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[1]Andrew Kelley - Why We Can't Have Nice Software (2024 Feb 04)
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Why We Can't Have Nice Software
The problem with software is that it's too powerful. It creates so much wealth
so fast that it's virtually impossible to not distribute it.
Think about it: sure, it takes a while to make useful software. But then you
make it, and then it's done. It keeps working with no maintenance whatsoever,
and just a trickle of electricity to run it.
Immediately, this poses a problem: how can a small number of people keep all
that wealth for themselves, and not let it escape in the dirty, dirty fingers
of the general populace?
This is a question that the music industry faced head-on, and they came up with
EULAs, enforced via the state's monopoly on violence, and DRM, a way for
software to act antagonistically against its own users. Software can do useful
things like encode media into bits, and then copy those bits. That's
dangerously useful, and it had to be stopped.
The True Cause of Bitrot
What about bitrot, you say? It takes ongoing maintenance to keep software
working, doesn't it?
Let's think critically about bitrot for a moment because, as a reminder, bits
don't actually rot - that's kinda the point of bits. In the best case scenario,
bitrot happens due to progress - perhaps a dependency has made improvements but
requires breaking API compatibility, or better hardware comes out and the
software needs to be recompiled for that hardware. In this case, it's kind of a
happy outcome. Some labor is needed to enhance the software in response, but
then, once again, it's done; ripples disappearing from the surface of a lake
hours after a stone is thrown into it.
The darker side of bitrot is due to businesses trying to make more profit than
last year, and launching marketing initiatives. For example, Microsoft shipped
a Windows Update that puts advertisements into the start menu, advertisements
into the task bar, and changed the control panel's user interface to unify it
with their business incentives - namely a superficial makeover to justify
customers paying additional money for what is effectively worse software - it
has new bugs and is now ridden with advertisements. This caused a bunch of
churn in their own codebase, as well as other software trying to use native
user interfaces on Windows.
It's all so incredibly wasteful. And that's the point, isn't it?
The programmers at Microsoft could have done less work, or worked on bug fixes
instead. The UI designers could have done less work, or tweaked their existing
design instead of making a new one. The managers could have done less work.
Customers could have paid little to no additional money for a Windows Update.
This all would have culminated in a more robust version of Windows that
customers preferred, instead of one that is effectively boycotted like Vista
and Windows 11.
It's actually a problem that software is too efficient and has this nasty
tendency of being completed. Software offers us a glimpse into a post-scarcity
society, but it is being actively sabotaged by those who seek to turn a profit.
Platform Waste
Consumers love standards. Standards allow multiple parties, perhaps even
competitors, perhaps especially competitors, to have interchangeable components
with each other, which gives consumers options, and negotiation power.
For-profit companies hate standards. They would rather have their own special
cable, for example, that only works for their devices, and only they are
allowed to manufacture them. To be more specific, underdog companies like
standards because it lets them compete. The established players don't want to
have to play fair.
You can see this playing out right now with the [2]EU formally adopting a law
requiring Apple to support USB-C chargers. At the time of writing there is no
such law in the United States, but it is [3]being discussed by politicians.
Standards allow software to be more efficient. By sticking with a standard for
a period of time and then coordinating an upgrade to a newer one, software
churn is minimized, resulting in a fixed amount of software development labor
needed.
On the other hand, without a standard, for-profit companies are incentivized to
fiddle with their product in a wasteful manner. For example, Apple has in the
past made insignificant changes to their charging cable, making it not
compatible with the one from the previous year. This resulted in more profit
for Apple since consumers found their existing cables useless and had to buy
new ones. Ultimately this resulted in more money being spent in the economy,
increasing the country's GDP. Economists rejoice; the Earth weeps.
Think about how many messaging apps have come and go and how much programmer
hours have been wasted on them. We almost had XMPP be mainstream, but then
Google outgrew their "don't be evil" diaper and put on their "make profit" big
boy pants. If your goal is to turn a profit, it's obviously the correct choice
to invest into a platform that you own. So then we got a half-dozen buggy
messaging apps from Google that didn't even work with each other, let alone
Apple's platform or the other contemporary players.
The new hotness is Discord, which is already starting, predictably, [4]to decay
. I can't believe a human sat down and wasted hours of their life coding "super
reactions". It's not something that really needed to happen.
Imagine if all these programmer hours spent on all these products actually
centered around a proper standard, which evolved along with consumers' needs
rather than these companies' ongoing need to fiddle with the knobs and sliders
until profit comes out. The thing is, if this actually happened, then what
would these employees spend their time on? At some point society would be
pretty much done implementing messaging software. Messaging app updates would
be rare, and bugs in messaging apps would be rare. We would reach peak
messaging.
Peak Dishwasher
Decades ago, we already did it. We reached peak dishwasher. Dishwashers
achieved perfection, and it was no longer possible to improve them. The
mechanics were optimal, the user interface was ideal, and consumers had no
desire for any changes.
One would, naively, think of this as an accomplishment. But how is a company
supposed to make more profit than last year? By any means necessary, of course.
They invented these dishwasher detergent pods that are actually a downgrade -
slightly more time consuming to use than powder, more expensive to manufacture
and purchase, worse for the environment, and most offensive of all - actively
sabotage the dishwasher's prewash feature making the product actually function
worse than before!
And from a business perspective, it is a critical success. They found a way to
make consumers spend more money on dishwashing. The line goes up, for one more
year. But it's not enough. It has to go up every year. What else can we do?
I found myself in a position where I needed to buy a new dishwasher last month,
and, already being aware of this problem, did my very best to buy one that
worked well. I picked one that had 5/5 stars on Consumer Reports.
Unfortunately, the dishwasher that I ended up with is my worst nightmare.
It takes 30 seconds to boot up, presumably because of the Bluetooth and WiFi
driver in it. Many of the configuration options are hidden behind a proprietary
app. The buttons are hidden and touch based instead of being visible and
depressing with natural tactile feedback. I still haven't yet done the chore of
going into my router and disabling it from accessing the Internet. I had to
give it access to use the app to find out why it was broken. Until I do that
chore, there's a chance it could auto update and have a firmware bug and stop
working, or just waste my bandwidth. Who knows what it's up to?
Meanwhile, I had to call a repair technician to fix the door latch already, as
well as the soap dispenser latch. Both things have since failed to work
properly again and I still need to do the chore of calling the company to get a
repair done a third time.
Before we moved, we had an older dishwasher that worked perfectly. No Internet,
no Bluetooth, and the door latches worked flawlessly through thousands of runs.
The problem with the requirement for each year to be more profitable than the
last is that once you reach the peak, once it's not possible to actually
improve your product any more, you still have to change something. Since you
can't change it to make it better, you therefore will change it to make it
worse.
What Blockchains and LLMs Have in Common
Plenty of people roll their eyes at blockchain being the new buzzword, or about
how tech is overobsessed with AI (LLMs) right now. It's easy to chock it up to
it being a silly, harmless fad perpetuated by uneducated or misguided people,
but in reality it's a lot more intentional than that.
Most tech workers work 40 hours per week at some company. That's a lot of
collective hours spent on something. What factors go into deciding, as a whole,
what that effort is spent on? Employees have some choices in the matter, but in
the end those choices are limited to job offers. Job offers are created by the
owners of companies who decide what they want to invest their money into.
