Links
Virtual machines of early PC operating systems, such as Windows and OS/2 1.0, that run in the browser. For anyone else who’s interested in a nostalgic kick. Don’t forget to check-out the list of included software installable via the virtual floppy drive.
🔗 Ludipe: Intro to Puzzle Design
Filing this under good tips for game development.
Via: GMTK weekly digest.
🔗 Wikipedia: White-winged chough
I’ve seen this bird before and I had no idea what they are: black, white tips on the wings, red eyes, and an interesting call. Their presence in a random YouTube video I was watching revealed the answer.
A very nice exploration of webpage design using a monospace font. The first thought I had when I saw this was that this would work great for online man pages, which never look as good online as they do in the terminal.
Via: Robb Knight
🔗 How we built Bluey’s world: tales from original series art director, Catriona Drummond
As someone who knows absolutely nothing about animation, I found this fascinating. Some nice bits of theory in this, such as the “language” of shapes:
Circles are round, friendly and soft. No hard edges!
Triangles are sharp, aggressive and evoke pain.
Squares are sturdy, steady and firmly planted.
Then on top of that, even directional lines have implicit associations! Horizontals are calm, verticals awake and upright, and diagonals off balanced.
🔗 Aresluna: Frame of preference
This walk through the various preference windows of MacOS is amazing. The way they integrate Infinite Mac alongside it: genius. Best explored while listening to ATP Overtime.
🔗 Daring Fireball: Microsoft Introduces ‘Copilot Mode’ in Edge
Some follow-up from my recent pondering about chatbots in browsers. From Gruber:
I think something similar is behind Microsoft trying to make Copilot front-and-center in Edge, and Google’s concurrent move to junk up Chrome with AI-generated suggestions. Their goal is to make their web browsers chatbots faster than OpenAI can make ChatGPT a web browser.
Okay, that’s plausible. If it’s just a fight for mindshare than I can understand this. Still not sure what OpenAI’s motivations are, but it does look like these other companies are just reacting here.
🔗 Daring Fireball: Google Chrome Adds AI-Generated Store Summaries
Now browsers themselves will be adding their own layers of distracting cruft atop the websites. The entire premise of Chrome — the reason for its name — is that it was originally designed to simplify the UI of the browser app itself, the “chrome”, at a time when Internet Explorer and even Firefox were increasingly cluttered and confusing.
I’m confused as to why Google and all these AI companies are so gun-ho about adding AI agents to browsers. What do they get out of this deal? Is it just a way for them to win users and get data from their browsing habits? Is it protection against Google potentially dissuading these users away from using their chat-bots? These are not problems Google has, so why are they doing this?
They seem like features designed to turn the dial up on Google’s slice of commissions from web transactions.
Maybe, but how can they collect? If they run AI over the web-pages that a user visits, when the user converts, how are they going to tell the website owner that they help “bring in the eye-balls” thanks to AI and have earned X% off the top? Maybe they’ll only run these AI agents on sites that “opt-in” in some way, either by using Google Pay or paying more for Google ads. I can see that happening.
All very strange. In either case, I’m glad I’m rocking Vivaldi these days.
🔗 Manuel Moreale: Why this matters
Manuel Moreale celebrates and reflects on reaching the 100th People and Blogs. Congratulations, Manuel! Here’s to many more.
We’re entering the 3 digits era of People and Blogs, and the next milestone is going to be the beginning of the 4 digits era, which will arrive in the year 2042. […] I’m not even sure if blogs will still be a thing by then.
Oh, I bet you they will be a thing.
🔗 MacSparky: A Remarkable, Unremarkable Thing
We often talk about how people can’t put their phones down while in line at the market, but what about during moments of joy? When taking in a theme park with your family, at the beach, or on vacation? Those moments are found solely in your immersion in the now.
A thought-provoking post.
🔗 Simon Willison: Identify, solve, verify
No matter how good these [coding LLMs] get, they will still need someone to find problems for them to solve, define those problems and confirm that they are solved. […] It’s also about 80% of what I do as a software developer already.
Hey, I’m a software developer too. And I acknowledge that my job is more than just typing things into an IDE. In fact, it’s probably closer to what Simon Willison does, where I’m identifying problems, and writing Jira tickets for others to fix rather than do it myself. And it might be that with the introduction of coding LLMs, software development will simply be more of this going forward. It certainly the direction things look to be going.
