Journal

I’m quite sure this is of no interest to anyone but me, but I finally managed to fix a longstanding weird issue with my website.

I realise that me telling you about a bug specific to my website is like me telling you about a dream I had last night—fascinating for me; incredibly dull for you.

For some reason, my site was being brought to its knees anytime I syndicated a note to Mastodon. I rolled up my sleeves to try to figure out what the problem could be. I was fairly certain the problem was with my code—I’m not much of a back-end programmer.

My tech stack is classic LAMP: Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP. When I post a note, it gets saved to my database. Then I make a curl request to the Mastodon API to syndicate the post over there. That’s when my CPU starts climbing and my server gets all “bad gateway!” on me.

After spending far too long pulling apart my PHP and curl code, I had to come to the conclusion that I was doing nothing wrong there.

I started watching which processes were making the server fall over. It was MySQL. That seemed odd, because I’m not doing anything too crazy with my database reads.

Then I realised that the problem wasn’t any particular query. The problem was volume. But it only happened when I posted a note to Mastodon.

That’s when I had a lightbulb moment about how the fediverse works.

When I post a note to Mastodon, it includes a link back to the original note to my site. At this point Mastodon does its federation magic and starts spreading the post to all the instances subscribed to my account. And every single one of them follows the link back to the note on my site …all at the same time.

This isn’t a problem when I syndicate my blog posts, because I’ve got a caching mechanism in place for those. I didn’t think I’d need any caching for little ol’ notes. I was wrong.

A simple solution would be not to include the link back to the original note. But I like the reminder that what you see on Mastodon is just a copy. So now I’ve got the same caching mechanism for my notes as I do for my journal (and I did my links while I was at it). Everything is hunky-dory. I can syndicate to Mastodon with impunity.

See? I told you it would only be of interest to me. Although I guess there’s a lesson here. Something something caching.

Harry popped ’round to the Clearleft studio yesterday. It’s always nice when a Clearleft alum comes to visit.

It wasn’t just a social call though. Harry wanted to run through the ideas he’s got for his UX London talk.

Wait. I buried the lede. Let me start again.

Harry Brignull is speaking at this year’s UX London!

Yes, the person who literally wrote the book on deceptive design patterns will be on the line-up. And judging from what I heard yesterday, it’s going to be a brilliant talk.

It was fascinating listening to Harry talk about the times he’s been brought in to investigate companies accused of deliberately employing deceptive design tactics. It involves a lot of research and detective work, trawling through internal communications hoping to find a smoking gun like a memo from the boss or an objection from a beleaguered designer.

I thought about this again today reading Nic Chan’s post, Have we forgotten how to build ethical things for the web?. It resonates with what Harry will be talking about at UX London. What can an individual ethical designer do when they’re embedded in a company that doesn’t prioritise user safety?

It’s like a walking into a jets pray of bullshit, so much so that even those with good intentions get easily overwhelmed.

Though I try, my efforts rarely bear fruit, even with the most well-meaning of clients. And look, I get it, no on wants to be the tall poppy. It’s hard enough to squeeze money from the internet-stone these days. Why take a stance on a tiny issue when your users don’t even care? Your competitors certainly don’t. I usually end up quietly acquiescing to whatever bad are made, praying no future discerning user will notice and think badly of me.

It’s pretty clear to me that we can’t rely on individual people to make a difference here.

Still, I take some encouragement from Harry’s detective work. If the very least that an ethical designer (or developer) does is to speak up, on the record, then that can end up counting for a lot when the enshittification hits the fan.

If you see something, say something. Actually, don’t just say it. Write it down. In official communication channels, like email.

I remember when Clearleft crossed an ethical line (for me) by working on a cryptobollocks project, I didn’t just voice my objections, I wrote them down in a memo. It wasn’t fun being the tall poppy, the squeeky wheel, the wet blanket. But I think it would’ve been worse (for me) if I did nothing.

Jessica and I spent last week working remotely. We always work remotely in the sense of not being in an office, but I mean we were remote from home too.

