principles, or maybe your documentation’s not as robust as you’d like it to be—but it’s still a system. And in order to improve that system, you have to research it before you can begin to gradually, slowly improve it.</p>
</blockquote>
<p><b>Link: <a href="https://product.voxmedia.com/2019/6/17/18524029/the-ballad-of-drop-caps-and-design-systems">product.voxmedia.com</a></b></p>
<hr>
<p class="post-via"><a rel="via" href="https://twitter.com/beep/status/1140661988357484547"><span class="url">Via @beep</span></a></p>https://letra.studio/2019/06/20-rules-for-making-the-best-salads-of-your-life/2019-06-17T22:02:41+01:00Link: 20 Rules For Making the Best Salads of Your Life<p>Sarah Jampel:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Every additional ingredient should bring a contrast in flavor or texture: If the salad is primarily crunchy, add something soft. If it skews sweet, add something salty or bitter. If it’s on the rich side, use acid to nudge it back to equilibrium. And if what you’re about to throw in achieves none of that? Save it for something else.</p>
</blockquote>
<p><b>Link: <a href="https://www.bonappetit.com/gallery/salad-ideas">bonappetit.com</a></b></p>
<hr>
<p class="post-via"><a rel="via" href="https://twitter.com/kottke/status/1140637976424136704"><span class="url">Via @kottke</span></a></p>https://letra.studio/2019/06/the-new-wilderness/2019-06-16T13:26:54+01:00Link: The New Wilderness<p>Maciej Ceglowski writes about privacy and I want to quote the whole thing:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Ambient privacy is not a property of people, or of their data, but of the world around us. Just like you can’t drop out of the oil economy by refusing to drive a car, you can’t opt out of the surveillance economy by forswearing technology (and for many people, that choice is not an option). While there may be worthy reasons to take your life off the grid, the infrastructure will go up around you whether you use it or not.</p>
<p>Because our laws frame privacy as an individual right, we don’t have a mechanism for deciding whether we want to live in a surveillance society. Congress has remained silent on the matter, with both parties content to watch Silicon Valley make up its own rules. The large tech companies point to our willing use of their services as proof that people don’t really care about their privacy. But this is like arguing that inmates are happy to be in jail because they use the prison library. Confronted with the reality of a monitored world, people make the rational decision to make the best of it.</p>
<p>That is not consent.</p>
</blockquote>
<p><b>Link: <a href="https://idlewords.com/2019/06/the_new_wilderness.htm">idlewords.com</a></b></p>https://letra.studio/2019/06/keep-it-simple/2019-06-11T21:41:13+01:00Link: Keep it simple<p>Andy Bell:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>One thing that is often forgotten about accessibility is that keeping things simple and utilising semantic HTML gets you most of the way towards providing a fully accessible experience for everyone.</p>
</blockquote>
<p><b>Link: <a href="https://andy-bell.design/wrote/keep-it-simple/">andy-bell.design</a></b></p>https://letra.studio/2019/06/tech-and-antitrust/2019-06-11T21:33:04+01:00Link: Tech and Antitrust<p>Ben Thompson:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Suggesting that users changing ecosystems is a sufficient antidote to Apple’s behavior is like suggesting that users subject to a hospital monopoly in their city should simply move elsewhere; asking a third party to remedy anticompetitive behavior by incurring massive inconvenience with zero immediate gain is just as problematic as making up market definitions to achieve a desired result.</p>
</blockquote>
<p><b>Link: <a href="https://stratechery.com/2019/tech-and-antitrust/">stratechery.com</a></b></p>https://letra.studio/2019/06/wwdc-2019-first-words-which-i-may-end-up-eating-later-but-hopefully-not/2019-06-09T19:14:40+01:00Link: WWDC 2019 First Words, Which I May End Up Eating Later, but Hopefully Not<p>Brent Simmons on SwiftUI:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The future of app-making looks more and more like web development. Declarative. Semantic. Dynamic — adapting to context (interaction styles, accessibility settings, screen size, etc.). Runtime-editable.</p>
</blockquote>
<p><b>Link: <a href="https://inessential.com/2019/06/07/wwdc_2019_first_words_which_i_may_end_up">inessential.com</a></b></p>https://letra.studio/2019/05/reducing-motion-with-the-picture-element/2019-05-29T08:54:45+01:00Link: Reducing motion with the picture element<p>Brad Frost:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I was just talking with <a href="https://daverupert.com/">Dave</a> about the accessibility of moving images on the web, and he said:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>hm… I wonder if you could use <code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">picture</code> + <code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">prefers-reduced-motion</code>?</p>
</blockquote>
<p>He then sends the following code:</p>
<div class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge"><div class="highlight"><pre class="highlight"><code><picture>
<source srcset="no-motion.jpg" media="(prefers-reduced-motion: reduce)"></source>
<img srcset="animated.gif alt="brick wall"/>
</picture>
</code></pre></div> </div>
</blockquote>
<p>Whoa! This is a revelation.</p>
<p><b>Link: <a href="http://bradfrost.com/blog/post/reducing-motion-with-the-picture-element/">bradfrost.com</a></b></p>https://letra.studio/2019/05/how-aladdin-changed-animation-by-screwing-over-robin-williams/2019-05-21T00:20:49+01:00Link: How Aladdin Changed Animation (by Screwing Over Robin Williams)<figure class="post-figure embed">
<a class="embed-placeholder" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nyiBdccfNkg" data-embed-id="nyiBdccfNkg" data-embed-provider="youtube">
<img src="https://img.youtube.com/vi/nyiBdccfNkg/hqdefault.jpg" alt="">
</a>
</figure>
<p><i></i></p>
<p>Lindsay Ellis:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>So here’s a question: when did animated movies start selling themselves on their bankable celebrity talent?</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Robin Williams was such a treasure.</p>
<p><b>Link: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nyiBdccfNkg">youtube.com</a></b></p>https://letra.studio/2019/05/he-crossed-the-atlantic-in-a-barrel/2019-05-16T07:38:54+01:00Link: He Crossed the Atlantic in a Barrel.<p>Emily S. Rueb interviews Jean-Jacques Savin, a French adventurer who “spent 127 days alone in a large, barrel-shaped capsule made of plywood, at the mercy of the winds and currents.” It sounds like he had a lovely time:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>If it was nice, I swam, and dove underneath the barrel to catch a fish, sea bream, to supplement my meal.</p>
<p>I made a breakfast in the morning, and a nice dinner in the evening. I had a lot of time to write my book. I played a lot of bluegrass on my mandolin.</p>
</blockquote>
<p><b>Link: <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/10/world/atlantic-ocean-barrel.html">nytimes.com</a></b></p>
<hr>
<p class="post-via"><a rel="via" href="https://twitter.com/kottke/status/1128337677210804224"><span class="url">Via @kottke</span></a></p>https://letra.studio/2019/05/the-potential-advantages-of-a-javascript-whitelist/2019-05-10T12:31:07+01:00Link: The Potential Advantages of a JavaScript Whitelist<p>Nick Heer:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>When you think about it, it’s pretty nuts that we allow the automatic execution of whatever code a web developer wrote. We don’t do that for anything else, really — certainly not to the same extent of possibly hundreds of webpages visited daily, each carrying a dozen or more scripts.</p>
</blockquote>
<p><b>Link: <a href="https://pxlnv.com/linklog/simmons-javascript-whitelist/">pxlnv.com</a></b></p>https://letra.studio/2019/05/let-people-enjoy-things/2019-05-07T08:20:16+01:00Link: Let People Enjoy Things<p><i></i></p>
<p>Esther Rosenfield:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>It’s no coincidence that you never see the comic posted in response to criticism of some understated indie drama or underground Bandcamp musician. You only ever see it used to defend the commercial output of mega-corporations; your Marvel, your <em>Game of Thrones</em>, your Ariana Grande, etc. It’s no surprise, either. A recent development in corporate art is the positioning of it as a cultural underdog, constantly under siege from Haters and Trolls. You see it most with the nerd properties mentioned above. They parry the childhood fear of being bullied for liking nerd stuff into the suggestion that those bullies are still out there, waiting to pounce, and they take the form of everyone who dares to not like the IP in question.</p>
</blockquote>
<p><b>Link: <a href="https://medium.com/@EstherRosenfield/let-people-enjoy-things-12021d00285a">medium.com</a></b></p>
<hr>
<p class="post-via"><a rel="via" href="https://twitter.com/EstherOnFilm/status/1125014799983742976"><span class="url">Via @EstherOnFilm</span></a></p>https://letra.studio/2019/05/underlines-are-beautiful/2019-05-04T14:23:08+01:00Link: Underlines Are Beautiful<p>Adrian Roselli:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Underlines, the standard, built-in signifier of hyperlinks, the core feature of the web, are beautiful.</p>
<p>This is objectively true. They are aesthetically one of the most delightful visual design elements ever created.</p>
<p>They represent the ideal of a democratized information system. They are a frail monument to the worldwide reach of ideas and discourse. They are proof of our ascension from trees and swamps, a testament to our species’ intelligence, and a witness to our inevitable downfall.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>❤️</p>
<p><b>Link: <a href="http://adrianroselli.com/2019/01/underlines-are-beautiful.html">adrianroselli.com</a></b></p>https://letra.studio/2019/05/details-summary-are-not-insert-control-here/2019-05-04T14:20:43+01:00Link: Details / Summary Are Not [insert control here]<p>Adrian Roselli:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Once major browsers started supporting <code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge"><details></code> & <code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge"><summary></code> developers immediately started to play with them to see what sorts of patterns they could enhance or replace. This is a good thing. Experimentation pushes boundaries, improves understanding.</p>
<p>However, we need to be careful of christening this new-to-us interaction as the solution to all our coding struggles.</p>
</blockquote>
<p><b>Link: <a href="http://adrianroselli.com/2019/04/details-summary-are-not-insert-control-here.html">adrianroselli.com</a></b></p>
<hr>
<p class="post-via"><a rel="via" href="https://twitter.com/css/status/1124534116047884288"><span class="url">Via @css</span></a></p>https://letra.studio/2019/05/into-the-breach-design-postmortem/2019-05-03T08:47:57+01:00Link: Into the Breach Design Postmortem<figure class="post-figure embed">
<a class="embed-placeholder" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s_I07Iq_2XM" data-embed-id="s_I07Iq_2XM" data-embed-provider="youtube">
<img src="https://img.youtube.com/vi/s_I07Iq_2XM/hqdefault.jpg" alt="">
</a>
</figure>
<p><i></i></p>
<blockquote>
<p>In this 2019 GDC session, Subset Games co-foudner Matthew Davis details the Into the Breach design process from early drafts to the final balancing decisions. Davis dives into years of cut content and iteration to show how Subset Games approached the difficult design challenges of making Into the Breach.</p>
</blockquote>
<p><b>Link: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s_I07Iq_2XM">youtube.com</a></b></p>https://letra.studio/2019/04/all-podcasts-are-shows-not-all-shows-are-podcasts/2019-04-27T09:35:31+01:00Link: All Podcasts Are Shows; Not All Shows Are Podcasts<p>John Gruber:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>These companies are trying to usurp the word <em>podcast</em> for one simple reason: people love podcasts. What I think and hope they are missing is that part of what people love about podcasts is the openness. It’s one of the last remaining areas of the internet that works exactly as the internet was intended to work.</p>
</blockquote>
<p><b>Link: <a href="https://daringfireball.net/2019/04/not_all_shows_are_podcasts">daringfireball.net</a></b></p>https://letra.studio/2019/04/freedom/2019-04-24T06:27:09+01:00Link: Freedom<p>Brent Simmons:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>In a way, it feels like iOS devices are rented, not owned. This is not a criticism: I’m totally fine with that. It’s appropriate for something so very mass-market and so very much built for a networked world.</p>
<p>But what about Macs?</p>
<p>Macs carry the flame for the revolution. They’re the computers we <em>own</em>, right? They’re the astounding, powerful machines that we get to master.</p>
<p>Except that lately, it feels more and more like we’re just renting Macs too, and they’re really Apple’s machines, not ours.</p>
</blockquote>
<p><b>Link: <a href="http://inessential.com/2019/04/23/freedom">inessential.com</a></b></p>https://letra.studio/2019/04/how-recommendation-algorithms-run-the-world/2019-04-23T12:46:24+01:00Link: How Recommendation Algorithms Run the World<p>Zeynep Tufekci:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Deep down, behind every “people like you” recommendation is a computational method for distilling stereotypes through data. Even when these methods work, they can help entrench the stereotypes they’re mobilizing. They might easily recommend books about coding to boys and books about fashion to girls, simply by tracking the next most likely click. Of course, that creates a feedback cycle: If you keep being shown coding books, you’re probably more likely to eventually check one out.</p>
