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Ross Wintle

@rosswintle.uk
674 followers 318 following 1.2K posts

Curious and creative software developer. WordPress. Laravel. PHP. JS. Made Turbo Admin. Mostly at crikey.social/@ross rw.omg.lol

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Ross Wintle @rosswintle.uk · 3h
Anyway, I've mostly been ill for the last two days and all that has, apparently, been brewing in my neurons while my immune system worked (and boy was it working hard!!) 🤷
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Ross Wintle @rosswintle.uk · 3h
I do really lament the apparent lack of (or possibly mis-directed?) curiosity that LLMs seem to have created. Sensible assessment is mostly drowned out by hype. And I really worry that we're handing over critical thinking to corporate-controlled machines that may not be there in the future.
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Ross Wintle @rosswintle.uk · 3h
But mostly I'm thinking about how there is this AI divide in tech. I'm sure there is something about neurotypes or personality types involved. I'm a moderate, curious thinker. And I wonder how we can bridge this divide and find some helpful common ground. 😕🤔
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Ross Wintle @rosswintle.uk · 3h
Only atoms and lists, as far as I recall. But that's a good foundation right there!! (I reckon this was my first academic textbook)
infosec.exchange
abadidea (@0xabad1dea@infosec.exchange)
Attached: 1 image does this programming language support tables?
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Ross Wintle @rosswintle.uk · 4h
I properly read this post about the "gestalt" of tools yesterday. I think it's incredibly insightful. Tools are part of systems. There's something about systems thinking and friction-as-a-good-thing that I've not pieced together properly yet.
deadsimpletech.com
There's no such thing as Just a Tool | deadSimpleTech
Heidegger thinks about tools like so: a tool is something (a thing that has being in the Heideggerian sense, not necessarily an object) that represents an extension of human capabilities in some way. A tool is thus any kind of thing that *lets you do something you wouldn't otherwise have been able to*. The important (for us) conceptual leap here is that when a tool works well, or isn't broken, it develops what Heidegger describes as a "ready-to-hand" quality: the tool fades into the background as a kind of human-tool gestalt of a human with the additional capability afforded by a tool forms. As a simple example of this, consider eating with a fork. When the fork is well-designed and not broken, *you don't explicitly have "I am using a fork" in your conscious mind while eating dinner*.
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Ross Wintle @rosswintle.uk · 4h
I'm also hearing, and deeply thinking about, the relentless (and possibly toxic) positivity of the pro-AI crowd. I get why one could find this era attractive and exciting. But how can the alternatives be presented in a positive light without sounding glib?
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Ross Wintle @rosswintle.uk · 5h
Thing that I've not seen discussed anywhere: Chat interfaces must be a real accessibility boon for some. But do they exclude people who struggle with words? Like, is this LLM world really problematic for people with dyslexia? Is literacy going to become even more important if LLMs persist?
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Ross Wintle @rosswintle.uk · 5h
I'm also thinking about chat as an interface. Text chat is a crap interface for many tasks. It has no affordances. It's often very slow. There's cognitive load. And with LLMs involved there's the possibility of the wrong thing being done. Plus… like… just LEARN TO DO THINGS!
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Ross Wintle @rosswintle.uk · 5h
Today I'm thinking about product release cycles. How Jev arrived and it will quickly be ripped off by one of the LLM houses. How Meta's Muse arrived and we already have OpenAI's Dots as a response. Everyone has to do the same thing as quickly as possible. Just because we can!
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Ross Wintle @rosswintle.uk · 5h
I should probably write down more of my thoughts. They're really quite interesting. Well, I think so, at least.
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Ross Wintle @rosswintle.uk · 29/09/2026
The best I can say about how I feel today is: gosh I'm glad my wife and I didn't have this virus at the same time!!! 🤒😭
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Reposted by Ross Wintle
Manchester WordPress User Group @mwug.uk · 28/09/2026
WordCamp Manchester is on it's way! We're meeting on November 6th, 2026 in Whitworth Locke Hotel in Manchester for a day of relaxed networking, learning about WordPress and collaboration. Hope you can join us! manchester.wordcamp.org/2026/
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Ross Wintle @rosswintle.uk · 26/09/2026
This is a very good point. Anthropic are arguing for AI rights. But we should do human rights properly first.