In other words, venture capitalists decide what is the current hotness
precisely by directing large amounts of labor towards whatever they want.
Empirically, VCs are primarily motivated by seeking a return on investment. The
goal is to turn a big sum of money into an even bigger sum of money. In theory,
this is because with an even bigger sum of money, you can then start to spend
that money on directing an even larger amount of labor towards whatever you
want, bypassing democracy to influence the future of humanity, but in practice,
most VCs get fixated on that return on investment until they die.
If you were to criticize blockchain technology from a purely technical
perspective, you might point out the flaw that proof of work requires an
exponentially increasing amount of computational power, and thus electricity,
in order to keep the blockchain database alive over time. You might point out
how inefficient of a database it is. But you would be missing the point.
Blockchain technology excites investors precisely because of how wasteful it is
. Even if we had fusion (!!) it would eat up all that energy and more. It's
difficult to express the magnitude of how wasteful this is, and the fact that
it's built into the system intentionally is sinister.
Blockchain technology is a kind of software that doesn't get completed or
perfected. Rather it's the opposite; the longer it is in existence the more
work it creates for everyone to do. The waste is a feature; it's how the [5]
line goes up.
Reminds me of this scene in The Fifth Element where Zorg says:
Life, which you so nobly serve, comes from destruction, disorder, and
chaos. Now take this empty glass. Here it is: peaceful, serene, boring. But
if it is destroyed... look at all these little things! So busy now. Notice
how each one of them is useful. What a lovely ballet ensues, so full of
form and color. Now, think about all those people that created them.
Technicians, engineers, hundreds of people who will be able to feed their
children tonight so those children can grow up big and strong and have
little teeny children of their own and so on and so forth. Thus adding to
the great chain of life.
You can find this scene on YouTube but I won't link it for fear of accidentally
causing someone to view an advertisement.
LLMs offer an even more ideal kind of software to the investor. First of all
they require an enormous amount of capital to train, and specialized hardware
to run, making them suitable to offer as a service, where the amount of profit
can be made to go up in a controlled manner. What a delicious idea.
More to my point, they offer a host of subjective, ill-defined tasks that are
immune to being completed. They've managed to take something well-defined,
well-scoped, and completable, and turn it into an untameable monster that will
be sure to offer software churn for decades to come.
Have a peek at this blog post that is going around lately: [6]The pain points
of building a copilot
These people are brimming with excitement about all the new problems that LLMs
are bringing to the table. Some choice quotes:
Prompt engineering is time consuming and requires considerable trial and
error...As one developer said, "it's more of an art than a science".
Testing is fundamental to software development but arduous when LLMs are
involved. Every test is a flaky test.
The field is moving fast, and it requires developers to "throw away
everything that they've learned and rethink it."
Developers are having to learn and compare many new tools rather than
focusing on the customer problem. They then have to glue these tools
together.
It is still the wild, wild west ... It will be interesting to see how
software engineering will evolve, either through new processes or tools,
over the next several years.
LLMs are a way to make software take orders of magnitude more computational
power, electricity, and human labor, while delivering a product whose extremely
volatile quality is impossible to assure. The work will never be completed; it
will only create the need for ever more labor.
For investors, all this churn is attractive. It's disruptive.
It's why we can't have nice software.
Conclusion
Technology, and in particular, software, offers a glimpse of magic; a perpetual
motion machine; wealth created from nothing. It offers us a chance to work
together on something beautiful; to achieve perfection by ratcheting
improvements over time.
In the end, this opportunity is squandered in a doomed quest for endless
growth.
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Thanks for reading my blog post.
[7]Home Page | [8]RSS feed | [9]Sponsor the Zig Software Foundation
References:
[1] https://andrewkelley.me/
[2] https://www.cnn.com/2022/10/24/tech/eu-law-charging-standard/index.html
[3] https://techcrunch.com/2022/06/17/senators-call-for-us-to-adopt-common-charger
[4] https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/04/platforms-decay-lets-put-users-first
[5] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQ_xWvX1n9g
[6] https://austinhenley.com/blog/copilotpainpoints.html
[7] https://andrewkelley.me/
[8] https://andrewkelley.me/rss.xml
[9] https://ziglang.org/zsf

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[test-img]
[1]skip to main content
[2]Brain Baking navigation toggle
• [4] Brain Baking
• [5] Archives
• [6] Subscribe
• [7] Works
• [8] About
• [9] Links
[10]
Your Blog Should Have an About Page
[11] 13 March 2024 | [12]webdesign
The [13]site stats tell me that my [14]about page at /about is consistently one
of the most visited pages on this website. That confirms what everyone already
knows: people are very curious, sometimes even nosy.
I’ll be the first to admit that I’m just as nosy as my visitors: I love
clicking on About Me buttons as soon as I see one, and I’m disappointed when
there isn’t any—up to the point of me leaving the “personal” blog or not
bookmarking it in my feed reader. I want to get to know the person who wrote
that compelling article. What else keeps them busy in life? Bonus points for
cat pics, obviously.
The question then becomes: what to put on that /about page? Just your
professional history, making it more like a boring résumé, hoping the blog will
help you land a job? Your hobbies and coordinates? Your marital^[15]1 status? A
complete summary of the technical tools wielded and endless prowess showcased
when building your custom blog engine? A list of social media links where
people can also find you? How many years you’ve been uploading words onto a
server? A selection of the most popular articles you’ve written so far? A
lovely photo of you in a suit presenting something at an important conference?
I don’t really know and I’ve never been happy with what’s on my own about page.
For some reason, I’m not creative enough to come up with anything else besides
a dumb enumeration of things that keep me busy, mostly on a professional level.
Not everything needs to be put online. What I do know, though, is that such a
page should come equipped with contact information—preferably an email address.
I like saying thanks through email.
This [16]five steps to a perfect about page tells me I’ve been doing it wrong
for years: “The About page is the place where you get to sell your brand.” Ooh,
so that’s what it’s for! Perhaps I should go for some testimonials below a
founder’s story about a personal struggle, that’ll certainly attract the right
Brain Bakers. (In case that wasn’t clear: it won’t, and it’s a ridiculous way
of thinking about your about page. It’s a personal blog, not a soulless company
website that’s only there to further pollute the internet!)
Anyway. This post may serve as a reminder to go check the contents of your
about page. Is it still up to date? Does it convey an easy way to contact you
without redirecting people to social media junk? Is the goofiness level up to
snuff?
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
1. Your martial status—at first an honest typo—might be more exciting. Deadly?
Ready? Tell us! [17]↩︎
[18]blogging
[19] You Might Also Like...
• [20]Displaying Series of Posts in Hugo 04 Jan 2024
• [21]On Writing For Yourself In Public 06 Nov 2023
• [22]Blogging Nets More Than Just Text 22 Oct 2023
• [23]Are You A Blog Post Glancer? 08 Aug 2023
• [24]Bloggers, Dump Your Twitter Card Tags 27 Nov 2022
[25] Bio and Support
[26] A photo of Me!
I'm [27]Wouter Groeneveld, a Brain Baker, and I love the smell of freshly baked
thoughts (and bread) in the morning. I sometimes convince others to bake their
brain (and bread) too.
