iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Alex Russell @infrequently.org · 24/08/2026

Google's brilliant "lay off all the senior people with taste and experience" plan is going swimmingly.

new, cursed "my first vector drawing program" icons from Android

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Alex Russell @infrequently.org · 23/08/2026

First Ken White, now Adam Serwer? This place is losing the juice.

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Alex Russell @infrequently.org · 30/07/2026

Still available in Apple and Google's walled garden app stores, and Apple even lists it in "news". No less of a scandal now than it was 7 months ago, just more putrid and gangrenous: infrequently.org/2026/01/nake...

Apple's listing for Twitter, the everything app.

Google's listing for Twitter, the everything app.

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Alex Russell @infrequently.org · 27/07/2026

ICYMI, finally breaking my silence and coming out in favour of...time. That can't be right...can it? infrequently.org/2026/07/stat...

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Alex Russell @infrequently.org · 23/07/2026

So this keeps happening, and I think we need to talk about it: > them: React manages state in our app. > > me: It does? Then what are <various_libraries> for? > > them: Oh, those manage state. infrequently.org/2026/07/stat...

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Alex Russell @infrequently.org · 16/06/2026

OMG, it's real, and I don't know what's funnier: that it's just sitting there in the JS, or that they were done in by React and shitty web design:

LOL, dialog's website gives up the ghost(s)

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Alex Russell @infrequently.org · 14/06/2026

Friend, check out this waterfall and then tell me if you think it can be "fixed". Yep, that's nearly 12MB of JS *compressed* in the critical path.

WPT waterfall for the WPT UI. A sea of sadness and JavaScript.

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Alex Russell @infrequently.org · 14/06/2026

Welp, I think WPT is totally cooked. 6+ months ago I walked a Catchpoint employee through how the new version fails to meet basic needs and how unbelievably slow it is. Did I mention unusable on mobile? Traced the WPT UI again using WPT. "Enjoy": portal.catchpoint.com/UI/Entry/WPTITP/…

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Alex Russell @infrequently.org · 24/05/2026

Web MIDI, now Web Serial? Why yes, we *can* have a capable, expansive, and safe vision of the web...

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Alex Russell @infrequently.org · 22/05/2026

Because someone on Mastodon caused me to look it up, here's the latest on Google's 15+ year rolling disaster of Android upgrade fuckups from Google's own data. They stopped publishing this on a web page because it was so bad that every tech journalist could write an annual "lol, Android" piece.

Latest Android version data from Google, tucked away inside the "help me choose" UI in the Andoid SDK picker, buried in Android Studio.

More than 50% of devices are 2+ major Android versions out of date, and fully 15% are on an OS released 5+ years ago.

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Alex Russell @infrequently.org · 21/05/2026

1 in 3 Americans are demonstrably cooked: fiftyplusone.news/polls/approval/p…

FiftyPlusOne's snapshot of polls has Trump's approval at 36.5%, with a net disapproval of 24%. Americans (derogatory).

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Alex Russell @infrequently.org · 01/05/2026

Heres @nytimes.com advertising it hired so many Over Reactors that nobody in the building knows how to write CSS or access MDN any more. Cringing inside out with second-hand embarrassment.

The NYT website placing a full page banner over top to advertise their web development skills are now so shitty that they cant even figure our CSS dark mode or PWA installation.

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Alex Russell @infrequently.org · 13/04/2026

Congrats to Hungary, Europe, and everyone that's against the oligarch-illiberal axis that Putin and Trump prop up. A great day for us all. I don't believe in omens or portents, so there's a lot of hard work ahead, particularly here. Apropos of nothing, just saw this out the cab window at SFO:

A rainbow over San Francisco Airport as clouds and rain are blown away by clearer skies.

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Alex Russell @infrequently.org · 10/04/2026

This tool marks my writing as "suspicious", LOL.

An "is this AI?" vetting tool marking a recent article as "suspicious" despite no AI involvement in the text's drafting.

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Alex Russell @infrequently.org · 06/04/2026

The number of meme templates that apply to this specific framing is troubling, so let's go with the obvious:

Bell curve meme with both 0.1's agreeing that browsers are magic and you should use the magic, with the middle saying "Browsers will hurt you if you try to understand them; that's why we do everything in React"

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Alex Russell @infrequently.org · 18/01/2026

NYT just casually pushing their app (featuring invasive tracking) on web users by advertising that nobody on staff knows CSS. Honestly? Checks out.

NYT promo suggesting dark mode isn't available on the web for reasons our of their control, which is either hilariously incompetent, shockingly disrespectful, or both.

