Conservative web development RB

Today I turned off my ad blocker, enabled JavaScript, opened my network monitor, and clicked the first link on Hacker News - a New York Times article. It started by downloading a megabyte of data as it rendered the page over the course of eight full seconds. The page opens with an advertisement 281 pixels tall, placed before even the title of the article. As I scrolled down, more and more requests were made, downloading a total of 2.8 MB of data with 748 HTTP requests.

This is ridiculous. It’s amazing the web works at all.

No longer trapped in cages. RB

Finally. :-)

How to Use Your Watch to Gauge the Magnitude of an Earthquake RB

It was March. There was a chill in the air, and snow flurries, but no snow on the ground. Nor, from the feel of it, was there ground on the ground. The earth snapped and popped and rippled. It was, Goldfinger thought, like driving through rocky terrain in a vehicle with no shocks, if both the vehicle and the terrain were also on a raft in high seas. The quake passed the two-minute mark. The trees, still hung with the previous autumn’s dead leaves, were making a strange rattling sound. The flagpole atop the building he and his colleagues had just vacated was whipping through an arc of forty degrees. The building itself was base-isolated, a seismic-safety technology in which the body of a structure rests on movable bearings rather than directly on its foundation. Goldfinger lurched over to take a look. The base was lurching, too, back and forth a foot at a time, digging a trench in the yard. He thought better of it, and lurched away. His watch swept past the three-minute mark and kept going.

Scary shit.

When I first heard Amazon... RB

Ben Miller:

When I first heard amazon.com I thought of a big rainforest. I now only think of 2 day delivery and lackluster streaming content.

Two Ways to Stop Caring What Others Think RB

Of course it still matters, in a big way, what your immediate family members, close friends, and employers think of your character. A falling out with this small handful of people could mean losing your livelihood, or your home (although it’s probably much easier for us to find another livelihood or home than it would have been for a similarly-shunned hunter-gatherer).

However, if a second cousin dislikes you, or a passer-by thinks you dress like a fool, it won’t affect your life much, aside from your own ruminations about it. In fact, it’s hard to imagine how the negative opinion of anyone in your life, even those closest to you, would really threaten your survival in the way it would for your ancestors.

Food for thought if you worry a lot about what others think of you.

Elon Musk email: Employee conducted 'extensive and damaging sabotage' RB

Elon Musk:

The full extent of his actions are not yet clear, but what he has admitted to so far is pretty bad. His stated motivation is that he wanted a promotion that he did not receive. In light of these actions, not promoting him was definitely the right move.

This is a sad story, but I love the dry humor/sarcasm here.

Free Trials From Apple’s Perspective RB

I think “free app with a free in-app purchase to unlock a one-month demo period, which, when expired, will require a $20 in-app purchase” is fundamentally more confusing than “this app costs $20 but you can try it for free for the first month”

Strongly Agree.