If you found this article amusing and/or helpful, you can support me via [28]
PayPal or [29]Ko-Fi. I also like to hear your feedback via [30]Mastodon or
email. Thanks!
JavaScript is disabled. I use it to obfuscate my e-mail, keeping spambots at
bay.
Reach me using: [firstname] at [this domain].
↑ [31]Top [32]Brain Baking bv | [33]Archives | [34]© CC BY 4.0 License.
References:
[1] https://brainbaking.com/post/2024/03/your-blog-should-have-an-about-page/#top
[2] https://brainbaking.com/post/2024/03/your-blog-should-have-an-about-page/#
[4] https://brainbaking.com/
[5] https://brainbaking.com/archives
[6] https://brainbaking.com/subscribe
[7] https://brainbaking.com/works
[8] https://brainbaking.com/about
[9] https://brainbaking.com/links
[10] https://brainbaking.com/
[11] https://brainbaking.com/post/2024/03/your-blog-should-have-an-about-page/
[12] https://brainbaking.com/categories/webdesign
[13] https://stats.brainbaking.com/
[14] https://brainbaking.com/about
[15] https://brainbaking.com/post/2024/03/your-blog-should-have-an-about-page/#fn:1
[16] https://www.tooltester.com/en/blog/5-steps-to-a-perfect-about-page/
[17] https://brainbaking.com/post/2024/03/your-blog-should-have-an-about-page/#fnref:1
[18] https://brainbaking.com/tags/blogging
[19] https://brainbaking.com/post/2024/03/your-blog-should-have-an-about-page/#related
[20] https://brainbaking.com/post/2024/01/displaying-series-of-posts-in-hugo/
[21] https://brainbaking.com/post/2023/11/on-writing-for-yourself-in-public/
[22] https://brainbaking.com/post/2023/10/blogging-nets-more-than-just-text/
[23] https://brainbaking.com/post/2023/08/are-you-a-blog-post-glancer/
[24] https://brainbaking.com/post/2022/11/bloggers-dump-your-twitter-card-tags/
[25] https://brainbaking.com/post/2024/03/your-blog-should-have-an-about-page/#bio
[26] https://brainbaking.com/
[27] https://brainbaking.com/about
[28] https://www.paypal.com/donate/?hosted_button_id=R2WTKY7G9V2KQ
[29] https://ko-fi.com/woutergroeneveld
[30] https://dosgame.club/@jefklak
[31] https://brainbaking.com/post/2024/03/your-blog-should-have-an-about-page/#header
[32] https://brainbaking.com/bv
[33] https://brainbaking.com/archives
[34] https://brainbaking.com/copyright-and-tracking-policy

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March 26, 2024, 2:27 a.m.
Own Your Web – Issue 12: Finding Your Rhythm
[1] [fcc8dc79-0]
Own Your Web
Hi All! 🤗
It is one of the most common reasons why we abandon our personal sites and
blogs: at some point, we stop publishing.
But why? Weren’t we so enthusiastic when we started (or restarted) our sites?
Didn’t we tell ourselves that this time, we would really post more regularly?
And didn’t it also work well for a few posts? But then, everyday life
interfered. Other things needed our attention. And before we knew it, two
months had passed since our last post. Then four, then eight… And, just like
with other habits, once you let the series break and more and more time has
passed since your last post, it is getting even harder to publish again.
You would be right in pointing out that that’s part of the beauty of having a
personal site. You are free to decide how regularly you post and there is no
obligation to post anything. You don’t owe the world or the people out there
any posts, after all.
But then again, what is the point of having a personal site if we don’t [2]put
stuff out there from time to time, if we don’t document and share random
thoughts, things we learned, and nuggets we found? And even though you
definitely don’t have to publish daily to enjoy having a blog, it is only when
you post more regularly that many of [3]the advantages of having a personal
site really start to emerge.
One key to posting regularly lies in finding your very own cadence of writing,
a habitual practice that works well for you personally and that fits your
lifestyle and comfort. For some of us, this means finding set hours for
writing. Maybe it becomes your morning ritual, a quiet moment to collect your
thoughts and transpose them before the day’s demands grab your attention. Or
perhaps you're more of a night writer, documenting your day’s thoughts and
ideas when the world around you has slowed down. Or maybe, you just need to
give yourself permission to jot down a quick first draft of a post whenever you
have an idea throughout the day, taking advantage of the momentum when it is
still fresh. Still others like to batch-write a few articles in advance in
longer, uninterrupted sessions on certain days of the week or when they are
traveling, for example. Whatever works for you, in the end it all comes down to
making writing or working on your site something that you do consistently and
repeatedly, maybe even daily.
If you establish this consistent rhythm, you will find that over time, it will
become much more frictionless to publish new posts and you’ll leave the
resistance behind. Now, the rhythm of your writing habit is the beat that
carries you. You’ll also have more ideas on what to write about, because your
brain is constantly watching for opportunities for future posts. And you’ll
learn to not wait for inspiration to strike but to sit down and get past the
inertia of those first few words, because you can trust in your ability to work
your way through even [4]the shittiest first drafts.
At the same time, it is equally important to not overthink the process of
writing and publishing in the first place. It is your site, so you are allowed
to post regardless of what others think of it or how polished it is. It is
still a blog, not an academic journal and nobody expects a blog post to have
Pulitzer-winning quality. Perfect is an illusion. So just put stuff out there
and experiment. And if it is only for yourself.
And then, there’s a third secret to publishing more regularly, and that’s
enjoying the process of creating something and making it really convenient and
frictionless to publish. Above all, working and posting on your website should
be fun. Your CMS, SSG, or other tools you are using are an import factor in how
enjoyable and easy it is to post new things. If every new post takes a huge
amount of work besides the pure writing, it adds unnecessary friction and makes
the whole process more cumbersome. If, on the other hand, drafting and
publishing a post is almost as smooth as writing a post on social media, there
is not much between your thoughts and the next published post. This will allow
you to enjoy the act of creating itself even more and you will much more likely
find that rhythm that works for you – and keep publishing on your site.
What writing habit or publishing cadence have you found to work best for you?
Or are you still struggling? Hit reply and let me know.
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Links
Here’s another mixed bag of links. Please let me know how you like them! And if
you can think of someone who would enjoy reading this newsletter today, feel
free to forward along.
Shoptalk Show Episode 606: Web Sustainability with Michelle Barker
[5]Michelle Barker visited the ShopTalk Show and talked with Chris and Dave
about a topic that is, given the urgency of the climate emergency, easily one
of the most important challenges on the Web today: digital sustainability and
the environmental impact of our websites and digital life.
👉 [6]https://shoptalkshow.com/606/
Kottke.org Redesigns With 2024 Vibes
I already shared another post about the recent redesign of kottke.org in the
last issue, but I didn’t want to withhold this interesting post by [7]Jason
himself, in which he explains a lot of the decisions that influenced the new
design with all it’s 2024 “social media energy”.