We’ve done this twice before. Once in Ortigia, Sicily and once in Cáceres, Spain. This time we were in Turin.

We had one day at the start of the trip to explore the city and do touristy things, checking out museums and such. After that we hunkered down in a very lovely and cosy AirBnB working each day.

I found it very productive. Maybe it’s a similar effect to going to a coffee shop to write—something about the change of scene encourages more of a flow state. The apartment was nice and quiet too so it wasn’t a problem when I needed to be on a call.

Best of all was what awaited at the end of each working day. We were staying in the Quadrilatero neighbourhood, famed for its aperitivo scene. Heck, there was a wonderful Vermouth bar literally across the street.

And after an aperitivo? Time to sample some Piedmontese cuisine. Bagna càuda! Vitello tonnato! Agnolotti! Panna cotta! We had some wonderful meals at restaurants like Consorzio, L’Acino, and Pautasso (a neighbourhood spot we went to on our last night that had the most perfectly convivial atmosphere you could imagine).

They say a change is as good as a rest. I certainly enjoyed this change of scene.

There’s something about going somewhere for a working week that feels very different to going somewhere primarily as a tourist. You get a different flavour of a place.

It is now exactly five weeks until Patterns Day—just another 35 sleeps!

Everthing is in place for a perfect day of deep dives into design systems. There’ll be eight snappy 30 minute talks—bam, bam, bam!

Here’s the schedule I’ve got planned for the day:

9:00	Registration.
9:45	Jeremy introduces the day.
10:00	Jina delivers the opening keynote.
10:30	Débora talks about the outcomes, lessons and challenges from using design tokens.
11:00	Break.
11:30	Yolijn talks about the relay method for design system governance.
12:00	Geri talks about her journey navigating accessibility in design systems.
12:30	Lunch.
14:00	Richard talks about responsive typography in design systems.
14:30	Samantha talks about getting buy-in for a design system.
15:00	Break.
15:30	Mary talks about transitioning from a single to a multi-brand design system.
16:00	Vitaly delivers the closing keynote.
16:30	Jeremy wraps up the day.
16:45	Have a drink and a geek pub quiz at the Hare And Hounds pub.

I assume you’ve got your ticket already, but if not use the discount code JOINJEREMY to get 10% off the ticket price.

See you there!

Cory has published the transcript of his talk at the Transmediale festival in Berlin. It’s all about enshittification, and what we can collectively do to reverse it.

He succinctly describes the process of enshittification like this:

First, platforms are good to their users; then they abuse their users to make things better for their business customers; finally, they abuse those business customers to claw back all the value for themselves. Then, they die.

More importantly, he describes the checks and balances that keep enshittification from happening, all of which have been dismantled over time: competition, regulation, self-help, and workers.

One of the factors that allows enshittification to proceed is a high switching cost:

Switching costs are everything you have to give up when you leave a product or service. In Facebook’s case, it was all the friends there that you followed and who followed you. In theory, you could have all just left for somewhere else; in practice, you were hamstrung by the collective action problem.

It’s hard to get lots of people to do the same thing at the same time.

We’ve seen this play out over at Twitter, where people I used to respect are still posting there as if it hasn’t become a cesspool of far-right racist misogyny reflecting its new owner’s values. But for a significant amount of people—including myself and anyone with a modicum of decency—the switching cost wasn’t enough to stop us getting the hell out of there. Echoing Robin’s observation, Cory says:

…the difference between “I hate this service but I can’t bring myself to quit it,” and “Jesus Christ, why did I wait so long to quit? Get me the hell out of here!” is razor thin.

If users can’t leave because everyone else is staying, when when everyone starts to leave, there’s no reason not to go, too.

That’s terminal enshittification, the phase when a platform becomes a pile of shit. This phase is usually accompanied by panic, which tech bros euphemistically call ‘pivoting.’

Anyway, I bring this up because I recently read something else about switching costs, but in a very different context. Jake Lazaroff was talking about JavaScript frameworks:

I want to talk about one specific weakness of JavaScript frameworks: interoperability, or the lack thereof. Almost without exception, each framework can only render components written for that framework specifically.

