Link tags: values

Hixie’s Natural Log: Reflecting on 18 years at Google

On leaving the company, Hixie compares the Google of old to what it has become today:

Google’s culture eroded. Decisions went from being made for the benefit of users, to the benefit of Google, to the benefit of whoever was making the decision. Transparency evaporated. Where previously I would eagerly attend every company-wide meeting to learn what was happening, I found myself now able to predict the answers executives would give word for word. Today, I don’t know anyone at Google who could explain what Google’s vision is. Morale is at an all-time low. If you talk to therapists in the bay area, they will tell you all their Google clients are unhappy with Google.

The one about AI - macwright.com

Writing, both code and prose, for me, is both an end product and an end in itself. I don’t want to automate away the things that give me joy.

And that is something that I’m more and more aware of as I get older – sources of joy. It’s good to diversify them, to keep track of them, because it’s way too easy to run out. Or to end up with just one, and then lose it.

The thing about luddites is that they make good punchlines, but they were all people.

Reinventing W3C Governance

To be honest, I’m not all that convinced by Robin’s arguments here about overhauling the governance model at the World Wide Web Consortium (partly because the way he describes the current model sounds pretty okay to me). But I’m very interested in what he has to say in the broader philosophical sense about using values to solve problems:

A value is worth something if it’s there to help you when the rubber hits the road and starts hydroplaning. Sure, you’ll need a handful of high-level lofty values as reminders, if only because there’s always a vocal guy (it’s always a guy) who thinks it’s just outrageous to put people before profits. But mostly you want Values You Can Use.

That might be the best description I’ve come across yet for design principles: values you can use.

When we say that engineering is about trade-offs, we’re saying that engineers solve their hardest problems using values (which they call “heuristics” because everyone’s entitled to be fancy some). In implementing a system, you might need to decide between an option that provides people with the best experience, another that delivers the greatest value to the shareholders, and yet a third one that makes the control centre blinkenlights dance in the prettiest way.

What Can You Put in a CSS Variable? / Coder’s Block

A reminder that the contens of custom properties don’t have to be valid property values:

From a syntax perspective, CSS variables are “extremely permissive”.

mnot’s blog: RFC8890: The Internet is for End Users

RFC 8890 maybe the closest thing we’ve got to a Hippocratic oath right now.

A community that agrees to principles that are informed by shared values can use them to navigate hard decisions.

Also worth noting:

Many discussions influenced this document, both inside and outside of the IETF and IAB. In particular, Edward Snowden’s comments regarding the priority of end users at IETF 93 and the HTML5 Priority of Constituencies were both influential.

Currying in CSS? | Trys Mudford

I don’t understand what currying is, but Trys points out a really interesting thing about custom properties in CSS:

The value after the : in the CSS custom property does not have to be valid CSS.

That means you can use custom properties to store arbitrary strings of text, which can then be combined within a calc() function, at which point they get evaluated.

Drupal’s commitment to accessibility | Dries Buytaert

Shots fired!

I’ve come to believe that accessibility is not something you do for a small group of people. Accessibility is about promoting inclusion. When the product you use daily is accessible, it means that we all get to work with a greater number and a greater variety of colleagues. Accessibility benefits everyone.

Adding value, by adding values – Public Digital

Ben Terrett on balancing the needs of an individual user with the needs of everyone else.

Of course we care about our clients: we want them to be successful and profitable. But we think there’s a balance to be struck between what success means for just the user or customer, and what success means for society.

Leaving Clearleft – Jon Aizlewood

Following on from Ben’s post, this is also giving me the warm fuzzies.

I, in no uncertain terms, have become a better designer thanks to the people I’ve had the pleasure of working alongside at Clearleft. I’ll forever be thankful of my time there, and to the people who helped me become better.

So long, and thanks for all the beer. – Ben Sauer

Ben is moving on from Clearleft. I’m going to miss him. I found this summation of his time here very moving.

Working at Clearleft was one of the best decisions I ever made. 6 years of some work that I’m most proud of, amongst some of the finest thinkers I’ve ever met.

He also outlines the lessons he learned here:

• Writing and speaking will make you a better thinker and designer.
• Autonomy rules.
• Own stuff.
• Aim high.

Should you ever choose to work with, or work for Clearleft, I hope these words will give you some encouragement — it is an exceptional place to be.

Strong culture = less process – The Man in Blue

For any single scenario you can name it’ll be easier to create a process for it than build a culture that handles it automatically. But each process is a tiny cut away from the freedom that you want your team to enjoy.

Learn CSS Grid - A Guide to Learning CSS Grid | Jonathan Suh

A quick visual guide to CSS Grid properties and values.

It’s ok to say what’s ok | Government Digital Service

I really like this list. I might make a similar one for the Clearleft office so what’s implicit is made explicit.

It’s ok to:

• say “I don’t know”
• ask for more clarity
• stay at home when you feel ill
• say you don’t understand
• ask what acronyms stand for
• ask why, and why not
• forget things

Web Design - The First 100 Years

A magnificent presentation from Maciej that begins by drawing parallels between the aviation industry in the 20th century and the technology industry in the 21st:

So despite appearances, despite the feeling that things are accelerating and changing faster than ever, I want to make the shocking prediction that the Internet of 2060 is going to look recognizably the same as the Internet today.

Unless we screw it up.

And I want to convince you that this is the best possible news for you as designers, and for us as people.

But if that sounds too upbeat for you…

Too much of what was created in the last fifty years is gone because no one took care to preserve it.

We have heroic efforts like the Internet Archive to preserve stuff, but that’s like burning down houses and then cheering on the fire department when it comes to save what’s left inside. It’s no way to run a culture. We take better care of scrap paper than we do of the early Internet, because at least we look at scrap paper before we throw it away.

And then there’s this gem:

We complained for years that browsers couldn’t do layout and javascript consistently. As soon as that got fixed, we got busy writing libraries that reimplemented the browser within itself, only slower.

It finishes with three differing visions of the web, one of them desirable, the other two …not so much. This presentation is a rallying cry for the web we want.

Let’s reclaim the web from technologists who tell us that the future they’ve imagined is inevitable, and that our role in it is as consumers.

The Brand Deck by Scott Thomas — Kickstarter

This Eno-esque deck of cards by Scott could prove very useful for a lot of Clearleft projects.