We used to have much more diversity in terms of browser engines years ago than we do today. This is easy to understand as the Web in 2018 is far more complex than it was in the early
noughties. It is very costly to develop and maintain a Web engine and few companies have the necessary talent and cash to do it. Microsoft is one of those companies but the fact that
it might be throwing in the towel on its engine signals a bad development for all
of us.
…
Further evaluation of the dangers of the disappearing diversity on the Web, following in the theme of my thoughts the other day about
Microsoft’s adoption of Chromium instead of EdgeHTML in its browser.
Andre raises a real point: how will we fight for a private and decentralised Web when it becomes “the Google Web”?
I don’t think Microsoft using Chromium is the end of the world, but it is another step down a slippery slope. It’s one more way of bolstering the influence Google currently has on the
web.
We need Google to keep pushing the web forward. But it’s critical that we have other voices, with different viewpoints, to maintain some sense of balance. Monocultures don’t benefit
anyone.
This essay follows-up nicely on my concerns about Microsoft’s move from EdgeHTML to Chromium in Edge, but goes further to discuss some of the
bigger problems of a homogeneous web, especially one under Google’s influence.
Yesterday, Quora
announced that 100 million user accounts were compromised, including private activity like downvotes and direct messages, by a “malicious third party.”
Data breaches are a frustrating part of the lifecycle of every online service — as they grow in popularity, they become a bigger and bigger target. Nearly every major online service
has had a security breach: Facebook, Google, Twitter, Yahoo, Tumblr, Uber, Evernote, eBay, Adobe, Target, Twitter, and Sony all extensively leaked user data in the last few years.
Security breaches like these are a strong argument for using a password manager, but not a compelling reason to avoid a service you love, unless you plan to quit the internet
entirely.
But this does seem like a good time to remind you of all the other reasons why you should never, ever use Quora.
…
Short summary of why you shouldn’t use Quora (even ignoring the recent security scare), for those who can’t be bothered clicking-through:
They claim to want to share knowledge, but they hoard and restrict access to knowledge
They’re actively hostile to the free exchange of data, both technically and politically
They directly oppose the archiving and backup of the knowledge they hoard
From Real Monstrosities via Ed Yong via Matthew Cobb comes one of the best
cases of mimicry I’ve ever seen. Natural selection has been a fantastic artist here, giving a perfect illusion of three-dimensionality. In fact, this may be the most astonishing case
of mimicry I know.
It’s a moth from eastern Asia: Uropyia meticulodina—a fantastic dead-leaf mimic:
…
What I love about this thing is that it looks 3D. Even looking at photos or videos of the beast, your eyes will deceive you: its wings and back are flat, but look like
a dried-up and curled-up leaf. Incredible.
I twist the band on my left ring finger. I never know what to do with my hands, especially when I’m nervous.
I’m at McDonald’s. I see him at the door before he sees me. I watch him look around the room. My heart is beating so fast it’s making me dizzy. The whole scene freezes.
I am transported back 20 years: surrounded by Gothic architecture on our East Coast college campus. Our backpack straps around both shoulders on a crisp day, our hands in each other’s
jacket pockets as we met up briefly between classes — a kiss, a hug, a quick story. We were a brochure for young love. We made it look good; we made it look easy. And it was good and
easy, for a very long time.
Now, I see him see me and his face lights up. I know that face by heart. I look away, pretend to dig through my purse. I can feel any and all sense and rationality leaving
my body.
How many times have I imagined this meeting in the past decade? How many versions have played through my mind — the angry, the passionate, the blasé version — now that we’ve both
moved on, married other people, and had kids?
Sometimes Stephanie Weisner doesn’t know how two-parent families do it all, without a Mike in tow.
Weisner, 38, has been in a polyamorous relationship with her husband, Ian Hubbard, and her work colleague, Mike Wissink, for eight years. The three adults all live together in one
home in Moncton, alongside Weisner and Hubbard’s two children, who are seven and nine years old.