[8]
[kottke-202]
Kottke.org Redesigns With 2024 Vibes
Well. Finally. I’m unbelievably pleased, relieved, and exhausted to launch the
long-awaited (by me) redesign of kottke.org
CSS :has() Interactive Guide
The CSS :has selector is now supported [9]in all major browsers (yes, also in
Firefox) and [10]Ahmad took the opportunity to create another one of his
amazing interactive explainer posts. This time, he explains :has() and also
provides a ton of useful examples of how to use it in clever ways, not only as
a parent selector.
[11]
[twitter-ca]
CSS :has() Interactive Guide
Everything you need to know about CSS :has() selector.
Talker’s block
An all time classic by [12]Seth Godin about why no one ever gets talker’s block
and why precisely therein lies the cure for writer’s block:
“Just write poorly. Continue to write poorly, in public, until you can
write better.”
[13]
[sethgodin_]
Talker’s block | Seth's Blog
No one ever gets talker’s block. No one wakes up in the morning, discovers he
has nothing to say and sits quietly, for days or weeks, until the muse hits,
until the moment is right, until all…
What the world needs
A beautiful piece by [14]Jeremy about writing, why sharing your experience is
always valuable, and the right response to the assertion that “the world
doesn’t need another opinion.”
[15]
[photo-300]
Adactio: Journal—What the world needs
Write for yourself.
🎧 Personal Site of the Week ⌨️ [16]Cassidy Williams == https://cassidoo.co
Cassidy Williams is a software engineer, CTO at Contenda, a startup advisor and
investor, and developer experience expert. She loves to make memes and dreams
and software. Her personal site not only changes colors from time to time, but
also includes a “blog AKA digital garden AKA mind dump land” where Cassidy
regularly shares all kinds of things she explores and learns, like her [17]
publishing workflow, [18]the productivity apps she uses, or, famously, that
[19]she misses human curation. Also, sign up for [20]Cassidy’s newsletter if
you like newsletters (you do, right?).
👉 [21]https://cassidoo.co/
Cassidy's home page with a few social media profile links, links to her
newsletter and blog, and a bio. The home page in light mode The blog with each
post's heading underlined with a different color A blog post with the title "I
miss human curation"
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
And that’s it for today. How did you like this issue? Which one of the links
was your favorite? What do you want more or less of? Do you have any other
suggestions on how to improve this newsletter? Hit reply now and let me know.
Cheers! ☀️
– Matthias
You just read issue #12 of Own Your Web. You can also browse the [22]full
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References:
[1] https://buttondown.email/ownyourweb
[2] https://matthiasott.com/notes/just-put-stuff-out-there?utm_source=ownyourweb&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=issue-12
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[8] https://kottke.org/24/03/kottkeorg-redesigns-with-2024-vibes?utm_source=ownyourweb&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=issue-12
[9] https://caniuse.com/css-has?utm_source=ownyourweb&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=issue-12
[10] https://ishadeed.com/?utm_source=ownyourweb&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=issue-12
[11] https://ishadeed.com/article/css-has-guide?utm_source=ownyourweb&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=issue-12
[12] https://seths.blog/?utm_source=ownyourweb&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=issue-12
[13] https://seths.blog/2011/09/talkers-block/?utm_source=ownyourweb&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=issue-12
[14] https://adactio.com/?utm_source=ownyourweb&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=issue-12
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[17] https://blog.cassidoo.co/post/publishing-from-obsidian/?utm_source=ownyourweb&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=issue-12
[18] https://blog.cassidoo.co/post/producivity-apps-2023/?utm_source=ownyourweb&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=issue-12
[19] https://blog.cassidoo.co/post/human-curation/?utm_source=ownyourweb&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=issue-12
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• [1]Johan Halse
• [2]Blog
• [3]Mastodon
• [4]GitHub
• [5]LinkedIn
[avatar]
Johan wrote this
@ 2024-03-05
Churn
I’ve been using Web Components lately. I quite like them.
I wouldn’t call myself a heavy user, or power user, or whatever. It seems like
every other article I read has things to say about the Shadow DOM, declarative
or otherwise, or maybe about slots. These things seem divisive, but I don’t
have an opinion because I’m not using any of them. My experience is limited to
my patience and coping strategies finally having failed with regard to [6]
Hotwire being absolutely mahoosive (132kB minified! WHAT!!) which lead to me
writing my own Stimulus replacement called [7]Musculus. It uses the Web
Component lifecycle hooks, and basically nothing else. Those are an absolute
godsend, though! Before they came along, we had to build our own awkward
lifecycle handler (probably via MutationObserver) and that came with a lot of
plumbing and performance gotchas, whereas WC lifecycles are crazy simple: you
register the component with customElements.define and it’s off to the races.
Just write a class and the browser will take care of elements appearing and
disappearing for you, regardless of whether they came from a full reload, a
fetch request, or—god forbid—a document.write. The syntax looks great in
markup, too: no more having to decorate with js-something classes or data
attributes, you just wrap your shit in a custom element called
something-controller and everyone can see what you’re up to. Since I’m firmly
in camp “progressively enhance or go home” this fits me like a glove, and I
also have great hopes for Web Components improving the poor state of pulling in
epic dependencies like date pickers or text editors.
Felling the beasts
I won’t pretend to have an answer to how they would replace React and its
intellectual brethren, though. I stand by my belief that [8]ninety-five percent
or so of us will be absolutely fine without ever having to pull reactivity or
two-way binding into our sites. That doesn’t stop others from trying to tear
down the current world order, of course! I’ve seen a bunch of speculation and
heated discussion as to what Web Components would need in order to oust the
current breed of component libraries, mostly in service of reducing your
dependence on the tiresome and ever-churning world of JavaScript frameworks.
Build your site with Web Components, it’s said, and you’ll have offloaded the
Sisyphean task of staying on top of updates and version bumps to evergreen
browsers! Since this is the web, where we’re VERY SERIOUS about backwards
compatibility (you can still use document.all if you like—it’s a bad idea, but
you be the boss) you can let the Chrome team shoulder some of your burden and
you’ll never again be stuck in the purgatory of having to rewrite your code to
use Hooks or Signals or Runes or whatever we’re doing this year.
I don’t really buy it, though!
Anyone who wants to has been able to go it alone and build library-less for
many years. It’s what everyone started out doing, after all. And that usually
leads to what’s colloquially known as [9]Big Ball of Mud architecture. The
browser APIs are cool and all, but they’re a motley collection of weird
imperative operations: a few decades’ worth of functions and properties that
people figured would be useful, and then some paved-cowpath convenience stuff
layered on top. The APIs work, it’s hard to argue otherwise, but they’ve never
been fun or even ergonomic to use. So we’ve had libraries papering over the
various cross-browser cracks and improving DX since… well, basically forever.
Staying close to the metal sounds like a good idea in theory but just doesn’t
shake out very well in practice. It comes with a whole lot of ceremony and
drudgery, something I touched on [10]a while back (how was that five years ago
already oh dang oh nuts my life slipping through my fingers like grains of sand
impossible to catch oh no whyyy) and any abstractions or DSLs you write are
likely going to be sub-par reimplementations of other peoples’ libraries. So
it’s usually a good idea to find a battle-tested library or framework that gels
with your style.
Money and fame
The main reason Web Components aren’t going to save you from the JS treadmill,
however, is that the JS treadmill is first and foremost a cultural product.