As a result, the JavaScript community tends to fragment itself along framework lines. Switching frameworks has a high cost, especially when moving to a less popular one; it means leaving most of the third-party ecosystem behind.

That switching cost stunts framework innovation by heavily favoring incumbents with large ecosystems.

Sounds a lot like what Cory was describing with incumbents like Google, Facebook, Twitter, and Amazon.

And let’s not kid ourselves, when we’re talking about incumbent client-side JavaScript frameworks, we might mention Vue or some other contender, but really we’re talking about React.

React has massive switching costs. For over a decade now, companies have been hiring developers based on one criterion: do they know React?

“An expert in CSS you say? No thanks.”

“Proficient in vanilla JavaScript? Don’t call us, we’ll call you.”

Heck, if I were advising someone who was looking for a job in front-end development (as opposed to actually being good at front-end development; two different things), I’d tell them to learn React.

Just as everyone ended up on Facebook because everyone was on Facebook, everyone ended up using React because everyone was using React.

You can probably see where I’m going with this: the inevitable enshittification of React.

Just to be clear, I’m not talking about React getting shittier in terms of what it does. It’s always been a shitty technology for end users:

React is legacy tech from 2013 when browsers didn’t have template strings or a BFCache.

No, I’m talking about the enshittification of the developer experience …the developer experience being the thing that React supposedly has going for it, though as Simon points out, the developer experience has always been pretty crap:

Whether on purpose or not, React took advantage of this situation by continuously delivering or promising to deliver changes to the library, with a brand new API being released every 12 to 18 months. Those new APIs and the breaking changes they introduce are the new shiny objects you can’t help but chase. You spend multiple cycles learning the new API and upgrading your application. It sure feels like you are doing something, but in reality, you are only treading water.

Well, it seems like the enshittification of the React ecosystem is well underway. Cassidy is kind of annoyed at React. Tom is increasingly miffed about the state of React releases, and Matteo asks React, where are you going?

Personally, I would love it if more people were complaining about the dreadful user experience inflicted by client-side React. Instead the complaints are universally about the developer experience.

I guess doing the right thing for the wrong reasons is fine. It’s just a little dispiriting.

I sometimes feel like I’m living that old joke, where I’m the one in the restaurant saying “the food here is terrible!” and most of my peers are saying “I know! And such small portions!”

It’s been another busy week of evening activities that ended up covering a range of musical styles.

Monday

On Monday night I went to the session at The Fiddler’s Elbow. It’s on every fortnight. The musicians are always great but the crowd can be more variable. Sometimes it’s too rowdy for comfort. But this week was perfect, probably because not many people are going out in late (dry) January.

The session, led by fiddler Ben Paley was exceptionally enjoyable. Nice and laid back, with a good groove.

Tuesday

On Tuesday night I stayed in and watched a film. Killers Of The Flower Moon. Two thumbs up from me.

Wednesday

On Wednesday evening it was the regular session at The Jolly Brewer. Jolly good it was too.

Thursday

On Thursday night I was back in The Jolly Brewer. My friend Rob roped me into doing a Burns Night thing. “It’s not a session, but it’s not a gig” was how he described it. I wasn’t sure what to expect.

We had been brushing up on our Scottish tunes, but we were mostly faking it. In the end it didn’t matter. I don’t think there was a single Scottish person there. But there was a good crowd enjoying their tatties and neeps with suitably-addressed haggis while we played our tunes in the background.

Some more musicians showed up: a fiddler and two banjo players. “Isn’t there old-time music here tonight?” they asked. We told them that no, it was Burns Night, but why not play some old-time tunes anyway?

So I passed the night jamming along to lots of tunes I didn’t know. I hope I wasn’t too offputting for them. It was good fun.

Friday

Finally on Friday evening it was my turn to leave my mandolin at home and listen to some music instead. The brilliant DakhaBrakha were playing out at Sussex Uni in the Attenborough Centre.