The family keeps a joint e-mail account to sort out their household logistics. While Weisner and Wissink, 49, work shifts at their airline industry jobs, Hubbard, 47, home-schools the
children. Wissink often cooks and cleans while Weisner does the groceries. All three pitch in with bedtimes and shuttling the kids to their various activities. This winter, the whole
family’s going to Disney World.
“We’re very boring and normal,” said Weisner. “We’re not swinging from chandeliers.”
…
Sometimes somebody will ask me about my polyamorous relationships and they often have a preconception that Ruth, JTA and I’s lives are incredibly interesting and exciting (usually with the assumption on the
side that we’re particularly sexually-adventurous). But like virtually any other decade-plus long relationship and especially with children in tow, we’re really quite ordinary
and domestic. That there’s an additional adult around is basically the only thing that stands out, and we’re each individually far more-interesting and diverse than we are by
the product of our romantic lifestyle.
This article pleased me somewhat because of the symmetries between us and the family depicted by it, but especially because they too seem to have to spend time reassuring other that
they’re just regular folks, beneath it all. There’s a tendency to assume that if somebody’s a little different from you then everything else must be different too, and
articles like this help to remind us that we’re all a lot more-alike than we are different. Even we weird polyamorous people.
As well additional land around our familiar coastlines, the lower sea level reveals a low lying 9,000 square mile landmass called Doggerland – named after Dogger Bank, the large
sandbank which currently sits in a shallow area of the North Sea off the east coast of England (dogger being an old Dutch word for fishing boat).
Doggerland had a rich landscape of hills, rivers and lakes and a coastline comprising lagoons, marshes and beaches. It had woodlands of oak, elm, birch, willow, alder, hazel and
pine. It was home to horses, aurochs, deer, elks and wild pigs. Waterfowl, otters and beavers abounded in wetland areas and the seas, lakes and rivers teemed with
fish. It was probably the richest hunting and fishing ground in Europe at the time and had an important influence on the course of prehistory in northwestern Europe as maritime
and river-based societies adapted to this environment.
…
I love a bit of alternative history fiction, and this is a big one, going all the way back to prehistoric times. What if the period of global warming that took place thousands
of years ago, “sinking” Doggerland and separating the formerly-connected British Isles from one another and from the European mainland? The potential impact is massive, affecting
geography, history, and politics indefinitely, and it’s fun to think – and read – about.
JUST LEARNED THERE ARE 16 OUNCES IN A POUND AND I AM FUCKING LIVID
SIXTEEN???
WHAT THE FUCK KIND OF NUMBER IS THAT
i have had no reason to actually look into imperial measurements until now and frankly i immediately regret it finding this out it makes some sense though because a pound is
defined as being 7000 grains so that makes each ounce a nice round…
437.5 grains
and then, oh my word, oh my fucking actual god
GUESS HOW MANY POUNDS THERE ARE IN A STONE
you’ll never get it, it would be fucking impossible to guess this
THERE ARE FOURTEEN POUNDS IN A STONE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
THAT’S A COMPLETELY DIFFERENT FUCKING NUMBER! FYI!!!!
THERE’S LITERALLY NO WAY TO KNOW HOW MANY OUNCES ARE IN A STONE!! NO-ONE CAN KNOW THIS “but innes you can just multiply up the fourteen by sixteen and you’ll g-“
NO
MATHS HAS CLEARLY ABANDONED US. NUMBERS MEAN NOTHING AT THIS POINT
WHAT THE FUCK KIND OF ANTIQUATED JOKE SYSTEM ARE PEOPLE WORKING WITH
my mum: wow count yourself lucky you only need to learn your 10 times tables, when i was a kid we had to go up to 12
me, a child: oh, for weights and stuff?
mum, a liar: sure
TURNS OUT NO-ONE ON THE PLANET IS TRAINED TO WORK WITH THESE FUCKED UP NUMBERS. THEY JUST MAKE STUFF UP. NO-ONE KNOWS HOW MUCH A POUND IS BECAUSE IF THEY’D EVER USED THIS
BULLSHIT SYSTEM THERE WOULD BE RIOTS
and then how many ounces go in a cup?
