Showing all posts tagged: technology
A school in Iceland shows us what a smartphone ban looks like
22 October 2024
There has been a ban on the use of smartphones at a school in Iceland since 2019. No prizes for guessing what the result was.
A phone ban has been in place at Öldutún School since the beginning of 2019, and according to the principal, it has worked well. The school’s atmosphere and culture have changed for the better, and there is more peace in the classroom.
Hardly surprising. Students are able to bring their phones with them, but in the normal course of events, they must not be used during school hours. Smartphones weren’t around when I was at school, and for that I am thankful… it seemed like there was plenty else to worry as it was.
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education, smartphones, technology, trends
Before the Firefox, Opera, web browsers there was Netscape
21 October 2024
Jamie Zawinski, one of the original creators of the erstwhile Netscape browser, recalls the day the first version, Netscape 0.9, was shipped thirty-years ago, last week:
According to my notes, it went live shortly after midnight on Oct 13, 1994. We sat in the conference room in the dark and listened to different sound effects fired for each different platform that was downloaded.
I started using Netscape, by then known as Netscape Navigator, when I bought my own computer in 1996, meaning I could choose the software I wanted to install.
That was a Windows 95 box, and would have had a version of Internet Explorer (IE), Microsoft’s then web browser offering. But Netscape was all anyone could talk about, so I soon migrated there. I’ve never been a fan of IE, or any Microsoft browser, for that matter. The browser wars of the late nineties left me with a distinct distain for their stuff. I took to using Firefox almost the day it was released, and it remains my default browser to this day.
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Automattic, makers of WordPress, and development discipline
21 October 2024
Dave Winer, writing at Scripting News:
One of the things that makes me want to see Automattic stick around and grow is that they have a really large codebase that has been scaled, debugged and maintained for over 20 freaking years. And the most important thing — they don’t break users. The code I wrote to run against WordPress in the 00s still runs today. To me as a developer this speaks very loudly. It means it’s safe to develop here. It means there’s discipline in their development organization.
The on-going dispute between Automattic and WP Engine, the lawsuits and counter lawsuits, and staff departures, has me, as a long term WordPress user, a tad nervous. I could surely migrate to another publishing platform if it came to the crunch, and WordPress, somehow, ceased to exist. But would whatever I moved to have the same long-term development consistency and stability?
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How to reduce bad screen time, while needing good screen time?
17 October 2024
Mary Grace Descourouez, writing for Stanford Lifestyle Medicine:
Additional studies found that adults who engage in excessive screen time or have a diagnosed smartphone addiction had lower gray matter volume. Gray matter is brain tissue essential for daily human functioning and is responsible for everything from movement to memory to emotions. Gray matter volume naturally decreases as we age, so along with reducing screen time, engaging in activities that maintain our gray matter volume and promote brain health, such as exercise and movement, restorative sleep, social engagement, and stress management, is crucial.
I think it’s a given that an excess of time spent gazing at computer and laptop screens is detrimental to our health and well-being. But these devices are deeply ingrained in our lives, so going cold-turkey, or switching to a dumbphone, AKA a featurephone, aren’t exactly realistic options. Even though some people have reported a marked difference in well-being, from doing so.
Nor are the simplistic calls made by some to go “back to the old ways”, because it worked for them, in their day. For my part, being able to do so much, from a device in my hand, sees me lead a life and work style that earlier generations of my family could not have possibly imagined. While I’m full well aware of the dangers of too much screen time, I’m not about to dumb-down anytime time soon.
We get around over-doing screen time by getting outside for two to three hours daily, weather permitting, in the early evenings. Naturally we carry our phones with us, in the event family or friends need to make contact. Moving at a brisk pace for several hours though is not much conducive to looking at a screen, so we score at least a few screen-free hours. Taking a solid break like this seems more sensible than trying to ration, or restrict, looking at screens, at other times.
At least, that’s our experience.
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health, smartphones, technology
Building a website is easy: a guide to the first steps
16 October 2024
HTML for people, by American software developer Blake Watson, is a helpful resource for people wishing to build their first website, with a simple text editor. HTML for people guides first time web designers through the process of creating webpages, to uploading them, to produce a live website.
You, my friend, are about to go from zero to internet by putting your very first homemade page on the web. I will let you in on a little secret — websites are just files with text. They don’t require fancy, expensive software to create. You can literally make a website with Notepad. In fact, that’s what we’ll do right now.
