Micros

As a general rule, I don’t follow accounts or share content that neglect alt text. If someone seems open to growth, I usually try to contact them politely to explain the importance of alt text for accessibility.

I get varied responses. Some people thank me for cluing them in and make a change, and some people say they want to provide alt text but don’t know how (a good approach is to write like you’re describing something over the phone). Other people make the argument that people with disabilities don’t view their work, which is a common, lazy, ableist, and flawed claim made by people who don’t care about accessibility.

One argument that I adamantly dislike is: ‘I don’t put alt text on photos because it helps companies train AI’. At the core of this argument is prioritising inconveniencing AI companies over helping fellow humans – an ineffective attempt at sabotaging AI training by harming real people while doing virtually nothing to hinder AI corporations.

If training is your worry, consider that by omitting alt text, or worse, providing garbage, you are teaching AI systems and other people that alt text isn’t necessary and can be abused. Surely, at the end of the day, making things better for fellow humans is more important than making things insignificantly worse for AI systems?

Also, why risk publishing anything on the web if it is vulnerable to scraping? And why, specifically, draw the line at assistive technologies?

It is my true and honest opinion that every logo design process should involve a step of presenting the concept to a 14-year-old boy so they can identify anything phallic.

All my love to Adobe Illustrator, which has today decided I don’t need to use the shortcut Ctrl + Z. Wonderful stuff. Much appreciated.

My undo privileges have been undone.

I’m reducing my LinkedIn presence.

I’ve come to realise I don’t really benefit from a presence on LinkedIn. It attracts spam, scams, and unwanted messages. It also doesn’t help me find work – I’ve gotten more work from Bluesky than LinkedIn!

The content on LinkedIn is not useful to me. The people I care about are more present on other platforms, and I get more AI prose and images in my feed than I do genuine content. The relevant information I do get is often false, with there being a lot of accessibility slop in particular.

LinkedIn is run by Microsoft and cosy with the United States’ regime. It has removed protections for transgender individuals and fails to properly moderate misinformation. The platform actively penalises certain content, such that I don’t feel free to say what I want or to link freely.

LinkedIn also absolutely chugs whenever I try to use it. Perhaps that is related to scanning everyone’s computers for installed browser extensions. The site is very poorly optimised for mobile and consistently pushes me to use the app.

I’m not leaving entirely, as having an account makes it easier to combat accounts that steal my work, and having no presence on the platform can prove a red flag for some. I have cleared out my profile, though. If you wish to contact me or want to keep up with what I’m doing, my site has all you need.

I’ve been trying in relative vain to figure out how I feel about people reacting to my content. I’ve had enough success that YouTubers and streamers alike have published reactions to my content.

These reactions don’t fall under fair use or fair dealing in most cases, so legally they’re pretty grey. I’ve seen some reaction channels which I think could reasonably class their content as transformative, not only reacting to one piece of content but also cross-referencing it with other relevant bits of information and sometimes anecdotes to present a wider degree of information.

However, I’ve also seen some channels which fail to build on the source material. I’ve seen videos of streamers leaving a video playing while taking a break from the stream or sitting in silence for minutes while letting content play. I’ve had people read my content verbatim without any input of their own. I’ve also seen people butcher my work by failing to fully read or comprehend it, such that they critique my work in front of their followers without having done due diligence.

I’ve never seen any evidence of significant traffic to my site from video hosting sites, indicating that the people who watch reaction content don’t generally follow the links to view the source content themselves. Why would they? What have they to gain from visiting the source when they’ve just been exposed to the content in full via another medium?

I think that, in the majority of cases, the original creator should be consulted before their content is reacted to. If you do try to have the content taken down for infringement, influencer culture means that it can backfire by stirring up quite the drama, even if you’re in the right.

I like to think I know a lot, but given how much there is to know I’m certain I actually know very little. I’m so privileged that the front-end community is such an open place willing to share and distribute knowledge freely.

I look forward to learning so much more.

One of my ‘rules’ is to not make notes in design files. It forces me to make fresh judgements every time, which helps me re-evaluate my work more objectively.

Living in a Commonwealth country, I get a lot of exposure to the British royal family. I despise the fact that a royal family has any power in the modern age. I entirely fail to see how a monarchy is any less authoritarian than a dictatorship. Leaders should be democratically elected based on their virtues, not because of arbitrary factors such as being born into a specific family.

I feel sometimes we collectively fail to appreciate how underpowered computers of the past were. Especially when it comes to game consoles.

This level of performance was in pursuit of a lower price point, and games only managed to be as impressive as they were because they could target fixed hardware. Optimisations could be made for specific resolutions, processors, GPUs, and provided system-specific APIs, which isn’t possible with the wide array of configurations seen in general-purpose computers, even if many personal computers had rivalling hardware.

