newsonaut
newsonaut
Mark Rogers
The newsonaut is Mark Rogers, a writer, designer and web coder living in beautiful British Columbia.
Latest Posts
You can get a badge for your blog declaring that you never, ever use AI. While it’s true that I never, ever use AI for my writing, I did use it once to make a graphic for an April Fools Day joke about how Apple is making the corners on...
Here’s how to make your post as hard to read as possible. Step 1: Make it all one paragraph, the longer the better. Step 2: Don’t put in any subheadings. If you’ve followed step 1, you won’t be able to do this anyway. Step 3: Resist the...
There’s a guy who occasionally publishes reviews on Reddit that are honest, informed and non-monetized. I trust him and have in fact bought one of the things he recommended. I use it often, and I’m glad to have it. Lately, though, I’ve...
I’ve been interested in the concept of the indie web for a few years now, but have struggled to take part in a meaningful way. I wrote about an early attempt in 2024 when I discovered that you can get a random RSS feed from...
Apparently, Apple likes those big-ass round corners so much that they have decided to go all-in with what they’re calling “circular” design. Here’s an example I found for TextEdit.
In seemingly miraculous fashion, basic functions that I thought were lost to my Mac have returned. Spotlight is now able to find stock Apple apps, and Mail is now able to send emails. So what happened? I can only guess, but I do know...
I’ve had my iMac for almost a decade now, and aside from slowing down a bit over the years, it’s worked just fine. Until now. It started with Spotlight no longer being able to find any apps or files. After a lot of back and for with...
I have been thinking about my characterization of OpenAI and Anthropic as being motivated by greed. This may be unfair, given that greed motivates all of us to some degree, and it is a necessary vice if you are to succeed in the...
A lot of people have been deleting their ChatGPT accounts in favour Claude. It’s their way of choosing sides in the controversy surrounding contracts with the U.S. government. I was initially tempted to do the same thing until I...
With ads now showing up in ChatGPT, there is a worry that the answers will turn into sales jobs for the advertisers. That’s too obvious, and is unlikely to happen — at least in the short term. What is more likely is that the AI will try...
.image-container { display: flex; gap: 20px; /* space between the images */ } .image-block { text-align: center; width: 200px; /* fixed or flexible */ } .image-block img { max-width: 100%; height: auto; display: block; margin-bottom:...
We humans place a lot of importance on the time it takes for Earth to revolve around the sun. It takes one year, and we wind up in more or less the same place — relative to the sun — each time. A time for celebration! But since the sun...
There’s a cool new thing you can do in HTML that is supported by all the major web browsers, including Safari. But I can’t use it because, well, Safari. You see, if you want the latest version of Safari, which has this cool new thing,...
Everyone else has had their say about the Liquid Glass design adopted by Apple, so why shouldn’t I? Actually, I’m mostly fine with it, but some of those icons just don’t make sense. The one that jumps out at me is Settings. The icon is a...
I’m on track to read 46 books this year — up by four from 2024. I was lucky enough to find eight books I felt were worthy of 10 stars out of 10, plus three others that didn’t quite make it with 9.5. 10/10 A Truce That Is Not Peace Miriam...