Baldur Bjarnason

Web developer and consultant based in Hveragerði, Iceland. Lapsed Interactive Media Academic. Webby Tech Stuff and webby book stuff.

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npub1z8u5kqzzndfhjuhpuj6gtry6ggnrs2tpaavetcah0leqh7fgn8fs27xck7

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baldur_at_toot.cafe@mostr.pub

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nprofile1qqspr72tqppfk5mewts7fdy93jdyyf3c99s77kv4uwmhlustly5fn5cpz4mhxue69uhhyetvv9ujumt0wd68ytnsw43qy4aaez

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relay.mostr.pub

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npub1z8u5kqzzndfhjuhpuj6gtry6ggnrs2tpaavetcah0leqh7fgn8fs27xck7

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Last Notes

2024-09-07 12:04:05

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Like, there’s a geothermal well under my driveway that the previous owner of this house (the asshole who did a horrible job renovating it into flats) discovered during the renovation.
A real “oh no” moment, to be sure.
He had to spend a ton of money blocking it up and make it as safe as possible, but in theory it still could open up in a big earthquake.

2024-09-07 11:58:23

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And, beyond just making it safe for people who don’t quite understand how dangerous seemingly placid geothermal springs are, tourist sites need parking lots and there is no space near this site that isn’t either a protected reforestation area or geothermally active. Paving over hot springs is not sensible and the reason why Icelanders know this is we’ve tried and it never ends well

2024-08-09 12:23:24

“Chinese rocket breaks apart after megaconstellation launch, creating cloud of space junk | Space”
https://www.space.com/china-megaconstellation-launch-space-junk
I really feels like we're speedrunning every possible nightmare scenario experts have been worrying about in recent decades, from zoonotic pandemics, to the Kessler syndrome, to the global climate crisis, to pervasive software insecurity, and the rise of fascism.

2024-08-03 11:42:48

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@npub1jpv…0l9y 😍

2024-08-03 11:38:07

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@npub1jpv…0l9y They are the best. 🙂

2024-07-26 10:02:48

A day later, I’m still thinking about that study from Upwork.
Mainly because marketing-funded research of the kind that Upwork does usually prevents these kind of results by finessing the questions.
They simply do not directly ask questions that might have answers they don’t like. That they didn’t this time means they really, really did believe that “AI” is a magic productivity tool and weren’t prepared for even the possibility that it might be harmful.

2024-07-24 10:13:20

Sudden random thought: Deno’s standard library might be JSR’s killer app.
https://jsr.io/@std
These modules all look decently maintained, tested, self-contained, and useful. They work both in the browser and on the server
I still think JSR itself is kinda pointless, but I’m tempted to use it for my next personal project just for the deno std modules.

2024-07-23 18:10:18

After thinking that Hveragerði was a suburb of New York for several days, for the second time this month, Google has finally realised that I’m not an American soccer mom (best guess as to what it thought based on the Youtube ads it showed me) and I no longer have to set the time zone on the chromebook manually.

2024-07-22 12:38:52

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@npub1dq6…kl95 Yeah, that’s my worry as well. Though, it might just be a question of dropping out of the blockbuster movie business. Argylle’s budget on its own would probably pay for a bunch of HBO-level series.

2024-07-22 12:30:52

“Apple TV Plus budgets come under close scrutiny from top exec - The Verge”
https://www.theverge.com/2024/7/22/24203423/apple-tv-plus-tighten-budget-streaming-losses
I'd been wondering whether Apple TV+ roster of obviously too expensive and unprofitable original movies and series was a deliberate strategy or not. I guess I have my answer.

2024-07-06 10:58:05

Got my first “mastodon-style” well-actually reply guy over on Bluesky. The platform is growing up! 😄

2024-07-04 11:55:21

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@npub1xl4…p6vx They're literally offering this garbage as an API https://developers.google.com/maps/documentation/geolocation/overview 😑

2024-07-04 11:52:58

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So, based on what I've found out online, Google uses some form of machine learning to guess an IP address's physical location, unlike every other service. And this process getting locations horribly massively wrong seems to be a common problem.
My guess it that the number of US tourists with Android devices staying in Hveragerði might have had something to do with this utter bullshit.