There are some fantastic edits of films by dedicated fans which take the same source media in different aspect ratios from different releases (VHS, DVD, Blu-Ray, widescreen, open mattes, scans, etc) and combine them to present the most comprehensive picture. Unfortunately because they don’t overlap perfectly, corners can be left lacking visual content, as represented by the orange below:

This has traditionally been addressed with ambient lighting fills, which are gradients based on the available image, but this can look jarring – it is just a blurry approximation after all.

I think filling these voids with generative outpainting is a good application of generative AI. It doesn’t detract from the art due to being confined to the very corners, and it allows the art to be more fully appreciated by reducing distraction. This is in contrast to AI conversions from 4:3 to 16:9, which I feel introduce significant alterations to the framing and context surrounding the content.

Japanese is full of 外gai来rai語go (loanwords), especially from English. A lot of these words end up sounding like English terms with a Japanese accent.

For example, ‘table’ translates to テtēーーブbuルru. The reason for the pronunciation change is that Japanese has a strict moraic structure where most consonants must be followed by a vowel, which here introduces a ‘u’ (though in most dialects it is a devocalised vowel). Additionally, Japanese has a single liquid phoneme, rather than distinct /r/ and /l/ sounds, so the English /l/ sound becomes a Japanese /r/ sound. Thus, テtēーーブbuルru.

Some people misinterpret adoption of a Japanese accent for pronunciation as insensitive, but the language’s phonetic structure necessitates use of Japanese phonology. Words adopted into Japanese are transcribed into Katakana – the original versions are incorrect in Japanese. Using the native Japanese rhythm ensures the word is recognisable and flows naturally within the sentence.

I don’t think enough people really talk about the fact that our prime minister here in Australia went swimming one day and then just disappeared. Genuinely just vanished then got replaced.

Nobody really knows what happened to him, though we did later name a swimming pool after him and there are many theories.

‘Look Tony, what are the odds of a prime minister being drowned or taken by a shark?’

— Harold Holt, prime minister of Australia, who presumably drowned.

I’m unsure what I did to piss them off, but I just wanted to give a shout-out to the delinquent who sent me ‘Fuck You’ without further elaboration via every single public communication channel of mine they could find.

> Post about how bad accessibility overlays are on LinkedIn
> Get message notification
> ‘I saw your recent post, but our overlay is different. Check it out!’

🫥

Also, pro tip, if you’re trying to shill your overlay and prove that you’re different, don’t use the term ‘handicapped’.

Even pro-er tip: Just stop with the accessibility overlays. There is something seriously wrong with you if you think exploiting or jeopardising people with disabilities is an opportunity to make a quick buck.

Chinese pronunciations are not intuitive for English speakers. The Chinese Phonetic Alphabet, also known as Hanyu Pinyin or just pīnyīn, is a romanised version of Chinese that uses Latin letters in ways that don’t match typical English usage.

This cheat sheet is not comprehensive but does cover the basics and many common pitfalls.

Consonants

The primary hurdle is the distinction between the J, Q, X sounds (tongue forward/down) and the Zh, Ch, Sh sounds (tongue curled back).

Vowels & Combinations

Pinyin vowels often change their sound based on the consonants they follow.

Common Pitfalls

• The Hidden ‘ü’: When the ü sound follows J, Q, X, or Y, the umlaut is dropped. Even if written as Ju, it is pronounced like Jü.
• The ‘ui’ Shortcut: Pinyin -ui is shorthand for -uei. Therefore, Hui sounds more like ‘Hway’ than ‘Hoo-ee’.
• Unvoiced Consonants: In Pinyin, B, D, and G are ‘unvoiced’. This means B sounds closer to a soft English P, and D sounds closer to a soft English T.

The Four Tones

1. First (mā): High and level (like a sustained singing note).
2. Second (má): Rising (like a question: ‘What?’).
3. Third (mǎ): Low and dipping (like a slow, hesitant ‘Well…’).
4. Fourth (mà): Sharp and falling (like a firm command: ‘Stop!’).

CSS Naked Day MISUNDERSTOOD (gone wrong) (just got out of GAOL!!??!) 😵🤯👮‍♂️

‘You need to understand that Sam can never be trusted. He is a sociopath. He would do anything.’
— Aaron Swartz, who was federally charged while trying to make information free, talking about Sam Altman, who would go on to co-found the company OpenAI, which harvests information en masse with no repercussions.

Samsung launched a browser for Windows. Samsung Internet is spreading. I repeat, Samsung Internet is spreading.

I fear that this may be the end of civilisation as we know it. The collapse of technology and return to the stone age.

Member of the AI resistance: ‘Halt! List every valid value for timeZoneName! Recite them! List them now!’

Me: ‘I— I don’t know. There is short and long. I think offset is somewhere in there?’