It’s easy to forget since the webdev world moves so quickly nowadays, but the
preferred mode of distribution for frontend JavaScript was “go download this
.js file from, like, SourceForge” well into the latter half of the 2010s. NPM
and Big Tech stewardship of open source changed all that. Suddenly you could
get a well-paid job and a form of rockstardom from releasing a popular library.
Gone were the days of “hey I’m Johan and I made a [11]tiny search engine,
download my file if you want” and instead we found ourselves in the days of
smarmy overpromising brochure sites and Twitter catfights about data mutability
or codes of conduct. That milieu rewards high-profile Architectural Thinking
and popularity contests, and so we’re stuck in a constant churn of new ideas
and one-upmanship. Look, library X implemented Y, we have to come up with an
answer!!
If you want a good example of what we could have had, look at jQuery. They’re
still out there, quietly releasing stuff that really doesn’t break anyone’s
builds. It’s a solid and unassuming library that does what it says it does.
What would’ve happened if React had just stayed with their class components? If
they didn’t keep uprooting their community with things like Hooks or Effects or
Reducers? They could’ve stayed on a steady beat of polishing a more-or-less
finished product, and let other libraries explore those other ideas. That would
probably have saved everyone a massive amount of rewriting, reskilling, and
[12]bugs. But the social context demanded otherwise, and that has infected
basically the entire ecosystem now. I would love it if Web Components could
change those dynamics, but I’m not holding my breath (although the current
epidemic of Big Tech layoffs is probably doing more to shake things up than any
browser standard could!)
I still hope the APIs can open up a new frontier of library-agnostic and easily
distributable components, maybe using some kind of middleware spec (similar to
Ruby’s [13]Rack) that doesn’t change very much over time? I really hope that
works out. But for now, I’m going to keep using the parts I enjoy using, and be
cautiously optimistic about the future.
I'm Johan Halse: web developer, feared duelist, renowned lover, compulsive
liar. I made this fat footer because that's how footers are supposed to look
these days!
While you're here, consider following me on [14]Mastodon. Am I always correct
on Mastodon? No. But am I always hilarious? Also no. But I'm angling for enough
followers to credibly call myself a "thought leader" and retire to a quiet life
of picking shameful public fights with JavaScript celebrities.
If Mastodon's not your jam, maybe star one of my [15]GitHub repos. It's really
the least you can do.
Also: if you found my technical writing interesting, you should know that I
founded a company called [16]Varvet many years ago and they're still going, so
give them a buzz if you want help with web stuff.
Copyright © Johan Halse 2024
References:
[1] https://johan.hal.se/
[2] https://johan.hal.se/wrote
[3] https://ruby.social/@hejsna
[4] https://github.com/johanhalse
[5] https://www.linkedin.com/in/johan-halse
[6] https://hotwired.dev/
[7] https://github.com/johanhalse/musculus
[8] https://johan.hal.se/wrote/2024/01/24/concatenating-text
[9] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-pattern#Software_engineering_anti-patterns
[10] https://web.archive.org/web/20230327144118/https://www.varvet.com/blog/the-importance-of-elegance/
[11] https://github.com/johanhalse/pucko-search
[12] https://johan.hal.se/wrote/2024/02/28/care/
[13] https://github.com/rack/rack/blob/main/SPEC.rdoc
[14] https://ruby.social/@hejsna
[15] https://github.com/johanhalse
[16] https://www.varvet.com/

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• [1]Archive
• [2]Newsletter
• [3]Work
• [4]Contact
[5]Baldur Bjarnason
Web dev at the end of the world, from Hveragerði, Iceland
28 March 2024
‘I’m not a cynic, I’m disappointed’ – the Software Crisis Easter Sale
Most people don’t realise just how few of the “critics” in tech are genuine
cynics.
You don’t spend a good part of your life shouting about bad websites or broken
software and how they could be fixed if you’re a cynic.
Cynics don’t believe things can be fixed and they don’t believe that fixing
things would help in the first place.
Somebody who is constantly pointing out various instances of software
inaccessibility isn’t doing so because they’re a cynic. They believe this can
be done better; they were optimistic enough to expect more; and now they’re
disappointed.
And anybody who thinks that pointing out common flaws in the tech industry is
good for your career is hilariously wrong. Dramatically pulls out his wallet
using only his index finger and thumb. Carefully opens it. A cartoonish moth
flies out of the empty wallet.
People who point out what needs to be improved are generally disappointed
optimists. Only an optimist would believe that pointing out what has gone wrong
could ever result in said issue being fixed. Only somebody who believes that
software could be universally useful to everybody in society is going to spend
time discovering and highlighting accessibility issues.
You don’t spend years of your life figuring out how the flaws of the web can be
fixed unless you think the web has massive unfulfilled potential.
We’re not cynics. If we were, we wouldn’t waste so much energy being hopeful.
But, people in tech frequently seem to believe that people like me are haters –
that we’re out to prevent the industry from doing amazing things.
That, the seeming slow progress, and the frequent setbacks get tiring after a
while. We’re only a quarter of the way through the year and I’m already
exhausted.
I’m not a religious person, but Easter is coming around right at a time when I
need a bit of a break, so a break it is.
However, being the eternal optimist that I am, I figure I might as well run an
Easter sale while I’m off on the couch watching movies.
So, until the end of day 1 April, the discount code EASTER24 will give you a
$10 USD off any of my ebooks. That means that you can get Out of the Software
Crisis and The Intelligence Illusion for $25 USD each.
And, yes, it means that, since their normal price starts at $10 USD you can get
the ebook version of Yellow or my essay collection Bad Writing And Other Essays
for $0 USD.
(Though, in the case of Bad Writing you have the option of paying more if you
want to support this blog.)
The discount code again:
EASTER24
The ebooks:
[6]Out of the Software Crisis
[DEL:$35 USD:DEL]… $25 USD for PDF and EPUB.
[7]Direct checkout with discount applied
[8]The Intelligence Illusion
[DEL:$35 USD:DEL]… $25 USD for PDF and EPUB.
[9]Direct checkout with discount applied
[10]Bad Writing
[DEL:$10+ USD:DEL]… $0+ USD for PDF and EPUB.
[11]Direct checkout with discount applied
[12]Yellow: principles (or useless aphorisms) for software dev (ebook edition)
[DEL:$10 USD:DEL]… $0 USD for PDF and EPUB.
[13]Direct checkout with discount applied
In the meantime, try to be kind to yourselves and forgiving of your own flaws.
Not because of some religious thing.
Do it because it makes sense.
[14] Links, Notes, and Photos (28 March 2024)
Join the Newsletter
Subscribe to the [15]Out of the Software Crisis newsletter to get my weekly (at
least) essays on how to avoid or get out of software development crises.
Join now and get a free PDF of three bonus essays from Out of the Software
Crisis.
[16][ ]
Subscribe
We respect your privacy.
Unsubscribe at any time.
