February

Apparently the new hotness in Japan is Morioka.

Via Matt Weagle: First, when you implement RFCs, you will be introducing friction to your team. Instead of going straight to building, we are required to think and write about what we’ll build. Friction brings frustration. Our industry has convinced us that programmers are supposed to be writing code for as much time as possible, leading to negative sentiments to practices that keep programmers away from their editors.

Via Chris Ruppel: Really enjoyed refreshing my responsive images know-how with the new guide from @Wilto — definitely spotted some opportunities for improvement on my personal site, which is now serving up to 10x less image data on certain posts. 🤯

Via Charles Johnson: I’ve been building a much better way to embed Mastodon posts in a blog or wiki or whatever, simply by pasting in a post’s URL.

It uses a revamped version of the Mastodon embed.js script, that can be used to correctly size dynamically embedded posts. It’s just one piece of the puzzle, but that code is here if you’d like to give it a try:

The Verge via Christina Warren: Sonos is continuing to finalize details for a pair of new smart speakers set to launch in the coming weeks, and The Verge has now obtained marketing images of the products and learned roughly how much they will cost.

Ecow: Compact, clone-on-write vector and string.

If you’re someone who enjoys taking photos but doesn’t enjoy checking a pile of apps to see when the conditions are right, I’d love for you to check out my new app Photo Scout and give your feedback.

A way to query arbitrary data sources in SQL-like fashion.

Simon Willison: TIL that macOS ships with a default CLI command called “sips,” for “scriptable image processing system” - and it can convert webp images to PNG, but it can also generate entirely new images from scratch using an almost entirely undocumented canvas-based JavaScript API!

StreetPass is a cool new browser extension that uses Mastodon’s verification system in a clever way. Mastodon users verify themselves by adding a custom link to their personal site. StreetPass lets you know when you’ve found one of these links, and adds them to your list. As you browse the web, StreetPass will build a list of Mastodon users that belong to the websites you visit.

Via Derek Prior: You can now add up to four social account links to your GitHub profile which render with a sprinkling of formatting support for our most popular platforms. Yes, the resulting links links will satisfy Mastodon verification requirements when rendered.