Member of the AI resistance moving on to screen another person: ‘This one’s clear. They’re human.’

MDN page for the constructor: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/JavaScript/Reference/Global_Objects/Intl/DateTimeFormat/DateTimeFormat

Great reference: https://topper64.co.uk/nk/btd6/rounds/regular

1.14+ can do crawl mining. Otherwise, standard strip mining.

Pre-1.17 Ore Distribution:

Pre beta 1.6, ores generate less in north/east quadrants compared to south/west. In beta 1.8, the Y-level range of each ore was lowered by 4.

Post-1.18 Ore Distribution:

If a diamond vein is exposed to air there is a 50% chance it won’t generate.

Nether Ore Distribution:

It is an open secret in Australia that Kmart sells a coffee grinder perfect for grinding bud, and the reviews from stoners on the Kmart website are appropriately fantastic.

(In store, this grinder is one of the few products with an anti-theft tag strapped to it.)

I’m working on PersonalSit.es and saw these logs. I really do think we ought to keep Henry away from the build systems.

631,152,000 seconds, 10,519,200 minutes, 175,320 hours, 7,305 days, 1,043 weeks (and 4 days), 240 months, 20 years.

Looking forward to many more!

Felt cute, might Application error: a client-side exception has occurred (see the browser console for more information) later.

Working on an article about accessibility overlays. Holy shit, fuck these companies and their deceit. I’m trawling through the waist-deep sludge that is their websites, and everything has this film of slime over it.

I knew they were bad, but I’d never looked that deeply into their marketing. Yuck.

I’m not usually this incensed, but accessibility overlay companies make my blood boil. How low do you have to be to go out of your way to exploit people with disabilities? Not only that, but to sabotage attempts to improve digital accessibility for all. Bottom-dwelling scabs.

The variety of thoughts that I find wandering my mind on a Monday night could kill if administered in tablet form.

I present to you a fish smoking a cigarette underwater.

Adobe is trying to revoke my Photoshop licence. They claim ‘misuse’ and ‘abuse of software’ and ‘Stop with these stupid things you keep making. They aren’t even funny’ and ‘you’re a dweeb’. I’m going on the run. They shan’t stop me.

Gaolbreaking for iOS devices is winding down. Alas, the art is dead. Here lies a great empire.

I remember the buzz online when unc0ver released. I remember the breakthrough that was checkra1n. I was on Windows 7 at the time, and it was one of my first times in a terminal. It felt exciting. I was a 1337 h4xØr pwning my devices.

It was hackery like gaolbreaking that got me into the more technical aspects of computer use. I remember spending long hours experimenting with tweaks and honing my troubleshooting abilities.

Unfortunately, the scene isn’t as vibrant as it once was. Apple has placed a focus on security, meaning fewer devices and releases are exploitable, and the drive to gaolbreak has become weaker. Android became a more polished experience as well.

Many of the features people once gaolbroke their devices for are now native parts of iOS. No longer do you need a tweak for dark mode or to place icons where you want on your screen. Less low-hanging tweak fodder means that ones which are released never see the same adoption and thus aren’t as financially viable.

The world changes a lot, the tech world even more so – if there even is such a thing as a distinct ‘tech world’ in this ever more dystopian-looking landscape. Titans of the scene have moved on, and the old empire is crumbling.

Gaolbreaking today dredges up the old. Link rot and tweaks lost to time. The old repositories are gone, and the Cydia store is closed. So very many tweaks and apps are stuck in limbo, and there is little incentive to fix the situation.

There are still new tweaks and releases, but the scene is small. I miss the old days of boundary pushing and the energy surrounding it.

It was year 4 of primary school, and my class had just returned from either recess or lunch. As we formed a line outside the class, waiting to be let inside, Edvard Grieg’s In The Hall Of The Mountain King began blaring at an extreme volume through the wall. Speculating amongst ourselves as to what was going on, our teacher opened the classroom door, stepped through it, and beckoned us inside with a complete poker face.

Stepping inside, we were all shocked. The song blared from the interactive whiteboard’s speakers, and the room was in shambles. Tables were toppled, chairs were strewn around, and bits of paper waste littered every surface.

Our teacher remained vague and unspecific as our nine-and-ten-year-old minds attempted to figure out what had gone on. Had someone broken in? Had the teacher gone insane? Looking around, surveying the carnage (which seemed much more destructive than it really was), we found envelopes strewn around.

This was the setup for a creative writing exercise. I don’t recall what I wrote – it was almost certainly atrocious given my age – but this exercise has really stuck with me. It was one of the first times I was truly exposed to the joys of writing.

Your honour, I understand that I completely broke their software, but they simply shouldn’t have built it like that. Of course I went and fiddled with it. I’m pretty sure the attractive nuisance doctrine comes into play.