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Ross Wintle @rosswintle.uk · 26/09/2026
This is such a brilliant idea. I'm gonna do this for sure.
social.lol
annie (@annie@social.lol)
Tonight we are having 〰️Family Presentation Night〰️ and I am so excited. There are a few friends/SOs joining in so about 10 of us, pizza ordered from the local place, fun silly game to play, and then: glorious presentations. Everybody has been giggling all week and asking random questions and dropping mysterious hints about their presentation topics this will be amazing
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Ross Wintle @rosswintle.uk · 25/09/2026
"My issue is with the power dynamics, of being robbed of agency, of the over-inflated hype and criti-hype being used to convince us of an inevitable future where a small group of very rich men are masters over our lives." Jeremy says is so succinctly.
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Ross Wintle @rosswintle.uk · 25/09/2026
Plant fans: These have started growing in my garden. Never seen them before. Closest I've got to an ID is that they might be Silver Fir seedlings. Any other good options?
An unidentified seedling
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abbi @abbis.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
Oh my goodness! So unexpected, genuinely burst into tears... a-ha.com/news/the-sec...
a-ha.com
ClockArrow IconQuotesClose Audio Loud Audio Mute Amazon LogoApple Music LogoFacebook LogoGoogle PlusInstagramLast FM LogoSnapchat LogoSpotify LogoTidal LogoX (formerly...
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Ross Wintle @rosswintle.uk · 24/09/2026
I'm open minded and want to hear different points of view. So I watched DHH at his conference. He seems to have lost any critical thinking that he once had. OR He's deliberately ignoring some stuff. You can't present the "logical choice" when you've not considered any downsides in depth.
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Ross Wintle @rosswintle.uk · 21/09/2026
The thing I find weird about the politics-in-tech stuff is the total lack of self-reflection. No one seems to think "Oh, other people don't like that? I wonder why?" It's all "Ignore the haters and move on". The incuriosity itself seems very anti-engineering. That itself is a red flag in tech.
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Ross Wintle @rosswintle.uk · 19/09/2026
I'm kinda surprised that my social feeds here aren't discussing Typesafe/Jev AI. I'm very curious what others think. It seems less ethically dubious and much more efficient, bridging AI recognition and deterministic output. I'm surprised coders aren't excited about this. Am I missing something?
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Nathan Wrigley @nathanwrigley.com · 18/09/2026
Have a podcast? Want to start one? The show.fm 'Founders' offer is three years of our Studio plan. It includes podcast hosting, analytics, and some AI tools for managing episodes. There's way more as well. We'd rather be funded by 100 podcasters than one investor. show.fm/founders
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Ross Wintle @rosswintle.uk · 19/09/2026
Oh. I always wondered how this happened. Didn't realise it was so simple!
A screengrab of part of a web page. Title is “Create Child”. The rest reads “To create a new child please complete the following details and then save these details using the buttons at the end of the form.”
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Ross Wintle @rosswintle.uk · 17/09/2026
I have a saying: "Maturity is more about knowing _when_ to be grown up than _how_ to be grown up. The when/how thing is important and applies to other areas of life and work too.
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Ross Wintle @rosswintle.uk · 17/09/2026
Excellent AI commentary: "China probably has a vested interest in everyone on earth not dying" 😂
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Ross Wintle @rosswintle.uk · 16/09/2026
I've been thinking about how I have a preference for small things. And I think about AI. A lot! And I have been thinking about tech bros and how they respond - on X - to criticism that they get on other platforms. And now I'm reading Brené Brown on "scarcity". 1/3
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Jenny Wong @jwo.ng · 15/09/2026
Happy Tuesday! I'm looking for my next EM in the EMEA region. Job Advert: apply.workable.com/humanmade/j/... humanmade.com/careers/ is also a handy site if you are interested.
apply.workable.com
Engineering Manager - EMEA - Human Made, makers of Altis DXP
Discipline: Engineering Line Management Responsibility: YesSalary: £55k to £65k per annum, dependent on location and experience.This is a remote position and is open to applications based in the ...
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Ross Wintle @rosswintle.uk · 15/09/2026
The theory that AI companies are wanting third parties to enforce a slow down on them because they can't maintain the pace anyway and don't want to look like it's their fault is excellent.
