Author: harold

I started with Netscape because in 98, fuck Microsoft.

Then Netscape Navigator was unstable. So, some IE, which was just a bit less unstable. The web itself wasn’t really stable at that time.

Then AvantBrowser. It’s 2000-ish. TABS. POP-UP BLOCKER. TYPE IN THE ADDRESS BAR TO SEARCH. That was the shit. The biggest browser innovation jump ever.

Then a bit of Opera. Cute. Then all geeks and nerds couldn’t STFU about Firefox. So I tried it. It was alright, except that there were barely any extensions that I was using quite heavily at that time. Then I super-customized my Firefox and it was pretty cool.

Then it auto-updated to Firefox 2, destroying all my settings and preferences. Uncool. Uninstall. I don’t play.

So I switched to Maxthon. Holy shit that was dope. I know, it ran on IE engine but I’ve never cared about Acid3 tests and all that useless shit. Does the browser work with the websites I use? If yes, it’s enough for me and a vast majority of users.

Around the same time, I started to use RSS heavily, unloading my browser’s needs. Maxthon was perfect with the flat theme I applied to it. I used it for years. Stable as hell.

Then it updated to Maxthon 2 and it was unstable as fuck. Extensions were def a problem so I stopped using them all together.

Time for Chrome! I was mad in love with it. I still remember it was September 2008. Reading the comic about javascript on my netbook, grabbing my dick. “Google is really listening and smart!” I said to myself, fapping. The trade-off of giving them my browsing history and behavior wasn’t so bad because I was RSSing a lot.

But it grew on me. While everyone was selling the browser to their grandma, I couldn’t let Google spy on me like that. So I started to use the Chromium forks. One was called ChromePlus and it was pretty dope.

Then it updated to ChromePlus 2 and it was terrible.

By that time it’s 2012 and I’m sick of all that browser bullshit. Win8 comes out. I start using IE11 without excitement and pretty much never looked back. I still use IE11 most of the time. I don’t care. The funniest thing is that sometimes –once a year- a website doesn’t work and I suppose that it’s because of IE. It’s not. It just does the same thing in Vivaldi or Chrome or whatever. I read this year that Safari still had issues displaying favicons and I wanted to let y’all know that this shit has been solved on most Windows browsers circa 2002-2003.

The amount of energy spent on those stupid ass browser battles is staggering. It’s hard to take software developers seriously sometimes. Web developers failed at making HTML5 a true, clean standard. Google took over and made everything not chrome-compliant, “bad”. You guys completely failed the public by letting one company do the thing that you didn’t want the other company to do. And now you’re crying about monoculture and shit. But here’s a truth: there’s pretty much no need for browser innovation anymore! They’re all fast. They’re all stable. They’re all able to handle forms, payment systems. That’s what we mostly do with browsers and there’s no need to reinvent the wheel again. I don’t need my browser to access some VR rig, run some sophisticated synth or stream 8K videos. Jesus. Code for other stuff that might help people, think native and offline. Leave the browser alone. We’re good. Browsers have achieved the Fridge status: they just work, everyone uses one, they all behave the same and no one cares about brands and “mind share” and all that high school shit. Working IT in a public space demonstrated that to me.

Browsers are everything and nothing at the same time. They’re incredibly complex pieces of software that are doing far too many things, like tracking every single thing we do (mouse cursor and all) or accessing your microphone. I just love me some vanilla HTML that renders instantly with today’s available bandwidth and any 2010 and above browser. Straight. To. The. Point. I’m never over a dozen tabs. The whole 70+ tabs nerdcore absurdity was my daily life back in 2005. It’s pretty clear that it’s not healthy for either brain or computer system.

I guess that sells multi-core CPUs though. Sigh.

My team sport is not doing well at all. The West is staked and ruthless so that makes sense.

Seeing Kawhi being Kawhi in the East stings so much omg I had no idea that would cut that deep. It’s the first time I see a player evolve, get outstanding, and leave the team I’m rooting for, over some stupid stuff. It’s not a good feeling. I wanted to see that big 3 of Dejounte/Kawhi/Lamarcus go HAM. A 2-way juggernaut. FUCK.

I’ve always enjoyed Toronto’s team but right now they have a fucking squad. Siakam is super impressive, Leonard is l o c k e d t all the time and everyone is balling. I’m mad and happy for them.

OKC has a squad too. You never know how they will perform in the playoffs but I think PG knows he won’t have many other opportunities. He seems very focused right now. Denver is scary as well.

For the rest, it’s too early to tell. Nothing makes sense. Some teams blow out others without even having their best players on the court. Some win over, on paper, much better teams. Games are pretty random right now and that’s cool.

The 3-point paradigm though. It’s weird to see three tall ass dudes on the perimeter, waiting. It’s not fun to watch basketball if it’s only that all the time. It’s really killing the game, in a way.

By steamrolling local taxi operations in cities all over the world and cultivating cheerleaders in the business press and among Silicon Valley libertarians, Uber has managed to create an image of inevitability and invincibility.

Journalism is about trolling 24/7 now. Uber is bad etc but first and foremost, people use that stuff all the time. All the fucking time. That’s how Uber became huge in the first place. It was such a small thing barely 5 years ago. We all made them insanely big because that ride-sharing shit is ultra-convenient. Starting an article about Uber by immediately spitting in their faces by implying that this is all because of lobbying, crazy SF libertarians and such, is not journalism. It’s trash. Boo Uber doesn’t make money. Netflix isn’t either. Tesla just barely started to? But those are for a certain slice of the population. Uber is used by everyone, from the prostitute at the corner of a dark boulevard to teenagers going back home to Bel Air’s heiresses going out.