2024-07-04 11:50:18

Google still thinks I'm in the US. The Chromebook has automatically switched to Central Eastern Time, forcing me to manually set the time zone.
And now I'm discover that a bunch of stuff I was following on Youtube isn't available in the US and it pushes commercial Youtube TV stuff much much harder making the overall experience worse (makes sense since much of it isn't available in Iceland)
And US ads absolutely suck. (The TV and iOS apps don't have ad blockers.)

2024-07-01 14:30:16

Just published an essay outlining why chatbots and copilots are especially bad for new approaches to web development
"New Web Development. Or, why Copilots and chatbots are particularly bad for modern web dev"
https://www.baldurbjarnason.com/2024/new-web-dev/

2024-06-26 15:39:44

“Researchers Prove Rabbit AI Breach By Sending Email to Us as Admin”
https://www.404media.co/researchers-prove-rabbit-ai-breach-by-sending-email-to-us-as-admin/
Honestly? This is exactly the kind of crap that happens if you're all-in on LLMs for coding. All sorts of basic stuff falls by the wayside

2024-06-22 10:14:15

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Also also, I’d say the odds are 50/50 that they’ll end up shipping at least some of these features unmodified in the EU because Apple’s culture of secrecy means they didn’t bother to actually talk to EU reps about what is or isn’t compliant.
Then they’ll spin that as a PR win: “we made the EU change its mind!”

2024-06-22 10:08:42

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Also, those of us living in Europe already know that “you would have gotten these features at the same time as the US if it weren’t for the EU” is a fucking lie. The US always gets features first, and we only get them later… if we’re lucky
(Iceland still doesn’t get Apple TV Plus.)

2024-06-22 09:53:11

“Your iPhone won’t get AI features because of the EU” is not the PR triumph Apple thinks it is.

2024-06-20 14:25:42

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@npub1plz…m9k0 Yeah, there have been a lot of improvement in recent years! 🙂

2024-06-20 09:57:05

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People who know about all of the new and cool features either don’t have the opportunity to use them or are too overworked to use them.
People who don’t know about them aren’t finding out because the field is effectively being dismantled, leading to fewer outlets writing about CSS and next to no conferences dedicated to it.
Businesses don’t want to pay for CSS so they’re basically getting less of it and fewer people who specialise in it.

2024-06-20 09:53:28

At risk of being labelled a one note pessimist, pretty much everything about the state of CSS—slow uptake of standards, popular reliance on frameworks, the lack of conferences, and the diminishing number of publications—can be explained by the eradication of CSS specialisation from the job market

2024-06-19 10:48:51

“I Will Fucking Piledrive You If You Mention AI Again — Ludicity”
https://ludic.mataroa.blog/blog/i-will-fucking-piledrive-you-if-you-mention-ai-again/
> The market is so distorted that it's almost as bad as dabbling in the crypto space. It isn't as bad, meaning that I haven't yet reached the point where I assume that anyone who has ever typed in import tensorflow is a scumbag, but we're well on our way there.
I wish I had the energy to write something this angry about “AI” because I’m absolutely this angry. Today’s must-read

2024-06-16 11:09:49

“Perplexity AI Is Lying about Their User Agent • Robb Knight”
https://rknight.me/blog/perplexity-ai-is-lying-about-its-user-agent/
> So they're using headless browsers to scrape content, ignoring robots.txt, and not sending their user agent string
Today is the day for Perplexity AI fuckups.

2024-06-15 10:45:39

Controversially, IMO most web devs shouldn’t be following in-progress web specs. Frameworks change constantly. Keeping track of in-progress change is a headstart on the code-annihilating churn of constant updates.
But once a spec is out of preview and implemented, it generally doesn’t change at all. But until then it’s a constant churn and keeping up can get EXTREMELY confusing. So, don’t. Wait until it’s actually out
Case in point: invokers are likely to get renamed https://github.com/whatwg/html/issues/9625#issuecomment-2140717681

2024-06-10 14:44:02

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@npub1eer…8yuv Ah, no. That's a typo. Like I said elsewhere, having a bit of a foggy day
Thanks for letting me know. Should be fixed soon 🙂

2024-06-10 14:14:41

The lifecycle of a tech bubble: https://www.baldurbjarnason.com/2024/bubble-lifecycles/

2024-06-06 10:53:35

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For example, the latest modelling on North Atlantic convection streams puts the odds of them shutting down within my lifetime at around 35-50%, rendering Iceland much less habitable.
And, honestly, I'm perfectly fine with wiping out entire industries if that's what it takes to prevent that from happening.