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Ross Wintle @rosswintle.uk · 15/09/2026
Someone told me about one of the best features of iOS 27 and so I must pass it on. The wallet app lets you create custom passes. You can scan and store all your loyalty cards!! (Android users, if you've had this for years, I'm happy for you. You don't need to brag!)
A redacted Nectar card in my iOS wallet.
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Ross Wintle @rosswintle.uk · 15/09/2026
Apps like this: And this: appzapper.com/ Are great. But trust is such a huge issue. How do I know that these aren't vibe-coded keyloggers or file slurpers or ransomware-injectors. It could be anything dressed up as a nice utility. I don't know what anything is any more! 😵‍💫
abue-ammar.github.io
Tinycast — a tiny, native macOS launcher
Tinycast is a tiny, fully native macOS launcher: fuzzy app search, an inline calculator, clipboard history, snippets, notes, window management and global hotkeys, with no Electron, no account and no telemetry.
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Ross Wintle @rosswintle.uk · 14/09/2026
Oh wow. The bad customer service folks just keep doubling down. I can't believe they'll see this but my name is uncommon - you never know. Tips: - Own up. Admit something went wrong! - Say sorry. It costs nothing. - Take responsibility. You can't fix it. But can you learn and improve? Tell me how!
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Ross Wintle @rosswintle.uk · 14/09/2026
Reminded of this 18-year-old, cheap, simple, but very effective 3D head-tracking concept. I don't know why something like this didn't get built into modern game consoles somehow.
youtube.com
Head Tracking for Desktop VR Displays using the WiiRemote
Using the infrared camera in the Wii remote and a head mounted sensor bar (two IR LEDs), you can accurately track the location of your head and render view dependent images on the screen. This effectively transforms your display into a portal to a virtual environment. The display properly reacts to head and body movement as if it were a real window creating a realistic illusion of depth and space. By Johnny Chung Lee, Carnegie Mellon University. For more information and software visit http://johnnylee.net
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Ross Wintle @rosswintle.uk · 13/09/2026
A weird thought/question I had while watching someone film an event today in vertical video format: Do we "see" in portrait or landscape? Does the fact that our eyes are left and right rather than top and bottom mean we get a wide-but-shallow field of view?
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Ross Wintle @rosswintle.uk · 10/09/2026
Today was the funeral of a local legend, taken from us early and unfairly. I was blessed to hang out with him a lot for a few years. Never seen the crematorium so full. Standing room only. No amount of healthy stuff can defend you from some things. I'm inspired to try to live my best life now.
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Ross Wintle @rosswintle.uk · 09/09/2026
Just… too much tech news today. - Panic do an awesome Playdate update - Some company named after a fruit folded. Or something - Nintendo emailed be about 55 new games coming up - Tailwind bought by Shopify - Digital Ocean sponsor the bad guy's thing - Some other tech dude in trouble Crazy!
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Ross Wintle @rosswintle.uk · 09/09/2026
I really don't get why I would pay extra for a foldable phone. A tech that I just have Zero interest in. Ideally I'd have a smaller, dumber phone, and revert to a laptop for any real activity. Perhaps I'm just old.
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Ross Wintle @rosswintle.uk · 08/09/2026
Happy Birthday @gazchap.com! (Apparently) Always fun interacting with you here. Hope you have a great day!
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Ross Wintle @rosswintle.uk · 07/09/2026
Anyway. Tonight I went to a badminton club! This is much more my thing than Taekwondo that I tried over the summer. We did a family "practice" yesterday to see if I was still any good. Turns out I still got something here!! Not a lot. But something!!
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Ross Wintle @rosswintle.uk · 07/09/2026
My "Psychology of Software Teams" book keeps giving me gold. Today Cat Hicks gave me "Mastery Orientation" and "Performance Orientation" as… are they approaches? Traits? I'm not sure. But it ties into a lot of online discourse about tech (IMO - IANAP) and pulls on many other threads.
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Ross Wintle @rosswintle.uk · 04/09/2026
Nicer things: we obeyed the instruction to not feed birds over the hot summer to prevent spread of disease. But they came looking yesterday. Juvenile starlings hopping around looking for seed on the ground.