WHICH FUCKING CUP, AMERICA
HOW DO YOU ALL OWN THE SAME SIZE OF CUP
WHO HAS A MONOPOLY ON THE ONE GOOD CUP SIZE
PRESUMABLY THIS IS JUST STRAIGHT UP BULLSHIT TOO TO COVER FOR THE FACT THAT NO-ONE KNOWS HOW MANY ANY QUANTITY OF ANYTHING IS
me: so, the recipe calls for 2 lbs 3 oz of flour, you got that?
you: uhhhh, sure. yeah. that’s like… 3 cups, probably. this is a great system.
AND THEN
THEN WE HIT THE BIG NUMBERS
PRESUMABLY. I ASSUME THAT’S THE ORDER WE’RE GOING IN
though judging from american dates IT IS KINDA HARD TO TELL
so what’s heavier, a ton of feathers or a ton of gold?
IT’S THE TON OF GOLD BECAUSE UNDER IMPERIAL MEASUREMENTS THESE ARE COMPLETELY FUCKING DIFFERENT SCALES
SEE ALSO: WOOL, COINS, MYSTERY ENGLISH ILLEGAL POUND, MISCELLANEOUS
THE ONE JOKE WHICH MAKES IT CLEAR THAT MASS IS A UNIVERSAL METHOD OF COMPARISON REGARDLESS OF MATERIAL HAS NO BEARING ON THE FUCKED UP BIZARRO WORLD OF YESTERDAY THAT IS THE
IMPERIAL SYSTEM
I AM 30 YEARS OLD
I’VE GONE MY WHOLE FUCKING LIFE BELIEVING THE IMPERIAL SYSTEM WAS DIFFERENT, SURE, BUT I THOUGHT IT HAD AT LEAST SOME GROUNDING IN REALITY
but NO
I AM SO ANGRY RIGHT NOW
I CANT UNDERSTAND WHY YOU’VE DONE THIS TO ME
go on
say it
but if anyone tells me anything other than one hundred here I am tearing this entire fucking place to the ground
Have you ever wondered how many pounds are in a hundredweight? That’s an actual name of an actual measure. Go on, guess.
oh my sweet jesus
OF COURSE
OF FUCKING COURSE IT DOES
WHY WOULD WORDS MEAN ANYTHING ANY MORE
I HATE ALL OF THIS, AND I HATE ALL OF YOU FOR MAKING ME KNOW IT
THIS IS WHY IM NOT TAKING ANY OF YOUR SHIT WHEN YOU TRY AND TELL ME FAHRENHEIT IS A MORE LOGICAL SYSTEM
HOW MANY FAHRENHEIT ARE IN A CUP
i cant take this right now im going for a fucking walk
everyone is just saying terrible number conversions at me i hate this
no-one has even mentioned oxgangs though so you’re all fired
trying to get to sleep but all i can hear is your voices chanting “pints a pound the world around” over and over in my brain
Pints A Pound The World Around
i still don’t entirely know what it means but I am 100% fucking sure it’s not even true
German chat platform Knuddels.de (“Cuddles”) has been fined €20,000 for storing user passwords in plain text (no hash at all? Come on, people, it’s 2018).
The data of Knuddels users was copied and published by malefactors in July. In September, someone emailed the company warning them that user data had been published at Pastebin (only
8,000 members affected) and Mega.nz (a much bigger breach). The company duly notified its users and the Baden-Württemberg data protection authority.
…
Interesting stuff: this German region’s equivalent of the ICO applied a fine to this app for failing to hash
passwords, describing them as personal information that was inadequately protected following their theft. That’s interesting because it sets a German, and to a lesser extend a European,
precedent that plaintext passwords can be considered personal information and therefore allowing the (significant) weight of the GDPR to be applied to their misuse.
