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Inline Forms
Based on a Twitter discussion about optimizing the performance of web apps, I implemented a very crude polyfill for an idea I recently had.
HTML forms support multiple target values, i.e. where should the result of submitting the form be displayed, but there is no value for of target for inline, that is, you submit the form and instead of the whole page refreshing the server returns HTML that takes the place of the Form contents.
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Looking back on five years of web components
Over 5 years ago I wrote No more JS frameworks and just recently Jon Udell asked for an update.
It's almost 4 years since @bitworking said: "Stop using JS frameworks, start writing reusable, orthogonally-composable units of HTML+CSS+JS." I'm curious, Joe, about what you've since learned, thought about, and done with the idea.https://t.co/zdKjEZfIe3
— Jon Udell (@judell) July 17, 2019 I have been blogging bits and pieces over the years but Jon’s query has given me a good excuse to roll all of that up into a single document.
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Stream
I’ve launched a new micro-blog at stream.bitworking.org, which has an Atom Feed if you want to follow along. You can also follow along on Mastodon by following @stream.bitworking.org@stream.bitworking.org thanks to https://fed.brid.gy/. Any entries will also appear on Twitter thanks to https://brid.gy. Interactions on any of those sites should flow back to Stream thanks to webmention support via github.com/jcgregorio/webmention-run.
Finally the admin interface to Stream is a PWA that supports the Web Share Target API, which means I can trivially share content to Stream using the native Android Share intent.
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OpenID Connect for US Citizens
Is there an OpenID Connect for US Citizens run by the US government? I’m not sure why I’ve been thinking a lot about such a utility lately. )
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Colostomy Takedown
This colostomy takedown surgery is the second in the pair of surgeries I have had this year. If you would like to read the story of how I came to need a colostomy takedown please read A thing that happened.
As opposed to the first surgery which was done as an emergency procedure, this was a planned surgery, which made a world of difference. We were able to research and hire a patient advocate to stay with me a few nights, apply for short term disability before the surgery, etc.
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Webmention on Google Cloud Run
I just published webmention-run, a Google Run application written in Go that implements Webmention. I’m now using this to handle webmentions on bitworking.org. Given the generous free quota for Google Run I don’t expect this to cost me anything. This is on top of using Firebase Hosting to host the static (Jekyll) parts of my blog, which is also effectively free.
Another awesome feature is that both services will provide SSL certificates; in my case Firebase Hosting provides the cert for https://bitworking.
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The Great Famine of 1315-1317
Great Famine The Great Famine of 1315-1317 only lasted two years, was no where close to the change in climate that we are looking in the face right now, and it wiped out 10-25% of the population.
To provide some measure of relief, the future was mortgaged by slaughtering the draft animals, eating the seed grain, abandoning children to fend for themselves (see “Hansel and Gretel”) and, among old people, voluntarily refusing food for the younger generation to survive.
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Concentrated corporate power as a threat to democracy
In this essay, I will argue that the interaction of concentrated corporate power and politics it a threat to the functioning of the free market economy and to economic prosperity it can generate, and a threat to democracy as well.
Towards a Political Theory of the Firm (PDF).
Glad to see the Chicago School of Economics trying to resuscitate their image after the previous damage they’ve done.
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simplifying income
Bill Gates
In terms of revenue collection, you wouldn’t want to just focus on the ordinary income rate, because people who are wealthy have a rounding error of ordinary income.
I would love to see the U.S. do away with categories of income (income, earned interest, capital gains, etc) and make it all just one bucket and tax that at a progressive rate.
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CEO Pay
I’ve said the Harvard MBA is the most second most damaging thing to happen to business in the last 40 years. I might have to clarify that to “the myth of the Harvard MBA is the second most damaging thing to happen to business in the last 40 years”.
We found no statistically significant alphas — despite testing every possible school with a reasonable sample size. MBA programs simply do not produce CEOs who are better at running companies, if performance is measured by stock price return.
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I'm not done trickling on you!
Look at poor Ken, so freaked out that everyone is talking about taxes. Obviously a firm believer in trickle-down economics, his entire screed boils down to:
Don’t tax me, bro! I’m not done trickling on you!
Ironically he refers to Bill Gates, who appears not to agree with Ken at all.
To get the full context it’s useful to watch the video from the beginning where Historian Rutger Bregman schools Michael Dell on his ignorant comment about a top marginal tax rate of 70%:
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Arts and crafts
When you have a stoma every day is arts and crafts day.
I swear I’ve modified more articles of clothing than my sister did during her entire teenage life in the 80s.
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gcsfuse and systemd --user
Google Cloud Storage has an officially supported fuse client!
This is something I have always wanted and would have expected for Google Drive, but 🤷.
The only thing better than a fuse client is a fuse directory that gets mounted automatically when you log in, which you can do fairly simply using systemd --user, which is just systemd, but everthing runs as you.
Here’s a gist of how I set this up on my machine:
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Google SRE Book and Workbook
I never realized the detail that the Google SRE book provided on the production environment at Google, including such things as D, Colossus, Jupiter, BNS, and GSLB.
Also there’s now The Site Reliability Workbook, a hands-on implementation guide.
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More TMI recovery stories
This is another story from my recovery that might be TMI for some people. Read with caution, or skip.
So while describing my initial hospitalization I mentioned an open question:
What exactly my anus is supposed to be doing for those three months is a question I forget to ask.
And now I know from the questions and comments I’ve received that many of you are curious too.
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The real value of a 70% top marginal tax rate
The last time we had a 70% top marginal tax rate in the U.S. it generated very little revenue. That doesn’t mean it failed, that means it was doing it’s job, as explained in The opportunity cost of firm payouts.
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Tim O'Reilly on Silicon Valley
The fundamental problem with Silicon Valley’s favorite growth strategy is great article by Tim O’Reilly on the fundamental harm Silicon Valley’s single-minded pursuit of unicorns does to the whole economy.
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Three weeks out
It’s now been close to three weeks since my emergency surgery and I am recoving slowly. As I’ve gotten better I’ve progressed through the three stages of TV watching:
Can’t watch TV, too much activity and sound. I could sit here and watch David Attenborough for days on end. If I watch any more TV my brain is going to melt and flow out through my ears. BTW, what happened to cooking shows on TV?
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A thing that happened
So here I am on a Tuesday morning, in the bathroom, getting ready for work while my wife still sleeps. The only context you need for what’s about to happen next is that my intestines had been a little sore the previous two days and that last year I found out that I had diverticulosis. The latter found because when you turn 50 you get a free colonoscopy. I really don’t think there is a more apt metaphor for turning 50 than a free colonoscopy.
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Nine steps for Facebook
Facebook must be restructured. The FTC should take these nine steps now
This was published back in March of 2018, but it’s still a good list of things that should be done.