Google’s Proprietary Fork of HTML Is Taking Over the Open Web
Consider this: Google owns the most popular search engine and the biggest video hosting platform in most countries, operates one of the most-used email services on Earth,1 has the greatest market share of any mobile operating system, makes the most popular web browser in many countries, serves the majority of the targeted advertising on the web, provides the most popular analytics software for websites, and is attempting to become a major internet service provider. And, to cap it all off, they’re subtly replacing HTML with their own version, and it requires a Google-hosted JavaScript file to correctly display.
None of this is ok.
stevenf.com
What’s not to like about Steven Frank’s new site at stevenf.com
Nothing, there’s nothing not to like.
Scripting News: May 31, 2017
Innovation. I am now storing the OPML file for this blog in my Dropbox folder. I think I just recreated Fargo. I’ll let you know. 😉
I hope so. I really liked using Fargo. I’d like to blog the way Dave blogs and his tools have typically suited his style.
John Wick: Chapter 2, 2017 - ★★★★
It’s good to see Keanu back. Great, escapist fun.
Notifications: A Tragedy Of the Digital Commons — Scott Belsky
“The most effective mobile notifications are finance related, fear related, or have some degree of FOMO (fear of missing out) in them. As such, companies are playing games to get us to pay attention.”
Count me among those who’ve disabled nearly all notifications.
When site speed metrics make you do something silly
A few weeks ago I moved my blog from a static site at baty.net into WordPress at baty.blog. I don’t know how it’ll all turn out but that’s where we are now.
My page speed scores dropped considerably after moving to WordPress but it’s a sacrifice I’ll make for the convenience and interop of a dynamic site.
I got to wondering how high I could get my speed score on the old static site. I believe that watching any metric too closely is dangerous and can lead to all sorts of poor decisions. “Getting the numbers up” at all costs is an attitude best avoided.
Ignoring my own advice, I made a new, super-minimal Hugo theme just to see what effect it had on the speed tests. The theme is based on and is the simplest possible thing, within reason. I added minor styles to a couple of things just so it was ever-so-slightly easier to look at and read. Here it is.
It may have been a silly and unnecessary thing to do, but it worked. Here’s the new score…
If you think Schrodinger’s cat is weird, then…
Oxford Academic on Bell’s Theorem
“In doing so, it undermines the entire basis for ‘local realism’, proving that the world we see does not always exist separately from our perception of it.”
I know nothing about quantum mechanics, but how’s that for a terrifying statement?
Hate Mowing Your Lawn? Good! Don’t Do It - The Nib
Ted Steinberg and Shannon Wright:
It’s environmentally destructive and a huge waste of time. Let it go brown.
I would love to either not have a lawn or be able to completely ignore it. The compromise so far has been paying too much money for someone else to deal with it. Our obsession with having a perfect lawn and landscaping is ridiculous.
Having a brown lawn would be totally fine with me. Having the only brown lawn in the neighborhood is something I’m not prepared to tackle yet.
Back to the Apple Watch for a Week — The Brooks Review
Whereas, when I look at one of my traditional watches on my wrist, I get joy from looking at them
I wear my Apple Watch most days, but I do it begrudgingly. I like that it unlocks my computer. I like that it shows me the weather, and I like that sometimes it conveniently notifies me about important things. I don’t mind that it tracks my steps, event though I don’t get any real value from that.
Most of the time it’s nothing more than a tiny annoying iPhone on my wrist.
And I’ll never love it as much as I love my real, automatic watches.
Dave Winer on JSON Feed
“If developers have a hard time using XML in their apps, if that’s the problem, why not attack it right there? Work to make it easier. I work in Node and the browser, and in both places XML and JSON are equally easy to use. The same could be done for any environment. In fact in the browser, XML is integrated deeply into the programming model, because the web is made out of XML.”
I’m with Dave. Even though I’m sure it’ll make some developers happy, JSON feed feels like it’s solving a problem we don’t have.
UPDATE (2017-05-26): I hadn’t considered the idea that even though XML/RSS is pretty well-supported, parsing JSON is somehow more fun. That alone should spur some innovation or at least get people talking about feeds again. Maybe JSON Feed is solving a problem we didn’t know we had.
UPDATE (2017-05-30): It seems Dave is beginning to think along the same lines now.