David Bushell’s Blog + Notes combined feed
Slop watermarks are coming to Claude and all LLMs, thanks EU! They use a seeded pseudo-random number generator to ensure the next word is still random, but can be matched back to the seed. It’s clever, and hilarious how often Anthropic use “random” to explain how LLMs work. The current crop of “AI detectors” are absolute bogus. When Anthropic releases their watermark detection API a strong…
I jumped in at the hour mark of Miriam Suzanne’s chat with Brad Frost around the time they discuss the true costs of AI. Miriam’s words are incredible. Brad nods along seemingly agreeing, but fails to see he’s part of the problem by using (and selling) this stuff. I was hoping to better understand the perspective of someone like Brad but I’m more confused than ever.
I had this drafted on my big blog under the title “Abattoirs of taste” which I felt was too killer to waste, so I’m dropping it here unfinished. After reading it back though I had to ask myself: why am I bothering? This nonsense is not what I should be focusing on! I keep seeing the word “taste” pop up in conjunction with AI usage in web development. According to Syntax episode #1027 it is “taste”…
I’ve already announced my new company half a dozen times by now. I figured it was about time I gave real details, so here’s the name and logo! Valley Fold is my new home for professional services… once I’ve finished the website. I’m not one for big splashy launches, I’ll probably just hit deploy and […]
WordPress if famous for its backwards compatibility. That’s if you ignore its non-existent CSS strategy. Over seven years ago the Gutenberg block editor was rushed into v5.0. Ever since, WordPress has polluted the front-end with impossible to manage styles. I’ve written for years about how WordPress breaks CSS and how horrendous theming has become the norm. I tried to raise issues but they went…
This story is wild. Where to start? John Gruber posts “App Store Rejection of the Week: Dark Hours” (now retracted) about Terry Godier’s “Browsers have standards, the App Store has judgment” (since edited). Godier claimed to have built an astronomy app called Dark Hours over four months, and that Apple rejected the app “on the grounds that it was Astrology”. Gruber ran with the story, heavily…
I read: “We Stopped Using RSC on TanStack.com” and it’s incredible. They were shipping 1.1 MiB of JavaScript to the browser to render markdown and syntax highlight code examples — in the browser. They moved this work to the server (good) using React Server Components (bad). RSC proved to be unbearable, even by TanStack standards. They then wrote their own markdown parser and syntax highlighter,…
After a multi-year detour wading through the quagmire of bloatware that is modern software I’m back to coding in Sublime Text. I am finally at peace! Do you know how relaxing it is without the daily “update available” and “view release notes” ritual? There is nothing I dread more than release notes. […]
I watched a recent Jeff Geerling video (YouTube) and couldn’t believe what I was seeing. The current price of a Raspberry Pi is an absolute rip off. I checked The Pi Hut and Pimoroni both are priced the same for the UK market. Raspberry Pi 5 for £292.80? Who in their right mind would buy that? I see they introduced a 1GB model for £43.20. A 1GB Pi 5 has extremely limited use, a Pi 4 or even Pi 3…
I really don’t understand the purpose of Homebrew anymore. Today I tried to rebuild my Tauri app and I get a weird error. I run tauri info to find: Weird, I thought I had installed Rust via Homebrew. I run which rustup to find: I run rustup and everything updates. I check ~/.cargo/bin and see all the Rust tools are symlinked to /opt/homebrew/bin/rustup-init — the rustup-init file does not exist. I…
Cold opens are the worst new trend in podcasting. Random talking with no context. I’m supposed to guess who is speaking and what they’re rambling on about? I look forward to the vague deja vu I get when it’s repeated in 40 minutes 🙄 This ain’t TikTok. Nobody is getting hooked on a poorly chosen mid-sentence quote that isn’t half as profound and the editor imagined. I’m getting real tired of…
I am listening to The Licanius Trilogy by James Islington. The Wheel of Time influence is obvious. The audiobooks are read by Michael Kramer who is the voice of the high fantasy genre. I’m not convinced half way into the first book but I’ll see it through.
I can’t take it anymore! If you want to speak to me, send an email. My contact form is out of service indefinitely. This is actually in lieu of moving my professional services to a yet to be announced limited company. But I can’t let opportunity for a dramatic blog post go to waste. […]
Back when I began freelancing I figured I’d set up a limited company eventually. I guess thirteen years later is eventually. I’ve finally got a local accountant working on company registration. Exciting times! The final push was this Making Tax Digital thing from GOV.UK. […]
When I redesigned my website earlier this year I removed dark mode. I never liked the colours, and the light switch toggle was so 2010’s. Personally I prefer reading with a dark theme for long-form content. Dark is not my brand though and I don’t believe every website needs to support colour scheme […]
When I’m not fighting WordPress I deliver static HTML or the occasional JavaScript framework integration. For personal projects I have ‘fun’ with my own static site generator. This week was a side quest (soon to be main quest) to build my new company website. […]
At the risk of pissing on people’s chips I figured it’d be helpful to illustrate the three classes of AI user I’ve identified in the slopageddon. You might be thinking: “Hey, those personas are all negative!” — and you’re absolutely right! Believe me, I’d love nothing more than to shut up about […]
1984, Minority Report, Black Mirror — bedtime stories compared to the horrors the UK Government publish, am I right? I’m led to believe “Watch this space” is the latest propaganda piece from His Majesty’s Nanny State. I haven’t read past the title but according to gaming site Dexerto, YouTube […]
I’m a front-end developer not a medical practitioner. If you’re bleeding IRL visit the hospital and stop googling medical issues! The full-bleed layout — as described there by Josh Comeau — can be done with CSS grid (and subgrid). Sometimes you can’t grid the entire page. […]
Today I’m introducing the next generation of code editor. A modern app to satiate the needs of the discerning coder. We’re talkin’ blazing fast collaboration between man and machine. Try out the demo below (for best experience: desktop Chrome, obvs). […]
This is an RSS-only post, thank you for subscribing :) If you’re only here for web and tech talk you can skip this one! I rescued an animal today! Probably… The UK has its fair share of canals. I like canals. They cut through urban life offering an escape back to nature and are teaming with […]