2024-06-06 10:35:34

Sometimes it feels like half of my social media is annoyed because they think climate activists are making unreasonable demands
While the other half is near-panic because they've done the research and realise that, in the understated words of the Magic Eight Ball, "outlook not so good"

2024-06-04 10:16:51

“A modern approach to browser support | Clearleft”
https://clearleft.com/thinking/a-modern-approach-to-browser-support

2024-05-24 11:44:26

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@npub1yyx…qa5g
You are much too trusting of MS, given their atrocious history for security and privacy and you aren't trusting enough of the people who specialise in security and privacy.

2024-05-16 12:02:43

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@npub1eer…8yuv No, I haven’t had the chance to look, sorry.

2024-05-15 10:26:34

“The wrong way to do Web Components | Go Make Things” https://gomakethings.com/the-wrong-way-to-do-web-components/

2024-05-11 14:30:14

And, bonus #caturday, this neighbour came for a short visit and did a routine inspection tour of the flat 😄
https://assets.toot.cafe/media_attachments/files/112/422/932/139/677/513/original/8729cf295ae07e44.jpg
https://assets.toot.cafe/media_attachments/files/112/422/932/249/176/422/original/cec4d3ffad6f8073.jpg
https://assets.toot.cafe/media_attachments/files/112/422/932/385/310/857/original/7e76b0b1040ce26a.jpg
https://assets.toot.cafe/media_attachments/files/112/422/932/577/430/510/original/179d493c42f14630.jpg

2024-05-04 11:02:00

The flip side to “Europeans are lazy and don’t work hard” is that we’re able to maintain a modern society with a high standard of living while still being able to spend time with our families. And why kill yourself through overwork when most of the rewards go to somebody else, anyway?

2024-04-21 10:29:16

“GitHub comments abused to push malware via Microsoft repo URLs”
JFC. https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/github-comments-abused-to-push-malware-via-microsoft-repo-urls/

2024-04-15 09:43:28

“Faster Connectivity !== Faster Websites - Jim Nielsen’s Blog” https://blog.jim-nielsen.com/2024/faster-bandwidth-and-websites/

2024-04-07 12:02:00

That feeling when the Icelandic spelling of a word leaks into your English writing.
(The letters ‘C’ and ‘Z’ aren’t in the Icelandic alphabet and when words that include them are adopted into Icelandic the letters get replaced with ‘K’ and ‘S’, respectively.)

2024-04-07 09:53:40

“Critics keep talking as if it’s useles, but it isn’t. It’s cheap and even though it has some flaws, is extraordinarily effective at some of its use cases.”
“So, what? Are we supposed to accept all the downsides of LLMs just because it’s occasionally useful?”
“LLMs? No I’m talking about asbestos.”

2024-03-21 14:36:33

I’m guessing Gruber will find some way to blame this on the EU
“Apple sued by Biden administration over alleged iPhone ‘monopoly power’” https://www.nbcnews.com/business/business-news/apple-sued-doj-antitrust-monopoly-biden-rcna144424

2024-03-20 15:17:59

“What if the doors to the creative industry are all closed?”
They used to say in comics that every time a new talent found their way into the industry, the powers-that-be would board it that way up so others wouldn’t follow. Looks like other creative industries are heading down the same path https://chocolateandvodka.com/2024/03/20/what-if-the-doors-to-the-creative-industry-are-all-closed/

2024-03-12 16:06:56

Web dev: constantly figuring out new ways for people to experience the joy and perfection that is “this is best experienced in…”
Kudos to the original pioneers: Netscape and IE. Other innovators: yarn vs npm, Early iPhone era Safari. Modern Chrome
And now packages registries with JSR. Wonderful