</blockquote>
<p><b>Link: <a href="https://www.wired.com/story/how-recommendation-algorithms-run-the-world/">wired.com</a></b></p>
<hr>
<p class="post-via"><a rel="via" href="https://twitter.com/zeynep/status/1120651576614563841"><span class="url">Via @zeynep</span></a></p>https://letra.studio/2019/04/retro-tech-game-boy/2019-04-22T22:52:29+01:00Link: Retro Tech: Game Boy<figure class="post-figure embed">
<a class="embed-placeholder" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oy8zSYKkczI" data-embed-id="Oy8zSYKkczI" data-embed-provider="youtube">
<img src="https://img.youtube.com/vi/Oy8zSYKkczI/hqdefault.jpg" alt="">
</a>
</figure>
<blockquote>
<p>On the 30th anniversary of its release, Marques Brownlee unboxes and explores how the Game Boy came to be, it’s impact on society, and why it’s leaving us feeling so nostalgic.</p>
</blockquote>
<p><b>Link: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oy8zSYKkczI">youtube.com</a></b></p>https://letra.studio/2019/04/apple-owes-everyone-an-apology-and-it-should-start-with-me-specifically/2019-04-19T18:47:16+01:00Link: Apple owes everyone an apology and it should start with me, specifically<p>Casey Johnston’s butterfly keyboard saga continues:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I dread the Overton window shift that Apple now appears to be attempting to push, which is that its customers and their crumbs and dust and bad habits are to blame, and should bend themselves around the “sensitive” keyboard, keep canned air (not supplied by Apple itself) on hand at all times, as if this is a problem we’ve always had, and not one Apple singlehandedly created with a nearsighted design.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>My 2014 MacBook Pro is still going strong, thankfully. (Knock on wood.)</p>
<p><b>Link: <a href="https://theoutline.com/post/7315/apple-keyboards-still-suck-insanely-bad">theoutline.com</a></b></p>https://letra.studio/2019/04/advice-to-a-young-me/2019-04-19T17:37:26+01:00Link: Advice to a Young Me<p>Craig Mod:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>At 23 I was obsessed with minimizing recurring costs of living. They felt like poison to me.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>Obsessing over minimized cost of living has a light-touch hint of Thoreau to it: the calculating, the measuring, the valuing of time.</p>
<p>“House: $28.12 ½; Farm one year: $14.72 ½ …” and on and on Thoreau wrote in <em>Walden</em>. “The cost of a thing is the amount of what I will call life which is required to be exchanged for it, immediate or in the long run.”</p>
<p>Cal Newport’s <a href="https://amzn.to/2K1iHDN"><em>Digital Minimalism</em></a> devotes a chapter to Thoreau. My favorite quote though is from Frédéric Gros on Thoreau’s processes: “[Thoreau] says: keep calculating, keep weighing. What exactly do I gain or lose?”</p>
</blockquote>
<p><b>Link: <a href="https://craigmod.com/roden/025/#advice-to-a-young-me">craigmod.com</a></b></p>
<hr>
<p class="post-via"><a rel="via" href="https://twitter.com/kottke/status/1119000652741529601"><span class="url">Via @kottke</span></a></p>https://letra.studio/2019/04/why-vlambeers-co-founder-thinks-mobile-games-market-is-broken/2019-04-18T01:07:48+01:002019-04-23T00:09:00+01:00Link: Why Vlambeer’s Co-Founder Thinks Mobile Games Market is Broken<p>Brian Crecente talks to Rami Ismail about why traditional game development is broken on iOS:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“I’m here to make video games,” he said. “I’m not here to fix somebody else’s problems. Our users? Absolutely. If they have a bug and it’s our fault, we’ll fix it. But having made a game in 2013 and then the platform going, ‘It’s broken now,’ That would be like if somebody went and updated like the internet and now all text is right to left. That’s how it feels to me. It’s like we made a game, so now we’re getting punished for it.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Apple has created a very inviting — but ultimately hostile — platform for games. There’s no malice there, they just don’t care about legacy software as much as they care about pushing things forward.</p>
<p>Video games have historically been extremely well preserved, yet some older iOS games seem to be gone forever. This ephemerality is unprecedented; it’s not just bad for game developers, it really feels like a big part of gaming history is being erased.</p>
<p><b>Link: <a href="https://variety.com/2019/gaming/features/android-ios-apple-google-game-dev-problems-1203191551/">variety.com</a></b></p>
<hr>
<p class="post-via"><a rel="via" href="https://twitter.com/crecenteb/status/1118615675231195142"><span class="url">Via @crecenteb</span></a></p>https://letra.studio/2019/04/samsung-galaxy-fold-is-the-homer-simpson-car/2019-04-17T23:46:58+01:00Link: Samsung Galaxy Fold is the Homer Simpson car<p>Patrick Thornton:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The Galaxy Fold is the kind of device that a random user might think is interesting in the abstract. It’s a phone. It’s a tablet. It folds in half!</p>
<p>But <a href="https://uxdesign.cc/guidelines-for-thoughtful-product-design-4a1c6e19c125">good product design</a> is not about letting your users design your products for you — it’s about solving users problems and making their lives better.</p>
</blockquote>
<p><b>Link: <a href="https://uxdesign.cc/samsung-galaxy-fold-is-the-homer-simpson-car-a364210edb1d">uxdesign.cc</a></b></p>
<hr>
<p class="post-via"><a rel="via" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2019/04/17/galaxy-fold-homer-simpson-car"><span class="url">Via daringfireball.net</span></a></p>https://letra.studio/2019/04/a-website-is-a-car-and-not-a-book/2019-04-16T10:35:35+01:00Link: A Website is a Car and Not a Book<p>Robin Rendle:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Anyway, I asked Lindsay that question: what is it about web design that makes it so difficult to understand? She posited that the issue is that most people believe web design is like designing a book. Heck, we still call these things web <em>pages</em>. But Lindsay argued that building a modern website is nothing like designing a book; it’s more like designing a car.</p>
</blockquote>
<p><b>Link: <a href="https://css-tricks.com/a-website-is-a-car-and-not-a-book/">css-tricks.com</a></b></p>https://letra.studio/2019/04/css-masonry-with-flexbox-nth-child-and-order/2019-04-16T00:04:11+01:002019-04-22T23:24:00+01:00Link: CSS masonry with flexbox, :nth-child(), and order<p>Tobias Ahlin:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>On the surface it seems fairly easy to create a masonry layout with <a href="https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/CSS_Flexible_Box_Layout/Basic_Concepts_of_Flexbox">flexbox</a>; all you need to do is set <code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">flex-flow</code> to column wrap` and voilà, you have a masonry layout. Sort of. The problem with this approach is that it produces a grid with a seemingly shuffled and obscure order. Items will be (unbeknownst to the user) rendered from top to bottom and someone parsing the grid from left to right will read the boxes in a somewhat arbitrary order, for example 1, 3, 6, 2, 4, 7, 8, 5, and so on so forth.</p>
<p>Flexbox has no easy way of rendering items with a <code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">column</code> layout while using a <code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">row</code> order, but we can build a masonry layout with CSS only—no JavaScript needed—by using <code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">:nth-child()</code> and the <code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">order</code> property.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>This is very clever — an actually helpful use of <code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">order</code> that helps visual order more accurately follow source order.</p>
<p>But there’s a catch: it requires a fixed height for the container — and it needs to be a magic number that’s taller than the tallest column. That unfortunately makes it not super resilient to content changes, limiting its usefulness.</p>
<p><b>Link: <a href="http://tobiasahlin.com/blog/masonry-with-css/">tobiasahlin.com</a></b></p>https://letra.studio/2019/04/all-you-need-to-know-about-hyphenation-in-css/2019-04-15T12:32:01+01:002019-04-22T23:12:00+01:00Link: All you need to know about hyphenation in CSS<p>Richard Rutter:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>There is more to setting hyphenation than just turning on the hyphens. The <a href="https://www.w3.org/TR/css-text-4/#hyphenation">CSS Text Module Level 4</a> has introduced the same kind of hyphenation controls provided in layout software (eg. InDesign) and some word processors (including Word). These controls provide different ways to define how much hyphenation occurs through your text.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>This is great news. I’ve always avoided CSS hyphenation because of how aggressive the algorithms are. Using these new properties in concert with <code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">@supports</code> we can get well-controlled hyphenation as a progressive enhancement while avoiding the half-baked hyper-hyphenated middle ground we’ve had so far.</p>
<p><b>Link: <a href="http://clagnut.com/blog/2395">clagnut.com</a></b></p>
<hr>
<p class="post-via"><a rel="via" href="https://twitter.com/robweychert/status/1117737792992358400"><span class="url">Via @robweychert</span></a></p>https://letra.studio/2019/04/accessibility-events/2019-04-12T04:28:05+01:00Link: Accessibility Events<p>Mat Marquis:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>It could seem like an enticing option for our users, at first glance: an enhanced, fully-featured website, on the one hand, a fully accessible alternative experience on the other. That unravels with even the slightest examination, though: if the fully-featured website isn’t accessible, the accessible website won’t be fully featured. By choosing to have the “accessible experience” deviate from the “real website,” we end up drawing a sharper line between those two definitions, and we nudge the “accessible experience” closer to an afterthought—limited and frustratingly out-of-sync with the “real” website, like so many dedicated mobile sites quickly became.</p>
</blockquote>
<p><b>Link: <a href="https://css-tricks.com/accessibility-events/">css-tricks.com</a></b></p>https://letra.studio/2019/04/split/2019-04-10T16:19:45+01:00Link: Split<p>Jeremy Keith:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Where it gets interesting is when a technology that’s designed for developer convenience is made out of the very materials being delivered to users. For example, a CSS framework like Bootstrap is <em>made</em> of CSS. That’s different to a tool like Sass which <em>outputs</em> CSS. Whether or not a developer chooses to use Sass is irrelevant to the user—the final output will be CSS either way. But if a developer chooses to use a CSS framework, that decision has a direct impact on the user experience. The user must download the framework in order for the developer to get the benefit.</p>
<p>So whereas Sass sits at the back of the front end—where I don’t care what you use—Bootstrap sits at the front of the front end. For tools like that, I don’t think saying “use whatever works for you” is good enough. It’s got to be weighed against the cost to the user.</p>
</blockquote>
<p><b>Link: <a href="https://adactio.com/journal/15050">adactio.com</a></b></p>https://letra.studio/2019/04/some-unsolicited-blogging-advice/2019-04-10T16:00:25+01:002019-04-13T00:00:00+01:00Link: Some Unsolicited Blogging Advice<p>Some great pointers from Dave Rupert:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>If you feel the need to write, write.</p>
</blockquote>
<p><b>Link: <a href="https://daverupert.com/2019/04/some-unsolicited-blogging-advice/">daverupert.com</a></b></p>https://letra.studio/2019/04/web-components-will-replace-your-frontend-framework/2019-04-10T15:42:55+01:00Link: Web Components will replace your frontend framework<p>An interesting comparison from Danny Moerkerke:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Remember when <code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">document.querySelector</code> first got wide browser support and started to end jQuery’s ubiquity? It finally gave us a way to do <em>natively</em> what jQuery had been providing for years: easy selection of DOM elements. I believe the same is about to happen to frontend frameworks like Angular and React.</p>
</blockquote>
<p><b>Link: <a href="https://www.dannymoerkerke.com/blog/web-components-will-replace-your-frontend-framework">dannymoerkerke.com</a></b></p>
<hr>
<p class="post-via"><a rel="via" href="https://twitter.com/css/status/1115954960494018560"><span class="url">Via @css</span></a></p>https://letra.studio/2019/04/the-history-of-video/2019-04-10T04:13:06+01:00Link: The History of Video<figure class="post-figure embed">
<a class="embed-placeholder" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rjDX5ItsOnQ" data-embed-id="rjDX5ItsOnQ" data-embed-provider="youtube">
<img src="https://img.youtube.com/vi/rjDX5ItsOnQ/hqdefault.jpg" alt="">
</a>
</figure>
<p>Veritasium:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>This is a video I’ve long wanted to make, about what makes video look like video and, up until 10 years ago or so, not as appealing as film. I grew up with the two technologies (film and video) in parallel and to me they always seemed like two ways of achieving the same ends: recording and replaying moving images. But their histories are quite distinct. Film was always a way to capture moving images for later replaying. Video started out as a way to transfer images from one place to another instantaneously.</p>
