The curious case of the Raspberry Pi in the network closet

Christian Haschek: Last week I got a message from a co-worker notifying me there was a Raspberry Pi connected to our network. I asked my IT colleagues and they were as baffled as I was. I heard of people getting paid to put things like this in places they shouldn’t and for this reason I …

Laravel Valet Environment Variables

To set/override Environment Variables in Laravel Valet, one had to manually edit the Nginx config files and restart Nginx after doing so. With the release of Laravel Valet 2.1.6 this is no longer needed: Valet 2.1.6 contains a merged PR that provides built-in support for an specific file named .valet-env.php in which you can set …

The nightmare videos of childrens’ YouTube

James Bridle – whom you might know from his autonomous trap for self-driving cars – on the dangers of leaving your children on YouTube unattended: Writer and artist James Bridle uncovers a dark, strange corner of the internet, where unknown people or groups on YouTube hack the brains of young children in return for advertising …

The Flexbox Holy Albatross

Great work by Heydon Pickering, in which he lets a flexbox layout respond to the size of its container, and not the viewport Sometimes you want your items to wrap in a very particular way. For instance, when you have three items, you’ll be happy with the three-abreast layout and accepting of the single-column configuration. …

Dimensions.Guide – Database of Dimensioned Drawings of Everyday Objects

Dimensions.Guide is a comprehensive reference database of dimensioned drawings documenting the standard measurements and sizes of the everyday objects and spaces that make up our world. Created as a universal resource to better communicate the basic properties, systems, and logics of our built environment, Dimensions.Guide is a free platform for increasing public and professional knowledge …

Create a map of the stars with “The Night Sky“

The Night Sky lets one create a map of the stars, as seen at a certain time and location. Was it your first kiss, the birth of a child or that moment you realized your world had changed. Give a gift of the stars to always remember that special night. Prints (rather expensive ones if …

Styling the select element

Scott Jehl, from Filament Group: The select element has long been difficult to style consistently across browsers. To avoid its shortcomings in the past, we have used workarounds like styling a parent element, adding pseudo-elements, and even using JavaScript to construct a select-like control out of different elements that are easier to style. But workarounds …

Scribit, a robot that can draw on walls

Scribit is a vertical plotter that can draw any content sourced from the web – and update it in real time. It is mounted on a wall using only 2 plugs and a wire in between. You send it an image from within the app and it will start drawing (with support for 4 colors …

Mozilla Hacks: Designing the Flexbox Inspector

With the upcoming release of Firefox 65 (due January 29tgh), its DevTools will sport a new shiny Flexbox Inspector. The new Flexbox Inspector, created by Firefox DevTools, helps developers understand the sizing, positioning, and nesting of Flexbox elements. Victoria Wang details how they UX challenges that came with this tool were tackled. Built on the …

Speeding up Your PHPUnit tests

Some nice tips by Tim MacDonald on how to speed up your PHPUnit tests! Having a fast test suite can be just as important as having a fast application. As a developer, getting feedback quickly about the state of your code allows for a much quicker development turnaround. Here we are going to run through …