Plane GPS systems are under sustained attack - is the solution a new atomic clock? - BBC News
A fascinating look at the modern equivalent of the Longitude problem.
Link tags: IM
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[this is aaronland] a tale of gummy snakes (and spunk)
About halfway through this talk transcript, Aaron starts dropping a barrage of truth bombs:
I understand the web, whose distinguishing characteristic is asynchronous recall on a global scale, as the technology which makes revisiting possible in a way that has genuinely never existed before the web.
What the web has made possible are the economics of keeping something, something which has not enjoyed “hockey stick growth”, around long enough for people to warm up to it. Or to survive long past the moment when people may have grown tired of it.
If your goal is to build something which is designed to flip inside of ten years, like many things in the private sector, that may not seem like a very compelling argument.
If, however, your goal is to build something to match the longevity of the cultural heritage sector, to meet the goal of fostering revisiting, or for novel ideas to outlast the reluctance of the present and to do so at a global scale, or really any scale larger than shouting distance, then I will challenge you to find a better vehicle for doing so than the internet, and the web in particular.
My Life in Weeks by Gina Trapani
This is one way of putting things into perspective.
The Tyranny of Now — The New Atlantis
I’m not a fan of Nicholas Carr and his moral panics, but this is an excellent dive into some historical media theory.
What Innis saw is that some media are particularly good at transporting information across space, while others are particularly good at transporting it through time. Some are space-biased while others are time-biased. Each medium’s temporal or spatial emphasis stems from its material qualities. Time-biased media tend to be heavy and durable. They last a long time, but they are not easy to move around. Think of a gravestone carved out of granite or marble. Its message can remain legible for centuries, but only those who visit the cemetery are able to read it. Space-biased media tend to be lightweight and portable. They’re easy to carry, but they decay or degrade quickly. Think of a newspaper printed on cheap, thin stock. It can be distributed in the morning to a large, widely dispersed readership, but by evening it’s in the trash.
Here Come the Lionfish – James Bridle
A terrific article by James.
6 CSS Snippets Every Front-End Developer Should Know In 2025 · 19 January 2025
- Springy easing with
linear()- Typed custom properties
- View transitions for page navigation
- Transition animation for
dialogandpopover- Transition animation for
details- Animated adaptive gradient text
Public Domain Image Archive
Explore our hand-picked collection of 10,046 out-of-copyright works, free for all to browse, download, and reuse. This is a living database with new images added every week.
Durable products | Brad Frost
Wherein Brad says some kind words about The Session. And slippers.
Slippers are cool.
The Two Rules Of Software Creation From Which Every Problem Derives – Ask The UXer
- Humans can not accurately describe what they want out of a software system until it exists.
- Humans can not accurately predict how long any software effort will take beyond four weeks. And after 2 weeks it is already dicey.
2004 was the first year of the future
I enjoyed reading through these essays about the web of twenty years ago: music, photos, email, games, television, iPods, phones…
Much as I love the art direction, you’d never know that we actually had some very nice-looking websites back in 2004!
Wibble-y-Wobble-y, Pace-y-Wace-y – Petafloptimism
Pondering pace layers.
The Unraveling of Space-Time | Quanta Magazine
This special in-depth edition of Quanta is fascinating and very nicely put together.
An Abridged History of Safari Showstoppers - Webventures
In an earlier era, startups could build on the web and, if one browser didn’t provide the features they needed, they could just recommend that their users try a better one. But that’s not possible on iOS.
I’m extremly concerned about the newest bug in iOS 18:
Whaa? That’s just shockingly dreadful!
First Impressions of the Pixel 9 Pro | Whatever
At this point, it really does seem like “AI” is “bullshit you don’t need or is done better in other ways, but we’ve just spent literally billions on this so we really need you to use it, even though it’s nowhere as good as what we were already doing,” and everything else is just unsexy functionality that makes what you do marginally easier or better. I’m sorry we live in a world where enshittification is being marketed as The Hot And Sexy Thing, but just because we’re in that world, doesn’t mean you have to accept it.
Developers Rail Against JavaScript ‘Merchants of Complexity’ - The New Stack
Perhaps the tide is finally turning against complex web frameworks.
Frostapalooza in photos and videos | Brad Frost
These are great!!!
Openly Licensed Images, Audio and More | Openverse
A library of CC-licensed photos.
Next time you’re tempted to use a generative “AI” tool to make an image for a slide deck, use this instead.
Lessons learned in 35 years of making software – Jim Grey
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.
A Rant about Front-end Development – Frank M Taylor
Can we please stop adding complexity to our systems just so we can do it in JavaScript? If you can do it without JavaScript, you probably should. Tools shouldn’t add complexity.
You don’t need a framework to render static content to the end user. Stop creating complex solutions to simple problems.