Imagine if Tom Waits and Cocteau Twins came from Eastern Europe and joined forces. Well, DakhaBrakha are even better than that.

I think I first heard them years ago on YouTube when I came across a video of them playing at KEXP. The first song caught my attention, then proceeded to mercilessly hold my attention captive until I was completely at their mercy—the way it builds and builds is just astonishing! I’ve been a fan ever since.

The gig was brilliant. I was absolutely blown away. I highly recommend seeing them if you can. Not only will you hear some brilliant music, you’ll be supporting Ukraine.

Слава Україні!

Patterns Day is exactly six weeks away—squee!

If you haven’t got your ticket yet, get one now. (And just between you and me, use the discount code JOINJEREMY to get a 10% discount.)

I’ve been talking to the speakers and getting very excited about what they’re going to be covering. It’s shaping up to be the perfect mix of practical case studies and big-picture thinking. You can expect talks on design system governance, accessibility, design tokens, typography, and more.

I’m hoping to have a schedule for the day ready by next week. It’s fun trying to craft the flow of the day. It’s like putting together a set list for a concert. Or maybe I’m just overthinking it and it really doesn’t matter because all the talks are going to be great anyway.

There are sponsors for Patterns Day now too. Thanks to Supernova and Etch you’re going to have bountiful supplies of coffee, tea and pastries throughout the day. Then, when the conference talks are done, we’ll head across the road to the Hare And Hounds for one of Luke Murphy’s famous geek pub quizes, with a bar tab generously provided by Zero Height.

Now, the venue for Patterns Day is beautiful but it doesn’t have enough space to provide everyone with lunch, so you’re going to have an hour and a half to explore some of Brighton’s trendy lunchtime spots. I’ve put together a list of lunch options for you, ordered by proximity to the Duke of York’s. These are all places I can personally vouch for.

Then, after the conference day, and after the pub quiz, there’s Vitaly’s workshop the next day. I will most definitely be there feeding on Vitaly’s knowledge. Get a ticket if you want to join me.

But wait! That’s not all! Even after the conference, and the pub quiz, and the workshop, the nerdy fun continues on the weekend. There’s going to be an Indie Web Camp here in Brighton on the Saturday and Sunday after Patterns Day.

If you’ve been to an Indie Web Camp before, you know how inspiring and fun it is. If you haven’t been to one yet, you should definitely come along. It’s free! If you’ve got your own website, or if you’re even just thinking about having your own website, it’s a great opportunity to meet with like-minded people.

So that’s going to be four days of non-stop good stuff here in Brighton. I’m looking forward to seeing you then!

One of the first ever personal websites—long before the word “blog” was a mischievous gleam in Peter’s eye—was Justin Hall’s links.net. Linking was right there in the domain name.

I really enjoy sharing links on my website. It feels good to point to something and say, “Hey, check this out!”

Other people are doing it too.

• I really enjoy Neil’s links (RSS), always wrapped up with a quote of the day.
• Scott Boms’s Through Lines (RSS) are always packed with good stuff, along with new typeface releases.
• Jim Nielsen’s notes (RSS) are as valuable as his blog, which is to say, very.
• Then there’s Clive Thompson’s Linkfest (RSS)—it’s right there in the name.

Then there are some relatively new additions to the linking gang:

• Hidde’s links (RSS),
• Andy’s links (RSS), and
• Sophie’s links (RSS) batched into a weekly release.

There are more out there for you to discover and add to your feed reader of choice. Good link hunting!

The output of generative tools based on large language models gives me the ick.

This isn’t a measured logical response. It’s more of an involuntary emotional reaction.

I could try to justify my reaction by saying I’m concerned about the exploitation involved in the training data, or the huge energy costs involved, or the disenfranchisement of people who create art. But those would be post-facto rationalisations.

I just find myself wrinkling my nose and mentally going “Ew!” whenever somebody posts the output of some prompt they gave to ChatGPT or Midjourney.

