iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Matt Henry 🥄 @matthenry.fyi · 05/10/2026

But in the rule making that change, DOJ (and i have to emphasize, lest everything I'm saying seem hopelessly politicized, this is *this* DOJ, in its own rulemaking) said:

In the 2024 final rule, the Department attempted to strike the appropriate balance between preserving public entities' limited resources and ensuring accessibility for individuals with disabilities. But the advancement and availability of technology did not meet the Department's expectations when it had struck that balance. Advanced technology, such as generative AI, does not yet reliably automate the remediation of inaccessible content at scale, and staff resources and availability continue to pose significant challenges. Nor did covered entities' resources meet the Department's expectations. The less public entities can rely on technology to make their web content and mobile apps accessible, the more they will need to rely on manual work instead. This interplay is highlighted by the recent concerns raised about the 2024 final rule's compliance dates.

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Matt Henry 🥄 @matthenry.fyi · 29/09/2026

Viewpoint-based removal of comments in a (limited) public forum remains illegal whether or not you give a warning about it in a markdown file. github.com/uswds/uswds/...

A github diff shows the text "Any posts or comments that the admin determine are not productive will be removed, and users who make multiple such posts or comments will be banned." being added to the USWDS code of conduct.

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Matt Henry 🥄 @matthenry.fyi · 23/09/2026

Because it appears to have been deleted again, here it is in notes app apology form

Because the previous comment posted 9/22
posted at approximately was deleted I'm going to keep reposting. The current resourcing of the web-design system does not appear to have cross-functional resourcing which is out of step with the OMB M-23-22 guidance 'Use cross-functional teams: Agencies should build cross-tunctional teams that have expertise in human-centered design and agile development practices. Critical roles may include product managers, [80] user experience researchers and designers, content designers and copywriters, front-end developers, software engineers, and data analysts and may include accessibility specialists, privacy and security specialists, information architects, service designers, behavioral scientists, data scientists, or other specialized roles. Agencies are strongly encouraged to establish a dedicated team to be responsible for each digital service (a "Scrum" team), where appropriate and feasible.

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Matt Henry 🥄 @matthenry.fyi · 23/09/2026

They've already (sort of?) walked back the idea of automating all of their accessibility testing. I don't think this is a meaningful change but maybe it indicates that they're paying attention to criticism.

A github diff shows text changed from "Aim to automate the full range of accessibility testing needed" to "Aim to automate as much accessibility testing as possible," but "Fallback to manual testing as needed" was removed.

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Matt Henry 🥄 @matthenry.fyi · 18/09/2026

Speaking of care and thought, enjoy all of these overnight breaking change PRs to demonstrate that the care & thought era is now over.

A github pull request queue shows several open PRs made in rapid succession, many of which are labeled as breaking changes.

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Matt Henry 🥄 @matthenry.fyi · 18/09/2026

This pull request adding an ADR was absolutely written by & for AI github.com/uswds/uswds/... but it’s also clearly just based on a stub of an issue I wrote two years ago.

A GitHub screenshot shows an empty issue written by me, with the title “USWDS - ADR: Prefer intrinsic layouts and container queries to page level media queries for responsive design”

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Matt Henry 🥄 @matthenry.fyi · 18/08/2026

God just imagine if Roberta Flack had covered Nick Drake

He remained convinced, however, that Nick's songs would provide rich pickings for other artists: 'I was bullish about all the covers he was going to get. For example, when I heard Roberta Flack's first album [First Take (released in June 1969)] I immediately thought
"Time Has Told Me" would be perfect for her, and sent an acetate of it to Atlantic? She did not oblige, alas.

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Matt Henry 🥄 @matthenry.fyi · 17/06/2026

It’s scary how good these recommendation algorithms are getting

Apple Music says, “trending with Elliott Smith fans: Elliott Smith”

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Matt Henry 🥄 @matthenry.fyi · 25/05/2026

I guess I should be grateful any content is visible at all, unlike at least half of modern web pages which just crash.

A mobile safari error screen says “a problem repeatedly occurred on [a long URL]”

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Matt Henry 🥄 @matthenry.fyi · 20/05/2026

People are calling this AI slop but it’s actually a historical record of the plumbers who made this windows screensaver

A screenshot of the ancient windows 3D pipes screensaver

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Matt Henry 🥄 @matthenry.fyi · 20/05/2026

The piece does point out how DF could connect people to non-tax benefits (like SNAP) based on what it knew about them, but an underreported aspect of DF was that it made it easy and free for people who might not otherwise file and would miss out on the EITC, to get money they were entitled to.