You can also find me on [18]Mastodon and [19]Twitter
References:
[1] https://www.baldurbjarnason.com/archive
[2] https://softwarecrisis.dev/
[3] https://www.baldurbjarnason.com/work/2021/
[4] mailto:baldur.bjarnason@gmail.com
[5] https://www.baldurbjarnason.com/
[6] https://softwarecrisis.baldurbjarnason.com/
[7] https://store.baldurbjarnason.com/buy/02e0f69a-aef4-41f7-8a6c-cd3739da6c73?checkout%5Bdiscount_code%5D=EASTER24
[8] https://illusion.baldurbjarnason.com/
[9] https://store.baldurbjarnason.com/buy/cd2b8ac5-4409-4567-b90d-ed83998c5c74?checkout%5Bdiscount_code%5D=EASTER24
[10] https://www.baldurbjarnason.com/books/bad-writing/
[11] https://store.baldurbjarnason.com/buy/ec7bf9dd-91cc-4ccd-a000-6f7703a91892?checkout%5Bdiscount_code%5D=EASTER24
[12] https://www.baldurbjarnason.com/courses/yellow/
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[14] https://www.baldurbjarnason.com/2024/links-10/
[15] https://softwarecrisis.dev/
[18] https://toot.cafe/@baldur
[19] https://twitter.com/fakebaldur

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[1] Christopher Butler ☼
[2]Archive
[3]Info
[4]Now
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Periodical 17 — Optimization
Optimizing a home is a years-long process.
[2ecf691b-e250-4506-b824-b2076088b38f]
Hello from the corner of our home. The sun is setting on what has been a rainy
but lovely day. We had a brief visit from some friends; my daughter spent a
couple of hours learning pottery from our neighbor, who is a master potter; my
son romped in puddles and came home a soggy raisin. We are about to enjoy a
glass of wine with dinner.
–
We’ve lived in this house for 11 years now. Each year, we find ways to better
inhabit it.
Optimizing a home is a years-long process. You must closely watch for patterns
in how you move about it; how you use things within it; how surfaces wear and
age; how light and dark, heat and cold come and go; how things sound.
The pandemic, of course, set in motion a lot of optimization. We had never
spent so much time in the house, and we had never been as many as we were by
2021, when our second child was born. Our 1,900 square foot house offers us
enough space, but with four humans and a dog, space is at a premium. So I have
been optimizing. We have an only-somewhat-said-in-jest motto here — spoken in
the rhythm of Glengarry Glen Ross — always be optimizing.
Recently, I did more optimizing.
First, I finished framing and mounting acoustic panels to the ceiling of our
office. The entire project is still not entirely finished — I need to re-paint
the ceiling — but I’m very happy with the results so far. It sounds great in
here. When you walk in, you can hear it — feel it — right away. It’s like being
in an isolation tank; it offers a warm silence.
[f6379286-e573-4c00-80c3-28eb069724c7]
Next, I created a tool panel for the back of the office closet door.
I’m frequently reaching for tools as there’s always something to repair,
update, or make in this old house. It’s surprising how much of a difference it
makes to simply reach for it rather than squat down and rummage through a bin
or drawer.
[5fd2bfee-60b0-4ef8-b00f-14630f79221b]
On the outside of the door, I used a bit of extra wood and bolts to make a
simple — but snazzy — coat rack.
[cf26d7d1-2bc3-4528-8981-d0a2c9ecc1b5]
Who says a bolt can’t be beautiful?
Finally, after I made [5]this lamp for the desk, my old [6]cylinder lamp needed
a new home.
I decided to notch out some space for it on the main bookshelf in here. My son
and I took down the books on the third shelf, carried the board outside,
measured, trimmed, and sanded it, and then brought it back in — about 10
minutes of effort to make a perfect space for some golden light.
[6efb3fb6-10ac-4f66-a124-16d9251850bf]
As I age, I realize more and more how important craft is to me. And I do take
pride in improving our surroundings. But the thing I’m most proud of here is
that each one of these projects was something I could include my children in.
On the short list of things I hope I can teach them is the confidence to shape
their surroundings for the better.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Written by [7]Christopher Butler on March 9, 2024, In [8]Log
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Next Entry
[9] visual journal – 2024 March 9 - March 16 Either nothing is magic or
everything is. (3 images)
Previous Entry
[10] object – Wooden Task Lamp I made a task lamp in just a couple of hours.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
⌨ Keep up via [11]Email or [12]RSS
✺ [13]Impressum
© Christopher Butler. All rights reserved
References:
[1] https://www.chrbutler.com/
[2] https://www.chrbutler.com/archives
[3] https://www.chrbutler.com/information
[4] https://www.chrbutler.com/now
[5] https://www.chrbutler.com/2024-02-24
[6] https://www.chrbutler.com/2023-04-24
[7] https://www.chrbutler.com/information
[8] https://www.chrbutler.com/tagged/log
[9] https://www.chrbutler.com/visual-journal/2024-03-09
[10] https://www.chrbutler.com/2024-02-24
[11] https://dontthinkaboutthefuture.eo.page/8y4tg
[12] http://chrbutler.com/feed.rss
[13] https://www.chrbutler.com/impressum

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[1]Eddie Dale [2]Blog [3]About [4]Uses 14.03.2024 – Eddie Dale
Why keep writing?
Good question.
I guess a natural follow up question is: Why did you start in the first place?
Also a good question. Let's try it:
1. "Writing to learn": I believe that writing is a great way to learn.
2. It sorts floating thoughts somewhere. Sure, could be private notes. Could
be a physical notepad. Could be a lot, but since I make web pages for a
living, that also seems like a good solution.
3. Practice. I really believe writing is a core skill that never goes out of
date, and always will be relevant. And writing a blog trains that writing
muscle.
4. Learning to let go. Clicking that "publish" button might not mean much.
After all, I can most probably count on one hand the readers of this post.
Still, it feels like a massive hurdle. And because "[5]caring less what
others think" is a personal goal of mine, writing and pressing publish
aligns well with that. The uncomfort is just proof that I still care too
much.
Ok, so that's at least something.
Not a great list, but enough to keep me at it for now.
"Writing is easy. You only need to stare at a blank piece of paper until drops
of blood form on your forehead"
– Gene Fowler
References:
[1] https://www.eddiedale.com/
[2] https://www.eddiedale.com/blog
[3] https://www.eddiedale.com/about
[4] https://www.eddiedale.com/uses
[5] https://www.eddiedale.com/blog/fold-fear-of-looking-dumb

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12 March 2024
essay
Any Technology Indistinguishable From Magic is Hiding Something
Somewhere between the [3]death of our favorite aggregator websites and the
world surviving a pandemic, the modern internet was reduced to four companies
in a trench coat. On the breast pocket of that trenchcoat is a name tag that
reads “The Cloud.” Under that name tag is an older name tag that reads “The
Internet.” And under that name tag is a frayed embroidery that reads, “ARPANET
(non-commercial use only, motherfuckers),” in a lovely script typeface and
craftsmanship you just don’t see nowadays.
Google, Amazon, Microsoft, and Meta (GAMM) now own most of the steel and glass
that makes the internet go vroom. Google, Amazon, and Microsoft control
seventy-five percent of the cloud computing market^[4][1]. Meta and Google own
half of the fiber optic cables supplying internet services across continents^
[5][2]. Most of our favorite productivity apps, retail websites, and social
media platforms are beholden to proprietary infrastructure controlled by these
four corporations. They own the most heavily trafficked server networks, all
the GPUs, and gigawatts, and whatever.
