I especially appreciated the section on performance absolutism and micro-optimizations, though I have a rather different point of reference than speedrunning Super Mario. I grew up with Apple II computers, and there were (and still are, among hard-core retro computing enthusiasts) some programs, especially games and demos, that boot directly from a floppy disk with no OS. One such modern program boots to the opening menu from a floppy in under a second. 1/?
But of course, there were/are severe tradeoffs to achieve that impressive feat. Perhaps you know about the classic text adventures from Infocom. The Apple II versions of these games had a minimal boot loader that directly loaded the interpreter and game with no OS. That was the only way to squeeze the interpreter plus a possibly 128K game onto a 140K floppy. But that also meant there was no way to run the primitive screen reader for the Apple II, even though these were all-text games. 2/?
Now of course, the analogy breaks down. On the web, the screen reader is outside the website, and some very lean websites are also very accessible, being based entirely on standard semantic HTML elements. Though one could imagine some kinds of web site/app that could be implemented more compactly using canvas with no accessibility than using HTML and CSS. 3/?
But I think the desire to create a super-optimized work of art is the same, and I feel it as well. On the web, the equivalent of that game disk that boots to the opening menu super fast might be a page where the CSS and JavaScript is embedded in the HTML and it's all minimized to fit in the initial ~15K burst allowed by the TCP slow start algorithm, so it can totally crush page speed tests. Impressive, but not necessarily practical, though maybe for reasons other than accessibility. 4/4
@matt Yeah, I sort of feel this way about what I did with Pinafore. It was almost an experiment in making the most hyper-optimized SPA I could, a scorched-earth approach to perf optimizations. But it was also a one-man show, and bound to a particular framework, so it wasn't necessarily going to be maintainable long-term. I'm curious how Semaphore/Enafore have held up since then.
At the end of the day, perf is just one virtue among others, and has to be weighed accordingly.
We know â and our rulers certainly know â that if we are to have any hope of preserving even a limited version of todayâs complex modern society, greenhouse gas emissions MUST go down, swiftly and urgently.
But instead, emissions continue going up and up and up. It is literally suicidal.
So, WHY haven't we stopped burning fossil fuels?
Because there are profits to be made. Huge, massive, irresistibly tempting profits.
In a sane world, these actions would be seen as criminal.
Perpetrators like fossil fuel executives, their financiers, and the politicians who enable them, would be arrested, charged, tried, and convicted, with assets forfeited to pay for mitigation and reparations.
đČ OMG, Audio Overview feature on NotebookLM is wild! It basically creates a podcast with two AI generated voices based on the source documents you upload. Definitely try if you haven't yet. #LLM #ML #AIblog.google/technology/ai/noteâŠ
#Tuvalu, likely first modern country to become uninhabitable, has new plan for keeping control of fishing rights even if its land disappears by #climatechange.
#LawOfTheSea treaty says sea territory, fishing rights only exist with reference to land territory, but is silent on what happens when land changes, disappears. Tuvalu has multi-pronged strategy to form intl consensus that sea borders remain if their land disappears.
Some impressions from Boiling The Ocean yesterday and today! Lots of productive planning and hacking including on postmarketOS, GNOME OS, Papers, eSIM settings, local-first plans, and much more :)
Did you catch the recent ACB Vispero Presentation - Use Text Processing Settings to Customize How JAWS Reads Text? In case you missed it, the archive is now available: acb-community.pinecast.co/episâŠ
Hi there :) We have inbox rules, which allow you set different rules for incoming email. To set up a new rule (for example set a rule to send email directly to trash) simply go to settings - email - click the plus under email rules.
Mit 12 ZĂŒgen fuhr ich die letzten Tage. Davon einmal Schienenersatzverkehr und einmal eine unbedeutende VerspĂ€tung von ein paar Minuten, sonst alle pĂŒnktlich und ohne Probleme.
