Labnotes

Published

Weekend Reading — So Shiny, So Chrome

Via garywhitta

Design Objective

Instantiation A thoughtful piece about the sad state of web apps:

Now you might be saying to yourself “Well, I’ve never made a bloated web page!” or “I’ve never slapped loads of intrusive crap over the content!” I’d certainly like to think that I can look at my track record and hold my head up reasonably high. But that doesn’t matter. If the overall perception is that going to a URL to read an article is a pain in the ass, it hurts all of us.

This Door is the Epitome of User Experience Design "And yet, most software companies would never build this door". Is your company like that?

Inclusive Toolkit: tools for iOS & OS X app accessibility Kickstarter project to help make apps more inclusive and accessible to more people.

Writing for Apple Watch TL;DR Keep it personal and cordial.

ftrain

Maybe instead of saying “make it so easy that your mom can use it,” say “make it so easy that a senior executive can use it.”


Tools of the Trade

Polymer Element Catalog Polymer is 1.0, and comes with collection of elements you can download (true to Google, they still use bower). Lots of Material Design web components.

HashiCorp: Security Automation in the Modern Datacenter (video) An introduction to the fantastic Vault project.

Someone said that 30% of the images on the Docker Registry contain vulnerabilities That's no surprise given that most images are released only once. And it says nothing about the images you use, which you hopefully selected for how well they're maintained. But the article does make a very important point about the future of security and component management:

This number is wonderful. Not because it's high or low, but because it exists. The fact that it is possible (and relatively easy) to compute this metric means that it will be possible (and relatively easy) to improve it, among other things.

numi Minimal and smart calculator app for the Mac.

postcss-style-guide A PostCSS plugin for generating styleguides from your CSS.

ungrid The simplest responsive CSS grid. Easy to learn: just two classes. Fast: only 97 bytes minified!

@media (min-width: 30em) {
    .row { width: 100%; display: table; table-layout: fixed; }
    .col { display: table-cell; }
}

wilto

the year is 2047

i have finally managed to get my dev environment up and running normally

i immediately retire without committing any code


Lingua Scripta

JavaScript as a Protocol for Native Development

There may be a simpler, less conventional alternative to consider: don't write an RFC! Or to put it differently: let JavaScript code act as your specification!


Lines of Code

The Carrying-Cost of Code: Taking Lean Seriously 100%:

I think that the future belongs to organizations that learn how to strategically delete code. Many companies are getting better at cutting unprofitable features in their products, but the next step is to pull those features out by the root: the code. Carrying costs are larger than we think. There's competitive advantage for companies that recognize this.

RailsConf 2015 - Nothing is Something (video) Fantastic talk by Sandi Metz, and a worthy follow up to her RailsConf 2014 - All the Little Things

Being explicit about hidden ideas makes your code simpler, your apps clearer and your life better. Even very small ideas matter. Everything, even nothing, is something.

noahsussman

humans under pressure cannot be relied upon to properly interpret a stack trace

Codemania 2015: Josh Robb - Connascence & Coupling (video) A great talk about software complexity, and building for change.

New C++ experimental feature: The tadpole operators This is master level trolling! (hint)

mraleph

"I'm solicitor to late Gregory Egorov, a C++ programming mogul. Tell me your GitHub account so I could send your inheritance of 1MLOC C++"


Peopleware

reverendanthony

I've never, ever worked with an asshole who couldn't be replaced with someone equally good, who was not an asshole. Ever.


Locked Doors

After FBI domain expires, seized Megaupload.com serves up porn FBI forgets to renew their cirfu.net domain, which they use for serving seized domains. What happens next won't surprise you at all.

Hola Better Internet Sells Your Bandwidth, Turning Its VPN into a Botnet Hola lets you bypass geo content restrictions, and it's free to use, "free" as in someone else gets to use your internet bandwidth for whatever purpose: not necessarily legal or ethical.

IRS system mined for over 100,000 taxpayer records by fraudsters IRS joins the Free Credit Monitoring club. Note: it was mined not hacked, as if that makes a difference to the people affected!

Slack API Terms of Service Just this:

9 Government Access. You will not knowingly:

9.1 Allow or assist any government entities, law enforcement, or other organizations to conduct surveillance or obtain data using your access to the Slack API in order to avoid serving legal process directly on Slack. Any such use by you for law enforcement purposes is a breach of this API TOS.


Techtopia

When the Best Page on a Campaign Website Is the One That's Not There The 2016 presidential election race gets serious: who's got the best 404 page of them all?

spolsky

Today I got email from our thermostat.

You're a thermostat! Get over yourself!

TechnicallyRon

My new erotic novel "Love in the time of autocorrect" will be out soon. Here is a sample


None of the Above

Feminist Mad Max

Wilton Silver Color Mist Amazon reviews are killing it again:

5 star So Shiny, So Chrome

Oh what a spray! What a lovely spray!

15 Unbelievable complaints travelers actually filed against their tour operator “The beach was too sandy.”

KUNG FURY Official Movie The 80's are back and they kick ass!

I Fooled Millions Into Thinking Chocolate Helps Weight Loss. Here's How. This is pretty much every "Scientists say …" article in mainstream media:

When reporters contacted me at all, they asked perfunctory questions. “Why do you think chocolate accelerates weight loss? Do you have any advice for our readers?” Almost no one asked how many subjects we tested, and no one reported that number. Not a single reporter seems to have contacted an outside researcher. None is quoted.

YoungmeMoon "Beautiful words that don't exist in English..."

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