Francis 🇾🇪 🏳️‍🌈 🏳️‍⚧️ @francis@greenplenty.social

I have seen the future of the web and it is LLMs eternally writing recipe introductions for other LLMs to read

The war on the homeless continues in Lancashire;. removing the shelter(s) of rough sleepers is one more attack on the vulnerable.

Leaving homeless people (rough sleepers) without tents is just inhumane as we head into winter.

If you want to do something about rough sleeping, how about finding them shelter?

Using an attack on a councillor as the justification looks a lot like collective punishment.... as always, lashing out at the weak is easy politics.

#homelessness
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cy4d74ple74o

#MehdiHasan makes such perfect sense when it comes to Isnotreal defenders...

#FreePalestine #FreeAmerica

https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZP8dwYEgq/

I’m convinced one aspect of RTO is re-enabling managers’ abuse of (some) lost power. When I worked in an office I had managers try and stop me going home, or follow me part way home because “work really needs to get done”. Much harder to pull shit like this on a zoom call.

#OtD 22 Sep 1960 bailiffs and 800 police attacked two blocks of council flats in London, UK to evict two communists who had been withholding payment of a rent increase for months. Other tenants rushed to fight the police and 300 workers went on strike https://stories.workingclasshistory.com/article/9525/rent-strike-at-st-pancras?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=mastodon

The "AI will make programming obsolete" bullshit has a surprisingly long history.

Here's an ad from 30 years ago promising code-free software development.

You can see the ad here: https://archive.org/details/BYTE199301/page/n263/mode/2up?view=theater

The unreasonable effectiveness of simple HTML
https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2021/01/the-unreasonable-effectiveness-of-simple-html/

I've told this story at conferences - but due to the general situation I thought I'd retell it here.

A few years ago I was doing policy research in a housing benefits office in London. They are singularly unlovely places. The walls are brightened up with posters offering helpful services for people fleeing domestic violence. The security guards on the door are cautiously indifferent to anyone walking in. The air is filled with tense conversations between partners - drowned out by the noise of screaming kids.

In the middle, a young woman sits on a hard plastic chair. She is surrounded by canvas-bags containing her worldly possessions. She doesn't look like she is in a great emotional place right now. Clutched in her hands is a games console - a PlayStation Portable. She stares at it intensely; blocking out the world with Candy Crush.

Or, at least, that's what I thought.

Walking behind her, I glance at her console and recognise the screen she's on. She's connected to the complementary WiFi and is browsing the GOV.UK pages on Housing Benefit. She's not slicing fruit; she's arming herself with knowledge.

The PSP's web browser is - charitably - pathetic. It is slow, frequently runs out of memory, and can only open 3 tabs at a time.

But the GOV.UK pages are written in simple HTML. They are designed to be lightweight and will work even on rubbish browsers. They have to. This is for everyone.

Not everyone has a big monitor, or a multi-core CPU burning through the teraflops, or a broadband connection.

The photographer Chase Jarvis coined the phrase "the best camera is the one that’s with you". He meant that having a crappy instamatic with you at an important moment is better than having the best camera in the world locked up in your car.

The same is true of web browsers. If you have a smart TV, it probably has a crappy browser.

My old car had a built-in crappy web browser.

Both are painful to use - but they work!

If your laptop and phone both got stolen - how easily could you conduct online life through the worst browser you have? If you have to file an insurance claim online - will you get sent a simple HTML form to fill in, or a DOCX which won't render?

What vital information or services are forbidden to you due to being trapped in PDFs or horrendously complicated web sites?

Are you developing public services? Or a system that people might access when they're in desperate need of help? Plain HTML works. A small bit of simple CSS will make look decent. JavaScript is probably unnecessary - but can be used to progressively enhance stuff. Add alt text to images so people paying per MB can understand what the images are for (and, you know, accessibility).

Go sit in an uncomfortable chair, in an uncomfortable location, and stare at an uncomfortably small screen with an uncomfortably outdated web browser. How easy is it to use the websites you've created?

I chatted briefly to the young woman afterwards. She'd been kicked out by her parents and her friends had given her the bus fare to the housing benefits office. She had nothing but praise for how helpful the staff had been. I asked about the PSP - a hand-me-down from an older brother - and the web browser. Her reply was "It's shit. But it worked."

I think that's all we can strive for.

Here are some stats on games consoles visiting GOV.UK

Matt Hobbs (@TheRealNooshu@hachyderm.io)

@TheRealNooshu

Replying to @TheRealNooshuInterestingly we have 3,574 users visiting GOV.UK on games consoles:
• Xbox - 2,062
• Playstation 4 - 1,457
• Playstation Vita - 25
• Nintendo WiiU - 14
• Nintendo 3DS - 16

20/22

❤️ 29💬 1♻️ 010:45 - Mon 01 February 2021

https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2021/01/the-unreasonable-effectiveness-of-simple-html/

#HTML5 #web #WeekNotes #work

You'll likely be depressingly unsurprised by the indication that decisions by the DWP on benefits sanctions looked to be shaped by institutional racism.

Once again, while we may claim (often rightly) to be a multicultural society, our governing institutions seem unable to address issues without some from of ethnic bias...

I wonder why that is?

Could it be, a history of racism that goes back centuries is well embedded & needs more work to root out!?

#racism #benefits
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2024/sep/16/benefit-sanctions-more-likely-for-minority-ethnic-claimants-uk-data-shows