The LLMentalist Effect: how chat-based Large Language Models replicate the mechanisms of a psychic’s con

Taken together, these flaws make LLMs look less like an information technology and more like a modern mechanisation of the psychic hotline.

Delegating your decision-making, ranking, assessment, strategising, analysis, or any other form of reasoning to a chatbot becomes the functional equivalent to phoning a psychic for advice.

Imagine Google or a major tech company trying to fix their search engine by adding a psychic hotline to their front page? That’s what they’re doing with Bard.

Add Less | CSS-Tricks - CSS-Tricks

Let the power of the browser work for you, and use less stuff!

Amen!

Your websites start fast until you add too much to make them slow. Do you need any framework at all? Could you do what you want natively in the browser?

Add a Service Worker to Your Site | CSS-Tricks - CSS-Tricks

Damn, I wish I had thought of giving this answer to the prompt, “What is one thing people can do to make their website better?”

If you do nothing else, this will be a huge boost to your site in 2022.

Chris’s piece is a self-contained tutorial!

Remove Trackers - CSS-Tricks

Laura and I are on the same page here.

Embrace the Platform - CSS-Tricks

This is a wonderful piece by Bram. Half history lesson, and half practical advice for building resilient websites today:

By embracing what the web platform gives us — instead of trying to fight against it — we can build better websites.

Keep it simple. Apply the Rule of Least Power. Build with progressive enhancement in mind.

HTML, CSS, and JavaScript — in that order.

Help Users Accomplish What They Came For - CSS-Tricks

If I were to point out one thing that people can do to make their website better, it is to take a moment to think about the most crucial actions that we want our users to be able to do on a page and make them as easy and accessible as possible.

All visual effects, fancy graphics, beautiful interactions, and tracking scripts should come second.

Wise words from Anna.

I hope that progressive enhancement doesn’t become yet another buzzword and that you really take a moment to help the user accomplish what they came for.

Test Your Product on a Crappy Laptop - CSS-Tricks

Eric’s response to Chris’s question—“What is one thing people can do to make their website better?”—dovetails nicely with my own answer:

The two real problems here are:

1. Third-party assets, such as the very analytics and CRM packages you use to determine who is using your product and how they go about it. There’s no real control over the quality or amount of code they add to your site, and setting up the logic to block them loading their own third-party resources is difficult to do.
2. The people who tell you to add these third-party assets. These people typically aren’t aware of the performance issues caused by the ask, or don’t care because it’s not part of the results they’re judged by.

Ain’t No Party Like a Third Party - CSS-Tricks

Chris is doing another end-of-year roundup. This time the prompt is “What is one thing people can do to make their website bettter?”

This is my response.

I’d like to tell you something not to do to make your website better. Don’t add any third-party scripts to your site.

On User Tracking and Industry Standards on Privacy | CSS-Tricks

Prompted by my post on tracking, Chris does some soul searching about his own use of tracking.

I’m interested not just in the ethical concerns and my long-time complacency with industry norms, but also as someone who very literally sells advertising.

He brings up the point that advertisers expect to know how many people opened a particular email and how many people clicked on a particular link. I’m sure that’s right, but it’s also beside the point: what matters is how the receiver of the email feels about having that information tracked. If they haven’t given you permission to do it, you can’t just assume they’re okay with it.

2019 End-of-Year Thoughts Archives | CSS-Tricks

I’m really enjoying this end-of-the-year round-up from people speaking their brains. It’s not over yet, but there’s already a lot of thoughtful stuff to read through.

There are optimistic hopeful thoughts from Sam and from Ire:

Only a few years ago, I would need a whole team of developers to accomplish what can now be done with just a few amazing tools.

And I like this zinger from Geoff:

HTML, CSS, and JavaScript: it’s still the best cocktail in town.

Then there are more cautious prognostications from Dave and from Robin:

The true beauty of web design is that you can pick up HTML, CSS, and the basics of JavaScript within a dedicated week or two. But over the past year, I’ve come to the conclusion that building a truly great website doesn’t require much skill and it certainly doesn’t require years to figure out how to perform the coding equivalent of a backflip.

What you need to build a great website is restraint.

Redesign v15 Notes | CSS-Tricks

Chris redesigned CSS Tricks and it’s got some really nice touches. I particularly like the stacked card view on mobile.