What a shit week. However we got some lovely spring weather and the Glasgow Botanics looked smashing on a quiet morning walk. Even saw a bunny.
🔗 Links
- The 49MB Web Page – Thanks to ubiquitous fast internet you don’t think too much about the size of web pages now…but this is horrendous. Not just the size but how unusable many sites now are thanks to adverts, auto playing pop up videos, adverts that are 80% of the screen. Here’s an analysis of a PC Gamer webpage thats a meagre 37MB but downloads around half a GB of data if you keep it open. Browsers need to stop this if website publishers are going to be so hostile.
- ‘Another internet is possible’: Norway rails against ‘enshittification’ – alternatively, we all move to Norway
- Have a Fucking Website – just not one that takes up 49MB
- Sloponomics and the coming storm – this feels inevitable
- Stop Sloppypasta – this also feels inevitable as a friend suffers this daily at work with someone abusing copilot to spam their Teams chats. Please don’t.
- Google Search is now using AI to replace headlines – this is ugly. Google should not be doing this. The poor AI results at the top of Google search has lead to me using ChatGPT more for basic searches…and its much better.
- DLSS 5 looks like a real-time generative AI filter for video games – DLSS 3 and 4 was for me surprisingly good but this looks like shit. I do not want a developers characters to look different thanks to AI.
- Our commitment to Windows quality – Quite the admission from Microsoft – Windows 11 had got bloated, slow, full of Copilot everywhere you don’t need it. Everything an OS shouldn’t be. Hopefully the focus is real and we see a significant improvement in speed and reliability through 2026.
- Glasgow Subway Goes Contactless – Finally. It’s a small thing especially given how simple the Glasgow Subway is, but this takes some more friction out of travelling around Glasgow. Next – fix the buses.
- Scotstoun, Glasgow, named one of the best places to live in the UK 2026 – I don’t stay in Scotstoun but have worked there for over 30 years. If this is one of the best places to live in the UK then we really are in trouble.
- Outgoing MSPs leave Holyrood with relief, regret and unfinished business – with 42 MSP’s leaving of their own accord and given the likely rise of Green and Reform candidates we could find over half the chamber filled with new faces. Interesting times. A lot of experience leaving in May.
- Gamblers trying to win a bet on Polymarket are vowing to kill me if I don’t rewrite an Iran missile story – this is wild. These betting/gambling sites need regulated.
- SUCKER – My year as a degenerate gambler – a great long read. Sobering just how addictive these prediction (not gambling or betting) sites really are.
- What Do You Do and What Do You Make? – Fascinating article on what 60 New Yorkers do and make. Apple News link.
- Apple is 50 on the 1st of April. A couple of great audio and visual treats. David Pogue is releasing a book, Apple: The First 50 Years. A 90 minute watch is Pogue moderating a panel of previous Apple’s exec’s at the Computer History Museum. John Gruber also published an episode of the Talk Show with David Pogue about the book he’s authored, the access he got and some great never before heard gossip on Apple. Both are highly recommend and I’ll post up some thoughts on the book once I’ve got it…and read it although that might take some time!