Reading The Pirate Queen by Ariel Lawhon.

A great little collection of accessible interactive components: dialogs, tabs, accordions, stuff like that.

Best of all, the components come with documentation: what problem is solves; when to use it; when not to use it; where to use it, and more.

adactio.com/links/22803

Hot on the heels of reading and enjoying The Mountain In The Sea, I picked up Ray Nayler’s next work, this tightly constructed novella. Once again it deals with inter-species communication. This time it’s de-extincted mammoths. Once again, it’s set in the relatively near fu...

Back in 2019, I read the book Other Minds: The Octopus, the Sea, and the Deep Origins of Consciousness by Peter Godfrey-Smith and said: I really enjoyed this evolutionary tale. It’s equal parts biology and philosophy. I will never look at cephalopods quite the same way a...

My computed probability of the risk that Chomp will eat me, or in statistical terms, P(CHOMP), is approximately 95%. This has been a tough realization for me, because I consider Chomp a close friend, and I insist that no harm or regulation should come to him. However, if ...

A message to Apple from the W3C Technical Architecture Group:

We expect user agents to make installation an obvious affordance to users. Specifically, we expect the install option to clearly name the action, and to be easily reachable from the browser’s UI. An entry inside a menu with an unrelated label (such as Share), or several menu layers deep, does not meet this expectation.

adactio.com/links/22799

The term “no-brainer” refers to a suggestion that is so compelling that it would be foolish to even consider not doing it.

I came across a no-brainer recently, thanks to Matt Hobbs:

Make all UK Government websites free to access without mobile data charges.

When I was done slapping my forehead at how obvious this proposal is, I signed the petition. If you’re a UK resident, you should do the same. And then spread the word.

This is the kind of proposal that I imagine any politician would be happy to support, regardless of party affiliation, so don’t be shy about contacting your local MP.

I guess in theory this could be opposed on the grounds that it technically violates net neutrality, but I would hope that the obvious societal benefits would outweigh that objection.

Like I said, a no-brainer.

Reading The Tusks of Extinction by Ray Nayler.

Back at the Vehicle Assembly Building …twenty years after I got to go inside it:

https://adactio.com/journal/1208

Going to Florida. brb

Bringing receipts for xkcd.com/2347.

adactio.com/links/22794

An in-depth report from Galax, the Old Time equivalent of the fleadh.

adactio.com/links/22793

Wednesday session

Tuesday session

In some ways, the short story is the ideal format for science fiction. If science fiction is all about ideas, a short story is a way to take an idea and play it out without any obligation to build a bigger world around it. But short stories can work the other way too. If yo...

Thought-provoking musings from Nolan.

adactio.com/links/22789

My Clearleft colleagues have made this tool to check if your colour palette has enough contrast to be accessible.

But let’s face it, the best part is the name—chef’s kiss!

This hue shall pass is an accessibility tool that helps you review and refine your brand’s digital colour palette. It shows you a matrix of all possible colour combinations and which ones pass or fail your accessibility criteria. It then helps you make adjustments to unlock more usable combinations.

adactio.com/links/22788

Reading The Mountain In The Sea by Ray Nayler.

Sunday session

Thursday session

We may end up with a full “hidden economy”: People working on their own passion projects, building things for their own sake, and for recognition from their peers. Work done without real compensation, to express personal ideas, moods, and visions, with personal lines drawn on when AI usage is acceptable, and when it isn’t.

This bifurcation would affect everyone. For every single hobby activity in your life you’ll have to make a decision: Do you care about the “outcome”, or do you care about doing it yourself, about going through the steps, learning, and doing it badly?

Say, do you just want to eat something, or do you want to know how to cook?

Do you just want a drawing, or do you want to learn how to express yourself in art, in a way that’s impossible to articulate or explain through a chat interface?

adactio.com/links/22784

A thoughtful comparison of “AI” and electricity:

The work is in two places. Regulation, which first requires the political will to want it, and which nobody gets to skip by hoping the technology will mature into fairness on its own. And efficiency — continued ground gained on open models small enough to run on ordinary machines. The future I want is local — off-grid AI. A model on a laptop that belongs to the person using it, the way a lamp belongs to the person who switches it on.

adactio.com/links/22783

Wednesday session

On this day, twenty five years ago, I wrote my first journal entry on this website. Twenty five years! A quarter of a century! That’s a significant portion of the lifetime of the World Wide Web itself. Actually, this site did exist before September 30th, 2001 but it was ve...

In defense of the girliest programming language.

I was pleasantly surprised to find a blog post of mine quoted in this article.

adactio.com/links/22780

A grim tally.

adactio.com/links/22779

If you’re anything like me, you’re sick of hearing about so-called “AI”. We are not a fringe. The majority consensus amongst actual regular people is that this is being forced down our throats and stuffed into our eyes and ears. That’s why it pains me that I’m about to add ...

I am an AI skeptic/hater/slow adopter, due to a combination of concerns about the ethics and environmental impact of AI and the fact that I like doing things myself. I knit my own socks, I built a swing for my porch this summer, and every Thanksgiving I make pies from scratch — even the crust (do you like my handmade em dash?).

adactio.com/links/22777

Aaron’s talk at Papercamp opened with this:

Fun fact: Alex and I first met 19 years ago at a conference in Paris where, coincidentally, I was speaking about something I referred to as the “Papernet”. Amazingly there are no photographs, that I could find online, of either of us speaking. This is a nice passage that Jeremy Keith wrote about the event at the time.

adactio.com/links/22776

Thursday session