You can be mad at how much money Uber raised or argue how they will replace drivers with level-5 cars (which is when they’ll be able to make profit) but the service itself? Leave it alone. We needed it.

Also maybe y’all could stop investing in businesses solely based on growth, wins-it-all promises? Maybe.

There was this older man at my day job. I was helping him set up his tablet. I noticed that every time I would open a browser and focus on the address bar, the four letters “milf” would show up.

At some point, I told him: “you know, you can set up your browser in what is called Incognito Mode, that allows you to search for things privately”. His eyes opened large, looking at mine straight into my soul like I had understood him at the deepest level.

I showed him how to do it. He never came back.

I can’t even imagine the amount of filth his tablet’s RAM has processed. I saw him a couple times in the streets since. He looked visibly tired. He’s travelled a lot on the intertubes. I could tell.

I’m sorry.

Me: hey my old man, listen.

Him: hey, you know I’m gone.

Me: yeah I know, we’re all hurting still. But yo, I got to tell you about what’s going on in France.

Him: you ain’t even there, stupid.

Me: right but the PSG tho.

Him: what about it.

Me: well, it’s owned by Qatar now. It’s one of the wealthiest sport club in the world. They only have 3 French players in the default rotation. They have 4 Brazilians. They paid one of them 222 million euros for him to play for the PSG.

Him: godddaaaaamn. Are they winning?

Me: sort of. They won everything in France.

Him: Champions league title?

Me: noooo lol

Him: so they fucking suck. Bums. What the fuck. How much??? What the fuck.

Me: *giggles*

It’s a great article on why restaurants have gotten so loud. Finally, someone is pointing out those super-dumb high ceilings inside buildings. They create awful acoustics and are absolutely the worst in terms of cooling/heating efficiency. But hey, “luxury” right? FOH

Acousticians can be expensive, and many retail designers figure that they can get away without one.

It’s creepy how this race to efficiency and profit kills things we’ve been doing that are so anchored in our habits, like trying to make a space feel good, that we don’t even realize when we break said habits. There’s just a way too big focus on numbers these days. For everything.

Also a bit sad to realize that this article was written by Kate Wagner, from McMansionHell fame, which means that we’re really like two people caring about acoustics and Quality of Life in houses. Mental Five, Kate.

Meanwhile, I worked on the two additions I would build on my future estate: an audio lab (ok, just a cube to make sound and music in it) and a workshop (ok, just a rectangle to build stuff in it). GOALS BRUH

Back in the days when I was young, in 2007, I was actively reading about cannabis. We had hit a crazy drought in France for a few years and no good weed was available. Some was laced with piled glass (to make it look like it’s full of THC crystals), that’s how bad shit was. I was looking to grow some ganja. I was looking at the absurd laws in place. I bought a whole system with lamps and all and asked my parents if I could grow some at the family house: no one says nothing, I’m gardening and smoking clean stuff, everybody wins. My dad was fast to say no (him: “it’s illegal!” me, under breath: “you a bitch”). My mom was kind of alright with the idea. She’s the OG gardener. Moms always show up at some point.

Anyway. 2009, California. Weed problem solved.

2010s, I see two indie game developers quit game development to start weed businesses on the west coast. Both are white men. Happy for them, personally annoyed.

2018, I see billboards about cannabis. I see new, white people-owned cannabis dispensers with VALET PARKING. Soon they’ll have bottomless mimosas for when you buy over an eighth on Sundays.

You can’t understand how hard that shit hits. I’ve read so many stories of black and brown people getting their lives fucked upside down for a joint in a car on a Friday night. I’ve been ostracized so much for smoking weed and not indulge with beers. I’ve probably been judged as a drug addict, soon to go down the path of some other shit because that’s what black and brown people do: they do drugs until they OD, right? The amount of shame carried by all of us, the absurd tactics to hide, minimize what society is telling us is really, really bad but is in the reality of facts, absolutely not. Even a HBO show about black LA barely mentions marijuana but has the cast drink alcohol day in day out.

And we’re *all* aware of that bullshit. It’s so weird when you  think about it.

So for years you play that stupid game of hide & seek and all of a sudden, it’s legal and Forbes has articles on those white ladies in Colorado making mad money selling buds. The same ladies that would call the cops on us when we were smoking too close to their front yards. It’s not like “oh, the irony” it’s more like “what the actual fuck is this, fuck everything”.

How come weed isn’t fully legal in the entire country when it is in a growing number of states AND Canada? At this point? How come?

How come they haven’t freed all the people in jail for possession right the fuck yesterday?

How come it isn’t legal in France, the biggest consumer of cannabis in Europe? The president is fucking 40 years old, he smoked “when he was younger” and he’s acting like he can’t legalize. Fuck that president. And fuck all of y’all out there, minimizing this massive societal problem while downing bottles of booze.

How come Portugal, which legalized everything and has great results from it (reducing ODs by more than half), is not the poster child of what the fuck the whole world needs to do?

It’s hard not to be mad at this disaster. All of that for a fucking plant. An awesome, armless plant.