But I would be lying if I said I wouldn’t be disappointed to see all these coding tasks go away, and all my job description reduced to finding problems and verifying fixes. Like some sort of… manager 😖. I got into software development because I like to code. And part of this is finding problems, but I only get the dopamine hit after fixing them. I get nothing if I simply tell someone (or something) else to fix it.
And okay, we’re talking about a job here. And I’ve reached the age where I recognise one doesn’t always achieve a fulfilling life from their careers alone. So might be that this is something that I just need to recognise that sometimes jobs suck and identifying problems is all I’ll ever do in the near future.
But I would tell employers thinking of outsourcing all coding tasks to LLMs to consider this: if I’m faced with two employment opportunities, and one has 0% coding tasks, and the other has >0% coding tasks, I’d take the latter any day of the week.
🔗 LMNT: I’ve Got Better Things To Do Than This, and Yet
It’s one thing for QuickTime UI to “get out of the way.” Please, do. I’m watching a video. I don’t need a big honkin’ pause button in the middle of the window, you know? But wait a minute, why is there a big honkin’ pause button in the middle of the window anyway? That’s not how it used to be.
I don’t always agree with Louie Mantia but he’s absolutely right here. When did hiding UI or moving it out of various bars become synonymous of “getting out of the way of content”? Slapping UI over the content is not getting out of the way. In fact it’s the exact opposite.
Pretty impressive to see what’s possible with CSS nowadays. Viewing the page source is quite illuminating.
🔗 Search Engine Land: What 1,000 food blog audits has taught me about SEO
I’m wary about posts on SEO but I found this one discussing the techniques attempted by recipe bloggers quite interesting. In short: cargo cult thinking around SEO myths is resulting in many bad food sites.
Via: Pixel Envy
🔗 Spyglass: Apple Lives Long Enough to Become the Ad Villain
People pay a lot of money for these devices from Apple. And part of the implicit bargain is that they won’t have adware or ads themselves shoved at them in every direction.
Now I’m no marketing expert, but I do know that understanding one’s customer base is important for success. And I understand that Apple’s is generally made up of people who pay a premium for a good user experience. I wonder if Apple understands this. I also know that generally pissing people off with stunts like this will not get them to come to your party.
🔗 Omer: you are what you launch: how software became a lifestyle brand
they don’t just ship features anymore, they ship vibes. onboarding becomes a performance. the ui is the brand. the founder’s blog post is the manifesto.
it’s not about what the software does.it’s about who it’s made for.
I guess this shouldn’t be surprising. Software construction is like any other human endeavour, where the person making it puts a bit of themselves into it. How can they not? But I enjoyed how this essay explored this phenomenon.
Via: Jim Nielsen’s Notes
🔗 Nicholas Bate: The Greatest Productivity Tips, 159
Simply because we do not affix a postage stamp to our e-mail does not mean it is free. That mail has a huge cost in productivity terms: for us, in did we craft it correctly first time? For others in lack of certainty perhaps of what is required of them. For others in being cc’d without need.
No, mail isn’t free. It’s extraordinarily expensive.
So true. I would add that Slack is just as expensive, only that you’re making micropayments over the course of the day instead of one lump sum.
🔗 82MHz: Blogs are still a thing
One more for the “blogging’s not dead yet” list everyone’s keeping.
Blogging is a small niche these days. There isn’t much hype around it, nor is there any money to be made because the VC firms are all busy chasing the next big thing […] But it is still here, and I like it exactly because it’s not the hype technology of the day anymore. It isn’t commercialised, algorithmically curated and set up to make some other person rich.
That’s why I like it too. It’s a slow, quiet, and comfortable form of online interaction.
Via: Mastodon boost by Brent Simmons
🔗 MOR10: Blogging is dead. Long live ephemerality.
This ended up being quite an insightful piece, particularly around how much better the authoring tools are in Instagram and other social media apps.
Via: Juha-Matti Santala
🔗 Robert Birming: Blog Inspiration
Very nice collection of links to blogging resources — from ideas and inspirations through to colour and icon packs — from @birming. This stuff is cat nip for me, so I’m sure to enjoy browsing these links.