2024-03-12 14:45:11

Starlings dropping by for a visit
https://assets.toot.cafe/media_attachments/files/112/083/252/705/801/354/original/d20ff7c8c73ebd0f.jpg

2024-03-12 13:13:47

Putting together the blog post collection has meant trying to find old links in the Wayback Machine
One was this one by the legendary Kathy Sierra in 2004. It’s both inspiring and depressing, because we all know what happened in the intervening two decades
“A Computer Book Author’s Manifesto” https://web.archive.org/web/20120118171954/http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/oreilly/news/ksmanifesto.html

2024-03-12 09:56:49

“Thoughts on embedding alternative text metadata into images – Eric Bailey” https://ericwbailey.website/published/thoughts-on-embedding-alternative-text-metadata-into-images/

2024-03-12 08:52:58

“Artists Sell Themselves So Cheap”
"Artists don’t sell themselves cheap. If you as a rich publisher/producer/studio got creative work cheaply, you took advantage of someone." https://colleendoran.substack.com/p/artists-sell-themselves-so-cheap

2024-02-20 15:36:20

“The AI community needs to take copyright lawsuits seriously”
Maybe people will take this more seriously when a law professor says it. They certainly weren’t paying attention when I was making the same argument. https://www.understandingai.org/p/the-ai-community-needs-to-take-copyright

2024-02-16 11:15:54

“Advocating for Protections for the Information Ecosystem | by Emily M. Bender | Feb, 2024 | Medium” https://medium.com/@emilymenonbender/advocating-for-protections-for-the-information-ecosystem-89fbe95e9de2

2023-10-17 13:43:03

Occasionally I stop to think about how much of the modern software development infrastructure and community is run at a massive loss: Stack Overflow, npm, Github Copilot (probably Github itself), VS Code.
Also how much of it is owned and run by Microsoft.
So much of it could disappear at a short notice if just one CEO changes his mind about his company’s marketing strategy.

2023-09-23 12:06:46

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@npub1u2h…z4d7 Bing Chat is a search engine front end. The output is likely at least partially informed by search engine results.
The problem isn’t that they are limited at text correlation. The problem is that text correlation is a fundamentally limiting approach. Pattern-matching on an undocumented and effectively unknowable body of work using methods that are non-deterministic in practice exposes you to potential errors and biases in the output that are very hard to detect

2023-09-23 11:31:29

“Elegant and powerful new result that seriously undermines large language models”
Like I’ve been saying for a while now: LLMs do not think or reason. They are not on the path to AGI. They are extremely limited correlation and text synthesis machines. https://garymarcus.substack.com/p/elegant-and-powerful-new-result-that

2023-08-26 10:16:40

“Pants on Fire – Pixel Envy”
"But Evans does not give nearly enough weight to how often big industry players and their representatives simply lie."
I’m shocked, shocked etc. etc. https://pxlnv.com/blog/pants-on-fire/

2023-08-21 11:07:35

“The modern era of research-backed software delivery”
"Essentially, making projects small has 3x more impact than making them agile."
I’m pretty much required by law to link to any essay that both cites the CHAOS reports and Gall’s law https://octopus.com/devops/history/research-backed-software-delivery/

2023-08-05 12:14:42

> You see, if somebody robs a store, it's a crime and the state is all set and ready to nab the criminal. But if somebody steals from the commons and from the future, it's seen as an entrepreneurial activity and the state cheers and gives them tax concessions rather than arresting them. We badly need an expanded concept of justice and fairness that takes mortgaging the future into account.
- Ursula M. Franklin, The Real World of Technology

2023-08-05 10:51:37

“Patreon issues are causing paused payouts and canceled subscriptions - The Verge”
We’re seeing an increase in tech co blunders—exactly what rational people would expect a few months after a mass layoff. Patreon has laid of over 17% of its workforce in the past year or so. https://www.theverge.com/2023/8/3/23818598/patreon-payment-blocked-processing-declined-subscription-canceled