Warp and Weft by Paul Robert Lloyd(paulrobertlloyd.com)
Earlier this month I had the good fortune to attend Material, a conference that explores the concept of the web as a material and all the intrinsic characteristics that entails. The
variety of talks provided new perspectives on what it means to build for – and with – the web, and prompted me to …
…
What it means for something to be of the web has been discussed many times before. While the technical test can be reasonably objective – is it addressable, accessible and available – culturally it remains harder to judge. But I don’t know about you, I’ve found that
certain websites feel more ‘webby’ than others.
…
Despite being nonspecific on the nature of the feeling he describes, Paul hits the nail on the head. Your favourite (non-Medium) blog or guru site almost certainly has that feel of
being “of the web”. Your favourite API-less single-page app (with the growing “please use in Chrome” banner) almost
certainly does not.
A wise man once said “To Infinity and Beyond”, Unfortunately there’s no way of knowing who that man was or in what context it was meant to be understood, so let us instead turn our
attention to the Toy Story porn parody – Sex Toy Story The XXX Parody Part 1.
It says Part 1, but I searched and there’s no Part 2. Unless they’re doing like a Toy Story 3 thing where they wait like ten years for Andy to grow up and go off to college, in which
case we will have to wait with bated breath for ten years for Part 2.
We open on an unnamed woman played by Veruca James (Lesbian Anal Vampires, Emo Teen Fucks at Work) getting ready to masturbate. She does so the normal way we all do, by rubbing her
clothed body.
…
“Does it exist?”, I asked, when the conversation drifted perilously close to this topic. Well of course it exists: Rule
34, duh. I was so glad that this article existed, to spare me from having to watch it to work out how much I didn’t want to watch it. Now all I have to do is scrub the idea of this
article from my mind, which is hopefully easier than the retina-burning image of the film itself would have been.
If something I want to do with JavaScript can be done with CSS instead, use CSS.
CSS parses and renders faster.
For things like animations, it more easily hooks into the browser’s refresh rate cycle to provide silky smooth animations (this can be done in JS, too, but CSS just makes it so damn
easy).
And it fails gracefully.
A JavaScript error can bring all of the JS on a page to screeching halt. Mistype a CSS property or miss a semicolon? The browser just skips the property and moves on. Use an
unsupported feature? Same thing.
…
This exactly! If you want progressive enhancement (and you should), performance, and the cleanest separation of behaviour and presentation, the pages you deliver to your users
(regardless of what technology you use on your server) should consist of:
HTML, written in such a way that that they’re complete and comprehensible alone – from an information science perspective, your pages shouldn’t “need” any more than this (although
it’s okay if they’re pretty ugly without any more)
CSS, adding design, theme, look-and-feel to your web page
Javascript, using progressive enhancement to add functionality in-the-browser (e.g. validation on the client-side in addition to the server side validation, for speed and
ease of user experience) and, where absolutely necessary, to add functionality not possible any other way (e.g. if you’re looking to tap into the geolocation API, you’re going
to need Javascript… but it’s still desirable to provide as much of the experience as possible without)
Developers failing to follow this principle is making the Web more fragile and harder to archive. It’s not hard to do things “right”: we
just need to make sure that developers learn what “right” is and why it’s important.
Incidentally, I just some enhancements to the header of this site, including some CSS animations on the logo and menu (none of them necessary, but all useful) and some
Javascript to help ensure that users of touch-capable devices have an easier time. Note that neither Javascript nor CSS are required to use this site; they just add value… just
the way the Web ought to be (where possible).
Is it just me, or is this some fantastic fucking casting. For the first time perhaps ever, I feel confident that a remake of an already-good film has the potential to be awesome.
