Firehose

We used to be Explorers of the Internet. We used to be Navigators of the Netscape – Browsers, Communicators. We admired the Moasic. It was the WorldWideWeb. We admired the Nexus. What happened?

Was at the doctor’s, and a trap remix of Frère Jacques was playing on loop. Simultaneously, Chumbawamba’s Tubthumping was playing from another speaker.

Needless to say, I engaged in some ethical hacking by use of my Flipper Zero.

Are you a 500ms or 0.5s sort of person?

Taking a break from my writing to go to a content aggregation site to enjoy somebody else’s writing, only to find my own writing staring back at me there.

There are worse problems to have, but I’m not cut out for ‘success’.

Instead of measuring time with standard units, I’ve taken to using CVEs as my measure.

Say not: ‘I went to the shops last week.’

Instead say: ‘I went to the shops 879 CVEs ago.’

I love when you say something in a forum, someone replies with a retort that entirely shuts you down, and then a random keyboard cowboy swings by the thread and says, ‘Actually, they meant X’, saving your skin.

Why yes, that far better thought-out argument is certainly the one I was trying to make.

Hacker News commenter: Couldn’t even read the article because the website wouldn’t load in my copy of Internet Explorer 5 on Windows ME. The modern web sucks.

I have a rouge instance of NVDA running somewhere because I continue to hear the dulcet tones of Windows OneCore whispering little somethings to me.

And now, without further ado…

(Ados further)

Your author is an idiot. You thought them sharp and quick.

But then they spoke of facts you know and outed themselves a prick.

LinkedIn is a silo, and daring to so much as suggest one temporarily leave it is punished.

The currencies of this platform are engagement and ad impressions. If you aren’t actively using LinkedIn, you cannot be served advertisements. You are not engaging with content, and you can be tracked far less.

To dare to share a link which might drag people away is condemned by the algorithm to the nth degree.

I knew this. I’ve seen the ‘Link in comments’ verbiage, but never did I expect links to be as vilified as they are. A post with a link is dead on arrival. Posts containing links are sent into the ether by LinkedIn’s algorithm.

This is the World Wide Web, an interconnected network, not a lone strand that should be dominated by a few major platforms. Links are the backbone of this place, and they matter, yet I’m forced to relegate them to a footnote of my posts if I want any return from this platform.

I’m disappointed, but that is the way it is. The algorithm’s link-suppression policy is just one of many reminders that LinkedIn doesn’t have your best interests at heart.

Knocking off for the day after adding some ‘pop’ with body {filter: saturate(10); } and making the app ‘more dynamic and interactive’ by slapping * { transition: all 0.25s ease-in-out; } into the stylesheet.

I read a very fascinating post on building a tiny Markov model based on one’s own writing. Naturally, I gave it a whirl on the currently ~120,000-word corpus of Vale.Rocks. Reproduced below are some of the slightly more coherent, interesting outputs that I’ve cherry-picked.

Patches are also frequent comparisons to previous hype-driven drivel such as HTML, CSS, and JavaScript where possible but often find myself engaging with a damp paper towel once I got my biomagnet installed, and for the sake of preserving my appearance or structure. My body without me is a child of .. You are now well estranged by time, and a more varied, refined equipment system. It is so much better. The new flexibility allotted by our full redesign and development allows for individuals to customise their editor to define how prose should display.

YOLO (You Only Live Once) is just writing, perhaps supplemented with additional JavaScript-based functionality considered progressive enhancement, but that is iffy.

Three outputs from a command which instructs the text to begin with ‘The web is’ (./mvs 2 100 'The web is' < vale_corpus.txt):

The web is my attempt to offer both—a unique, accessible experience. Perhaps the largest and most advisories urge against its usage. Exploitation of the Google search results page for the first few hours later with an external interface where I feel like a library or school which doesn’t have the technology.

The web is dominated by Chrome, and something tangible to walk away with and without variance. If there ever is a physical arcade rail shooter with a range of national organisations. We worked on the use of AV1. AV1 as a unicycle contributes to people’s willingness to manually implement and hard-code every single thing. Thus, I moved away from giving any advice at all. Given this is a case of Malaysia, many remote areas were going to figure out the specifics of what you’re writing, you’re limiting your reach and hurting your growth. Yet another step up from a moving

The web is dominated by Chrome, and something needs to do so. I figured I’d do something on the Xbox, I wouldn’t sweat it if you use Samsung Internet? Person: I’m not a huge interest in smoking, which is lovely for debugging and visualising exactly how much this game is pushing forward while minimising miscommunication. You’re going to be carefully considered and future-proofed – especially not mother monkeys with infants. This snake’s name is George, and while I did little circles. While most kids were wishing us a compliment, which was unfortunately let down somewhat by the very comprehensive IRDB.

Bit miffed that half my vocabulary is given the ‘archaic’ or ‘obsolete’ usage labels in dictionaries.

Can’t wait till one of those accessibility overlay providers decides to pivot to eugenics in their ever continuing effort to ‘fix’ accessibility without actually helping people with disabilities.

Had an absolutely fantastic time unicycling in the Perth Christmas Pageant with the WA Historical Cycle Club yesterday evening.

It was tricky riding so slow and in the presence of so many penny-farthings, but we made it through successfully, and everyone had a good time.

I high-fived so many people. I did feel a tad terrible when there were kids I missed or couldn’t quite reach down to, though. Lots and lots of tiny hands. The crowd rather liked it when I did little circles.

While most kids were wishing us a merry Christmas, the sheer number of children saying 6-7 complete with hand gestures was impressive – like some sort of hive mind.

I was absolutely knackered afterwards but posed for a few photos and such. Had an absolute blast and got to see some TV personalities. A highlight was ex-Wiggle Emma Watkins (Emma Memma) throwing us a compliment, which was lovely.

I don’t wish to count my chickens before they hatch, but it seems a long while since I’ve seen someone take direct issue with small caps on the web.

Dare I say web surfers have grown tolerant?

Whenever I see a person who calls themself a ‘web developer’ slap together a janky portfolio site in a site builder with poor accessibility, I’m forced to question their capability.

How can you be trusted to develop websites when the website you built to show you can build websites is poorly built?

My life’s prime directive is to avoid ending up with a Wikipedia page written about me which contains a ‘Controversies’ section.

I partly got into coding because computers were determinate and did exactly what they were instructed to reliably and without variance. If there was a problem, it was because your code was wrong.

But, congrats everyone, because by shoving AI everywhere we’ve made computers indeterminate.

It all went awry when we got rid of wizards in our setups.

‘Networking’ on Bluesky has been spades more effective for me than other platforms like LinkedIn or even the Fediverse. There is something special happening here.

(I hate using the term ‘networking’ here, because it makes the connections sound shallow and non-genuine, and that isn’t the case.)