</blockquote>
<p><b>Link: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rjDX5ItsOnQ">youtube.com</a></b></p>https://letra.studio/2019/04/break-out-of-the-echo-chamber/2019-04-08T23:45:53+01:00Link: Break out of the echo chamber<p>Andy Bell:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The majority of the web community are probably building—y’know—modest websites. There’s a reason why <a href="https://w3techs.com/technologies/details/cm-wordpress/all/all">WordPress powers 33.5% of the web</a>: because most of the web isn’t big applications or design systems—it’s straight-up websites. We would all do well to remember that.</p>
</blockquote>
<p><b>Link: <a href="https://andy-bell.design/wrote/break-out-of-the-echo-chamber/">andy-bell.design</a></b></p>https://letra.studio/2019/04/how-the-web-became-unreadable/2019-04-08T03:39:10+01:00Link: How the Web Became Unreadable<p>Kevin Marks:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>There’s a widespread movement in design circles to reduce the contrast between text and background, making type harder to read. Apple is guilty. Google is, too. So is Twitter.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>My plea to designers and software engineers: Ignore the fads and go back to the typographic principles of print — keep your type black, and vary weight and font instead of grayness. You’ll be making things better for people who read on smaller, dimmer screens, even if their eyes aren’t aging like mine. It may not be trendy, but it’s time to consider who is being left out by the web’s aesthetic.</p>
</blockquote>
<p><b>Link: <a href="https://www.wired.com/2016/10/how-the-web-became-unreadable/">wired.com</a></b></p>
<hr>
<p class="post-via"><a rel="via" href="https://twitter.com/matthewtbeard/status/1114465233576157184"><span class="url">Via @matthewtbeard</span></a></p>https://letra.studio/2019/04/perceived-velocity-through-version-numbers/2019-04-08T00:25:41+01:002019-04-13T00:00:00+01:00Link: Perceived Velocity through Version Numbers<p>Dave Rupert thinks version number bumps would be a good move for HTML and CSS, marketing-wise. I agree!</p>
<blockquote>
<p>A single number bump replaces a mountain of marketing. Every discerning technologist knows it only makes sense to invest in technologies that are moving forward. To invest in a stagnant technology would be a dereliction of duty.</p>
<p>I think this has effected web technologies deeply. HTML5 was released in 2008 and its handful of new elements and APIs was a boom for the language. <a href="https://www.apple.com/hotnews/thoughts-on-flash/">Even Steve Jobs advocated for it over Flash</a>. Web Standards had won, Firefox and Webkit were our champions. “We need to upgrade to HTML5” was a blanket excuse for auditing your website and cleaning up your codebase.</p>
</blockquote>
<p><b>Link: <a href="https://daverupert.com/2019/04/perceived-velocity/">daverupert.com</a></b></p>https://letra.studio/2019/04/defining-productivity/2019-04-07T16:40:02+01:00Link: Defining Productivity<p>Jeremy Wagner:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>It’s easy to slap something up on a web server, but it’s quite another to be a steward of it in a way that makes the web a better place. That starts with redefining our productivity with the goal of serving the interests of others instead of our own.</p>
</blockquote>
<p><b>Link: <a href="https://jeremy.codes/blog/defining-productivity/">jeremy.codes</a></b></p>https://letra.studio/2019/04/how-china-turned-a-city-into-a-prison/2019-04-06T15:48:32+01:002019-04-13T00:00:00+01:00Link: How China Turned a City Into a Prison<p>This New York Times report on Kashgar is a good visual companion piece to last year’s excellent <a href="https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/meghara/china-uighur-spies-surveillance">Buzzfeed News report on the subject</a>.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Outside the camps, Uighurs live in a virtual cage. China has built a vast net of controls that shows the Communist Party’s vision of automated authoritarianism. Neighbors become informants. Children are interrogated. Mosques are monitored.</p>
</blockquote>
<p><b>Link: <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/04/04/world/asia/xinjiang-china-surveillance-prison.html">nytimes.com</a></b></p>
<hr>
<p class="post-via"><a rel="via" href="https://twitter.com/paulmozur/status/1113896210446868485"><span class="url">Via @paulmozur</span></a></p>https://letra.studio/2019/04/the-guardians-nifty-old-article-trick-is-a-reminder-of-how-news-organizations-can-use-metadata-to-limit-misinformation/2019-04-05T18:36:59+01:00Link: The Guardian’s nifty old-article trick is a reminder of how news organizations can use metadata to limit misinformation<p>Joshua Benton:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>This is a great idea: In order to reduce the number of its old stories that get recirculated as new, The Guardian is <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/help/insideguardian/2019/apr/02/why-were-making-the-age-of-our-journalism-clearer">making a story’s age more prominent</a>, both to readers and to those who might only see a <a href="https://www.cjr.org/innovations/you-may-hate-metrics-guardian-audience-twitter-images.php">link on social media</a> without clicking through.</p>
</blockquote>
<p><b>Link: <a href="https://www.niemanlab.org/2019/04/the-guardians-nifty-old-article-trick-is-a-reminder-of-how-news-organizations-can-use-metadata-to-limit-misinformation/">niemanlab.org</a></b></p>
<hr>
<p class="post-via"><a rel="via" href="https://twitter.com/css/status/1114208577072369664"><span class="url">Via @css</span></a></p>https://letra.studio/2019/04/game-of-thrones-the-last-show-we-watch-together/2019-04-04T23:04:04+01:00Link: ‘Game of Thrones’: The Last Show We Watch Together?<p><i></i></p>
<p>Matt Zoller Seitz:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>TV doesn’t feel the same when you watch it that way. It’s more of a solitary experience, no matter how many fellow fans discuss it with you on social media. And it necessarily reduces the level of excitement surrounding a season or series finale because the show has been deprived of that measured pace of one episode per week, with six days of contemplation and anticipation in between each chapter, all leading inexorably to that last run of episodes during which the fans, who’ve spent years living and breathing this thing, come to terms with the totality of the accomplishment, and ready themselves for the exquisite and horrible moment when the storytellers swing that sword at our necks and the birds take flight and the credits roll for the last time.</p>
</blockquote>
<p><b>Link: <a href="https://www.vulture.com/2019/04/game-of-thrones-the-last-show-we-watch-together.html">vulture.com</a></b></p>
<hr>
<p class="post-via"><a rel="via" href="https://twitter.com/tvaziri/status/1113909298273247232"><span class="url">Via @tvaziri</span></a></p>https://letra.studio/2019/04/how-animators-created-the-spider-verse/2019-04-03T18:12:12+01:00Link: How Animators Created the Spider-Verse<figure class="post-figure embed">
<a class="embed-placeholder" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l-wUKu_V2Lk" data-embed-id="l-wUKu_V2Lk" data-embed-provider="youtube">
<img src="https://img.youtube.com/vi/l-wUKu_V2Lk/hqdefault.jpg" alt="">
</a>
</figure>
<p><i></i></p>
<blockquote>
<p>Danny Dimian, Visual Effects Supervisor, and Josh Beveridge, Head of Character Animation, for “Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse,” share exclusive breakdowns and talk about their inspiration and the techniques they used to create a new visual language for their Academy Award-winning film.</p>
</blockquote>
<p><b>Link: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l-wUKu_V2Lk">youtube.com</a></b></p>https://letra.studio/2019/04/how-to-design-for-the-modern-web/2019-04-03T17:59:27+01:00Link: How to Design for the Modern Web<p>Casper Beyer:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Research has shown that modals that cannot be closed have the highest conversion rates.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Putting this on Medium: <em>*chef’s kiss*</em></p>
<p><b>Link: <a href="https://medium.com/s/silicon-satire/how-to-design-for-the-modern-web-52eaa926bae2">medium.com</a></b></p>
<hr>
<p class="post-via"><a rel="via" href="https://twitter.com/Freerunnering/status/1113458516931563521"><span class="url">Via @Freerunnering</span></a></p>https://letra.studio/2019/04/yet-another-javascript-framework/2019-04-03T01:53:36+01:00Link: Yet Another JavaScript Framework<p>Great writing on this well-researched story, by Jason Hoffman:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>At first glance, the bug appeared to be fairly routine, most likely a small problem somewhere in the website’s code or a strange coincidence. After just a few hours though, it became clear that the stakes for this one particular bug were far graver than anyone could have anticipated. If Firefox were to release this version of their browser as-is, they risked breaking an unknown, but still predictably rather large number of websites, all at once. Why that is has everything to do with the way MooTools was built, where it drew influence from, and the moment in time it was released. So to really understand the problem, we’ll have to go all the way back to the beginning.</p>
</blockquote>
<p><b>Link: <a href="https://css-tricks.com/yet-another-javascript-framework/">css-tricks.com</a></b></p>https://letra.studio/2019/04/what-the-theranos-documentary-misses/2019-04-03T01:09:13+01:00Link: What the Theranos Documentary Misses<p><i></i></p>
<p>Avi Asher-Schapiro makes some good points about <cite>The Inventor</cite> that I failed to consider:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Missing from the film, however, is any sustained effort to understand how Theranos interacted with the larger economic and social forces that nurtured it. In the hands of Gibney, the rise and fall of Theranos is reduced to a sort of personality puzzle, driven by the banal questions like: What was Elizabeth Holmes thinking? Is she a liar? How could seemingly competent investors be so misled?</p>
<p>That’s a shame, because the story of Theranos is so much more than that. At its root, it’s a parable that cuts to the central dysfunctions in the American economic and political order, one that should dismantle our notions of meritocracy and put a strict limit on our forbearance for elites. It illuminates how the rich and well connected occupy different strata of life, enjoy a completely different set of opportunities from the rest of us, experience a different kind of justice, and are so often immune from consequences. Though the film gives some glimpses of these dynamics, they are always in the background, shadowed by other far less compelling narrative impulses.</p>
</blockquote>
<p><b>Link: <a href="https://newrepublic.com/article/153419/theranos-documentary-misses">newrepublic.com</a></b></p>
<hr>
<p class="post-via"><a rel="via" href="https://twitter.com/zeynep/status/1113103524324392966"><span class="url">Via @zeynep</span></a></p>https://letra.studio/2019/04/dev-perception/2019-04-02T18:58:41+01:00Link: Dev perception<p>Jeremy Keith:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>It’s relatively easy to write and speak about new technologies. You’re excited about them, and there’s probably an eager audience who can learn from what you have to say.</p>
<p>It’s trickier to write something insightful about a tried and trusted (perhaps even boring) technology that’s been around for a while. You could maybe write little tips and tricks, but I bet your inner critic would tell you that nobody’s interested in hearing about that old tech. It’s boring.</p>
<p>The result is that what’s being written about is <strong>not</strong> a reflection of what’s being widely used.</p>
</blockquote>
<p><b>Link: <a href="https://adactio.com/journal/15011">adactio.com</a></b></p>https://letra.studio/2019/03/stuffing-the-front-end/2019-03-26T00:04:21+00:00Link: Stuffing the Front End<p>Bridget Stewart:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>How many features are built-in to a framework or library that your app doesn’t need yet (and may never need)? How much can you hold back from the package you send to the web? How dependent are these modules and bits of code on one another? To me, that sounds like a lot of analysis up front to pick apart a tool before I even write a single line of code to be truly productive. It is also the antithesis of Progressive Enhancement, which strives to start with the bare minimum necessary to make it work and build up from there.</p>
</blockquote>
<p><b>Link: <a href="https://www.bridgestew.com/journal/stuffing-the-front-end/">bridgestew.com</a></b></p>
<hr>
<p class="post-via"><a rel="via" href="https://adactio.com/links/14991"><span class="url">Via adactio.com</span></a></p>https://letra.studio/2019/03/grifters-gone-wild/2019-03-24T20:12:00+00:00Link: Grifters Gone Wild<p>More on scammers, by Maureen Dowd:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>As Maria Konnikova wrote in her book, “The Confidence Game,” “The whirlwind advance of technology heralds a new golden age of the grift. Cons thrive in times of transition and fast change” when we are losing the old ways and open to the unexpected.</p>
<p>We are easy marks for faux Nigerian princes now, when chaos rules, the American identity wobbles, and technology is transforming our lives in awe-inspiring and awful ways.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>See also, on Wired: <a href="https://www.wired.com/story/nigerian-email-scammers-more-effective-than-ever/">Nigerian Email Scammers Are More Effective Than Ever</a>.</p>