There’s been a lot of talk about the missionary killed by the natives of North Sentinel Island. They’re probably so aggressive because of this weirdo, Maurice Vidal Portman. So
here’s a big thread about this creep and some facts from my decade-long obsession with the island.
The Sentinelese are often described as “uncontacted,” but this not strictly true. They had a very significant contact in 1880 with Commander Portman.
Portman, the black sheep third son of some minor noble, was assigned by the English Royal Navy to administer and pacify the Andaman Islands, a job he pursued from 1880-1900 with
the full measure of his own perversity.
Portman was erotically obsessed with the Andamanese, and he indulged his passion for photography by kidnapping members of various tribes and posing them in mock-Greek homoerotic
compositions.
During his 20 years in a sexualized heart of darkness, Portman measured and cataloged every inch of his prisoner’s bodies, with an obsessive focus on genitals.
Just imagine being a Neolithic person spending a few weeks in this guy’s rotating menagerie.
Portman spent most of his time in the greater Andaman Islands, but in 1880, he landed on North Sentinel. The natives fled, and his party ventured inland to find a settlement
which had been abandoned in haste.
But they located an elderly couple and a few children they were able to abduct. The couple quickly died, likely from ailments to which they had no immunity.
The children spent a few weeks with Portman doing god knows what, after which he returned them to the island. Portman returned on a couple occasions, but the Sentinelese hid
from him each time.
The story related by the children was certainly passed down among the 100 or so inhabitants of the island, and even today, Portman’s fatal kidnapping is just beyond a human
lifetime.
So when the Indian government attempted contact with anthropologists in the 1960s and 70s, the Sentinelese were understandably hostile to outsiders. The Indian government soon
gave up.
In 1981, a cargo ship named The Primrose ran aground on the coral reef surrounding North Sentinel. The crew radioed for assistance and settled in for a long wait. But in the
morning they saw 50 men with bows on the beach, building makeshift boats.
The crew called for an emergency airlift and were evacuated, and not a moment too soon. Rough waves had thwarted the Sentinelese in their attempts to board, but the weather was
clearing.
The ship and its cargo were left at the island, awaiting discovery by Neolithic eyes. Today you can still see the gutted remains on The Primrose on Google Earth.
Imagine climbing on board that ship. A completely alien vessel filled with alien things. Imagine seeing simple machines for the first time. A hinge. A latch. A wheel. Things
that would instantly make sense in a satisfying way. Others would be so incomprehensible to avoid notice.
I have never been able to find out what cargo was on The Primrose in all my years of reading. There was about 100 tons of some sort of consumer product on board, and I’m curious
what it was. But even absent the cargo, think about all the things that must have been on that ship.
In the 1990s, when anthropologists returned to the island to make new attempts at contact, they were met with a different attitude. Not friendly, exactly. But they were willing
to accept gifts. Many would wade into the water with smiles to accept coconuts.
Here is a video of one of those encounters:
And in those videos, you can see that these pre-iron age people now had metal weapons, like the knife carried by this man. They had scavenged metal from the Primrose and
cold-forged it into tools.
After collecting gifts for a few minutes, a few members of the tribe would approach and make menacing gestures, signaling that it was time for the outsiders to leave. They have
never lost their desire for isolation, despite the gifts.
And they remained consistent in their intolerance against intruders. In 2006, two fishermen were killed after drifting into the island when their anchor detached while they were
sleeping.
The Sentinelese are lucky they were so effective at preventing contact. The neighboring Jawara weren’t so fortunate. The tribe went from 9,000 to a couple hundred from lack of
genetic immunity and only forestalled annihilation due to aggressive segregation. Their future is bleak.
Yet on North Sentinel, they’ve maintained a small community for 60,000 years which is by all indications happy. There is no way to integrate them into the modern world without
wiping out nearly every member of their tribe.
And their aggressiveness is not the mark of savagery. It just that their conception of outsiders is mostly framed by some foot-faced English pervert who murdered some old people
and did weird things to their kids. So let’s do them a favor and leave them alone.
