2024.10.21 - Making Technical Tools Sound Human

Title: 2024.10.21 – Making Technical Tools Sound Human

React and Web Components & NotebookLM & Treating a Cold & Fat Donglai

This Week’s Highlights

Making Technical Tools Sound Human https://www.simplethread.com/making-technical-tools-sound-human/
All our lives, we’ve received ideas about how things should sound. It’s how we know which language is most appropriate to a situation—we’re polite with clients, friendly with friends, a bit apologetic when we get pulled over for doing 80 in a 45. We’re socialized to know how these interactions should go. We’re also getting more and more socialized to how apps and digital tools should sound, too: those we use for work (Microsoft Office) are going to be a little more pragmatic‑sounding than, say, Instagram. This is called the app’s voice, and it’s a key part of how the app connects with users.

Liskov’s Gun: The Parallel Evolution of React and Web Components https://www.baldurbjarnason.com/2024/liskovs-gun/
Described this way, you might wonder how an otherwise innocuous set of web APIs, designed to aid in the making of reusable widgets, so consistently cause tension and conflict among web developers. So much so that it’s almost certainly a very bad idea for me to wade into it with this essay. Why do Web Components cause online web‑developer communities to erupt in anger and argument? To answer that, we need to go back over a decade, at least thirteen years, all the way back to 2011. Related: How Microsoft Edge Is Replacing React With Web Components.

Our Approach to Architecture https://blog.scottlogic.com/2024/10/15/our-approach-to-architecture.html
In this article we publish Scott Logic’s approach to architecture and how we avoid common pitfalls. This is the first in a series of pieces that define our IT‑consultancy methodology through the lens of principles we have honed over two decades of delivering complex, critical change for the world’s largest financial institutions and government organisations—principles that we apply across all our consulting services and roles.

New in NotebookLM: Customizing Your Audio Overviews and Introducing NotebookLM Business https://blog.google/technology/ai/notebooklm-update-october-2024/
You can now steer NotebookLM’s Audio Overview—telling the AI what to focus on and what level of expertise to use—and apply for the NotebookLM Business pilot program. Related:

• Solving Complex Problems with OpenAI o1 Models
• Adobe’s New Image‑Rotation Tool Is One of the Most Impressive AI Concepts We’ve Seen
• Diffusion for World Modeling: Visual Details Matter in Atari
• Introducing AI Assistance in Chrome DevTools
• Brain Drain: David vs. Goliath

Deep Reads

How to Convert CommonJS to ESM https://deno.com/blog/convert-cjs-to-esm
All new JavaScript should be written in ESM for future‑proofing. However, many legacy codebases need to be modernized for compatibility with newer packages. In this blog post we’ll show you how to migrate the syntax of a legacy CommonJS project to one that supports ESM, and we’ll point out tools that smooth the process.

The Story of Web Framework Hono, from the Creator of Hono https://blog.cloudflare.com/the-story-of-web-framework-hono-from-the-creator-of-hono/
“While trying to create my applications, I ended up creating my framework for them.” — a classic example of yak shaving. However, Hono is now used by many developers, including Cloudflare, which incorporates Hono in core products. So this journey into the depths of yak shaving turned out to be meaningful.

Using Static Websites for Tiny Archives https://alexwlchan.net/2024/static-websites/
Tagged with digital preservation, HTML – Posted 16 October 2024
In my previous post I talked about trying to be more intentional and deliberate with my digital data. I don’t just want to keep everything—I want to keep stuff I’ll actually look at again. As part of that process I’m trying to be better about organising my files. Keeping something is pointless if I can’t find it later.

Accelerators Maximize Efficiency in User Interfaces https://www.nngroup.com/articles/ui-accelerators/
Alternate methods for accomplishing frequent actions in user interfaces support expert users by speeding up their interactions, without hindering novice users.

CSS min() All The Things https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2024/10/css-min-all-the-things/
Victor Ayomipo experiments with the CSS min() function, exploring its flexibility with different units to see whether it can be the be‑all, end‑all for responsiveness. He also highlights cautions against dogmatic approaches to web design based on his findings.

Shell2: 200× Faster, Persisted, Multiplayer‑Native Shells https://blog.replit.com/shell2
Replit, in its simplest form, lets you access a remote development environment in your browser. Because interfacing with the terminal is such a critical part of any development workflow, we’re heavily invested in getting this right while also keeping it snappy and fast.

Nine Predictions for the Future of the Music Business https://www.honest-broker.com/p/nine-predictions-for-the-future-of
I offer a forecast ten years out—and it’s filled with good news (surprise!).

Fresh Finds

• On the 55th World Standards Day, My History of the Web and Relationship with W3C

• Electron 33.0.0

• Node v23.0.0 (Current) Released

• JS0/JSSugar: The Tooling Will Continue Until Morale Improves

• Escaping the Chrome Sandbox Through DevTools

• Zustand v5.0.0: A Small, Fast, and Scalable Bare‑bones State‑Management Solution Using Simplified Flux Principles

• ApexCharts: Modern & Interactive Open‑Source Charts

• Huly — All‑in‑One Project Management Platform (alternative to Linear, Jira, Slack, Notion, Motion)

• ArchiveBox: A Powerful, Self‑Hosted Internet‑Archiving Solution to Collect, Save, and View Websites Offline

• Inkscape Launches Version 1.4: Free and Open‑Source Vector Graphics Editor for GNU/Linux, Windows, and macOS

Products & Others

Skin dry and itchy as autumn/winter arrives? These simple, effective methods https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/EfmQC2A3uWm8NiUFvUdzAQ

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Originally written by Ping Xia (平侠) and published in Chinese on Web技术周刊 (Web Tech Weekly). Translated and adapted for DriftSeas with permission.