Alex Russell
slightlyoff@toot.cafe
<p>Trying to make the web work for *everyone*. </p><p><a href="https://infrequently.org/about-me/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener" translate="no"><span class="invisible">https://</span><span class="">infrequently.org/about-me/</span><span class="invisible"></span></a></p><p>Still not speaking for my employer, lo these many years.</p>
Posts
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RE: https://infosec.exchange/@josephcox/117315761403151624 Normally it takes less time for FB to copy Google, but speed-running Duplex 8 years later is still fun to watch.
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If you haven't worked at Google, it's hard to convey what Jeff and Sanjay leaving means. The ethical compass for Search (and therefore everything) left with Matt Cutts; the technical north star is now going as well. Actually shocking.
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RE: https://mastodon.social/@owa/117013437073165599 If you listen to @pluralistic@mamot.fr interviews, one of the things he repeats that resonates with me is that he's not an optimist; things don't default to getting better or worse, we *make them* better or worse. We can engineer a fairer power arrangement, and folks like @owa@mastodon.social and @brucelawson@social.vivaldi.net are some of my heros, doing that work every day. Give their interview a listen:
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TC39ers: the committee is working well and doesn't need fundamental reform. me: https://github.com/tc39/proposal-signals https://github.com/tc39/proposal-decorators mhmm...I see...yep. "Working" "well".
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Our moral and political imagination must concieve and demand Elon Musk behind bars for the rest of his life.
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This is very cool: https://www.aleksandrhovhannisyan.com/blog/local-code-embeds/
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IDK who needs to hear this, but you shouldn't buy promises of utopian futures with abundance and UBI from dudes who spend a considerable fraction of their time figuring out how not to pay their taxes.
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Just as I'm planning to move residual devices away from SmartThings, I find out that they: a.) have a web interface (!!!)[1] b.) have an *advanced* version of that UI that does significantly more of what I want/need? They could have blunted our full move to HA had they led with this: https://my.smartthings.com/advanced [1]: https://my.smartthings.com/
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Oh look, more React »»» Web Components == $$$ data from Shopify: https://shopify.engineering/upgrading-checkout-blocks-app-to-polaris-web-components
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So this keeps happening, and I think we need to talk about it: > them: React manages state in our app. > > me: It does? Then what are for? > > them: Oh, those manage state. https://infrequently.org/2026/07/state-management/
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If you make websites for a living, stop what you're doing and read this research by @tammy@webperf.social; it shows what many of us have been saying for a long time: even if there is such a thing as "fast enough",[1] it's generally *much* faster than you are targeting: https://embrace.io/blog/research-core-web-vitals/ [1]: there isn't
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Tired: this meeting should have been an email Wired: this app should have been a web page https://danq.me/2026/07/09/your-app-could-have-been-a-webpage/
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No One is on an absolute tear: https://nooneshappy.com/article/kernel-anti-cheat-is-an-overreach/
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Spot Apple's astroturf front group once and you can't help but find their enshittified fingerprints every. Here's Cupertino's favourite sock puppet -- "ACT | The App Association" -- arguing against right-to-repair for smartphones: https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2024/10/28/2024-24563/exemption-to-prohibition-on-circumvention-of-copyright-protection-systems-for-access-control#:~:text=Opponents%20ACT%20%7C%20The%20App%20Association%3B /cc @owa@mastodon.social...
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I'm not saying Safari is the new IE6; that would be unfair...to IE 6. When it came out, it was world-beating in nearly every regard, but got long in the tooth. No, Safari and iOS are more like IE 7, 8, 9, 10, and 11: predictably disappointing showings thanks to structural under-funding by an organisation hellbent on holding the web back to defend profits: https://infrequently.org/2026/07/abject-praise/
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No One's entire guide for classes of native app to avoid are is incredibly thorough, but nowhere is the logic of "app makers" more distilled than this section: https://nooneshappy.com/guide/a-very-basic-framework-for-apps-to-avoid/#10-apps-that-exist-to-wrap-a-website The goal of app stores is to rob you of the agency that interoperability and portability through open runtimes (browsers) give you. The gains from that trade are then largely deposited with data brokers and their cl...
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Pro tip for regulators looking to do good by their citizens (a troublingly small subset): The memorypocalypse (deflationary RAM pricing across multiple years) should put usable hardware lifetimes at the very center of the agenda; the best approaches are legislated bootloader unlocks from date of sale, firmware code-in-escrow (OSS'd + patent unencumbered for firms that fail to deliver security updates less than 6 years out), and legalising browser choice to extend app compat and enable alt O...
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1.) you should always take Heather seriously 2.) taking Heather seriously, this is a shocking indictment of Andoid and Google, and is 100% in-line with my critiques of DMA enforcement to date [1] and should be read by everyone as "Android, i. practice, is shockingly insecure and out of date": https://www.wired.com/story/top-google-security-staff-warn-search-data-could-be-hacked-thanks-to-eu-plans/ [1]: https://infrequently.org/2026/04/the-web-is-an-antitrust-wedge/
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It's very, very hard for me not give in to cynicism about the motives and priors of wealthy tech (and tech-adjacent) folks when the news that seems to move the commentariat to notice stagnant computing resources is that *Apple* is increasing prices. In no calendar year across the past decade has Apple sold more than 20% of phones or more than 15% of desktop/laptop computers. And yet.
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Extremely cogent advice: https://nooneshappy.com/article/native-apps-should-be-avoided-whenever-possible/
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The framing and tone of this is rancid. The NYT is engaging in excuse-making exercises for Republicans who had, and continue to have, extraordinary agency. Instead of holding them to account or even enumerating their options, it launders inaction as fate. https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/15/us/politics/iran-war-powers-congress.html?rsrc=flt&amp;unlocked_article_code=1.ilA.69l0.MweAvzBKq8Wk&amp;smid=url-share
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A point excerpted from a talk I gave earlier this week at Microsoft&#39;s internal performance symposium (alt talk title: &quot;CSS-in-JS: Frontend&#39;s Worst Idea&quot;): Browsers are virtual machines tuned to efficiently turn *markup* into *pixels*. If your system tries to generate pixels from not-markup, you&#39;ll be working against the grain of the system, and should expect to suffer massive performance penalties -- both in CPU and memory use -- as a result. For dee...
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Two weeks feels like plenty of time for impeachment and removal proceedings. Just saying.
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First, you should read @mnot&#39;s most recent post: https://www.mnot.net/blog/2026/02/20/open_systems.html Then, let&#39;s discuss &quot;permissionless innovation&quot; and what he called recently &quot;the power of &#39;no&#39;&quot;: https://www.mnot.net/blog/2026/02/13/no.html A short thread thisaway... 👇
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The prevalence of transpilers on top of a language&#39;s syntax, particularly if concentrated, is a measure of the irrelevance of its standards bodies.
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Hey @mwichary, what&#39;s the usual punishment for typography crimes of this magnitude?
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Doing research into the performance and memory overhead of the most popular &quot;CSS-in-JS&quot; approaches, and my question for the authors of these systems is always the same: are you proud of this?
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As I read, tried to imagine the Guardian speaking as clearly about the left in the UK and just...couldn&#39;t. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/apr/08/why-do-elite-democrats-fear-hasan-piker
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This is outstanding work, DSD + slotting will open up new worlds to folks exploring these patterns: https://calendar.perfplanet.com/2025/revisiting-html-streaming-for-modern-web-performance/
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I&#39;ve been pretty hard on the LLM bros, but this truly is innovation (in benchmarketing): https://youtu.be/Oq5e_8zvick