Again, I’m not saying this is rational. It’s more instinctual.

You could well say that this is my problem. You may be right. But I wonder what it is that’s so unheimlich about these outputs that triggers my response.

Just to clarify, I am talking about direct outputs, shared verbatim. If someone were to use one of these tools in the process of creating something I’d be none the wiser. I probably couldn’t even tell that a large language model was involved at some point. I’m fine with that. It’s when someone takes something directly from one of these tools and then shares it online, that’s what raises my bile.

I was at a conference a few months back where your badge featured a hallucinated picture of you. Now, this probably sounded like a fun idea. It probably is a fun idea. I can’t tell. All I know is that it made me feel a little queasy.

Perhaps it’s a question of taste. In which case, I’m being a snob. I’m literally turning my nose up at something I deem to be tacky.

But isn’t it tacky, though? It’s not something I can describe, but there’s just something about the vibe of these images—and words—that feels off. It’s sort of creepy, but it’s mostly just the mediocrity that sits so uneasily with me.

These tools do an amazing job of solving the quantity problem—how to produce an image or piece of text quickly. And by most measurements, you could say that they also solve the quality problem. These outputs are good enough to pass for “the real thing.” The outputs are, like, 90% to 95% there. And the gap is closing.

And yet. There’s something in that gap. Something that I feel in my gut. Something that makes me go “nope.”

Socialising in England usually follows a set pattern. You work during the week. You go out on the weekend.

This week I’ve been doing the exact opposite. I’ve been out every weeknight and I plan to stay in all weekend.

Monday

On Monday Jessica and I took a trip up to London. Dinner in Chinatown followed by a film in the Curzon cinema in Soho.

Usually dinner and a movie would be a fun outing, but this was a more sombre affair. The film we saw was The Zone Of Interest followed by an interview with the director, Jonathan Glazer.

The film is officially released in February. This was an advance screening organised by The Wiener Holocaust Library. Jessica is a member, which is how we got our invitations.

I was unsure whether the framing device of The Zone Of Interest would work. The hidden camera set-up could’ve come across as gimicky. But it worked all too well. The experience was disturbingly immersive, thanks in no small part to the naturalistic performances. Not showing the other side of the wall was the right decision—hearing the other side of the wall was incredibly effective. The depth of research that went into this project was palpable. It not only succeeded in its core task of showing the banality of evil, it also worked on a meta level, displaying the banality of the remembrance of evil.

See this film. And see it projected if you can.

Tuesday

With the heaviness of Monday evening still rightly staying with me, I was glad to have an opportunity to lose myself in music for a while. There was an impromptu Irish music session at the lovely Hand In Hand brewpub in Kemptown. It’s usually more of a jazz venue, but my friend Robb who works there convinced them to try a more folky evening.

The session was nice and intimate—just five of us playing. The pub was busy and everyone seemed to really appreciate the music. Me, I just really got into playing jigs and reels with my talented friends.

Wednesday

Whereas the session in the Hand in Hand was an impromptu affair, the session in the Jolly Brewer is regular as clockwork. Every Wednesday evening at 8 o’clock, rain, hail, or shine.

It was particularly good this week. Sometimes you just lock into a groove and everything clicks.

Thursday

Enough with the culture—time for some good hard science!

I hadn’t been to a Brighton Astro meetup in ages. Their monthly lectures are usually on the first Thursday of the month, which clashes with the session in the Ancient Mariner in Hove. But this month’s gathering was an exception, which meant I could finally make it.

Professor Malcolm Longair from the University of Cambridge was ostensibly speaking about the James Webb Space Telescope, but the talk ended up being larger in scope. The over-riding message was that we get the full picture of the universe by looking at all the frequencies of the electromagnetic spectrum—not just visible light, but not just infrared either.

It was so great to see how Brighton Astro has grown. It started life years ago as a meetup in the Clearleft building. Now it gets over a hundred people attending every month.

Friday

The weekend starts now. Apart from Salter Cane band practice tomorrow morning, I plan to stay in and stay cosy.