<p><b>Link: <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/26/opinion/sunday/grifters-gone-wild.html">nytimes.com</a></b></p>https://letra.studio/2019/03/scammers-theyre-just-like-us/2019-03-24T20:11:26+00:00Link: Scammers: They’re Just Like Us<p>Prompted by the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_college_admissions_bribery_scandal">college admissions bribery scandal in the US</a>, the hosts of Do By Friday had an interesting discussion about grifting on a <a href="http://dobyfriday.com/123">recent episode of the podcast</a>. This article by Tom Gara was <a href="https://overcast.fm/+HfJjpFFI8/18:02">mentioned by Max Temkin</a> and caught my attention:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>We are living in a golden age of grifting. For an ambitious scammer in 2018, this is like being a sculptor in 1500s Florence — every major force at play in our world is like a wind at your back. In politics, a team of all-star grifters now runs the United States, and their fake-it-till-you-make-it ethos bleeds into everything it touches and elevates aspirational young con artists into national figures. Technology now allows you to create and maintain an entirely constructed identity, giving you not just the tools to manipulate your image and massage the truth of your everyday life, but also an audience hungry to consume that image and believe in it.</p>
</blockquote>
<p><b>Link: <a href="https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/tomgara/anna-delvey-scammers-theyre-just-like-us">buzzfeednews.com</a></b></p>
<hr>
<p class="post-via"><a rel="via" href="https://twitter.com/MaxTemkin/status/1109905597422583808"><span class="url">Via @MaxTemkin</span></a></p>https://letra.studio/2019/03/regarding-the-thoughtful-cultivation-of-the-archived-internet/2019-03-11T23:15:41+00:00Link: Regarding the Thoughtful Cultivation of the Archived Internet<p>Prompted by an excellent <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JtUAAXe_0VI">Kurzgesagt video</a> on the subject, Jason Kottke reflects on what to do with old blog posts that don’t quite pass muster anymore:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>But so anyway, I don’t know what to do about those old problematic posts. Tim Berners-Lee’s idea that <a href="https://www.w3.org/Provider/Style/URI">cool URIs don’t change</a> is almost part of my DNA at this point, so deleting them seems wrong. Approximately no one ever reads any post on this site that’s more than a few years old, but is that an argument for or against deleting them? (If a tree falls in the woods, etc…) Should I delete but leave a note they were deleted? Should I leave the original posts but append updates citing my current displeasure? Or like <a href="https://kottke.org/18/06/mister-rogers-fixed-old-shows-if-he-felt-they-were-wrong">Mister Rogers used to do</a>, should I rewrite the posts to bring them more into line with my current thinking? Is the kottke.org archive trapped in amber, a record of what I’ve written when I wrote it, or is it a living, breathing thing that thrives on activity? Is it more like a book or a performance?</p>
</blockquote>
<p>This is an issue I struggle with, too. I no longer agree with some of my older <a href="https://letra.studio/notes/reviews/">film reviews</a>, and some even contain mistakes. Should I delete them? Do I need to rewatch the films and write new reviews?</p>
<p>I might implement something I’ve seen in other blogs: a notice on old posts saying something to the effect of “this post is old, I might not agree with it anymore.”</p>
<p><b>Link: <a href="https://kottke.org/19/03/regarding-the-thoughtful-cultivation-of-the-archived-internet">kottke.org</a></b></p>https://letra.studio/2019/03/homework-i-gave-web-designers/2019-03-09T12:30:56+00:00Link: Homework I Gave Web Designers<p>Tyler Sticka:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>When everyone finished translating articles to semantic, accessible HTML, I let them in on a secret: <strong>This was still design.</strong> While we hadn’t yet incorporated color, typography or composition, we <em>had</em> made decisions about prioritization, hierarchy, information architecture and user experience. And those decisions would be the most resilient… accessible to virtually any visitor, not just those blessed few with perfect vision, hearing and mobility. The web was the only medium that offered designers the chance to craft <em>one</em> work for such a varied landscape with so few gatekeepers.</p>
</blockquote>
<p><b>Link: <a href="https://cloudfour.com/thinks/homework-i-gave-web-designers/">cloudfour.com</a></b></p>https://letra.studio/2019/03/tesla-has-a-self-driving-strategy-other-companies-abandoned-years-ago/2019-03-08T15:18:56+00:00Link: Tesla has a self-driving strategy other companies abandoned years ago<p>Timothy B. Lee:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>In January 2016, <a href="https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/686279251293777920">Musk predicted</a> that Tesla cars would be able to drive autonomously coast to coast “in ~2 years.”</p>
<p>Needless to say, this hasn’t happened.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>More than a critique of Tesla, this article is a good roundup of current thinking around self-driving technology.</p>
<p><b>Link: <a href="https://arstechnica.com/cars/2019/03/teslas-self-driving-strategy-is-outdated-and-possibly-dangerous/">arstechnica.com</a></b></p>
<hr>
<p class="post-via"><a rel="via" href="https://twitter.com/Tweetermeyer/status/1103866529152552961"><span class="url">Via @Tweetermeyer</span></a></p>https://letra.studio/2019/03/i-ruin-developers-lives-with-my-code-reviews-and-im-sorry/2019-03-05T07:00:47+00:00Link: I ruin developers’ lives with my code reviews and I’m sorry<p>Philipp Ranzhin:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I was mad that, while I spent my nights learning F#, my daughter started calling everyone around “fathers”. And this guy, instead of getting better at his job, went home to his children. And I wanted to punish him.</p>
<p>Because I do code review for self-identification. I don’t give a toss about the project or the code. I’m simply a madman who’s allowed to hurt people. I’m a psychopath with a licence to kill. An alpha male with a huge stick.</p>
<p>When I realized that, I felt ashamed of myself.</p>
</blockquote>
<p><b>Link: <a href="https://m.habr.com/en/post/440736/">m.habr.com</a></b></p>
<hr>
<p class="post-via"><a rel="via" href="https://twitter.com/css/status/1102627272941596672"><span class="url">Via @css</span></a></p>https://letra.studio/2019/02/managing-flow-and-rhythm-with-css-custom-properties/2019-02-28T20:33:40+00:00Link: Managing Flow and Rhythm with CSS Custom Properties<p>Andy Bell suggests using CSS Custom Properties together with Heydon Pickering’s <a href="https://alistapart.com/article/axiomatic-css-and-lobotomized-owls">lobotomized owl selector</a> to manage vertical spacing. It’s an elegant solution that works well with the cascade:</p>
<div class="language-css highlighter-rouge"><div class="highlight"><pre class="highlight"><code><span class="nc">.flow</span> <span class="p">{</span>
<span class="py">--flow-space</span><span class="p">:</span> <span class="m">1em</span><span class="p">;</span>
<span class="p">}</span>
<span class="nc">.flow</span> <span class="o">></span> <span class="o">*</span> <span class="o">+</span> <span class="o">*</span> <span class="p">{</span>
<span class="nl">margin-top</span><span class="p">:</span> <span class="n">var</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">--flow-space</span><span class="p">);</span>
<span class="p">}</span>
</code></pre></div></div>
<p>I’ve been experimenting with old-school margin collapsing for vertical rhythm this past year, in <a href="https://github.com/letrastudio/cobalt">Cobalt</a>. I’m a proponent of spacing being an inherent property that exists by default instead of something that has to be explicitly added. But margin collapsing doesn’t really play well with Grid layout (until we get something like <a href="https://drafts.csswg.org/css-box-3/#margin-trim"><code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">margin-trim</code></a>), so I might give this method a try.</p>
<p><b>Link: <a href="https://24ways.org/2018/managing-flow-and-rhythm-with-css-custom-properties/">24ways.org</a></b></p>
<hr>
<p class="post-via"><a rel="via" href="https://twitter.com/websmyth/status/1100688776307736576"><span class="url">Via @websmyth</span></a></p>https://letra.studio/2019/02/astronauts-arriving-on-mars-wont-be-able-to-walk-vr-may-save-them/2019-02-26T12:29:28+00:00Link: Astronauts arriving on Mars won’t be able to walk. VR may save them<p>Katia Moskvitch:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Astronauts returning to Earth after a long stint in space are so badly disorientated that they usually can’t walk properly for 24 hours or longer. Turns out human brains function differently in space and when an astronaut gets back, it takes his or her brain some time to re-train itself. Now Marissa Rosenberg, a neuroscientist at Nasa, plans to use virtual reality headsets as a tool to short-cut the training.</p>
</blockquote>
<p><b>Link: <a href="https://www.wired.co.uk/article/nasa-virtual-reality-training-for-astronauts-mars-missions">wired.co.uk</a></b></p>
<hr>
<p class="post-via"><a rel="via" href="https://twitter.com/heydonworks/status/1100348487726780416"><span class="url">Via @heydonworks</span></a></p>https://letra.studio/2019/02/oscars-2019-burning-would-have-won/2019-02-22T23:31:18+00:00Link: Oscars 2019: ‘Burning’ Would Have Won<p><i></i></p>
<p>Kristen Yoonsoo Kim investigates why Korean films keep getting snubbed at the Oscars:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>At the time, the submission of <em>Age of Shadows</em> made no sense to me. But in early 2017, a <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/12/world/asia/south-korea-president-park-blacklist-artists.html?module=inline">government blacklist</a> created by Korea’s former, impeached president Park Geun-hye was uncovered. Thousands of Korean artists and cultural figures were banned from receiving government support, and one of the most prominent figures on that blacklist was <em>The Handmaiden</em> director Park Chan-wook, thought to be too leftist and thus a threat to the government’s agenda.</p>
</blockquote>
<p><cite>The Handmaiden</cite>, <cite>Okja</cite>, and <cite>Burning</cite> are among my favorite films of the last few years. It’s a shame they’re not getting wider recognition.</p>
<p><b>Link: <a href="https://www.gq.com/story/burning-oscar-snub?verso=true">gq.com</a></b></p>
<hr>
<p class="post-via"><a rel="via" href="https://twitter.com/xoxogossipgita/status/1098971663222403072"><span class="url">Via @xoxogossipgita</span></a></p>https://letra.studio/2019/02/once-hailed-as-unhackable-blockchains-are-now-getting-hacked/2019-02-20T05:37:57+00:00Link: Once hailed as unhackable, blockchains are now getting hacked<p>Mike Orcutt:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>A miner who somehow gains control of a majority of the network’s mining power can defraud other users by sending them payments and then creating an alternative version of the blockchain in which the payments never happened. This new version is called a <strong>fork</strong>. The attacker, who controls most of the mining power, can make the fork the authoritative version of the chain and proceed to spend the same cryptocurrency again.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>This sounds less like a hack and more like a consequence of “it’ll never happen” dismissal of possible abuses of the system as it’s designed.</p>
<p><b>Link: <a href="https://www.technologyreview.com/s/612974/once-hailed-as-unhackable-blockchains-are-now-getting-hacked/">technologyreview.com</a></b></p>
<hr>
<p class="post-via"><a rel="via" href="https://twitter.com/heydonworks/status/1097954268085141504"><span class="url">Via @heydonworks</span></a></p>https://letra.studio/2019/02/foreveryone/2019-02-16T19:27:14+00:00Link: FOREVERYONE.NET<figure class="post-figure embed">
<a class="embed-placeholder" href="http://www.foreveryone.net/" data-embed-id="cCE2EyV_IiY" data-embed-provider="youtube">
<img src="https://img.youtube.com/vi/cCE2EyV_IiY/hqdefault.jpg" alt="">
</a>
</figure>
<p><i></i></p>
<p>A great little documentary about the birth of the web, featuring Tim Berners-Lee front and center.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>FOREVERYONE.NET connects the future of the web with the little-known story of its birth. In 1989, Tim Berners-Lee implemented the first successful communication between a Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) client and server via the Internet creating the world wide web.</p>
</blockquote>
<p><b>Link: <a href="http://www.foreveryone.net/">foreveryone.net</a></b></p>
<hr>
<p class="post-via"><a rel="via" href="https://adactio.com/links/14824"><span class="url">Via adactio.com</span></a></p>https://letra.studio/2019/02/worldwideweb/2019-02-16T18:30:06+00:00Link: CERN 2019 WorldWideWeb Rebuild<p>Digital archeology — a working simulation of the first ever web browser:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>In December 1990, an application called WorldWideWeb was developed on a NeXT machine at The European Organization for Nuclear Research (known as CERN) just outside of Geneva. This program – WorldWideWeb — is the antecedent of most of what we consider or know of as “the web” today.</p>
<p>In February 2019, in celebration of the thirtieth anniversary of the development of WorldWideWeb, a group of developers and designers convened at CERN to rebuild the original browser within a contemporary browser, allowing users around the world to experience the origins of this transformative technology.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>It’s amazing just how resilient and backwards-compatible HTML is. My site is already quite usable in WorldWideWeb, but now I’ll have to resist the urge to add some optimizations for 1990 web users.</p>
<p><b>Link: <a href="https://worldwideweb.cern.ch">worldwideweb.cern.ch</a></b></p>
