Olivier Lange

Big shoutout to @nodejs for adding TypeScript 🎉 But how is it different than Deno's "first class" TypeScript support? Here's an overview of what you can (and can't) do with TypeScript in Node and Deno. deno.com/blog/typescrip…

Having fun building pixel UI, especially my own color picXer #JS #pixelArt #dev #ThreeJS

Advice for Food Companies Since we launched PlasticList, we’ve been heartened to have quite a few food companies reach out and ask for help interpreting their results and tracking down and eliminating their contamination. I’ve had calls with a bunch of these. I am happy to report that no food company wants this stuff in their food and they are all eager to figure out what’s going on and how to remove it. After a while I noticed the advice we were giving was pretty similar for every company, so I thought it would be useful to write it down and share publicly. So, here are some notes: 1. To track down the source of your contamination, don’t just test a few samples of your product with varied production processes. Instead, test every single one of your inputs: every ingredient and input in the form you receive it before any processing steps, including water and any other consumables. 2. Then, test the food before and after every step in your production process. If you boil something in tap water, test before and after boiling. If you chop something on a plastic cutting board (because wood cutting boards are outlawed in commercial kitchens, apparently), test before and after chopping. 3. You may have to go deep into your supply chain to figure out the source of your contamination. One food company founder we spoke to said that some of the fruit they include in their product is picked, put into plastic bags, and then steamed in the bags before the bags are cut open and the fruit is transferred into another plastic bag, while still warm, for shipping. Whoops. 4. Run at least three samples of every test due to sample-to-sample variation. You can see in our report and in our data that sample-to-sample and lot-to-lot variation should be expected: plasticlist.org/report 5. You should also test any intermediate or final packaging that your product ships in, as leaching can also occur post-production. 6. There are a lot of steps that you need to carefully follow to prevent contaminating your samples during collection and transportation. It’s really easy to miss one of these and mess up your data. We describe many of these on our methodology page: plasticlist.org/methodology 7. You should consider running longitudinal tests, maybe quarterly, as we have heard that there can be seasonal variation in contamination from suppliers, due to things like summer heat, suppliers switching their processes, and suppliers switching their own backend suppliers for their inputs. 8. And most importantly: PICK A GOOD LAB. Unfortunately not all labs are good, and we think many ISO-certified commercial labs will not give reliable results. We rejected many certified labs because we weren’t confident in their work; all-in-all, we spent about 10 weeks finding a lab that we trust for our tests. You can see our lab’s internal methodology here: docs.google.com/document/d/1pc… Our lab has recently permitted us to identify them publicly, and they are IEH: iehinc.com We also worked with Light Labs to produce this study and they can be a big help: lightlabs.com And Million Marker is able to work with food companies to debug their supply chains as well: millionmarker.com 9. You should consider hiring an analytical chemist as a consultant to validate that the testing methodology is accurate and to double-check the lab’s results. We hired John Brock to do this and it was well worth it; we would not have been confident in our choice of lab or our results without John. 10. We couldn’t find a lot of evidence that the phthalate substitutes are bad; if you have high-percentile detections in phthalates or bisphenols, though, it’s probably worth figuring out how those chemicals are getting into your products.

Sunday rant. For software engineering, my sense is that the phrase “premature optimization is the root of all evil” has massively backfired. Its from a book on data structures and mainly tried to dissuade people from prematurely write things in assembler. But the point was to free you up to think harder about the data structures to use, not leave things comically inefficient. This context is always skipped when it’s uttered. Not all fast software is world-class, but all world-class software is fast. Performance is _the_ killer feature. If you are in engineering, here is a fantastic anecdote. I refer to this account often. It’s a bit subtile, but the implications are massive- It’s an account of how SQLite became 50% faster, not by doing one specific thing but hundreds of small ones. SQLite is everywhere today because of this work. sqlite-users.sqlite.narkive.com/CVRvSKBs/50-fa… We need the engineers in all companies fight for this more. Product leads are not the right owners of the end performance of the software. This needs to be encoded in the professional pride of the software engineering discipline. Leaders in companies need to encourage it and hold engineering accountable. It’s simply not ok to fritter away the performance of the products for random reasons. Every user of your products cares exactly as much about latency as engineers do when typing in their terminal. They just don’t have the words to describe what they don’t like about the experience and neither should they.

