Hi
I had another week full of learning about the inner workings of WordPress’s block editor. Apart from that, summer is finally here and we enjoyed some lovely weather and temperatures (today it should be 30°C for the first time) and I was out bicycling a few times with some friends.
Privacy
🕵️♀️ Opinion piece on privacy by Zeynep Tufekci
In this article, Zeynep Tufekci looks into privacy implications of having surveillance capitalism where data collection is all but regulated, and a US government that looks into making abortions illegal. It’s completely bonkers, especially if you think about what can be done with this data already:
For example, algorithmic interpretations of Instagram posts can effectively predict a person’s future depressive episodes — performing better than humans assessing the same posts. Similar results have been found for predicting future manic episodes and detecting suicidal ideation, among many other examples.
Zeynep Tufekci
Zeynep is one of the best writers on those topics and I couldn’t point to a single article of her that I couldn’t recommend reading. But what I especially liked about this one is that she’s not one to fall into the trap of “tech-pessimism”, but clearly states why all this data collection should be regulated so that we can enjoy the many positive sides of technology. Couldn’t agree more.
This doesn’t mean we should snuff out digital technology or advances in algorithms. Even if it were possible, it wouldn’t be desirable. The government should regulate these technologies so we can use them, and enjoy their many positives, without out-of-control surveillance.
Zeynep Tufekci
NY Times – We Need to Take Back Our Privacy
Frontend Development
🎭 Page transition API
Jake Archibald demonstrates the upcoming page transition API, which is already present in Chrome Canary. It appears to only work with single page apps at the moment, but he mentions that there are plans to even make it work with normal, multi page transitions, which would make this even more awesome. Watch the video to see some examples of what it can do.
YouTube – Bringing page transitions to the web
📊 Different Chart Types
The Data Viz Project collects different types of charts you can use in your Data Visualization. All of them come with a short explanation and some real world examples. Nice!
WordPress
🎙 Voice-controlled WordPress Admin
I really like experiments like these, as it’s often the most “pointless” things that lead to the best ideas in the end. And even if not, Ross looks like he had fun building this, so the time he put into it definitely wasn’t wasted.
Ross Wintle – Ross excitedly introduces his prototype of voice-controlled WordPress
Other / Random
✨ Cool things to do with your blog
Wouter Groeneveld curated a list of cool things people are doing with their personal blogs. Certainly some nice ideas & examples in there, and a few of which I’m also planning to do. Especially like the things people are doing in terms of personal “bookshelves” to collect what they were reading or listening to, but there’s a lot of other ideas in there as well.
Wouter Groeneveld / Brain Baking – A List of Cool Things People Do With Their Blogs
🍆 Open Source Buttplugs
Yes, you read that right. I mean, I knew that there’s an open source community for nearly everything, but this still was a surprise. Buttplug.io is an “open-source standards and software project for controlling intimate hardware, including sex toys, fucking machines, and more.” and what should I say, I think that’s fucking awesome.
☀️ Have a lovely weekend!