Scripting News: Tuesday, October 13, 2026

Tuesday, October 13, 2026

I'm a recent convert to new versions of the MacOS, last version I was using was High Sierra. In this version, Tahoe, it's entirely too easy to make a window go full screen with no obvious keystroke to undo the mistake. I learned if you move the mouse up to the top of the screen you get the menubar, but unfortunately there is no obvious command in the menu for undoing the mistake. I still don't know which gesture does this. And btw, the longtime Mac bug where some keystroke moves the dock to another window, that's still here. I can tell as I'm clicking the mouse, too late to stop, that this is one of those times. I've memorized a finger macro to get it back, but it used to piss me off a lot, but now it's kind of a gentle reassurance that someone is remembering how we got here. #

firstSentence, a JavaScript function that returns the first sentence in a string. Useful in coming up with something to display for an untitled post. It's always been a klooge, but this time with Claude's help we're using a new API in JavaScript, and supposedly it really works. I'm using it in one of my apps, and you might find it useful too, and let me know if it works for you. #

The web of hairballs#

• The browser and the web it defines is a hairball in a hairball in a hairball in a hairball in a hairball.#
• The hairballs are named Chrome, Firefox, MSIE, Netscape, Mosaic. #
• Each in turn has had their way with the web. #
• The stack of hair defines a "web" that is far far away from the web we started with. #
• It was going pretty good for a while, if you could live with the all the modal popovers and paywalls, but now the current owners are excluding old sites, and imho when you do that, it's not the web any longer. #

Linkblog items for the day

Closures, Objects, Actors, and Picos.

windley.com

Epic Games reportedly pivoting to "AI first" game development model.

arstechnica.com

Threads and the Fediverse: The Threat That Wasn’t.

blog.gelbphoenix.de

James Webb reveals a massive cosmic structure that challenges our understanding of the Universe.

sciencedaily.com

Copyright 1994-2026 Dave Winer.
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