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darekkay

1,918 karma · joined October 2, 2014

Senior front-end engineer @IBM • Accessibility advocate • Minimalist

https://dariuszwinkler.com

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darekkay··on Om Malik has died
Thanks. You've shared the same link twice. Here's the post from Daniel: https://glass.photo/daniel/bhGvi7R5zR8XvuYG6jT3X

He also wrote an official post on Glass: https://glass.photo/highlights/remembering-om

darekkay··on Flickr: The first and last great photo platform
There's also Irys (from Alan Schaller). It's more open than Glass, as it's a freemium model, but it's also more closed at the same time, as it doesn't offer a web-based version. It's probably even more photographer-oriented than Glass. For something truly open, there's Pixelfed. All those platforms have their pros and cons, especially regarding the audience. Personally, I publish all my photos on my own website and syndicate them to (in order of preference): Glass, Pixelfed, Instagram, Irys.
darekkay··on Why Japan has such good railways
This sounds great, especially as it's linked to the IC card. Unfortunately, I couldn't find anything similar for JR West or JR Kyushu, which I will be using in the next few weeks. Hopefully they will implement the same system in the future.
darekkay··on Why Japan has such good railways
But you still have to pick up the tickets at the machine. Additionally, my mobile phone internet is not recognized as "being in Japan", so I can't access the QR code needed for the ticket without wifi. You can work around it (save the QR code when you have wifi), but it all just seems so inefficient compared to all the countries where you can _book_ your tickets using a mobile app.
darekkay··on Which European countries have the best salaries after taxes?
Vacation is also never mentioned in those discussions or comparisons. 10 days in the US vs. 20-30 (+ 8-14 public holidays, depending on the state) in Germany is much more important for _me_ than the net income.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_minimum_annual_leave_b...

darekkay··on Modern CSS Code Snippets: Stop writing CSS like it's 2015
HTML vs. CSS is a separation of technologies. If HTML was really only about the content and the CSS was only about styling, we wouldn't have to write div soups to style our websites (.container-wrapper .container .container-inner { /* "separation" */ }) and we wouldn't have to adjust our HTML when we change the layout.
darekkay··on Ask HN: Share your personal website
That's cool! A small idea: if I can resize the window (nice!), I'd expect the maximize button to work, too.
darekkay··on Bookmarks.txt is a concept of keeping URLs in plain text files
I've been maintaining my bookmarks as plain text (YAML) for years, which I then turn into a single interactive HTML file [1].

[1] https://darekkay.com/static-marks/

darekkay··on Seine reopens to Paris swimmers after century-long ban
Bonne chance!
darekkay··on Bots are overwhelming websites with their hunger for AI data
ai.robots.txt contains a big list of AI crawlers to block, either through robots.txt or via server rules:

https://github.com/ai-robots-txt/ai.robots.tx

darekkay··on Apple and Meta fined millions for breaching EU law
There are web APIs for both.
darekkay··on Page is under construction: A love letter to the personal website
Check out the following:

- https://indieblog.page/

- https://blogdb.org/

- https://github.com/outcoldman/hackernews-personal-blogs

darekkay··on Discover the IndieWeb, one blog post at a time
> the ability to read the whole content in the reader instead of having to go to the site. But that depends on how RSS/Atom exposes the content;

It rather depends on the amount of content the RSS _author_ includes in the RSS feed. There's nothing in the RSS/Atom protocol that prevents you from reading the entire article, but some website creators decide to truncate the feed content.

My RSS reader of choice, InoReader, has the option to download the original website which solves the problem. However, I have over 200 feeds and it's rare to find one without the entire content being included.

darekkay··on Uchū – Color palette for internet lovers
I've analyzed the palette with my own tool, a11y-contrast[1], and indeed the luminance is not uniform. I wrote [2] about why this might be a desired property of a color palette.

[1] https://github.com/darekkay/a11y-contrast

[2] https://darekkay.com/blog/accessible-color-palette/

darekkay··on I've been advocating for RSS support, and you should too
> 1000s of requests a day

Some RSS readers are quite aggressive with their polling time. At the same time, a single request may serve thousands of users. However, you can check your logs and get the actual number of subscribers, at least for popular RSS readers: https://darekkay.com/blog/rss-subscriber-count/

darekkay··on I've been advocating for RSS support, and you should too
I've once blogged about this technique, in case someone wants to learn more about it: https://darekkay.com/blog/rss-styling/
darekkay··on Is XYplorer really written in VB6?
I've been using XYplorer for 10 years now and it's fantastic. There are just so many features and quality of life improvements over the Windows explorer.

It's written by a single person, and they're very responsive. I've recently reported a bug with the search (the first that I've noticed in all those years), and it's been fixed within a day. I'm only worried about the bus factor a little.

