hrbrmstr's Daily Drop

  • Drop #732 (2025-11-17): Reliable Sources

    Today’s Drop explores the evolving landscape of coding tools and resources, particularly emphasizing AI’s impact on the decline of small npm packages like blob-util. It introduces Brimstone, a Rust-based JavaScript engine aiming for high ECMAScript compliance, and discusses optimizing DNS lookups to enhance website performance, recommending strategies like dns-prefetch and preconnect.

    hrbrmstr

  • Bonus Drop #103 (2025-11-15): Fingerprints, Fabrications, And Foolproof Family Support

    The Weekend Bonus Drop discusses a variety of security and privacy topics, notably a new ja4-mcp server for JA4 fingerprint analysis, critiquing AI’s role in cyber espionage operations, and presenting Tailscale’s effective use of Raspberry Pi for remote family network access.

    hrbrmstr

  • Drop #731 (2025-11-13): That’s So Random

    Today’s Drop digs into Homebrew’s big 5.0 release, Chaser System’s research into just what these coding agents do on/from your system, and ends with a way to get rid of some “AI” frustration.

    hrbrmstr

  • Drop #730 (2025-11-11): Typography Tuesday

    Today’s Drop introduces three unique typefaces: Myrna, which enhances code readability by equalizing symbols and letters; Tongari Display, inspired by Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai; and Avería, generated by averaging various fonts on the creator’s computer. Each font showcases innovative design principles.

    hrbrmstr

  • Bonus Drop #102 (2025-11-09): It Always Feels Like Someone Is Watching Me

    The (depressing) Weekend Bonus Drop discusses modern surveillance practices, highlighting a new tool that removes tracking links from Google Docs exports and showcases the Surveillance Watch map, which reveals the surveillance industry’s global scope. It also critiques how gaming companies collect player data under the guise of achievements, normalizing surveillance in entertainment.

    hrbrmstr

  • Drop #727 (2025-11-06): Forgotten But Not Gone

    Today’s Drop brings some items from simpler times back into active memory: the HTMLTableElement API for creating data tables without libraries, the ‘leave’ terminal command for GTHeckO reminders, and an effective modern use for the HTML element.

    hrbrmstr

  • Drop #725 (2025-11-03): Monday Grab Bag

    Today’s Drop pits terminal emulators against each other (and the results are sad + surprising). It also showcases a11y.css, a lightweight tool for instant accessibility checks on webpages, and Ben Joffe’s fast-date algorithm, which improves date conversion speeds by 2-10% through a simplified approach.

    hrbrmstr

  • Drop #723 (2025-10-29): CSS • JS • HTML

    Today’s Drop discusses three core web topics: CSS’s 239 methods of representing the color blue (O_O), the inefficiencies of using await in JavaScript loops, and the HTML Popover API for creating overlays. It emphasizes the complexities arising from legacy choices in CSS, performance patterns in JavaScript, and the [in]accessibility features of popovers.

    hrbrmstr

  • Drop #722 (2025-10-28): Typography Tuesday

    This week’s typographic edition of the Drop explores 3 key resources: 1984.design’s Typography Basics provides a friendly guide to type communication, while Codepoints.net serves as a searchable atlas for Unicode characters. And, The Is It Tofu? tool helps prevent missing characters in web content.

    hrbrmstr

  • Bonus Drop #101 (2025-10-26): Really Random Resources

    The weekend Bonus Drop covers Typst 0.14.0 which introduces significant enhancements, including automatic tagging for accessible PDFs, improved HTML export, and character-level justification. We also link to Phil Gyford’s memoir that reflects on his nostalgic first experiences with the internet in 1995. Finally, it covers and provides a Dockerfile for Restring, a SvelteKit web app…

    hrbrmstr