blog.8-p.info

I know people don’t come here for reading Coronavirus news, but I do like to keep some notes for future myself.

I have Sodastream and went out for getting its CO2 bottles today. However they are mostly sold out around my neighborhood. Apparently there is a CO2 shortage.

Surprising Shortage Of Carbon Dioxide Threatens Food And Beverage Industries (Forbes)

The coronavirus outbreak has created multiple shortages as businesses shut down to maintain social distancing and quarantine orders. As the production of ethanol plants decreases, the amount of carbon dioxide (CO2) they capture as a byproduct and resell is also going down. This has implications for both food and beverage manufacturers that depend on CO2 for carbonation.

With fewer people driving to work or traveling, the need for fuels, such as ethanol, has gone down. In turn, plants have either cut or stopped making ethanol and its byproducts.

And “went out” here means literally walking around. It may be better to have a bike, then, there is a bike shortage.

Sorry, the World’s Biggest Bike Maker Can’t Help You Buy a Bike Right Now (The New York Times)

Because gyms are closed and we could all use a little more exercise; because we are avoiding buses and trains; because we are in need of outdoor group activities; or perhaps just because the pandemic has made us crave simple pleasures like the wind against our faces, bicycle sales are soaring around the world.

The result has been an international bike shortage. And the world’s largest bike maker, Giant, expects its supplies to remain tight for some time to come.

In my neighborhood, the grocery stores are fine regarding stocks and the drug stores have masks, but still some surprising things are hard to buy.

The web is getting bigger and bigger. The technical complexity makes making a new web browser virtually impossible, which makes Google’s dominance stronger. People claim the web is bloated, then looking for a trimmed-down, lightweight web.

That reminds me one of the classics by Joel Spolsky: Strategy Letter IV: Bloatware and the ⁸⁰⁄₂₀ Myth (2001).

A lot of software developers are seduced by the old “80/20” rule. It seems to make a lot of sense: 80% of the people use 20% of the features. So you convince yourself that you only need to implement 20% of the features, and you can still sell 80% as many copies.

Unfortunately, it’s never the same 20%. Everybody uses a different set of features.

In addition to that, even for “my 20% web”, I’m really not so sure where the line is.

I agree that JavaScript is going too far, but I still remember the beginning of Ajax. At that time, Adobe was pushing Flash and Rich Internet Applications. Seeing Google Maps and Gmail convinced a lot of people Flash would not be needed.

CSS is complex and -- on CSS variables shows it’s age, yet new CSS features such as Flexbox is much easier to use than combining float:right with a parent div with clear:both.

HTML 5 parsing algorithm is a strange effort to cover all of the corner cases correctly. But we had tried draconian error handling already, which didn’t work. Remember XHTML?

While it is possible to cut a few new features such as WebUSB and/or HTTP/3, it is difficult to reduce the complexity of the web. Making a consensus regarding those removals would be even more difficult.

Complaining about Slack’s threads is so 2017, but I’m new to Slack and confused by threads.

Threads makes sending notifications easier. If you are on a thread, you are interested. If you are not, you are not. It makes a channel less clutter. I see. But I want to follow all discussions roughly without clicking around.

Maybe what I’m doing, following all conversations roughly is IRC thing. Slack realizes that it wouldn’t be scalable. However the decision should be owned by the customers, not Slack.

Another things bothers me is that Slack’s API is not designed to write your own client. There are a few alternative clients such as emacs-slack, terminal-slack and slack-term. But all of them mention a non-straightforward way to get an authentication token first.

Slack is a paid productivity app for businesses. It is sad to see the app is pushing the way we consume information. Ads-powered apps for consumers might need to do that to make sure people do see ads, but Slack doesn’t have to.

ActionDash is an alternative of Google’s Digital Wellbeing app. The Wellbeing only works on Android 8.0 Oreo or newer versions, whereas ActionDash supports older phones, including my OnePlus 5T.

I was using ActionDash to limit my time on Chrome and Gmail, but I tended to change the setting to allow a bit of time after hitting the limit, especially regarding Chrome. I have terrible self-control.

So, I’ve just uninstalled Chrome once again.

How to uninstall Chrome on Android? It is Google’s phone and Chrome is Google’s browser.

“Make Time” book’s John Zeratsky wrote the way on The Distraction-Free Android.

The good news is that Android (at least the version on my Pixel, v7.1.1) lets you disable any system app from the settings. That means you can easily turn off email, and when you need it again, turn it back on and your Google Account is still there. It’s pretty slick.

Technically you cannot “uninstall” Chrome, but you can “disable” Chrome.

This is my 30th post of #100DaysToOffload challenge. The pace of the writing stays almost the same (10 posts / 20 days).

Twitter

I’m still not so sure what I’d like to do with Twitter. Twitter is still fast and noisy. I agree that Unwoke is bad. Do I have to know about Unwoke and voice my concern? That’s pretty much Duty Calls situation.

Emacs

I don’t feel bad about using Magit. I still use GoLand and Visual Studio Code much. I haven’t used any language servers with Emacs.