<hr>
<p class="post-via"><a rel="via" href="https://adactio.com/journal/14821"><span class="url">Via adactio.com</span></a></p>https://letra.studio/2019/02/oh-god-its-raining-newsletters/2019-02-11T11:46:42+00:00Link: Oh God, It’s Raining Newsletters<p>I don’t quite share Craig Mod’s love of email newsletters, but I do strongly agree on this point:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I try to be deliberate, and social networks seem more and more to say: You don’t know what you want, but we do. Which, to someone who, you know, <a href="https://craigmod.com/essays/lets_talk_about_margins/">gives a shit</a>, is pretty dang insulting.</p>
</blockquote>
<p><b>Link: <a href="https://craigmod.com/essays/newsletters/">craigmod.com</a></b></p>https://letra.studio/2019/02/apollo-11-review-astonishing-nasa-documentary-is-one-giant-leap-for-film-restoration/2019-02-07T22:29:46+00:00Link: ‘Apollo 11’ Review: Astonishing NASA Documentary Is One Giant Leap for Film Restoration<figure class="post-figure embed">
<a class="embed-placeholder" href="https://www.indiewire.com/2019/01/apollo-11-review-sundance-1202037713/" data-embed-id="3Co8Z8BQgWc" data-embed-provider="youtube">
<img src="https://img.youtube.com/vi/3Co8Z8BQgWc/hqdefault.jpg" alt="">
</a>
</figure>
<p><i></i></p>
<p>David Ehrlich writes about the upcoming <cite>Apollo 11</cite> documentary, made using recently discovered 65mm footage:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>It’s rare that picture quality can inspire a physical reaction, but the opening moments of “Apollo 11,” in which a NASA camera crew roams around the base of the rocket and spies on some of the people who’ve come to gawk at it from a beach across the water, are vivid enough to melt away the screen that stands between them. The clarity takes your breath away, and it does so in the blink of an eye; your body will react to it before your brain has time to process why, after a lifetime of casual interest, you’re suddenly overcome by the sheer enormity of what it meant to leave the Earth and land somewhere else.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>This looks absolutely incredible.</p>
<p><b>Link: <a href="https://www.indiewire.com/2019/01/apollo-11-review-sundance-1202037713/">indiewire.com</a></b></p>
<hr>
<p class="post-via"><a rel="via" href="https://kottke.org/19/01/trailer-for-apollo-11-a-documentary-based-on-pristine-65mm-footage-of-the-mission"><span class="url">Via kottke.org</span></a></p>https://letra.studio/2019/02/becoming-from-zygote-to-tadpole-in-six-stunning-minutes/2019-02-07T16:46:06+00:00Link: Becoming: From zygote to tadpole, in six stunning minutes<figure class="post-figure embed">
<a class="embed-placeholder" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Q9VyHJ1l2Q" data-embed-id="7Q9VyHJ1l2Q" data-embed-provider="youtube">
<img src="https://img.youtube.com/vi/7Q9VyHJ1l2Q/hqdefault.jpg" alt="">
</a>
</figure>
<p>A remarkable visualization of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergence">emergence</a> at work. The close-up shots of the circulatory system look straight out of a trippy sci-fi horror film.</p>
<p><b>Link: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Q9VyHJ1l2Q">youtube.com</a></b></p>
<hr>
<p class="post-via"><a rel="via" href="https://kottke.org/19/02/watch-a-single-cell-become-a-complex-organism-in-just-six-minutes"><span class="url">Via kottke.org</span></a></p>https://letra.studio/2019/02/forget-privacy-youre-terrible-at-targeting-anyway/2019-02-03T18:53:56+00:00Link: Forget privacy: you’re terrible at targeting anyway<p>apenwarr:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The state of personalized recommendations is surprisingly terrible. At this point, the top recommendation is always a clickbait rage-creating article about movie stars or whatever Trump did or didn’t do in the last 6 hours.</p>
</blockquote>
<p><b>Link: <a href="https://apenwarr.ca/log/20190201">apenwarr.ca</a></b></p>
<hr>
<p class="post-via"><a rel="via" href="https://adactio.com/links/14761"><span class="url">Via adactio.com</span></a></p>https://letra.studio/2019/02/how-do-you-figure/2019-02-02T23:38:39+00:00Link: How do you figure?<p>A deep dive into <code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">figure</code> accessibility from Scott O’Hara:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>A <code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">figcaption</code> is meant to provide a caption or summary to a figure, relating it back to the document the figure is contained within, or conveying additional information that may not be directly apparent from reviewing the figure itself.</p>
<p>If an image is given an empty <code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">alt</code>, then the <code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">figcaption</code> is in effect describing nothing. And that doesn’t make much sense, does it?</p>
</blockquote>
<p><b>Link: <a href="https://www.scottohara.me/blog/2019/01/21/how-do-you-figure.html">scottohara.me</a></b></p>
<hr>
<p class="post-via"><a rel="via" href="https://css-tricks.com/how-do-you-figure/"><span class="url">Via css-tricks.com</span></a></p>https://letra.studio/2019/02/how-much-of-the-internet-is-fake/2019-02-02T15:45:14+00:00Link: How Much of the Internet Is Fake?<p>Max Read:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Studies generally suggest that, year after year, less than 60 percent of web traffic is human; some years, according to some researchers, a healthy majority of it is bot. For a period of time in 2013, the <em>Times</em> <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/01/27/technology/social-media-bots.html">reported</a> this year, a full half of YouTube traffic was “bots masquerading as people,” a portion so high that employees feared an inflection point after which YouTube’s systems for detecting fraudulent traffic would begin to regard bot traffic as real and human traffic as fake. They called this hypothetical event “the Inversion.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p><b>Link: <a href="http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2018/12/how-much-of-the-internet-is-fake.html">nymag.com</a></b></p>https://letra.studio/2019/02/deep-dive-css-font-metrics-line-height-and-vertical-align/2019-02-01T16:57:55+00:00Link: Deep dive CSS: font metrics, line-height and vertical-align<p>Vincent De Oliveira:</p>
<blockquote>
<p><code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">Line-height</code> and <code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">vertical-align</code> are simple CSS properties. So simple that most of us are convinced to fully understand how they work and how to use them. But it’s not. They really are complex, maybe the hardest ones, as <em>they have a major role in the creation of one of the less-known feature of CSS: inline formatting context</em>.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>No kidding, this stuff is complex.</p>
<p><b>Link: <a href="https://iamvdo.me/en/blog/css-font-metrics-line-height-and-vertical-align">iamvdo.me</a></b></p>
<hr>
<p class="post-via"><a rel="via" href="https://twitter.com/SelenIT2/status/1091367130799489025"><span class="url">Via @SelenIT2</span></a></p>https://letra.studio/2019/02/openness-and-longevity/2019-02-01T03:25:19+00:00Link: Openness and Longevity<p>Garrett Dimon:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>If you’ve spent any significant time on the web, you can likely feel how a website is built from the moment you open a page. Does it load quickly? Is anything broken? Does it work well with your password manager? Is it readable? You likely make a dozen judgments in a split second.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>On the other hand, you know the moment you open a site that was built well. Everything just works. The people who built it took care with their markup and CSS to take full advantage of the power and built-in features of those languages.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>These differences aren’t arbitrary. They’re the difference between a team that embraces and understands the web with all of its quirks and a team that scoffs at it and its constraints. But when constraints disappear, so does consideration. Forward progress is important, but we should take more time to consider the digital detritus that’s left behind. Bloated web pages. Sites that barely load.</p>
</blockquote>
<p><b>Link: <a href="https://garrettdimon.com/2019/openness-and-longevity/">garrettdimon.com</a></b></p>
<hr>
<p class="post-via"><a rel="via" href="https://adactio.com/links/14745"><span class="url">Via adactio.com</span></a></p>https://letra.studio/2019/01/html-css-and-our-vanishing-industry-entry-points/2019-01-31T04:43:27+00:00Link: HTML, CSS and our vanishing industry entry points<p>Fighting words from Rachel Andrew, defending the ease of learning HTML and CSS from scratch:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Whether front or backend, many of us without a computer science background are here because of the ease of starting to write HTML and CSS. The magic of seeing our code do stuff on a real live webpage!</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Yes! The instantaneous feedback when editing HTML or CSS on a live webpage is, to me, one of the most important characteristics of the web as a medium. Having no layers of abstraction between creative input and final output is one of the web’s miracles.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I might be the “old guard” but if you think I’m incapable of learning React, or another framework, and am defending <em>my way</em> of working because of this, please get over yourself. However, 22 year old me would have looked at those things and run away. If we make it so that you have to understand programming to even start, then we take something open and enabling, and place it back in the hands of those who are already privileged. I have plenty of fight left in me to stand up against that.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>I couldn’t agree more. It really was the ease of getting started that got me into web development, and kept me away from native app development. <em>Easy to learn, hard to master</em> is a wonderful trait that the web should fight to keep.</p>
<p><b>Link: <a href="https://rachelandrew.co.uk/archives/2019/01/30/html-css-and-our-vanishing-industry-entry-points/">rachelandrew.co.uk</a></b></p>https://letra.studio/2019/01/the-500-year-long-science-experiment/2019-01-29T10:19:23+00:00Link: The 500-Year-Long Science Experiment<p>The human factor of keeping a science project going for 500 years seems a lot more complicated than the actual science:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Opening vials, adding water, and counting colonies that grow from rehydrated bacteria is easy. The hard part is ensuring someone will continue doing this on schedule well into the future. The team left a USB stick with instructions, which Möller realizes is far from adequate, given how quickly digital technology becomes obsolete. They also left a hard copy, on paper. “But think about 500-year-old paper,” he says, how it would yellow and crumble. “Should we carve it in stone? Do we have to carve it in a metal plate?” But what if someone who cannot read the writing comes along and decides to take the metal plate as a cool, shiny relic, as tomb raiders once did when looting ancient tombs?</p>
</blockquote>
<p><b>Link: <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2019/01/500-year-long-science-experiment/581155/">theatlantic.com</a></b></p>
<hr>
<p class="post-via"><a rel="via" href="https://adactio.com/links/14731"><span class="url">Via adactio.com</span></a></p>https://letra.studio/2019/01/designing-for-the-web-ought-to-mean-making-html-and-css/2019-01-27T21:25:48+00:00Link: Designing for the web ought to mean making HTML and CSS<p>David Heinemeier Hansson thinks that web design quality is at risk of regressing now that it’s increasingly difficult for designers to work directly with code:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The towering demands inherent in certain ways of working with JavaScript are rightfully scaring some designers off from implementing their ideas at all. That’s a travesty.</p>
</blockquote>
<p><b>Link: <a href="https://m.signalvnoise.com/designing-for-the-web-ought-to-mean-making-html-and-css/">m.signalvnoise.com</a></b></p>https://letra.studio/2019/01/i-tried-to-block-amazon-from-my-life-it-was-impossible/2019-01-26T22:28:38+00:00Link: I Tried to Block Amazon From My Life. It Was Impossible.<p>Kashmir Hill:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Amazon has embedded itself so thoroughly into the infrastructure of modern life, and into the business models of so many companies, including its competitors, that it’s nearly impossible to avoid it.</p>
</blockquote>
<p><b>Link: <a href="https://gizmodo.com/i-tried-to-block-amazon-from-my-life-it-was-impossible-1830565336">gizmodo.com</a></b></p>
<hr>
<p class="post-via"><a rel="via" href="https://twitter.com/robweychert/status/1089155709231681538"><span class="url">Via @robweychert</span></a></p>https://letra.studio/2019/01/im-a-web-designer/2019-01-24T20:57:50+00:00Link: I’m a Web Designer<p>Still on the topic of web development job titles, Andy Bell hits the nail on the head. This paragraph describes my exact problem assigning a title to myself:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I struggled with how to place myself when I went back to freelancing last year because I’m both a designer and a developer. I toyed with “Independent Designer & Developer” which worked out alright but did make me sound like a bit of a “Jack of all trades”. I’m also technically “Full Stack”, but I won’t use that as a title because in my head, a Full Stack Developer is a back-end developer who knows a bit of client-side JavaScript and CSS.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>I tried to avoid the issue altogether and go with a short description instead of a title — “design and code for the web” is what I ended up with. But when pressed for a title, I do fall back to “front-end web developer,” which feels lamer every time I say it.</p>