Given and Vinton helped build a new portal for non-filers to claim their cash. Along the way, they came to see that America's social-safety net has been absorbed into the tax system—and that every year, the neediest families were unknowingly leaving billions of dollars in credit and deductions on the table. For Vinton, building something like Direct File was a moral and practical necessity.

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Matt Henry 🥄 @matthenry.fyi · 20/05/2026

Not only did it do the thing it was supposed to (which took truly prodigious engineering, design, product, and policy chops all working in concert), it did it in a way that users absolutely *loved*

The 2024 pilot was limited to "simple" tax situations, but it was a smashing success. More than 140,000 people across a dozen states submitted returns with Direct File. One in four users had been non-filers in the previous year. Fraud seemed to be a non-issue, due to burdensome ID verification processes; 94 percent of users preferred Direct File to their previous filing method, and 86 percent said it increased their trust in the IRS. For the first time in human history, tax administrators were receiving fan mail, rather than death threats. "We had retirees telling us they were going day-drinking to celebrate," Vinton says. "A guy in Texas completed his return in 24 minutes. We didn't even think that was possible."

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Matt Henry 🥄 @matthenry.fyi · 17/05/2026

This was really good! Small correction where the word “not“ is omitted on p. 11. (Though context makes the meaning clear)

Highlighted text reads “This problem does arise out of malice on the part of the AI tool, because it cannot”

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Matt Henry 🥄 @matthenry.fyi · 24/03/2026

7yo’s review of the Apple I: “Those computers were so big and messy. You could even see the computer brain”

A picture of a page from the book Apple: The first 50 years, shows the Apple I. It’s a big circuit board with a keyboard, small black & white CRT monitor with an ASCII apple on the screen, and an audio cassette storage device.

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Matt Henry 🥄 @matthenry.fyi · 13/03/2026

If it were me, I don’t think I’d go on TV to create a record of my intention to prosecute people without probable cause.

ABA rule 3.8, Rule 3.8: Special
Responsibilities of a
Prosecutor

The prosecutor in a criminal case shall:
(a) refrain from prosecuting a charge that the prosecutor knows is not supported by probable cause;

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Matt Henry 🥄 @matthenry.fyi · 12/03/2026

Honestly the most I’ve ever related to Morrissey

An article has the headline: Morrissey Cancels Concert Due to
"Sleep Deprivation" Caused by Noisy
Hotel

The dek is the quote: "It will take me one year to recover. And that is an understatement."

The art for the article is Morrissey looking dejected with his chin resting on his hand.

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Matt Henry 🥄 @matthenry.fyi · 10/03/2026

We wrote ”How to get started building a new CM/ECF. Today.” almost 4 years ago but it’s great to see some actual movement in that direction. www.uscourts.gov/sites/defaul...

The cover page of a report by 18F reads:
How to get started building a new CM/ECF. Today.

A tactical approach to designing, building, and shipping products that solve real
problems for real users in the federal Judiciary, immediately.

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Matt Henry 🥄 @matthenry.fyi · 07/01/2026

Except they fucked it up. This is Chrome's Lighthouse tool, showing that they tried to turn a div into a list by giving it that ARIA role, except you can't have a list without also specifying which elements are supposed to be the items that make up that list. 5/

A google lighthouse panel shows that the page is incorrectly using aria.

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Matt Henry 🥄 @matthenry.fyi · 07/01/2026

Let's view source. …Oops all divs.

the HTML for a terrible website is all divs and SVGs.

