Notices by Large Heydon Collider (heydon@front-end.social)

📝 New Blog Post: Poisoning Well

I have started publishing nonsense content on my blog, to hopefully mess with LLM crawlers.

Here is the article, all about it: https://heydonworks.com/article/poisoning-well/

And here is the nonsense companion article, all about whatever: https://heydonworks.com/nonsense/poisoning-well/

When you find out Sebastian Coe is a massive transphobe. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j3uLA0NuPl8

I am 43 today. My wish is for everyone to reply with a new conjugation of the word “cunt”.

I’ll start us off:

— cuntesque
— cuntible
— ...

📼 Why Is Everything Binary?

The latest briefs.video.

https://briefs.video/videos/why-is-everything-binary/

@sam no pressure https://webbed-briefs.teemill.com/product/you-would-not/

It's only just sinking in there's a social media platform called Truth Social where sharing is "re-truthing". Feels too stupid to be real.

Another satisfied customer.

@joachim dungarees are cool too! Will merge that PR tomorrow, thanks again.

Not sure what agender fashion is but I had a sudden hankering to own a boilersuit.

From the people who brought you React. https://neuromatch.social/@jonny/113790220085063594

@joachim @notabene @ffoodd @HTeuMeuLeu You are a treasure! Just to note that I'm still refining some wording. I'll notify you of any further changes.

Would the ability to sign this, like as a manifesto, be of any help? Thinking it might add weight if referring to it during negotiations.

I've drawn up a set of principles for approaching web accessibility. I hope they help to frame your work as we enter 2025. https://github.com/Heydon/principles-of-web-accessibility

I've adopted an approach to life which boils down to "what can I do today that will help me sleep better tonight?"

It can be physiological stuff like absorbing some sunlight or getting some exercise, or it can be getting peace of mind (ticking off a dreaded errand or taking a step towards a longer-term goal). So long as I do some of this shit I might actually sleep through these long fucking winter nights.

I am available for new contract work.

I have 20+ years 😩 experience in web design and development and I’m still learning. I have written courses and books that have influenced interface design across the industry. I love prototyping, writing documentation, creative coding, and I do everything with accessibility and inclusion in mind.

👋

Here is my unofficial guide to the HTML `<br>` element.

(I have now covered all of A and B 😅)

https://heydonworks.com/article/the-br-element/

@michelle Inkscape is actually pretty hot for most stuff these days, and I know you love you some SVG.

@NanoRaptor I did an art degree which, despite being primarily about making art, still had a writing component. Unlike most of my peers, I was a confident writer. One essay, I'm told, caused my lecturer a significant headache because he could not decide if it was A* material or F. He explained he had to compromise and give me a C. I never forgave him and will never go back into academia.

Lot of chat about AI today, especially in relation to Mozilla's continued shenanigans. Just a reminder that I have a video on the subject: https://briefs.video/videos/whats-the-deal-with-large-language-models/

Mozilla are the British Labour Party of Browser vendors.