<p>Andy suggests “web designer.” Despite the baggage, it does seem to fit the bill. I like it. I promptly added myself to Andy’s <a href="https://personalsit.es">personalsit.es directory</a> with that as my top tag.</p>
<p><b>Link: <a href="https://andy-bell.design/wrote/im-a-web-designer/">andy-bell.design</a></b></p>
<hr>
<p class="post-via"><a rel="via" href="https://adactio.com/links/14712"><span class="url">Via adactio.com</span></a></p>https://letra.studio/2019/01/getting-started/2019-01-22T13:12:05+00:00Getting Started<p>It’s 2019, and I have a blog now. This party is just getting started, right?</p>
<p>I managed to cheat the system and avoid kicking things off with an empty slate; I began collecting <a href="/links/">links</a> about a year ago, and my <a href="/notes/">notes</a> go even further back. Looking at the whole <a href="/feed/">feed</a>, it’s beginning to look like something.</p>
<p>I expect to continue posting small updates frequently, but I want to turn that momentum into more substantial writing. That’s the exciting (and scary) part of this endeavor — the part I’ve always put off, with the lame excuse of not having some place on the web I could call my own.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7s664NsLeFM"><em>If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe</em></a>. It took me over a year of overcomplicating it, but I now have a universe. Apple pie forthcoming.</p>https://letra.studio/2019/01/the-great-divide/2019-01-22T03:20:50+00:00Link: The Great Divide<p>Chris Coyier tries to make sense of what “front-end web developer” means now, and gets to the core of why I avoid calling myself one:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>When companies post job openings for “Front-End Developer,” what are they really asking for? Assuming they actually know (lolz), the title front-end developer alone isn’t doing enough. It’s likely more helpful to know which side of the divide they need the most.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>Two “front-end web developers” can be standing right next to each other and have little, if any, skill sets in common. That’s downright bizarre to me for a job title so specific and ubiquitous. I’m sure that’s already the case with a job title like <em>designer</em>, but <em>front-end web developer</em> is a niche within a niche already.</p>
</blockquote>
<p><b>Link: <a href="https://css-tricks.com/the-great-divide/">css-tricks.com</a></b></p>https://letra.studio/2019/01/how-to-fix-social-media-by-injecting-a-chunk-of-the-blogosphere/2019-01-20T14:50:12+00:00Link: How to Fix Social Media by Injecting A Chunk of the Blogosphere<p>Tim Carmody:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Most of the proper publications I’ve written for, even the net-native ones, have been dense enough to hold an atmosphere.</p>
<p>And guess what? So have Twitter and Facebook. Just by enduring, those places have become places for lasting connections and friendships and career opportunities, in a way the blogosphere never was, at least for me. (Maybe this is partly a function of timing, but look: I was there.) And this means that, despite their toxicity, despite their shortcomings, despite all the promises that have gone unfulfilled, Twitter and Facebook have continued to matter in a way that blogs don’t.</p>
</blockquote>
<p><b>Link: <a href="https://kottke.org/19/01/how-to-fix-social-media-by-injecting-a-chunk-of-the-blogosphere">kottke.org</a></b></p>https://letra.studio/2019/01/research-questions-are-not-interview-questions/2019-01-17T00:28:18+00:00Link: Research Questions Are Not Interview Questions<p>Erika Hall:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>(You can’t just ask people what you want to know. Sorry.)</p>
<p>The most significant source of confusion in design research is the difference between <em>research questions</em> and <em>interview questions</em>. This confusion costs time and money and leads to a lot of managers saying that they tried doing research that one time and nothing useful emerged.</p>
</blockquote>
<p><b>Link: <a href="https://medium.com/mule-design/research-questions-are-not-interview-questions-7f90602eb533">medium.com</a></b></p>https://letra.studio/2019/01/every-little-bit-helps/2019-01-16T10:05:12+00:00Link: Every little bit helps<p>David Heinemeier Hansson:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>We don’t all need to quit Facebook outright, foreswear Uber entirely, and never shop at Amazon again to have an impact. All of these companies are already walking a precarious tightrope of towering expectations. They don’t need to miss a quarter by more than a few percent before it’s a calamity that’ll get everyone’s attention.</p>
<p>So here’s what you can do: A little bit. It helps. Really.</p>
</blockquote>
<p><b>Link: <a href="https://m.signalvnoise.com/every-little-bit-helps/">m.signalvnoise.com</a></b></p>https://letra.studio/2019/01/signal-v-noise-exits-medium/2019-01-16T09:56:38+00:00Link: Signal v Noise exits Medium<p>David Heinemeier Hansson:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Traditional blogs might have swung out of favor, as we all discovered the benefits of social media and aggregating platforms, but we think they’re about to swing back in style, as we all discover the real costs and problems brought by such centralization.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Dave Rupert comments:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Blogging is back, baby! Awooo!</p>
</blockquote>
<p>I’m definitely feeling the momentum. I’ve been acutely aware of it as I’ve worked on getting this blog up and running over the past year, and it’s only getting stronger.</p>
<p><b>Link: <a href="https://m.signalvnoise.com/signal-v-noise-exits-medium/">m.signalvnoise.com</a></b></p>
<hr>
<p class="post-via"><a rel="via" href="https://twitter.com/davatron5000/status/1085287350056431616"><span class="url">Via @davatron5000</span></a></p>https://letra.studio/2019/01/line-breaking-florian-rivoal-at-dotcss-2018/2019-01-15T09:59:50+00:00Link: Line breaking - Florian Rivoal at dotCSS 2018<blockquote>
<p>Florian goes over a set of confusingly named properties and values from the <a href="https://drafts.csswg.org/css-text-3/">css-text-3 specification</a> that control what happens to white spaces when laying out text, and how line breaking works. He explains the logic of the system, different ways the properties can be used to achieve various results, and looks into some of the complication caused by incomplete implementations.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>I care about this topic a lot, but it really tests my patience. If only browser support for these properties were consistent, I could <em>start</em> to build a mental model that takes them all into consideration. As it stands, it’s such a mess that I routinely have to spend time reading about it, and still not be super confident with the results.</p>
<p><b>Link: <a href="https://www.dotconferences.com/2018/11/florian-rivoal-line-breaking">dotconferences.com</a></b></p>
<hr>
<p class="post-via"><a rel="via" href="https://twitter.com/fantasai/status/1084979254738051074"><span class="url">Via @fantasai</span></a></p>https://letra.studio/2019/01/blank-vhs-covers-were-kinda-beautiful/2019-01-15T02:27:31+00:00Link: 4096: blank vhs covers were kinda beautiful<figure class="post-figure embed">
<a class="embed-placeholder" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e9DfSCk-6Ko" data-embed-id="e9DfSCk-6Ko" data-embed-provider="youtube">
<img src="https://img.youtube.com/vi/e9DfSCk-6Ko/hqdefault.jpg" alt="">
</a>
</figure>
<p>Lovely.</p>
<p><b>Link: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e9DfSCk-6Ko">youtube.com</a></b></p>
<hr>
<p class="post-via"><a rel="via" href="https://kottke.org/19/01/the-colorful-80s-vibe-of-blank-vhs-tape-cases"><span class="url">Via kottke.org</span></a></p>https://letra.studio/2019/01/the-flexbox-holy-albatross/2019-01-14T10:04:17+00:00Link: The Flexbox Holy Albatross<p>A really clever (if somewhat opaque) use of flexbox to achieve some semblance of container-based layout breakpoints. Intrinsic Web Design for the win!</p>
<p><a href="https://snook.ca/archives/html_and_css/understanding-the-flexbox-albatross">Jonathan Snook tried to make it more understandable</a>, and Heydon published a <a href="http://www.heydonworks.com/article/the-flexbox-holy-albatross-reincarnated">follow-up post with some optimizations</a>.</p>
<p><b>Link: <a href="http://www.heydonworks.com/article/the-flexbox-holy-albatross">heydonworks.com</a></b></p>https://letra.studio/2019/01/the-ethics-of-performance/2019-01-09T23:09:25+00:00Link: The Ethics of Performance<p>Tim Kadlec:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>When you stop to consider all the implications of poor performance, it’s hard <em>not</em> to come to the conclusion that poor performance is an ethical issue.</p>
</blockquote>
<p><b>Link: <a href="https://timkadlec.com/remembers/2019-01-09-the-ethics-of-performance/">timkadlec.com</a></b></p>https://letra.studio/2019/01/css-doesnt-suck/2019-01-09T23:04:04+00:00Link: CSS doesn’t suck<p>Andy Bell:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>It’s getting exhausting spending so much of my time defending one of the three pillars of the web: CSS. It should sit <em>equal</em> with HTML and JavaScript to produce accessible, progressively enhanced websites and web apps that help <em>everyone</em> achieve what they need to achieve.</p>
</blockquote>
<p><b>Link: <a href="https://andy-bell.design/wrote/css-doesnt-suck/">andy-bell.design</a></b></p>
<hr>
<p class="post-via"><a rel="via" href="https://adactio.com/links/14681"><span class="url">Via adactio.com</span></a></p>https://letra.studio/2019/01/why-have-humans-never-found-aliens/2019-01-09T22:58:40+00:00Link: Why have humans never found aliens?<p>The Economist reports on a recently published astronomy paper:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Dr Tarter reckoned that decades of searching had amounted to the equivalent of dipping a drinking glass into Earth’s oceans at random to see if it contained a fish.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>Once the numbers had been crunched, the researchers reckoned humanity has done slightly better than Dr Tarter suggested. Rather than dipping a drinking glass into the ocean, they say, astronomers have dunked a bathtub.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Huh. I wonder if that really is an apt comparison.</p>
<p><b>Link: <a href="https://www.economist.com/science-and-technology/2018/10/11/why-have-humans-never-found-aliens">economist.com</a></b></p>
<hr>
<p class="post-via"><a rel="via" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2019/01/09/fermis-paradox-bathtub-in-ocean"><span class="url">Via daringfireball.net</span></a></p>https://letra.studio/2019/01/carriers-are-selling-customers-real-time-location-data/2019-01-09T22:55:45+00:002019-10-22T16:23:00+01:00Link: T-Mobile, Sprint, and AT&T Are Selling Customers’ Real-Time Location Data, And It’s Falling Into the Wrong Hands<p>Joseph Cox, for Motherboard:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>In the case of the phone we tracked, six different entities had potential access to the phone’s data. T-Mobile shares location data with an aggregator called Zumigo, which shares information with Microbilt. Microbilt shared that data with a customer using its mobile phone tracking product. The bounty hunter then shared this information with a bail industry source, who shared it with Motherboard.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>This is crazy. Zeynep Tufekci said it best: <a href="https://www.ted.com/talks/zeynep_tufekci_we_re_building_a_dystopia_just_to_make_people_click_on_ads">we are building a dystopia just to make people click on ads</a>.</p>
<p><em>Follow-up: <a href="https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/43z3dn/hundreds-bounty-hunters-att-tmobile-sprint-customer-location-data-years">Hundreds of Bounty Hunters Had Access to AT&T, T-Mobile, and Sprint Customer Location Data for Years</a></em></p>
<p><b>Link: <a href="https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/nepxbz/i-gave-a-bounty-hunter-300-dollars-located-phone-microbilt-zumigo-tmobile">motherboard.vice.com</a></b></p>https://letra.studio/2019/01/title-texts-suck/2019-01-09T21:31:47+00:00Link: Title Texts Suck<blockquote>
<p>Many people I meet think title texts, also known as tooltips, improve both the accessibility and usability of their sites. They don’t. In fact, they can even cause problems.</p>
</blockquote>
<p><b>Link: <a href="https://axesslab.com/title-texts-suck/">axesslab.com</a></b></p>
<hr>
<p class="post-via"><a rel="via" href="https://twitter.com/brucel/status/1082980916383895552"><span class="url">Via @brucel</span></a></p>https://letra.studio/2019/01/automated-front-end-development-a-critique/2019-01-08T18:31:12+00:00Link: Automated Front-end Development: A Critique<p>Painful. But at least human-readable?</p>
<p><b>Link: <a href="https://paulrobertlloyd.com/2019/01/automated_critique">paulrobertlloyd.com</a></b></p>https://letra.studio/2019/01/letterboxd-2018-year-in-review/2019-01-08T16:40:37+00:00Link: Letterboxd 2018 Year in Review<p>These are always great and make me want to watch everything.</p>
<p><b>Link: <a href="https://letterboxd.com/2018/">letterboxd.com</a></b></p>https://letra.studio/2019/01/angular-autoprefixer-ie11-and-css-grid-walk-into-a-bar/2019-01-08T02:04:17+00:00Link: Angular, Autoprefixer, IE11, and CSS Grid Walk into a Bar…<p>Dave Rupert:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>As toolchains grow and become more complex, unless you are expertly familiar with them, it’s very unclear what transformations are happening in our code.</p>
