Link tags: mini

Today’s AI is unreasonable - Anil Dash

Today’s highly-hyped generative AI systems (most famously OpenAI) are designed to generate bullshit by design. To be clear, bullshit can sometimes be useful, and even accidentally correct, but that doesn’t keep it from being bullshit. Worse, these systems are not meant to generate consistent bullshit — you can get different bullshit answers from the same prompts. You can put garbage in and get… bullshit out, but the same quality bullshit that you get from non-garbage inputs! And enthusiasts are current mistaking the fact that the bullshit is consistently wrapped in the same envelope as meaning that the bullshit inside is consistent, laundering the unreasonable-ness into appearing reasonable.

Google’s AI Hype Circle

Google has a serious AI problem. That problem isn’t “how to integrate AI into Google products?” That problem is “how to exclude AI-generated nonsense from Google products?”

The one about AI - macwright.com

Writing, both code and prose, for me, is both an end product and an end in itself. I don’t want to automate away the things that give me joy.

And that is something that I’m more and more aware of as I get older – sources of joy. It’s good to diversify them, to keep track of them, because it’s way too easy to run out. Or to end up with just one, and then lose it.

The thing about luddites is that they make good punchlines, but they were all people.

Those meddling kids! The Reverse Scooby-Doo theory of tech innovation comes with the excuses baked in | Nieman Journalism Lab

Manufactured inevitability a.k.a bullshit:

There’s a standard trope that tech evangelists deploy when they talk about the latest fad. It goes something like this:

1. Technology XYZ is arriving. It will be incredible for everyone. It is basically inevitable.
2. The only thing that can stop it is regulators and/or incumbent industries. If they are so foolish as to stand in its way, then we won’t be rewarded with the glorious future that I am promising.

We can think of this rhetorical move as a Reverse Scooby-Doo. It’s as though Silicon Valley has assumed the role of a Scooby-Doo villain — but decided in this case that he’s actually the hero. (“We would’ve gotten away with it, too, if it wasn’t for those meddling regulators!”)

The critical point is that their faith in the promise of the technology is balanced against a revulsion towards existing institutions. (The future is bright! Unless they make it dim.) If the future doesn’t turn out as predicted, those meddlers are to blame. It builds a safety valve into their model of the future, rendering all predictions unfalsifiable.

WriteFreely

I hadn’t come across this before: a barebones blogging tool with built-in fediverse support—neat!

Norton

It me.

Occasionally, I wonder whether I’ve got it all wrong. Is my age, my technical unsophistication, or my fond remembrance of an internet unencumbered by commerce blinding me to the opportunities that crypto offers me? But then I read something terrible and I recant my doubts, meditate for a while and get on with my life.

Tailwind and the Femininity of CSS

So when it comes down to the root of the problem, perhaps it isn’t CSS itself but our unwillingness to examine our sexist ideas of what is worthy in web development.

My Custom CSS Reset

This CSS reset is pleasantly minimalist and a lot of thought has gone into each step. The bit about calculating line height is very intriguing!

SmolCSS

Minimal snippets for modern CSS layouts and components.

A minimum viable experience makes for a resilient, inclusive website or app - Post - Piccalilli

The whole idea of progressive enhancement is using the power that the web platform gives us for free—specifically, HTML, CSS and JavaScript—to provide a baseline experience for the people who visit our sites and/or apps, and then build on that where appropriate and necessary, depending on the capabilities of the technology that they are using.

new.css

A minimal style sheet that applies some simple rules to HTML elements so you can take a regular web page and drop in this CSS to spruce it up a bit.

Kevin Kelly on Why Technology Has a Will | Palladium Magazine

Technologies are always coming out of networks that require other related ideas to have the next one. The fact that we have simultaneous independent invention as a norm works against the idea of the heroic inventor, that we’re dependent on them for inventions. These things will come when all the other pieces are ready.

world smallest office suite

I like this idea for a minimum viable note-taking app:

data:text/html,<body contenteditable style="line-height:1.5;font-size:20px;">

I have added this to bookmarks and now my zero-weight text editor is one keypress away from me. You might also use it as a temporary clipboard to paste text or even pictures.

See also: a minimum viable code editor.

The Empty Box | CSS-Tricks

This is an excellent framing for minimal viable products—what would the black box theatre production be?

Forget about all the production and complexity you could build. What’s the purpose you want to convey at the core?

Identify core functionality.

NASA Collection

Back in 1985, Ian wrote to NASA to get some info for a shool project (that’s how it worked before the World Wide Web). NASA sent him a treaure trove in response. Here they are, scanned as PDFs. Mercury, Gemini, Apollo, the Space Shuttle, and more.

The beauty of progressive enhancement - Manuel Matuzović

Progressive Enhancement allows us to use the latest and greatest features HTML, CSS and JavaScript offer us, by providing a basic, but robust foundation for all.

Some great practical examples of progressive enhancement on one website:

• using grid layout in CSS,
• using type="module" to enhance a form with JavaScript,
• using the picture element to provide webp images in HTML.

All of those enhancements work great in modern browsers, but the underlying functionality is still available to a browser like Opera Mini on a feature phone.

Et In Silicon Valley Ego – Dr Beth Singler

The parallels between Alex Garland’s Devs and Tom Stoppard’s Arcadia.

Breaking the physical limits of fonts

This broke my brain.

The challenge: in the fewest resources possible, render meaningful text.

• How small can a font really go?
• How many bytes of memory would you need (to store it and run it?)
• How much code would it take to express it?

Lets see just how far we can take this!

The timelessness of The Ballad of Halo Jones, the girl who got out | FactorDaily

The Ballad Of Halo Jones is 35 years old this year.

Where did she go? Out.

What did she do? Everything.

Minimal Google Analytics Snippet | Minimal Analytics

If you really, really have to add Google Analytics to a sites, here’s a way to do it in a more performant way, without the odious Google Tag Manager.