Mark
@maetl.bsky.social
Lecturer in Product Design at UCNZ. Tech industry dropout. Narrative systems and geoscience meddler. Old school web sectary. Frankenbike curator. Waste stream wrangler.
Worth reading this as well for more detail and background context: blog.zarfhome.com/2025/11/zork...
Zork is now open source
Two years ago, I wrote: Microsoft-the-company does not care about Infocom. But a lot of people in Microsoft must care. Microsoft is heavily populated by greying GenX nerds just like me. Folks who grew...
blog.zarfhome.com
November 23, 2025 at 6:51 AM
Worth reading this as well for more detail and background context: blog.zarfhome.com/2025/11/zork...
(Not gonna show the physical prototype or concept art yet as it gives too much away, but I’m amped for working on this over summer)
November 20, 2025 at 11:00 PM
(Not gonna show the physical prototype or concept art yet as it gives too much away, but I’m amped for working on this over summer)
To be fair, I still feel this bloatware is minor compared to the societal instability that comes from hyperscalers smashing together thousands and thousands of servers into giant web services and data pipelines supporting networked disinfo and message-shaping propaganda at unimaginable scales.
November 20, 2025 at 9:57 AM
To be fair, I still feel this bloatware is minor compared to the societal instability that comes from hyperscalers smashing together thousands and thousands of servers into giant web services and data pipelines supporting networked disinfo and message-shaping propaganda at unimaginable scales.
Besides, the "new tech" of CSS today is feature-rich and can support extremely intricate layouts in only a few KB. Nothing should be as slow or complicated as it’s made out to be.
One of those cultural forces/fashion trends is the prioritisation of developer experience over user experience.
One of those cultural forces/fashion trends is the prioritisation of developer experience over user experience.
November 20, 2025 at 3:27 AM
Besides, the "new tech" of CSS today is feature-rich and can support extremely intricate layouts in only a few KB. Nothing should be as slow or complicated as it’s made out to be.
One of those cultural forces/fashion trends is the prioritisation of developer experience over user experience.
One of those cultural forces/fashion trends is the prioritisation of developer experience over user experience.
Except unlike fast fashion where the clothes wear out or get dumped en masse by retailers (and go to landfill in both cases), the products of tech trends get deposited in production systems which is then entangled with the deposition of the next season’s trends. And so on.
November 20, 2025 at 2:51 AM
Except unlike fast fashion where the clothes wear out or get dumped en masse by retailers (and go to landfill in both cases), the products of tech trends get deposited in production systems which is then entangled with the deposition of the next season’s trends. And so on.
A realisation I had years and years ago (probably in the time of dynamic typing mailing list flame wars and Paul Graham prattling on about Lisp) is that the so-called tech industry is fundamentally about fashion trends.
November 20, 2025 at 2:48 AM
A realisation I had years and years ago (probably in the time of dynamic typing mailing list flame wars and Paul Graham prattling on about Lisp) is that the so-called tech industry is fundamentally about fashion trends.
Not relating this to Simeon Brown making a complete mess is ignoring crucial context. Avoidable and of their own making.
November 20, 2025 at 1:41 AM
Not relating this to Simeon Brown making a complete mess is ignoring crucial context. Avoidable and of their own making.
It’s not the whole deal but is part of the context.
bsky.app/profile/maet...
bsky.app/profile/maet...
The awards are specifically for published products which is why it mentions covers in the rules, despite the incredulous commentary around it.
November 17, 2025 at 6:47 PM
It’s not the whole deal but is part of the context.
bsky.app/profile/maet...
bsky.app/profile/maet...
(I will avoid contributing to the arguments in your mentions about this, haha)
November 17, 2025 at 3:53 AM
(I will avoid contributing to the arguments in your mentions about this, haha)
A lot of the exceptions and special pleading I’ve seen people talking about for coding and data science would be well suited to hybrid models that incorporate pattern matching, symbolic AI, rules engines, and so on. But none of that is in fashion right now.
November 17, 2025 at 3:50 AM
A lot of the exceptions and special pleading I’ve seen people talking about for coding and data science would be well suited to hybrid models that incorporate pattern matching, symbolic AI, rules engines, and so on. But none of that is in fashion right now.
Nitpicking about logical argument aside, the framing of these things as rhetoric support structures (language as gap filler/spackle/quick dry concrete etc) is spot on and it accords with how they are used for the most part.
November 17, 2025 at 3:46 AM
Nitpicking about logical argument aside, the framing of these things as rhetoric support structures (language as gap filler/spackle/quick dry concrete etc) is spot on and it accords with how they are used for the most part.