February 11, 2024

Hit and Miss #336: Wouldn’t it be nice

Hello!

Have had one of those off days—it wasn’t bad, really, just low energy, the time always passing more quickly than hoped. Ah well. I’m currently sitting in the spare room with Pema, trying to coax her into leaving Arthur alone (or, at least, to more peacefully co-exist with him); this hasn’t been particularly successful today, which is definitely impacting morale.

That said, a huge highlight of the week was seeing a load of CDSers along with a few soon-to-be alumni. It was so lovely to see some of my favourite people—of the many things I miss from my days at CDS, getting to work with those folks every day is top of the list.

Anyhow—briefly, links!

• Sameer’s most recent newsletter shared Anil Dash’s celebration of the radical availability of podcasts as a hallmark of the open web. Following sites, podcasts, whatever via RSS is such a delightful move—nobody but you filtering or sorting what’s served to you, and no shortage of interesting things out there to read. (I use Feedbin to store and sync my subscriptions, supported by almost all modern feed readers!)
• Harry Brignull and Cennydd Bowles have completed Over the Edge: The Use of Design Tactics to Undermine Browser Choice, supported and published by Mozilla. (Cennydd speaks to his comfort with Mozilla’s approach to the arrangement, given the obvious conflict of interest.) Importantly, this kind of analysis often depends on a paper trail, on people speaking up and writing down their opposition to a harmful choice.
• Aaron’s started a newsletter, and the first issue covers a topic near to my heart, “hedging” big IT investments with a smaller team aimed toward the same problem. It gives me a grin to know our proposal for the idea lives on in a CDS GitHub repository—though it shocks me to see the 2019 date on it.
• Love little sysadmin-type utilities that provide org awareness, like monitoring a user directory to spot arrivals and departures. (This would be fun to use in government, except IT account creation is regularly -1 to +3 [or more] weeks off someone’s actual arrival / departure date.)

All the best for the week ahead!

Lucas