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Matt Henry 🥄 @matthenry.fyi · 23/12/2025

Every year I make a smart playlist in Apple Music with my most-played tracks released that year to figure out my top 10 albums of the year. Here's this year's:

1. *Winged Victory*, Willi Carlisle
2. *Straight Line was a Lie*, The Beths
3. *Patience, Moonbeam*, Great Grandpa
4. *Pain to Power*, Maruja
5. *Teeth of Time*, Joshua Burnside
6. *Alan Sparhawk with Trampled by Turtles*, Alan Sparhawk with Trampled by Turtles
7. *All Smiles Tonight*, Poor Creature
8. *Bleeds*, Wednesday
9. *Getting Killed*, Geese
10. *This was all fields when I was growing up*, Arabú

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Matt Henry 🥄 @matthenry.fyi · 21/12/2025

We need to shut down cutesy acronyms for bills until we can find out what the hell is going on

A screenshot of an article from FedScoop highlights the text: The Strengthening Agency Management and Oversight of Software Assets (SAMOSA)

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Matt Henry 🥄 @matthenry.fyi · 21/12/2025

This email from the DLCC is so gross. I guarantee you nobody scrolling to the tiny text at the bottom of an email looking for the words “click here” is doing it to donate.

Tiny text at the bottom of an email reads: We're fighting to elect Democrats and advance a progressive vision in the states. Our success depends on grassroots donors like you. Ninety-eight percent of our donors give less than $200, and two-thirds give less than $20. To make a contribution, please click here. To unsubscribe and stop receiving emails about our efforts, please click here.

The “click here” to donate and the “click here” to unsubscribe are the same size and very close to each other.

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Matt Henry 🥄 @matthenry.fyi · 15/12/2025

This tweet from Big Balls says the new “Tech Force” website is their first using the “America Design System.” Here are just a few reasons why that sucks. 🧵

A tweet from Big Balls, linking to techforce.gov reads: Our first website using the new America Design System! Building a framework for beautiful, performant, secure and inexpensive websites to be very easy to build in Government.

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Matt Henry 🥄 @matthenry.fyi · 15/12/2025

I won’t bury the lede here: this site is the first to use the USWDS banner web component in production 2/

A banner at the top of a website shows a small Maryland flag and says “An official website of the State of Maryland.” The page’s top heading says “Paid family leave is coming to Maryland.”

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Matt Henry 🥄 @matthenry.fyi · 11/12/2025

I contributed some code back to USWDS’s web components repo to support this configuration so now I get to use it in a site that launches on Monday. It’s a little silly, but after everything that’s happened this year, I’m really proud of this.

A banner much like the one you’d see at the top of a US federal government website displays a Maryland state flag and says: “an official website of the state of Maryland”

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Matt Henry 🥄 @matthenry.fyi · 09/12/2025

I got IG influenced to buy an Audigo mic for my phone and I don’t love that a lot of features to a thing I already bought are paywalled, but I do love just setting it down, hitting record and getting this out of it. Phenomenal effort-to-reward ratio.

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Matt Henry 🥄 @matthenry.fyi · 04/12/2025

They already changed it. It’s not better. He’s not a maverick shaking things up; he’s a eugenicist.

A NYT headline reads “Inside Kennedy's Methodical Quest to Shake Up America's
Vaccine System”

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Matt Henry 🥄 @matthenry.fyi · 04/12/2025

“Reliance.” A lot of us do tend to rely on vaccines so we don’t die. I guess that’s on us.

A NYT headline reads “Inside Kennedy's Methodical Quest to Undo America's Reliance on Vaccines” by Sheryl Gay Stolberg

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Matt Henry 🥄 @matthenry.fyi · 27/11/2025

If i'm outlining it, it has to become real, right?

a markdown file with a bunch of headings showing a rough outline

# The Case for USWDS
## What is a design system?
### How is USWDS different from other design systems?
## What problem does a design system solve?
### What problems does USWDS solve for .gov sites?
#### Works everywhere
#### Will work forever
#### More than just code
#### Consistency
- Increased trust; Reduced cognitive load
### Why plain old HTML
### Why not React?
## What is *not* great about using USWDS?
### Getting started & staying up-to-date
### Sass & gulp :(
## What's next?
### Technical direction
### Stewardship and "Governance"

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Matt Henry 🥄 @matthenry.fyi · 25/11/2025

I need you to see the Reviewer 2 energy Bucky was giving when I put his new sweater on

A blonde schnauzer/chihuahua mix in a tan sweater looks like he’s scowling

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Matt Henry 🥄 @matthenry.fyi · 24/11/2025

DOGE would like you to know they’re still a thing. In a just world, these people would be ashamed to show their faces in public because of the literal body count and terrible human cost of their work. But they should also be ashamed of their shitty meme.