They call it the cloud, but really, that’s just the internet.
So, what we know as the cloud doesn’t actually exist. It’s a euphemism that
obfuscates the consolidation of critical infrastructure. The cloud is
metaphysical porn for wild-eyed technocrats in Allbirds who say things like,
“I’m making a dent in the universe” without a whisper of irony. It’s bullshit.
It’s fugazi. There is no spoon, Neo.
The cloud is a lie.
So, now that GAMM owns all this infrastructure, but no one really knows they
own it all, or even that there's an "all” to own, they're doing what American
corporations do best— selling us the biggest truck we're willing to drive off
the lot. But instead of F-250s, it's raw computing power manifested into
virtual reality conference rooms.
The future of the web is consumption [6]#
Web 3.0 probably won’t involve the blockchain or NFTs in any meaningful way. We
all may or may not one day join the metaverse and wear clunky goggles on our
faces for the rest of our lives. And it feels increasingly unlikely that our
graphic designers, artists, and illustrators will suddenly change their job
titles to "prompt artist” anytime soon.
But none of that really matters. We keep waiting for the next iteration of the
web, or the internet, but the future is now, baby. We’re living it at this very
moment. It snuck through the backdoor when no one was looking.
Over a decade or more, while our politicians were busy sub-tweeting fascists
for clout, GAMM was buying up all the infrastructure it could carry. The old
sync-and-share business model wasn’t working for them anymore, so they turned
the internet into a network of expensive, gas-guzzling computing power.
It makes sense. The production cost of data storage plummeted by 94% in just
ten years^[7][3]. You can't sell 50GB plans to college kids who own M2 Macbook
Pros with a terabyte of solid-state storage. That's not how you build
hundred-year empires.
So what did GAMM do? They convinced us that our notetaking apps require an
internet connection and forty thousand dollar GPUs located on a server three
hundred miles away. That's the future they've made for us.
It’s consumption. Its monopolistic control. It’s computing-hungry magic tricks
thrown at the wall, hoping something sticks. The next iteration of the web by
way of the internet is just one long infomercial of fifty-dollar solutions to
fifty-cent problems.
I can’t stress this point enough. The reason why GAMM and all its little
digirati minions on social media are pushing things like crypto, then the
blockchain, and now virtual reality and artificial intelligence is because
those technologies require a metric fuckton of computing power to operate. That
fact may be devastating for the earth, indeed it is for our mental health, but
it’s wonderful news for the four storefronts selling all the juice.
Open(ness) for business [8]#
The presumptive beneficiaries of this new land of milk and honey are so drunk
with speculative power that they'll promise us anything to win our hearts and
minds. That anything includes magical virtual reality universes and robots with
human-like intelligence. It's the same faux-passionate anything that proclaimed
crypto as the savior of the marginalized. The utter bullshit anything that
would have us believe that the meek shall inherit the earth, and the powerful
won't do anything to stop it.
Right now, there's a four-way chess match in which each competitor will take a
position of openness or security depending on which ideology helps them gain
more market share.
Amazon controls 35% of the cloud computing market and has created a tight seal
around its customer base. So, Meta and Google started preaching the importance
of data portability. The [9]Data Transfer Initiative is a red herring protocol
that does little more than allow Meta and Google to compare notes on the data
they have on us. But the message is, of course, "user empowerment.” [10]El oh
fucking el.
If either Google or Meta's market positions change, you better believe they
will pivot to security fearmongering while lifting that drawbridge.
Amazon is mostly quiet as the frontrunner in the cloud computing market.
Microsoft, however, may've earned itself a hundred-year reign with OpenAI. So,
its job is just to scare us into believing that AI has the power to bring about
the apocalypse and that Microsoft is the only company that can control it.
There's no way OpenAI survives any of this, by the way—not as an independent
company anyway. Without Microsoft running ChatGPT on its servers, OpenAI has no
product.
Google and Meta want the tech world to believe that building a sufficient moat
for its respective AI businesses is impossible. Google went so far as to leak a
[11]frantic internal memo. In it, an employee claims that open-source AI is
"eating its lunch” and that they might as well release their code to the
public.
This framing is a half-truth, and it's purposefully deceptive. Yes, if everyone
open-sources its AI models, they cannot build a moat on proprietary software.
However, Google's memo fails to mention that it already has the infrastructure
to run computing-hungry AI models and that infrastructure is wildly expensive
to build. That's why four companies own most of it. The real moat is the fields
of data centers, specialized GPUs, and hundreds of miles of deep-sea fiber
optic cables.
And then there's Zuck [12]#
No one has a more grandiose vision for the internet than Mark Zuckerberg. The
dude read a 1980s dystopian sci-fi novel where the world was so shitty, people
spent all of their time in a virtual reality universe, and he thought— yeah,
humans will love this beep boop beep (or whatever sound he makes when he has an
idea). And you know what? There’s a sporting chance that the son of a bitch
pulls it off.
Whatever. The metaverse is not the story here. And whether or not Zuck actually
believes the bullshit he preaches about his virtual reality hellscape isn’t
relevant.
What matters is that Meta is likely the most sophisticated cloud computing
company on the planet. Facebook cut its teeth on a barebones web before the
cloud market even existed. Zuck has open-sourced more cloud architecture than
most companies could ever hope to develop in a lifetime. Amazon Web Services
doesn’t gain a third of the cloud computing market without Facebook’s
contributions.
So, I think it’s a mistake to write off Zuck as some tech-bro idiot chasing his
tail. He’s not Elon Musk. Mark Zuckerberg is a capable businessman who
understands the industry better than most tech founders.
I don’t know the guy personally, but look at the facts. Half of the world is on
his suite of apps. He’s been the king of social media for twenty years. You can
count on one hand the number of competing social media platforms that have
survived his reign. His anti-competitive strategies are so effective that
universities [13]have studied it.
Psychopath? Probably. Should you hate him? Sure. But don’t underestimate him.
He’s shrewd and cunning and will rip your fucking head off if you hit the App
Store’s top 100.
With that in mind, let’s examine some of Zuck’s recent moves with fresh eyes.
Mark Zuckerberg didn’t spend ten billion dollars on GPUs to achieve augmented
general intelligence, a pursuit no one can even confirm is possible, just so he
can then give away the technology for free. That doesn’t make sense. He is a
chief executive with a fiduciary responsibility to shareholders.
He’s made these moves because raw computing power is the business model. So,
who gives a shit if Meta put Llama on Github for free? How will anyone ship
their resulting AI-featured app without Meta’s cloud infrastructure? Read the
terms and conditions. [14]Llama is not open-source.
Zuck isn’t the mad scientist his PR team wants us to think he is. He’s selling
us printers at cost so that later he can fuck us on the price of ink.
One layer up, one step ahead. [15]#
This post has been a stone-cold bummer, huh? I know, I know. I put you through
some shit just now. I’m sorry about that.
Listen, I know we want to believe that things are changing for the better. For
the first time in a long while, there’s hope for the future of the web. There’s
something in the air, something that feels like meaningful change. Things are
happening. It’s lovely, actually.