Star Trek The Next Generation, which first aired 37 years ago on this day 28th September, 1987. STTNG and the crew of the Enterprise D would go on to became a worthy successors to the original series and an integral part of the enduring legacy of Star Trek. #startrek #StarTrekTNG
> Many developers say AI coding assistants make them more productive, but a recent study set forth to measure their output and found no significant gains. Use of GitHub Copilot also introduced 41% more bugs, according to the study from Uplevel, a company providing insights from coding and collaboration data.
Like I've been saying for a while, feeling productive is not the same as being productive
Itâs very rarely that I am left shaking after reading something. This article outraged and frightened me, and itâs a striking example of why so many blind people will be outside the HQ of Uber and Lyft in October. We have every right to expect that we can go about our business without fear, and that the law will be enforced. nfb.org//images/nfb/publicatioâŠ
Weâre happy to announce that AntennaPod is joining #Hacktoberfest again. Weâd love to see contributions from developers of all experience levels. Whether youâre new to open-source or a seasoned pro, Hacktoberfest is a great time to dive in. antennapod.org/blog/2024/10/haâŠ
âJa, ja, ja und ja, das braucht es. Die AfD versucht die Demokratie abzuschaffen. Die Demokratie muss wehrhaft sein und eine anti-demokratische Partei muss verboten werden. Das ist im Grundgesetz so vorgesehen. Es ist höchste Zeit und die Zeit ist jetzt.â
What have I been up to, lately? Well ... not a lot of productive things, truth be told. Granted, there's some uni responsibilities I'm proud of having sent in before the deadline, and I have read a fair number of books (especially a lot more of Discworld, and all of Murderbot, which I read at a rate of one book per day). But otherwise I've just been reading countless articles and blog posts, watching videos, scrolling Reddit even when I said I would quit (again), doing a lot of comparing prices among shops for things I may not really need, Why, though? Well, to give the best life to this puppy in the below pictures! Everyone, say hi to Pika! She loves sleeping, food, her family, chewing, swimming, growling fearsomely while actually completely misunderstanding the game of tug (she thinks she's supposed to push the toy towards me and let me do all the tugging on my own), and all the belly, chest, back, neck ... just, all the rubs ever. And though she hasn't met you yet, she loves you, too. Mind you, all these pics are a bit out of date. She's almost 4 months old now and a much bigger girl at 15 kg. I'll be sure to get you a more recent pic sometime, perhaps with her new favourite toy, a plushy carrot that, to my unimaginative hands, looks more like a fish. But until then, enjoy this little journey! I've added additional info in the alt texts where I could, but I can's see the pics myself, so some descriptions are lacking. #pets #dogs #puppies 1/2 because apparently there's a pic limit.
Just boosting this. A blind person was refused an Uber because of her guide dog, then police pulled guns on her and her friends. Uber sided with the police. How is this not a national outrage? nfb.org//images/nfb/publicatio⊠@pluralistic @jeffjarvis
Los ataques continuos contra la micromovilidad nacen del lobby cochista, que se ha dado cuenta que cada VMP que se vende reduce las ventas de sus sofĂĄs con ruedas. Con toda la educaciĂłn de que soy capaz: que les jodan. Que les jodan fuerte. EstĂĄn destrozando el futuro y frenando la sostenibilidad.
I wish the WebKit/Safari team had stubbornly refused to implement Web Components. Now we're stuck with them as part of the huge stack of standards that make up the web platform. Just saw this article which argues that Web Components impose a steep cost for little benefit: dev.to/ryansolid/web-componentâŠ
@jscholes Then again, maybe I can point to something concrete. Web Components are one of the things that have contributed to the runaway complexity of the web platform, which affects, among other things, the size of Electron, which I ship in one of my applications. If the Chrome team had encountered more resistance when piling up new features, including Web Components, then maybe that executable wouldn't be so huge now.
Chris đ±
in reply to Kevin Beaumont • • •