dbread @dbread@qoto.org

my take on Gemini, Gopher, et. al.: just write HTML and mostly stick to features in HTML 2.0 as described in the RFCs (1866, 1867, 1942, 1980 (OK you can probably skip this one, imagemaps were always silly and questionable for accessibility), and 2070.)

don’t like the proliferation of JavaScript on the modern web? nobody’s forcing you to put a <script> tag in, just don’t write one. don’t like the crimes that can be committed with CSS, and believe that stylesheets should be the user’s choice, not yours? nobody’s forcing you to put a <link rel="stylesheet"> in.

you can even use good HTML5 features like srcset, and just stick to features present HTML2 otherwise, old browsers will just ignore it. follow design guides from before the Web 2.0 era, where your website was supposed to “gracefully degrade” - don’t require new features if you use them, and then the most potato of browsers can access your site.

and, sure, those potato browsers can’t access the rest of the modern web, but they can easily access sites of people who follow these guidelines… and so can modern browsers.

IMO, be the change that you want to see in the world that everyone actually uses, instead of creating your own world that will always be a tiny niche.

(refined version of a take in reply to someone else’s private thread, written for public consumption)

What I really like about #GNOME46 is that it turned out to be a really good release for old and low-end devices. One of my test devices is Thinkpad T400. That hardware is over 15 years old and is has actually got faster over the last few years - especially this release.

One of my favorite improvements here, headed by Christian Hergert, was the boost to VTE. Terminals using #gtk4 are now much faster and responsive. I mean, damn, even switching tabs doesn't trigger a full redraw!

#gnome

A large contingent of webdevs seem to think that fast means “best-case fast”: expensive hardware, reliable fiber networks.

Worst-case fast is a much more meaningful, impressive, and inclusive claim to make! Fast on low-end hardware. Fast on slow networks. Fast on the World Wide Web—not just from a WeWork in Silicon Valley.

Another banger by @pluralistic.

“an AI-supported radiologist should spend exactly the same amount of time considering your X-ray, and then see if the AI agrees with their judgment, and, if not, they should take a closer look. AI should make radiology more expensive, in order to make it more accurate.”

We knew this back in 2011-12 when I worked at IBM. AI is a support tool, not a replacement for human beings.

https://locusmag.com/2023/12/commentary-cory-doctorow-what-kind-of-bubble-is-ai/

@aral I might've vandalized it shortly with some game of life :)

I don't know if AI is going to replace programmers or not but there will be a lot of jobs just to delete AI generated code.

The 14mm Fibonacci48 prototypes have arrived, and they are tiny. 🧐

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