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Alex Russell @infrequently.org · 12/01/2026

It wasn't just a fluke; looks like there's an ad/tracking script that is totally nerfing the whole thing in a semi-reliable way: trace.cafe/t/HjWkZRvd6U

Is waiting 30+ seconds for 0-byte render-blocking script bad? Asking for a government agency.

Details for the Rubicon prebid script, which blocks rendering but doesn't send any data.

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Alex Russell @infrequently.org · 24/11/2025

This is most visible in the (sickening) plateau we're seeing in CWV pass rates. Despite progress in pipes and devices, more than half of pages don't feel minimally good on phones at least 1/4 of the time:

CWV pass rates at a few select data points over the past several years. We see a clear plateau below 50% in mobile pass rates over the past year.

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Alex Russell @infrequently.org · 24/11/2025

My post on the the updated network/device landscape will be out next week, but until then, here's a chart of Geekbench 6 single-core CPU scores at 4 price bands over the past decade. 50+% of sales (> 75% in many countries) comes from the bottom two lines. TL;DR: the privilege bubble rots brains.

the performance inequality gap is growing, not shrinking

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Alex Russell @infrequently.org · 21/11/2025

How's the mobile CPU landscape evolving? Thanks to process node improvements, a mid-range Android from 2025 is (finally!) as fast as 2017's iPhone 8, but a low-end (~$100) smartphone isn't yet as speedy as a decade-old iPhone 6s.

Geekbench 6 single-core scores over time at 4 price points:

- fastest iOS
- fastest Android
- mid-tier Android
- low-end Android

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Alex Russell @infrequently.org · 18/11/2025

*bad news What'll really blow your mind is how cache-rich the top-tier parts are. I've been going on (and on and on) about this for years, but the "more cache, fewer cores" tradeoff has been ripe in Androidlandia for years, and is only just now being picked:

total SoC cache sizings for high/mid/low end parts in both the Android and iOS ecosystems. iPhones are fast in large part because Apple blesses them with ungodly amounts of L1+L2+L3+LLC cache.

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Alex Russell @infrequently.org · 18/11/2025

I plotted that out too. The good news is that cheap phones are good value; the band news is...well...everything else.

Performance points per dollar for each cohort.

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Alex Russell @infrequently.org · 18/11/2025

The "i" in "iPhone" stands for "inequality", late 2025 edition:

Worldwide smartphone shipments by year in millions; sources: IDC, Statista, and Counterpoint Research.

At no point in the past decade have iPhones broken the 20% annual sales barrier. iOS is overrepresented in traffic statistics owing to wealth-correlated effects; e.g., faster networks and devices inducing heavier internet use. This does not imply that users on slower devices do not have money to spend, only that they are poorly served by the contemporary web.

Average selling prices in nominal USD for iOS (~$1000) and Android devices (~$300) vs. worldwide smartphone Average Selling Price (~$360).

iPhones aren't real life.

Time series of single-core Geekbench 6 scores for 4 device classes: fastest iPhone, fastest Android, mid-range Android, and low-end device (~$100).

The Performance Inequality Gap is growing, year on year, and the lower tiers are not even on the same trend line, let alone catching up.

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Alex Russell @infrequently.org · 10/11/2025

The ratios on this thread are *incredible*, and the comments are exactly what you think/hope they are:

Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse trying to talk down to Democrats and getting totally rekt in the comments.

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Alex Russell @infrequently.org · 24/10/2025

Two paragraphs below, the expert witnesses Apple brought in gets handed their walking papers in devastating fashion:

"Professor Sweeting’s analysis failed to identify any causal connection
between the restrictions and the value users might place on safety,
security and privacy. He did not attempt to compare the effects of the
restrictions on safety, security and privacy in the real world with a
counterfactual world absent the restrictions264. The study he relied on
was not specific to the UK and the questions it asked participants did not establish any causal link with the restrictions. Under cross examination,
his analysis was exposed as superficial and not reflective of a realistic
counterfactual world. Apple produced no other evidence to show what
link there might be between user value and the restrictions. In our view
Professor Sweeting’s analysis goes nowhere near the causal and
quantitative specificity that is required in order to establish an efficiencies defence."

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Alex Russell @infrequently.org · 24/10/2025

This tribunal ruling is *brutal* for Apple, citing not just the findings of the UK CMA's investigations, but also the evidentiary record developed by the EU's DMA. Further, it destroys Apple's argument that the web apps platform it has neglected is a workable alternative. /via @brucel.bsky.social

"779. We find that Apple’s restrictions do eliminate effective competition in those markets by removing all sources of competition. Accordingly, the efficiencies defence fails."

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Alex Russell @infrequently.org · 19/10/2025

Well played, soft shark. Well played

Inflatable shark with a sign reading "I know a predator when I see one, release the Epstein files!"