</blockquote>
<p><b>Link: <a href="https://daverupert.com/2019/01/angular-autoprefixer-ie11-and-css-grid-walk-into-a-bar/">daverupert.com</a></b></p>https://letra.studio/2019/01/remain-seated-please/2019-01-08T00:00:00+00:00Link: Matthew Serrano: Remain Seated Please — Sneaking into a Forgotten Disney World Ride<figure class="post-figure embed">
<a class="embed-placeholder" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rfh7A0lH1ac" data-embed-id="Rfh7A0lH1ac" data-embed-provider="youtube">
<img src="https://img.youtube.com/vi/Rfh7A0lH1ac/hqdefault.jpg" alt="">
</a>
</figure>
<p>This is one hell of a tiny homemade documentary.</p>
<p><b>Link: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rfh7A0lH1ac">youtube.com</a></b></p>
<hr>
<p class="post-via"><a rel="via" href="https://twitter.com/hotdogsladies/status/1082511690342625280"><span class="url">Via @hotdogsladies</span></a></p>https://letra.studio/2019/01/front-end-performance-checklist-2019/2019-01-07T13:25:54+00:00Link: Front-End Performance Checklist 2019<p>Will these lists ever get shorter?</p>
<p><b>Link: <a href="https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2019/01/front-end-performance-checklist-2019-pdf-pages/">smashingmagazine.com</a></b></p>https://letra.studio/2019/01/evaluating-technology/2019-01-06T16:57:18+00:00Link: Evaluating Technology<p>Jeremy Keith:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Now when we look at new things added to HMTL, new features, new browser APIs, what we tend to ask, of course, is: how well does it work?</p>
<p>How well does this thing do what it claims it’s going to do? That’s an excellent question to ask whenever you’re evaluating a new technology or tool. But I don’t think it’s the most important question. I think it’s just as important to ask: how well does it fail?</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Nothing like a full hour of Jeremy Keith to get the year’s work started.</p>
<p><b>Link: <a href="https://aneventapart.com/news/post/evaluating-technology-by-jeremy-keith-aea-video">aneventapart.com</a></b></p>https://letra.studio/2019/01/how-millennials-became-the-burnout-generation/2019-01-06T01:05:09+00:00Link: How Millennials Became The Burnout Generation<p>Anne Helen Petersen:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>For the past two years, I’ve refused cautions — from editors, from family, from peers — that I might be edging into burnout. To my mind, burnout was something aid workers, or high-powered lawyers, or investigative journalists dealt with. It was something that could be treated with a week on the beach. I was still working, still getting <em>other</em> stuff done — of course I wasn’t burned out.</p>
<p>But the more I tried to figure out my errand paralysis, the more the actual parameters of burnout began to reveal themselves. Burnout and the behaviors and weight that accompany it aren’t, in fact, something we can cure by going on vacation. It’s not limited to workers in acutely high-stress environments. And it’s not a temporary affliction: It’s the millennial condition. It’s our base temperature. It’s our background music. It’s the way things are. It’s our lives.</p>
<p>That realization recast my recent struggles: Why can’t I get this mundane stuff done? Because I’m burned out. Why am I burned out? Because I’ve internalized the idea that I should be working all the time. Why have I internalized that idea? Because everything and everyone in my life has reinforced it — explicitly and implicitly — since I was young.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>This hit home. My millennial brain kept trying to dismiss the whole article as millennial whining, but it won me over in the end.</p>
<p><b>Link: <a href="https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/annehelenpetersen/millennials-burnout-generation-debt-work">buzzfeednews.com</a></b></p>
<hr>
<p class="post-via"><a rel="via" href="https://twitter.com/RebeccaSlatkin/status/1081645043188928512"><span class="url">Via @RebeccaSlatkin</span></a></p>https://letra.studio/2019/01/this-clever-ai-hid-data-from-its-creators-to-cheat-at-its-appointed-task/2019-01-04T10:47:02+00:00Link: This clever AI hid data from its creators to cheat at its appointed task<p>Devin Coldewey:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>A machine learning agent intended to transform aerial images into street maps and back was found to be cheating by hiding information it would need later in “a nearly imperceptible, high-frequency signal.” Clever girl!</p>
<p>But in fact this occurrence, far from illustrating some kind of malign intelligence inherent to AI, simply reveals a problem with computers that has existed since they were invented: they do exactly what you tell them to do.</p>
</blockquote>
<p><b>Link: <a href="https://techcrunch.com/2018/12/31/this-clever-ai-hid-data-from-its-creators-to-cheat-at-its-appointed-task/">techcrunch.com</a></b></p>https://letra.studio/2019/01/leave-the-phone-at-home-and-put-news-on-your-wrist/2019-01-03T13:00:38+00:00Link: Leave the phone at home and put news on your wrist<p>Frank Chimero:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>If the watch can become people’s primary device, it may provide the opportunity to switch the media paradigm from an endless stream to a concentrated dispatch.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>I was reminded of <a href="https://www.hodinkee.com/articles/apple-watch-series-3-edition-review">Hodinkee’s Apple Watch Series 3 review</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>This image above is what I’ve carried with me the last three days. Not only is there no phone – which, let me tell you, is incredibly liberating – but also I’m now only carrying one AirPod with me at a time. I can make calls, listen to music, and use Siri all from just the single unit, which I throw into my pants pocket when I’m not using it.</p>
</blockquote>
<p><b>Link: <a href="http://www.niemanlab.org/2019/01/leave-the-phone-at-home-and-put-news-on-your-wrist/">niemanlab.org</a></b></p>
<hr>
<p class="post-via"><a rel="via" href="https://twitter.com/frank_chimero/status/1080554943914885121"><span class="url">Via @frank_chimero</span></a></p>https://letra.studio/2018/12/the-future-book-is-here-but-its-not-what-we-expected/2018-12-23T12:33:45+00:00Link: The ‘Future Book’ Is Here, but It’s Not What We Expected<p>Craig Mod always reminds me that words are magic:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Hiking with a Kindle definitely feels futuristic—an entire library in a device that weighs less than a small book, and rarely needs charging. And my first impulse on reading Johnson’s final line, sitting on a dirt path in the mountains of Japan flanked by <em>Cryptomeria japonica</em>, was to eulogize him right there, smack dab in the text while a nightingale whistled overhead. The Kindle indicated with a subtle dotted underline and small inline text that those final sentences had been highlighted by “56 highlighters.” Other humans! Reading this same text, feeling the same impulse. Some need to mark those lines.</p>
<p>I wanted to write, “Fuck. Sad to think this is the last new work we’re going to get from this guy. Most definitely dead as I’m reading it.” You know, something in the vulgarity of Johnson himself. I wanted to stick my 10-cent eulogy between those lines for others to read, and to read what those others had thought. Purchasing a book is one of the strongest self-selections of community, and damn it, I wanted to engage.</p>
<p>But I couldn’t. For my Kindle Oasis—one of the most svelte, elegant, and expensive digital book containers you can buy in 2018—is about as interactive as a potato. Instead, I left a note for myself: “Write something about how this isn’t the digital book we thought we’d have.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p><b>Link: <a href="https://www.wired.com/story/future-book-is-here-but-not-what-we-expected/">wired.com</a></b></p>https://letra.studio/2018/12/we-should-replace-facebook-with-personal-websites/2018-12-22T03:51:35+00:00Link: We Should Replace Facebook With Personal Websites<p>Jason Koebler:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>There’s a subtext of the #deleteFacebook movement that has nothing to do with the company’s mishandling of personal data. It’s the idea that people who use Facebook are stupid, or shouldn’t have ever shared so much of their lives. But for people who came of age in the early 2000s, sharing our lives online is second nature, and largely came without consequences. There was no indication that something we’d been conditioned to do would be quickly weaponized against us.</p>
</blockquote>
<p><b>Link: <a href="https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/vbanny/we-should-replace-facebook-with-personal-websites">motherboard.vice.com</a></b></p>
<hr>
<p class="post-via"><a rel="via" href="https://twitter.com/abookapart/status/1076120370757976064"><span class="url">Via @abookapart</span></a></p>https://letra.studio/2018/12/millitext-subpixel-text-encoding/2018-12-18T07:06:52+00:00Link: Millitext — Subpixel Text Encoding<p>Sebastian Morr:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Pixels of LCD monitors are usually composed of three stripes of the colors red, green, and blue. Tech enthusiast Matt Sarnoff used this property to his advantage when inventing <a href="http://www.msarnoff.org/millitext/">a subpixel text encoding font</a>. Its glyphs are comprised of colored strips only one pixel wide.</p>
</blockquote>
<p><b>Link: <a href="https://advent.morr.cc/2018/17">advent.morr.cc</a></b></p>
<hr>
<p class="post-via"><a rel="via" href="https://twitter.com/ccgus/status/1074804431579828224"><span class="url">Via @ccgus</span></a></p>https://letra.studio/2018/12/im-not-sure-how-to-look-at-art/2018-12-18T03:56:32+00:00Link: I’m not sure how to look at art.<p><a href="http://thenearsightedmonkey.tumblr.com/post/144767634609/by-lynda-barry-may-2016"><img src="/uploads/lynda-barry-may-2016-1.jpg" alt="A hand-drawn comic by Lynda Barry, panel one of four." /></a></p>
<p>Straight-up one of my favourite internet finds of the year. Something about it just gets to me on a deep level. I’ve looked at it dozens of times and that feeling doesn’t go away.</p>
<p>I first came across it <a href="https://twitter.com/kyttenjanae/status/926195278486560768">on Twitter</a> a few months ago, and it’s been on the back of my mind ever since.</p>
<p><b>Link: <a href="http://thenearsightedmonkey.tumblr.com/post/144767634609/by-lynda-barry-may-2016">thenearsightedmonkey.tumblr.com</a></b></p>https://letra.studio/2018/12/browsers/2018-12-16T18:07:40+00:00Link: Browsers<p>Jeremy Keith:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Very soon, the vast majority of browsers will have an engine that’s either Blink or its cousin, WebKit. That may seem like good news for developers when it comes to testing, but trust me, it’s a sucky situation of innovation and agreement. Instead of a diverse browser ecosystem, we’re going to end up with incest and inbreeding.</p>
</blockquote>
<p><b>Link: <a href="https://adactio.com/journal/14608">adactio.com</a></b></p>https://letra.studio/2018/12/celeste-will-make-you-better-at-every-video-game/2018-12-16T00:00:00+00:00Link: Polygon: Celeste will make you better at every video game<figure class="post-figure embed">
<a class="embed-placeholder" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eo7FaVLET3k" data-embed-id="eo7FaVLET3k" data-embed-provider="youtube">
<img src="https://img.youtube.com/vi/eo7FaVLET3k/hqdefault.jpg" alt="">
</a>
</figure>
<p><i></i></p>
<p>BDG shows how Celeste relates to real-life rock climbing and it totally clicks.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>While most games will make you grind to improve your character, Celeste makes you grind to improve yourself. When you succeed, you keep that skill and that knowledge. And just link in real climbing, when you go back to a route you’ve already completed, you ask yourself: “how did I ever struggle with this?”</p>
<p>And that’s when you know… you have become the <em>genius beefcake</em>.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Will we ever run out of Celeste praise videos? I hope not.</p>
<p><b>Link: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eo7FaVLET3k">youtube.com</a></b></p>https://letra.studio/2018/12/the-state-of-technology-at-the-end-of-2018/2018-12-13T07:15:23+00:00Link: The State of Technology at the End of 2018<p>Ben Thompson:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Still, as a thought experiment, suppose Congressman Smith were right, and that Google’s search results, whether via managerial decree, general employee bias, or rogue employee, were gamed to disfavor Conservatives. The solution seems clear: create a competitor to serve the part of the market that is dissatisfied with Google.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>The issue, of course, is that Google is, at least for a while (and more on this in a bit), impregnable: the company is an <a href="https://stratechery.com/2015/aggregation-theory/">Aggregator</a> with positive feedback loops everywhere.</p>
</blockquote>
<p><b>Link: <a href="https://stratechery.com/2018/the-state-of-technology-at-the-end-of-2018/">stratechery.com</a></b></p>https://letra.studio/2018/12/edge-goes-chromium/2018-12-09T14:19:46+00:00Link: #EdgeGoesChromium<p>Dave Rupert:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>But in the past we had browser disparity as a mechanism for delaying bad ideas from becoming ubiquitous so they could be hashed out in a Web Standards body. Some of the best ideas we have today, like CSS Grid, were pioneered in one browser (IE10) and then polished in a Working Group. If V1 of <code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">-ms-grid</code> was now the de facto standard, we’d have some regrets.</p>