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Ross Wintle @rosswintle.uk · 03/09/2026
Does Tom Lehrer's "The Elements" but for HTML exist? There's header, footer, section, div, ul, li and svg; Small and span and audio, thead, tfoot and tbody; There's button, fieldset, form input, option, select, anchor and p; Em, script, aside, address, hgroup, nav, iframe, code, strong, sup and pre
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Ross Wintle @rosswintle.uk · 03/09/2026
Lots of people talking about 1Password alternatives. Two that I've come across that I don't see mentioned are: - AliasVault (open source and self-hostable, but with hosted plans) - Mega Pass - is Mega bad too? Any opinions on these?
mega.io
MEGA Pass
Protect your login credentials and access them from any device with MEGA Pass. Start your free trial today.
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Ross Wintle @rosswintle.uk · 03/09/2026
I should be a software philosopher. I love stuff like this from @jessitron.bsky.social: "Legacy software is software that is not alive in a person's head" ()
youtube.com
RubyConf 2026 - Keynote: Who are we Now? by Jessica Kerr
As developers, who are we now that agents can do the coding? I loved the feeling of knowing the code intimately because I wrote or changed it, like the software is an extension of myself. That confidence that comes from deep understanding. How do we get that feeling from agent-written code? How do we have the right amount of confidence in it? And what is our role now--are we still important? Yes. Video Production by Confreaks Follow Confreaks 👇 https://confreaks.com
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Ross Wintle @rosswintle.uk · 02/09/2026
Something positive/creative… I'm enjoying making a habit tracker (yes, 25 years in software and never done it!). Hand-coded using my small site template: Trying to use components and keep data well structured and realising that the template doesn't handle this well. Have added "slots" though! 😃
github.com
GitHub - rosswintle/small-site-template: A template for a small site using a simple PHP build process, TailwindCSS and AlpineJS
A template for a small site using a simple PHP build process, TailwindCSS and AlpineJS - rosswintle/small-site-template
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Ross Wintle @rosswintle.uk · 01/09/2026
Just spent some time properly reflecting on the life of an amazing guy that was taken from us by cancer far too young. A smart, funny, kind and generous man that the world will miss. A lot! My life followed his, step by step, for some of the way. It was a real privilege. Fucking devastating.
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Reposted by Ross Wintle
Julia Evans @b0rk.jvns.ca · 01/09/2026
big news about the Wizard Zines store: print orders from Europe now ship from a European warehouse in Germany!!! get your zines here: wizardzines.com and here's the shipping FAQ with all the details: store.wizardzines.com/pages/shippi...
wizardzines.com
wizard zines
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Ross Wintle @rosswintle.uk · 31/08/2026
I'm thinking about who gets value out of LLMs doing coding. If a website or app only exists because an LLM did most of the work, did the LLM provide value to the end user?
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Alex Selby-Boothroyd @alexselbyb.bsky.social · 30/08/2026
This is getting out of hand
Tube map but with America Water instead of Canada Water. Hilariously.
171104233
Reposted by Ross Wintle
David Allsopp @doublehelix.bsky.social · 30/08/2026
The Government is threatening to switch off Freeview – the free telly you get from an ordinary aerial, which risks leaving older people, those in rural areas, and anyone feeling the pinch isolated. There’s an official consultation happening right now but it closes in a matter of days: 38d.gs/8sme
38d.gs
Save Our Freeview TV
Unbelievable. The Government is threatening to switch off Freeview TV, forcing millions to pay for expensive broadband just to keep their telly. We have just days to force them to back down. Sign the...
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Ross Wintle @rosswintle.uk · 30/08/2026
Re: the Nancy Grace space observatory. I don't see how a Lagrange point can be orbited. That's such a weird thing. Gonna have to look that up.
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Ross Wintle @rosswintle.uk · 27/08/2026
I bought "Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes" for £3.29 today and it's been a lot of fun with my kids. A great deal for a fun, co-op, puzzle-solving game that's helping us get through the last bit of the school holidays.
humblebundle.com
Buy Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes from the Humble Store
You’re alone in a room with a bomb. Your friends, the “Experts”, have the manual needed to defuse it. But there’s a catch: the Experts can’t see the bomb, so everyone will need to talk it out – fast! Put your puzzle-solving and communication skills to the test as you and your friends race to defuse bombs while attempting to communicate quickly before time runs out! Rounds are fast-paced, tense, occasionally silly, and almost always loud. Whether it’s defusing a bomb or deciphering information...
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