I have a GitHub repo with some of my settings/scripts/notes for XYplorer if someone's interested: https://github.com/darekkay/config-files/tree/master/xyplore...

darekkay··on Is XYplorer really written in VB6?
Not the OP, but I've been using XYplorer for 10 years now. I have a sidebar with a few scripts. Here are the ones I use the most:

- Extract selected archives

- Flatten current folder

- Convert selected file(s) to various formats (e.g. JPG to WebP or vice versa)

- Optimize selected image file(s) (smaller file size)

- Prepare image file(s) for publishing on my photography blog: strip irrelevant EXIF, create two variants (thumbnail and a bigger picture); see my post: https://darekkay.com/blog/photography-website/#pipeline

- Prepare image file(s) for sharing - similar as above, but more for sharing vacation photos with my family on WhatsApp)

- Rename files to a certain format (e.g. images to "YYYY-MM-DD HH:mm:ss")

- Check selected file with Virus Total

- Start a weekly backup to my external drive

- Backup my server files to my local drive

- Create a rectangle "album art" file, see my post: https://darekkay.com/blog/resize-album-art-images/

Many of those are just shell scripts and apps that I run right from XYplorer, but it's way faster than through CLI.

I've documented some of the XYplorer stuff here (see also the "scripts" folder): https://github.com/darekkay/config-files/tree/master/xyplore...

darekkay··on Web page annoyances that I don't inflict on you
Kagi Small Web (the index is open source) comes to my mind, even though it doesn't specifically focus on UI annoyances.

https://blog.kagi.com/small-web

darekkay··on Show HN: Struggle with CSS Flexbox? This Playground Is for You
When learning Flexbox, I've created a cheat sheet to look up the properties. Others might find it useful, too: https://darekkay.com/flexbox-cheatsheet/
darekkay··on When did estimates turn into deadlines?
> the first number you put out will be remembered

This is called anchoring effect, a psychological bias.

darekkay··on Ask HN: Any Good Alternatives to Disqus?
Yes, a lot: https://darekkay.com/blog/static-site-comments/
darekkay··on Title drops in movies
Maybe I was (un)lucky, but the only film I've checked was "Inception". It's spoken at 19:24, but the explorer states the title is not dropped at all. I had to actually look it up, as I've doubted my memory for a second.
darekkay··on Microfeatures I love in blogs and personal websites
Yes please! I always show a "published" date, but also a "last updated" date for my evergreen posts.
darekkay··on Scrum's Built-In 'Get Out of Jail Free Card' Against Criticism
There are projects where scrum doesn't make much sense. You wouldn't want to build a house in an agile way. It is also essential to have the customer comnit to the agile way of working. A project with a fixed deadline, fixed scope and fixed budget doesn't become a scrum project just because you introduce sprints, dailies, reviews, scrum masters and product owners. Framing the misuse of a framework as a "get out of jail free card against criticism" misses the point.
darekkay··on Caniemail.com – like caniuse but for email content
> I wish there was a business reason for orgs to care about accessable and machine readable emails.

I hope the upcoming EU Accessibility Act will be enough for many organizations to finally make their emails accessible. I disable images by default in my email client, and some emails are pretty much empty without them, without providing any alternative.

darekkay··on Save the Web by Being Nice
You should check Glass[1], which focuses strictly on photography. It does cost some money, but I see this as an advantage. There is basically zero spam, zero self-promotion, no "algorithm", no ads. And it even has RSS, which is how I mostly view photos (users may opt-out, though).

If you really don't want to spend any money, Pixelfed [2] is a good option.

Personally, I publish my photos on my own photography website and then syndicate them to Glass, Pixelfed and Instagram.

[1] https://glass.photo/

[2] https://pixelfed.social/i/web

darekkay··on Show HN: Composable (as in iGoogle, but modern) privacy-friendly new tab
I've created another open-source project which serves a similar purpose [1]. Unfortunately, I haven't been actively working on it for some time (although still using it daily).

[1] https://github.com/darekkay/dashboard/

darekkay··on Show HN: Free Plain-Text Bookmarking
I've also created an open-source plain-text bookmarking tool, Static Marks: https://darekkay.com/static-marks/

The bookmarks are stored in one or more YAML files, and static-marks generates a single web page on build.

darekkay··on Enough with the dead butterflies (2017)
Similar, emoji-oriented posts:

- Entomologist rates ant emojis: https://www.boredpanda.com/entomologist-rates-ant-emojis/

- Which emoji scissors close: https://wh0.github.io/2020/01/02/scissors.html

- A thread of rating every horse emoji: https://twitter.com/jelenawoehr/status/1191872816372600832

- Ranking the "Ringed Planet" emojis: https://twitter.com/physicsJ/status/1232662211438370817

- Reviewing Steam Loco Emojis: https://twitter.com/BisTheFairy/status/1192557730709622790

- Talk about Telescope emojis: https://twitter.com/BeckePhysics/status/1233414553607819267

- Snake emoji review: https://anothertiredmonster.tumblr.com/post/156610510939/sna...

- Would you survive a skydive with an emoji parachute? (my own post): https://darekkay.com/blog/parachute-emoji/

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