I don’t spend much time in Sketch myself, but this seems like a really clever way of mirroring Brad’s Atomic Design inside Sketch files.
I really like the format (and subject!) of Jeremy’s new workshop. Super hands-on, no slides, and different every time as the attendees go in different directions.
VoiceOver has a bug that causes it to misbehave when content is broken up, such as by a <br> or <span> inside a link or header. This is a quick explanation of the issue and how to use role="text" to fix it.
There is so much to like in this post by Lisa Maria Martin about keeping politics out of talks.
I love the careful definition of political versus partisan:
First, let’s get one definitional issue out of the way. Sometimes when people hear the term “political,” they understand it as “partisan.” To be political is to acknowledge the lived experiences of people outside of yourself. To be partisan is to advocate for the beliefs or propaganda of a specific party affiliation.
And also her point that the impact of our technology is never neutral:
“Please keep politics out of your talks” takes neutrality as a baseline. It relies on the premise that our viewpoints exist in frictionless purity, and we simply need to keep them there to communicate them appropriately. But this is a myth; there is no such thing as neutrality.
And again:
Our choices are always guided by something—laws, morals, values, rules. And because that something is not neutral, our choices cannot be either. And what is design, if not a series of choices? Our web work, no matter how insignificant we may think it, is inherently political, and to pretend otherwise is willful ignorance.
I am not saying every talk needs to be about the political ramifications of your work. Just don’t pretend those ramifications aren’t there. Recognize that your choices draw boundaries.
Viewing the broader context of what we build is something I’ve been thinking a lot about as of late (while reading some great books on the topic). We need more discussion like this.
After a recent flurry of worry online around a CSS keylogger, Jake points out the real issue (emphasis mine):
Some folks called for browsers to ‘fix’ it. Some folks dug a bit deeper and saw that it only affected sites built in React-like frameworks, and pointed the finger at React. But the real problem is thinking that third party content is ‘safe’.
Jeremy has been thinking about when the ends justify the means, a topic I’ve been thinking about a lot as of late as well.
When do the ends justify the means? Isn’t the whole point of having principles that they hold true even in the direst circumstances? Why even claim that corporations shouldn’t influence politics if you’re going to make an exception for net neutrality? Why even claim that free speech is sacrosanct if you make an exception for nazi scum?
Those two examples are pretty extreme and I can easily justify the exceptions to myself. Net neutrality is too important. Stopping fascism is too important. But where do I draw the line? At what point does something become “too important?”
It’s a lovely post that connects dots between censorship, AMP, HTTPS as a requirement for new features and more.
An incredibly detailed walkthrough of optimizing the heck out of some JavaScript. Some really impressive gains here and lots of great, low-level information.
A fantastic job by Eric showing the various limitations of HTTPS and why, while it may be important, it is just one small aspect of keeping your site secure.
Ethan was inspired by an Ursula Franklin lecture (I really have to read that book) to write a bit more about what we, as a community, can do about AMP. It looks a bit grim, as he points out.
And today, right now, I don’t think we need to look further than AMP to see an example of what Franklin’s talking about. As of this moment, the power dynamics are skewed pretty severely in favor of Google’s proprietary AMP standard, and against those of us who’d ask this question: What can I do about AMP?
But he goes on to point out that we can, and should, still speak up about our concerns and rally together:
That doesn’t mean it’s not worth speaking up, individually and collectively, and writing about our concerns. Quite the opposite. In fact, that’s why I signed an open letter on AMP, alongside twenty other concerned colleagues. (If you or your organization has a GitHub account, you can sign it, too.) Perhaps together, we can make the issue more visible, and make more people and organizations aware of our concerns. So while there might not be much I can do about AMP, maybe there’s something we can do.
The results from Joy Buolamwini’s research on facial recognition accuracy are disappointing to say the least.
Microsoft’s error rate for darker-skinned women was 21 percent, while IBM’s and Megvii’s rates were nearly 35 percent. They all had error rates below 1 percent for light-skinned males.
Those are bad numbers, but they shouldn’t be surprising—not when we’re training these algorithm’s with a poorly constructed data set.
One widely used facial-recognition data set was estimated to be more than 75 percent male and more than 80 percent white, according to another research study.
The stakes are just too high for us to continue to build technology without making sure we’re taking off our blinders and accounting for our biases. Oversights like this leave people out, at best. At their worst, they are capable of doing even worse.