It’s literally that simple, and it’s what I did — using Notepad, a simple text editor — way back in the day, to create the first version of disassociated. I was still using NotePad until recently, to create the PHP files here. If you’re on Linux, Mousepad is a simple text editor you could try there.
But even today, you can still comfortably go old-school, and build a website using component HTML files, e.g. an index page, about page, blog page, etc, using a simple text editor, without the need for CMS software, such as WordPress, if you so wanted.
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IndieWeb, technology, web design
ProRata: an AI chatbot that pays for the knowledge it disseminates
14 October 2024
ProRata is an AI chatbot that pays the content producers whose work is used to format answers to questions put to it. Yes, you read that correctly. The technology is being backed by American investor and entrepreneur Bill Gross, writes Fred Vogelstein, for Crazy Stupid Tech:
But it will do something none of the others do: Pay content providers for being the sources of those answers. He’s got written commitments from nearly two dozen top publishers to access their entire archives plus enough verbal — soon to be written — agreements to more than double that number. Meta’s LLM will parse each question. And ProRata will then use its access to this giant archive of publishers to generate answers. He’s launching it in Beta to 10,000 users some time in the next month.
This is the all-knowing chatbot we’ve been waiting for. One that pays those who contribute to it’s… knowledge. Without scaping and taking from others, without their knowledge or permission, or even offering a cent in return, behaviour some other chatbots are guilty of.
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artificial intelligence, technology, trends
Wikipedia to remove low quality unsourced AI created content
11 October 2024
Wikipedia has created a task force to identity instances of poor quality, unsourced content, being generated by AI chatbots. The online encyclopaedia will still allow AI apps to compose articles, provided they do so in accordance with their policies:
The purpose of this project is not to restrict or ban the use of AI in articles, but to verify that its output is acceptable and constructive, and to fix or remove it otherwise.
It’s unfortunate that a resource as trusted as Wikipedia — which is assumed by many readers to be correct and accurate — has become filled with sometimes false and misleading AI made slop.
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artificial intelligence, technology
WordPress.org users required to denounce WP Engine affiliation
11 October 2024
Samantha Cole, writing at 404 Media:
The checkbox on the login page for WordPress.org asks users to confirm, “I am not affiliated with WP Engine in any way, financially or otherwise.” Users who don’t check that box can’t log in or register a new account. As of Tuesday, that checkbox didn’t exist.
Automattic upping the ante in the on-going stouch with website hosting company WP Engine. I didn’t see this message when I logged into my WordPress (WP) account, Thursday afternoon AEDT. Maybe the roll-out is gradual, or (more fancifully) WP knows I host disassociated elsewhere.
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So long, thanks for all the blog posts: Microsoft cans WordPad
10 October 2024
Microsoft is doing away with their old basic, but useful, word processor, WordPad, which has been bundled with Windows Operating Systems for nearly thirty-years. It will not be a feature at all in Windows 11. Yet another reason to migrate away from Windows all together, perhaps?
Before switching to Word, I used to draft all my blog posts in WordPad. Now I use Writer. I did, still do, prep all the text and HTML tags when writing up a blog post, then copy and paste the lot into WordPress. When I migrated to WordPress in 2007, I used WordPad (heh, WP) to set out all the old blog posts from the old static, manually coded HTML webpages, onto an upload template. I later imported the template in the then new database on the WordPress install. So, WP to WP. The whole process took months, and I still look through the file today, which I’ve kept in an archive folder.
I expect the end game, on Microsoft’s part, is to push everyone onto Word. For a subscription.
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blogs, history, technology, trends, writing
Jeffrey Zeldman: I stayed, and declined an Automattic severance
8 October 2024
New York City based web designer, standards advocate, founder of A List Apart, and many other things, Jeffrey Zeldman:
I stayed because I believe in the work we do. I believe in the open web and owning your own content. I’ve devoted nearly three decades of work to this cause, and when I chose to move in-house, I knew there was only one house that would suit me. In nearly six years at Automattic, I’ve been able to do work that mattered to me and helped others, and I know that the best is yet to come.
I didn’t know Zeldman worked at Automattic, but I used to read his website/blog every day when I worked as a web designer.
Without getting involved in the WordPress/WP Engine imbroglio, the Automattic severance package seemed quite generous, given it catered for employees who disagreed with the company’s stance. It seems to me dissenting employees anywhere else would simply be shown the door.
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