When corporate social media platforms began to crumble a few years ago, we
looked for alternatives. Some of us, like myself, rediscovered the open web. We
reminisced about a time when the web was more than just search engine
optimization and key performance indicators. Before an algorithm made us dance
for our dinners. And it just felt right. So, we made blogs and personal
websites and put little pixelated badges on the footers like we used to. We
then moved to decentralized social media and joined [16]small forums.
We carved out a space on the web that wasn’t for sale.
But don’t you see, you beautiful idiot? (Pretend like I’m shaking you by the
shoulders frantically.) Our existence on this unincorporated web threatens
those who have made their fortunes off our digital lives. The four largest
corporations in the world won’t just roll over and let us have the quirky indie
web we all want. They’ve moved one layer up so that they remain our gatekeepers
no matter where we go.
There are no easy answers. Entire books exist on how to take back the internet
they’ve stolen from us. [17]Internet For The People by Ben Tarnoff is one of my
favorites. It’s an inspiring exploration of the untold history of the internet,
and it has some great calls to action.
Today, we can start by giving each other some grace. Let’s move away from the
trappings of the morality Olympics we’re playing with the social media
platforms we participate in. The factions created by that behavior don’t
benefit us. It benefits them. They love to see it. Some people are on Twitter,
some are on Threads. What the fuck ever. It doesn’t matter. Under the hood,
Twitter is just the company that removed “Don’t Be Evil” from its mission
statement. Threads is run by the company responsible for [18]cultivating a
genocide. None of our hands are clean.
And if you’re on Mastodon or some other decentralized social media, that’s
great! Don’t be a dick about it. For some people, TikTok is their livelihood.
For others, Instagram is the difference between speaking to someone that day or
not. We’re all just doing the best we can. But we’re fighting each other when
we could be working together to take these motherfuckers down a peg.
The internet doesn’t run on scattered clouds and rushing streams. It takes
heaps of fibered glass and twisted steel to send a DM to that cute French boy
from your year abroad. And it takes thousands of miles of laid cable, traveling
at impossible speeds through the depths of our oceans, for him to leave you on
read. I’m not judging. We’ve all been there, mon cheri.
But someone must own all that infrastructure. And with ownership comes control.
This fact is worth stating out loud. It’s worth communicating in our preferred
typeface. Even if some of us are more aware of it than others. Otherwise, we
get lost in the magic of it all. We become more beholden to our Internet
overlords.
Who’s to say how a cloud computing oligopoly will affect our everyday lives?
But it feels big—bigger than even the telecommunications and cable TV
monopolies of the 1990s or Bezos’s ownership of the Washington Post. The
internet is how we’ve been able to disperse information and organize with each
other. Good people on the web have stepped up when our news organizations and
politicians failed us.
Google, Amazon, Microsoft, and Meta already control so much of what we see and
don’t see. If they can suppress an active genocide on the platform layer,
imagine what they can do when they control the whole kit and kaboodle.
So, if we want a true indie web, we must be prepared to fight for it. Hope is
not enough.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
1. [19]Cloud Market Gets its Mojo Back; AI Helps Push Q4 Increase in Cloud
Spending to New Highs [20]↩︎
2. [21]Internet For The People [22]↩︎
3. [23]Historical cost of computer memory and storage [24]↩︎
Metadata
label name
Plot [26]notebook
Published 12 March 2024
Type essay
Phase sorting
Tags [27]technocrats, [28]the web
Assumed audience everyone
caffeinate me
If you have ever found my writing valuable and you want to help me continue
avoiding doing my laundry, you can [29]buy me a coffee. It would mean a lot.
† Article's assumed audience (AAA)
Sometimes, I identify who I'm writing for as a way to provide contextIt's like
saying, "I'm using a lot of technical terms because I wrote this post for
frontend developers,” or "Sorry if I'm getting too symmetrical, this one's for
my Wes Anderson fans." But, all are welcomed, always. If you're not in this
article's intended audience, but you find this article interesting, wonderful!
Please stick around, read the post, and feel free to ask me questions.
Referrals & affiliates
I do not receive commission for anything I share, endorse, or discuss, anywhere
on From Jason. I have no sponsorships, or advertiser agreements. If that ever
changes, I will let you know.
Ornamentation with the word Finis in a banner.
2086© (so I don't forget to change the year) From Jason [30]2.3.0
This site is dedicated to the old web, the weird web, the web that screamed in
horror when summoned through a land line.
[31]Don't click here
References:
[1] https://www.fromjason.xyz/p/notebook/
[2] https://www.buymeacoffee.com/fromjason
[3] https://www.fromjason.xyz/p/notebook/where-have-all-the-websites-gone/
[4] https://www.fromjason.xyz/p/notebook/any-technology-indistinguishable-from-magic-is-hiding-something/#fn1
[5] https://www.fromjason.xyz/p/notebook/any-technology-indistinguishable-from-magic-is-hiding-something/#fn2
[6] https://www.fromjason.xyz/p/notebook/any-technology-indistinguishable-from-magic-is-hiding-something/#the-future-of-the-web-is-consumption
[7] https://www.fromjason.xyz/p/notebook/any-technology-indistinguishable-from-magic-is-hiding-something/#fn3
[8] https://www.fromjason.xyz/p/notebook/any-technology-indistinguishable-from-magic-is-hiding-something/#open-ness-for-business
[9] https://dtinit.org/
[10] https://micro.fromjason.xyz/2024/01/13/threads-now-lets.html
[11] https://micro.fromjason.xyz/2024/01/17/a-quick-rant.html
[12] https://www.fromjason.xyz/p/notebook/any-technology-indistinguishable-from-magic-is-hiding-something/#and-then-there-s-zuck
[13] https://bfi.uchicago.edu/wp-content/uploads/BFI_WP_202019.pdf
[14] https://spectrum.ieee.org/open-source-llm-not-open
[15] https://www.fromjason.xyz/p/notebook/any-technology-indistinguishable-from-magic-is-hiding-something/#one-layer-up-one-step-ahead
[16] https://32bit.cafe/
[17] https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/667898/internet-for-the-people-by-ben-tarnoff/
[18] https://erinkissane.com/meta-in-myanmar-full-series
[19] https://www.srgresearch.com/articles/cloud-market-gets-its-mojo-back-q4-increase-in-cloud-spending-reaches-new-highs
[20] https://www.fromjason.xyz/p/notebook/any-technology-indistinguishable-from-magic-is-hiding-something/#fnref1
[21] https://www.versobooks.com/products/2674-internet-for-the-people
[22] https://www.fromjason.xyz/p/notebook/any-technology-indistinguishable-from-magic-is-hiding-something/#fnref2
[23] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/historical-cost-of-computer-memory-and-storage?tab=table&time=2002..latest
[24] https://www.fromjason.xyz/p/notebook/any-technology-indistinguishable-from-magic-is-hiding-something/#fnref3
[26] https://www.fromjason.xyz/p/notebook
[27] https://www.fromjason.xyz/tags/technocrats/
[28] https://www.fromjason.xyz/tags/the-web/
[29] https://www.buymeacoffee.com/fromjason
[30] https://fromjason.xyz/p/notebook/from-jason-2-0-is-an-11ty-powered-digital-garden-with-multiple-plots/
[31] https://www.fromjason.xyz/p/notebook/any-technology-indistinguishable-from-magic-is-hiding-something/#