FeedCity

Afternoon session

Checked in at The Empire Music Hall. Zoe Conway kicking off Belfast Trad Fest! — with Jessica

Going to Belfast. brb

Starting a six-week sabbatical …now!

Clever!

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Number one:

Do things in the most straightforward way possible. It’s easy to fall into the trap of clever solutions, or clever applications of technology, or overbuilding something because you’re anticipating the future. Don’t do it. You will hate yourself for it later when you have to maintain it.

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Wednesday session

Google search is no friend to the indie web:

Well-known brands often see most of their content indexed, while small or unknown bloggers face much stricter selectivity.

There was life before Google search. There will be life after Google search.

Information that you might search for may never appear in Google’s results. Not because it doesn’t exist, but because Google has chosen not to include it.

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A lovely choose-your-own-adventure blog post by Robin.

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Ethicswishing (in tech) is the belief that if you are committed to being ethical and understand technology, then you are well-equipped to build technology for social good. But the truth is that building tech for social good is a lot like having sex in a bathtub: if you don’t understand the first thing about sex, it won’t help that you’re a world-class expert in bathtubs.

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Back when South by Southwest wasn’t terrible, there used to be an annual panel called Browser Wars populated with representatives from the main browser vendors (except for Apple, obviously, who would never venture onto a stage outside of their own events). I remember gettin...

Sunday session

Went for a nice walk along the cliffs yesterday.

This is a damned fine list.

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I love how this timeline of Irish inventions starts with the ancient Ogham writing system and culminates in the creation of the spice bag:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TimelineofIrishinventionsand_discoveries

David is on board. Who else?

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Kind of miffed that this evening’s traditional Irish music session in the Jolly Brewer has been cancelled because of the men’s football—I was looking forward to playing some tunes! 😞

I was having a discussion with some of my peers a little while back. We were collectively commenting on the state of education and documentation for front-end development. A lot of the old stalwarts have fallen by the wayside of late. CSS Tricks hasn’t been the same since i...

Tuesday session

Despite all of this hype, all of this media attention, all of this incredible investment, the supposed “innovations” don’t even seem capable of replacing the jobs that they’re meant to — not that I think they should, just that I’m tired of being told that this future is inevitable.

The reality is that generative AI isn’t good at replacing jobs, but commoditizing distinct acts of labor, and, in the process, the early creative jobs that help people build portfolios to advance in their industries.

One of the fundamental misunderstandings of the bosses replacing these workers with generative AI is that you are not just asking for a thing, but outsourcing the risk and responsibility.

Generative AI costs far too much, isn’t getting cheaper, uses too much power, and doesn’t do enough to justify its existence.

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