This is what the Observer team & I were doing between strikes. Please read it because it couldn’t be more relevant. I interview Asif Kapadia about his alarming new film, 2073, with its stark warning of where Trump, Musk & Farage are taking us.. theguardian.com/film/2024/dec/…

🎁 Backers, check your inbox! Today we begin unwrapping Web Awesome, one feature preview per week, starting from <wa-page>, our favorite new component. 🧡 Not yet a backer? Get in on the action! You can still back Web Awesome for a limited time at webawesome.com

A driver waits while watching a woodcock finish crossing the road. 😂😂

It took me a while to fully realize the value of something my company achieved years ago, and continues to savor today. It’s one of our greatest quiet advantages, full stop. It’s not something you hear much about in business circles. In fact, I can’t remember the last time I heard anyone spend much time on the topic, or even bring it up in conversation, on a conference stage, or behind a podcast mic. There is, however, lots of discussion about achievement in business. A company can achieve product market fit, operational efficiency, influence, revenue goals, or, ultimately — and hopefully — profitability. But I’m not taking about those things. Those are the obvious things, the common talking points. And to those you can add the vanity metrics of achievement — social media followers, traffic, views, impressions, open rates, press mentions, gross this or gross that. All those are what they are, but they aren’t where it’s at. What I’m talking about is optionality. Achieving optionality is where it’s at. Optionality is a hearty mix of profit margin, small size, independence, attitude, and freedom. You’ve got to have all of it to have optionality. If a board is calling the shots, you don’t have much optionality. If your margins are thin, or non-existent, you don’t have much optionality. If the public owns a piece, you don’t have much optionality. If you’re too big to change direction quickly, you don’t have much optionality. And if you’re afraid to speak your mind and stake your point of view, you don’t have much optionality. Optionality lets you do things no one would give you permission to do. It lets you write excellent software and give it away for free if you choose. It lets you do things that don’t make sense in the current climate, but will long-term. It lets you be early while eventually catches up. Optionality is ecstasy. It’s making it up as you go, without making excuses. It’s openly changing your mind without having to save face. Optionality is equanimity, the corporate equivalent of enlightenment. So, entrepreneurs, ditch the bullshit. Abandon growth-at-all-costs. Reject conventional metrics. Scorn hollow acceptance. Instead, hunt for optionality. It's freedom. It's power. It's everything you crave, wrapped in a single, potent package. Chase it relentlessly. And when you get it, don’t let go.

I'm very excited about the JavaScript Signals proposal! It gives the platform a built-in reactive primitive so Lit can stay minimally opinionated and maximally interoperable. And it's trivial to integrate with Lit! I built a prototype in a few minutes: #gist=a1b12ce26246d3562dda13718b59926c" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener">lit.dev/playground/#gi…

For those interested in the TC39 Signals Proposal, here's a blog post I put together for you. eisenbergeffect.medium.com/a-tc39-proposa…

🚨🚨🚨🚨 Apple will NOT remove PWA support on iOS 🥳🥳🥳🥳 👉This is an official statement form Apple that replaced today the previous excuses published around the removal. We did it, folks!

Color nerds, eat some carrots and cancel your meetings. You have @mrmrs_ to thank. colormatch.pages.dev

A different perspective by Hugo Suissas - thread 🧵 1. Special Light

This journalist has been in a London prison for almost five years for exposing state criminality. If the UK sends to the country he exposed he will die in a US prison cell. This week the UK will decide. It’s now or never. Defend Assange. His life and the future of journalism depend on it. #JohrnalismIsNotACrime #FreeAssangeNOW #DayX

A brief history of your favourite fonts...

If you didn't want to watch my 23-minute HEY Calendar walkthrough video (and I can't blame you!), we made a condensed 3:45 version one that hits on many of the same points without the philosophical why's behind each feature. Attached.

New year, new Astro ✨ Upgrade to Astro 4.1 for new accessibility audit rules, improved `client:visible` options, bug fixes, and more! astro.build/blog/astro-410/

🔊 HERE IT IS! Off The Main Thread — A new developer podcast with @jaffathecake and myself. In this first episode I talk about WebGPU and Jake talks about if browsers are like political parties 🔥 Find it wherever you find your podcasts or go here: offthemainthread.tech/episode/webgpu…

Taking things up a notch, we're releasing the text-to-diagram feature! 🔥 Using AI to generate diagrams from plain text. 🧠 Unlike wireframe-to-code previously, you don't need your own API token — everyone can start generating right away! 💪 excalidraw.com

"So farewell, TypeScript. May you bring much rigor and satisfaction to your tribe while letting the rest of us enjoy JavaScript in the glorious spirit it was originally designed: Free of strong typing." world.hey.com/dhh/turbo-8-is…