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Alex Russell @infrequently.org · 09/10/2025

So Apple is censoring another ICE-spotting app, and I think we need to talk about the coverage, as much as Apple's groveling pre-compliance. @404media.co broke this, specifically @josephcox.bsky.social, and unlike some previous coverage, it includes this: 404media.co/apple-banned-an-….

"The website for Eyes Up which functions essentially the same way is still available. The site includes a map with dots that visitors can click on, which then plays a video from that location. Users are able to submit their own videos for inclusion. Mark said he manually reviews every video before it is uploaded to the service, to check its content and its location. "

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Alex Russell @infrequently.org · 20/09/2025

We should expect a page to fully render on this link and CPU, even with redirect, in < 3 seconds. I'm sure the business side is culpable, but did they do this? Inside the UK? www.webpagetest.org/breakdown.ph...

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Alex Russell @infrequently.org · 19/09/2025

Seriously, LOOK at the trace. Just look at it: webpagetest.org/video/compare.ph… By the time the first render "finishes" at *6+ seconds* we are hundreds of KB of JS into a bad time. Nevermind that the page is *also* doubling up the text content as JSON inline thanks to Next.js:

the usual Next.js diarrhea of inline JSON that repeats what's already in the HTML for no useful purpose on a static page.

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Alex Russell @infrequently.org · 19/09/2025

I would normally try to engage in constructive critique like "what was the goal here was?", but when an image map of the entire page would be faster, smaller, and more accessible...

the BBC News send 3MB of JS (nearly 12MB uncompressed) to render several kilobytes of text. The overall payload is monstrous.

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Alex Russell @infrequently.org · 19/09/2025

It's not a big thing, but relatively frequent travel back and forth from the UK has reminded me just how utterly the BBC broke their site with JavaScript for most of the world. This is BONKERS: www.webpagetest.org/video/compar...

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Alex Russell @infrequently.org · 11/09/2025

Is there a legal term for having such a weak hand that your defence is actually an indictment? Asking for a monopolist:

Fresh off trying to kill web apps, Apple argued to the CMA that the App Store doesn't need to be regulated, because web apps:

"the App Store competes strongly with the numerous alternative channels and transaction platforms through which iOS and iPadOS users can and do transact for digital goods and services. These include transactions on alternative devices (such as other mobile devices, PCs, game consoles, media player devices and smart TVs), web apps,"

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Alex Russell @infrequently.org · 01/09/2025

The area under these lines is a measurement of lost potential because Apple prevents real browser choice on iOS. An integral of fail; a decade of suck. Join @open-web-advocacy.org to keep it from continuing: webstatus.dev/stats?startD...

Features missing from the web due to a single engine, lower is better.

Despite making 40x more from the web than Mozilla, Apple has consistently trailed in basic web standards compatibility.

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Alex Russell @infrequently.org · 24/08/2025

can you show me where, on this chart, the billions of losses are? m.macrotrends.net/stocks/chart...

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Alex Russell @infrequently.org · 30/07/2025

Sedimentary loading screens, appearing one after the other, as I journey to the center of the earth where reservation details are etched in the superheated rock of the lower mantle.

BA's first loading screen, which is now the primary experience of ba.com

Should you click the wrong button, you might be delighted by BA's _ancien_ loading spinner, indicating that you have passed out of your body and that the river Styx will be visible just beyond the next rise.

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Alex Russell @infrequently.org · 26/07/2025

Absolutely no chance this will age like milk left in the sun. None whatsoever: webpagetest.org/video/compare.ph…

An up-to-the-moment project structure that brings hundreds of MB of deps in tow.

70% of this _static web page_ is JavaScript, or 155K compressed/505K unzipped

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Alex Russell @infrequently.org · 26/07/2025

Ok, Lake District, I get you.

Highland cows grazing over Derwentwater.

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Alex Russell @infrequently.org · 17/07/2025

Frameworkism is a hell of a drug:

Etch.co went from more than 2MB of JS on their homepage with Next to less than 12KB. Yes, that's right, *two orders of magnitude less JS* for *equivalent functionality*.

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Alex Russell @infrequently.org · 16/07/2025

A few in this list I'd missed; thank you! I already had the piccalilli blog in my post, and had written it up like this:

"The Piccalilli Blog is what would happen if troupe of badass webdev and content superstars formed a supergroup and instead of putting out one sad single, churned out bangers, week after week."

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Alex Russell @infrequently.org · 11/07/2025

I can see why Google hides this data in Android Studio instead of publishing it on a website (like they used to). Android fragmentation is an ongoing scandal:

More than 50% of Android devices run versions of the OS more than 3 major versions old, and many run versions that have no security patch support.

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