</blockquote>
<p><b>Link: <a href="https://daverupert.com/2018/12/edge-goes-chromium/">daverupert.com</a></b></p>https://letra.studio/2018/12/electron-and-the-decline-of-native-apps/2018-12-08T20:26:01+00:00Link: Electron and the Decline of Native Apps<p>John Gruber:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>There have always been bad Mac apps. But they seldom achieved any level of popularity because Mac users, collectively, rejected them.</p>
</blockquote>
<p><b>Link: <a href="https://daringfireball.net/2018/12/electron_and_the_decline_of_native_apps">daringfireball.net</a></b></p>https://letra.studio/2018/12/big-ol-ball-o-javascript/2018-12-07T08:47:10+00:00Link: Big ol’ Ball o’ JavaScript<p>Brad Frost:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I’m confident developers will get their heads around it. They’ll figure out their swim lanes and understand which JavaScript does what. I’m more concerned about other team members who are now staring at a Big Ol’ Intimidating Ball O’ JavaScript. And I’m concerned for those recruiters and hiring managers who are even further removed from the day to day. Those job listings with a giant spray of buzzwords and technologies can now be winnowed down to a single word: JavaScript. Those recruiters have a hard enough time separating Java from JavaScript, so best of luck to them making sense of the complex JavaScript ecosystem.</p>
</blockquote>
<p><b>Link: <a href="http://bradfrost.com/blog/post/big-ol-ball-o-javascript/">bradfrost.com</a></b></p>https://letra.studio/2018/12/programming-css/2018-12-06T00:59:15+00:00Link: Programming CSS<p>Jeremy Keith:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>It’s not that CSS in inherently incapable of executing complex conditions. Quite the opposite. It’s precisely because CSS selectors (and the cascade) are so powerful that we choose to put guard rails in place.</p>
</blockquote>
<p><b>Link: <a href="https://adactio.com/journal/14574">adactio.com</a></b></p>https://letra.studio/2018/12/risking-a-homogeneous-web/2018-12-06T00:57:43+00:00Link: Risking a Homogeneous Web<p>On the news of <a href="https://www.theverge.com/2018/12/4/18125238/microsoft-chrome-browser-windows-10-edge-chromium">Edge switching to the Chromium engine</a>, Tim Kadlec writes:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>We need Google to keep pushing the web forward. But it’s critical that we have other voices, with different viewpoints, to maintain some sense of balance. Monocultures don’t benefit anyone.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Hear, hear.</p>
<p><b>Link: <a href="https://timkadlec.com/remembers/2018-12-04-risking-a-homogenous-web/">timkadlec.com</a></b></p>
<hr>
<p class="post-via"><a rel="via" href="https://adactio.com/links/14580"><span class="url">Via adactio.com</span></a></p>https://letra.studio/2018/12/i-put-words-on-this-webpage-so-you-have-to-listen-to-me-now/2018-12-05T18:21:11+00:00Link: I Put Words on this Webpage so You Have to Listen to Me Now<p>Christine Dodrill:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>What? The code for that? It’s obvious, figure it out.</p>
<p>See? Five times as fast. Who cares that you have to throw out basically all your existing stuff, and if you mix rilkef and non-rilkef you’re gonna run into problems.</p>
</blockquote>
<p><b>Link: <a href="https://christine.website/blog/experimental-rilkef-2018-11-30">christine.website</a></b></p>
<hr>
<p class="post-via"><a rel="via" href="https://twitter.com/css/status/1070374747865792513"><span class="url">Via @css</span></a></p>https://letra.studio/2018/12/a-look-at-css-resets-in-2018/2018-12-04T08:45:16+00:00Link: A look at CSS Resets in 2018<p>I’ve been taking a lot of interest in this topic ever since I started working on my own reset/boilerplate — <a href="https://github.com/letrastudio/cobalt">Cobalt</a>.</p>
<p><b>Link: <a href="https://bitsofco.de/a-look-at-css-resets-in-2018/">bitsofco.de</a></b></p>
<hr>
<p class="post-via"><a rel="via" href="https://twitter.com/css/status/1069680170813001728"><span class="url">Via @css</span></a></p>https://letra.studio/2018/12/reluctant-gatekeeping-the-problem-with-full-stack/2018-12-03T23:45:28+00:00Link: Reluctant Gatekeeping: The Problem With Full Stack<p>Heydon Pickering:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>By assuming the role of the Full Stack Developer (which is, in practice, a computer scientist who also writes HTML and CSS), one takes responsibility for all the code, in spite of its radical variance in syntax and purpose, and becomes the gatekeeper of at least some kinds of code <em>one simply doesn’t care about writing well</em>. This has two adverse effects:</p>
<ol>
<li>Poor quality code</li>
<li>A bunch of people who can (and would enjoy!) expertly writing that code, standing unemployed on the sidelines muttering “WTF”</li>
</ol>
</blockquote>
<p>I so very much agree with everything Heydon says here. And that agreement comes from the experience of trying to become a full stack dev myself (though going at it from an HTML/CSS-first perspective).</p>
<p><b>Link: <a href="http://www.heydonworks.com/article/reluctant-gatekeeping-the-problem-with-full-stack">heydonworks.com</a></b></p>https://letra.studio/2018/12/the-graphic-art-of-incredibles-2/2018-12-02T06:10:47+00:00Link: The Graphic Art of Incredibles 2<p><i></i></p>
<p>Graphic design work on <em>Incredibles 2</em> was brilliant, as expected. But there was one glaring exception, conspicuously missing from this post: the atrocious <a href="https://pixarplanet.com/blog/bravo-edna/">Edna Mode logo</a>.</p>
<p><b>Link: <a href="http://joshholtsclaw.com/blog/2018/3/5/the-graphic-art-of-incredibles-2">joshholtsclaw.com</a></b></p>
<hr>
<p class="post-via"><a rel="via" href="https://www.underconsideration.com/brandnew/archives/incredibles_2_graphic_artwork.php"><span class="url">Via underconsideration.com</span></a></p>https://letra.studio/2018/11/why-are-tech-companies-making-custom-typefaces/2018-11-30T00:22:29+00:00Link: Why are tech companies making custom typefaces?<p>Arun Venkatesan:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>During my research process, I noted down the keywords used to describe some of the typefaces. As I read through the list, the same words kept coming up over and over: friendly, modern, clean, simple, human. It’s like everyone wants something that they can use to define their brand, yet they really just want a slightly different version of what everyone has.</p>
</blockquote>
<p><b>Link: <a href="https://www.arun.is/blog/custom-typefaces/">arun.is</a></b></p>https://letra.studio/2018/11/its-not-about-the-device/2018-11-29T16:23:26+00:00Link: It’s not about the device.<p>Ethan Marcotte:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Let me start by saying I generally avoid terms like “mobile,” “tablet,” and “desktop” in my work. It’s not that they’re bad; it’s because they’re broad. In my experience, terms like these confuse more than they clarify. Ask a roomful of clients or stakeholders to define “mobile,” and you’ll get a roomful of slightly different responses.</p>
<p>What I think is helpful, though, is breaking down the specific conditions or features that’ll cause our designs to adapt.</p>
</blockquote>
<p><b>Link: <a href="https://ethanmarcotte.com/wrote/not-the-device/">ethanmarcotte.com</a></b></p>https://letra.studio/2018/11/warp-and-weft/2018-11-26T18:05:58+00:00Link: Warp and Weft<p>Paul Robert Lloyd:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Such notions of craftsmanship can soon lead us down a dangerous path, raising questions around elitism and discrimination. These are accusations you could level towards the IndieWeb. For all its promise of giving people the tools to regain ownership of their online identity and content, to do so fully and effectively requires a proficiency for coding and familiarity with an endless barrage of acronyms. Encouraging participants to selfdogfood only exacerbates the near-impenetrability and narrowness of this movement.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Rob Weychert chimes in and gets a <a href="https://twitter.com/letrastudio/status/1067487599869259776">strong +1 from me</a>:</p>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-conversation="none" data-lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">I’ve been making websites for 20 years. I read a bunch about how to set up webmentions and gave up before I started. 🤷🏻♂️ <a href="https://t.co/iIv1BgQXlY">https://t.co/iIv1BgQXlY</a></p>— Rob Weychert (@robweychert) <a href="https://twitter.com/robweychert/status/1067470420612399104?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">November 27, 2018</a></blockquote>
<p>If even web people find it difficult, how can we ever manage to empower non-web people to produce web-like content?</p>
<p><b>Link: <a href="https://paulrobertlloyd.com/2018/11/warp_and_weft">paulrobertlloyd.com</a></b></p>https://letra.studio/2018/11/how-to-cook-onions-why-recipe-writers-lie/2018-11-24T09:43:18+00:00Link: How to cook onions: Why recipe writers lie and lie about how long they take to caramelize.<p>Tom Scocca, for Slate:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>There is no other word for it. Onions do not caramelize in five or 10 minutes. They never have, they never will—yet recipe writers have never stopped pretending that they will.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Good to know.</p>
<p><b>Link: <a href="https://slate.com/human-interest/2012/05/how-to-cook-onions-why-recipe-writers-lie-and-lie-about-how-long-they-take-to-caramelize.html">slate.com</a></b></p>https://letra.studio/2018/11/are-pop-lyrics-getting-more-repetitive/2018-11-19T20:10:26+00:00Link: Are Pop Lyrics Getting More Repetitive?<p>Colin Morris, for The Pudding:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>What does this have to do with pop music? The Lempel-Ziv algorithm works by exploiting repeated sequences. How efficiently LZ can compress a text is directly related to the number and length of the repeated sections in that text.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Clever and well-executed dataviz porn.</p>
<p><b>Link: <a href="https://pudding.cool/2017/05/song-repetition/">pudding.cool</a></b></p>
<hr>
<p class="post-via"><a rel="via" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2018/11/19/repetitive-lyrics"><span class="url">Via daringfireball.net</span></a></p>https://letra.studio/2018/11/what-it-has-taken-me-33-years-to-learn/2018-11-15T00:29:32+00:00Link: What it has taken me 33 years to learn<p>Justin McElroy resurfaces an old post of his, back from 2013:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Learning to appreciate things you don’t initially enjoy is the power to fill the world with stuff you like.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Those McElroy folks are just so damn good at advice.</p>
<p><b>Link: <a href="https://justinmcelroy.wordpress.com/2013/11/08/what-it-has-taken-me-33-years-to-learn/">justinmcelroy.wordpress.com</a></b></p>https://letra.studio/2018/11/this-is-all-donald-trump-has-left/2018-11-14T08:54:36+00:00Link: This Is All Donald Trump Has Left<p>David Roth, writing for Deadspin; this paragraph is so good:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Presidents exert a kind of ambient influence on the culture, but as Trump is different than previous presidents his influence necessarily feels different. Barack Obama wanted to be a cosmopolitan leader who brought people together and into a deeper empathy through a mastery of reason and rules; the country he governed doesn’t work like that, though, and the tension between that cool vision and this seething reality grew and grew. By the end, his presidency had the feeling of a prestige television show in its fifth season—handsomely produced and reliably well-performed but ultimately not really as sure what it was about as it first appeared to be. Trump has no such pretense or noble aspiration, and has only made the country more like himself; living in his America feels like being trapped in a garish casino that is filling with seawater, because that is what it is.</p>
</blockquote>
<p><b>Link: <a href="https://theconcourse.deadspin.com/this-is-all-donald-trump-has-left-1830329753">theconcourse.deadspin.com</a></b></p>
<hr>
<p class="post-via"><a rel="via" href="https://twitter.com/MaxTemkin/status/1062560959468847104"><span class="url">Via @MaxTemkin</span></a></p>https://letra.studio/2018/11/earth-and-moon-puzzles/2018-11-14T00:06:07+00:00Link: Earth and Moon Puzzles<p>Jessica Rosenkrantz of Nervous System design studio:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>This puzzle is based on an icosahedral map projection and has the topology of a sphere. This means it has no edges, no North and South, and no fixed shape. Try to get the landmasses together or see how the oceans are connected. Make your own maps of the earth!</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Super clever and cool design.</p>
<p><b>Link: <a href="https://n-e-r-v-o-u-s.com/blog/?p=8293">n-e-r-v-o-u-s.com</a></b></p>
<hr>
<p class="post-via"><a rel="via" href="https://kottke.org/18/11/an-infinite-icosahedral-puzzle-of-the-earth"><span class="url">Via kottke.org</span></a></p>https://letra.studio/2018/11/mouse-cursor-history/2018-11-14T00:00:00+00:00Link: Posy: Mouse Cursor History<figure class="post-figure embed">
<a class="embed-placeholder" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YThelfB2fvg" data-embed-id="YThelfB2fvg" data-embed-provider="youtube">
<img src="https://img.youtube.com/vi/YThelfB2fvg/hqdefault.jpg" alt="">
</a>
</figure>
<p>Michiel de Boer:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>It is believed that the most seen photo is this Windows XP background. And I’m convinced that the most viewed shape is the mouse cursor.</p>
</blockquote>
<p><b>Link: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YThelfB2fvg">youtube.com</a></b></p>