Code snippets and brave beginnings of ideas from the desk of Henry (From Online)

There is yet room for techno-optimism

Henry Desroches — Tue, 31 Mar 2026 05:59:43 GMT

Earlier today, in a particularly enthusiastic scroll-sesh, I read a reply to an article about AI use that read something to the effect of:

Bluesky has a toxic AI discourse problem…

And man, I actually feel you — hard-lining doesn’t always feel useful. Especially when you find yourself open-armed, open-eyed, willing to approach this burgeoning space with unbridled optimism, but upon returning to the village find many quite upset with the fruits of your labor — it must be especially frustrating.

But I think rather than “people are too emotional or angry about AI”, the more salient point to arrive at is something else. Love it or hate it, a lot of the tech under the AI umbrella have well-documented trade-offs and outright harms. It’s fairly reasonable, then, to accept that most folks insist upon “solutions that don’t knowingly create new problems”, especially given that the world looks *gestures wildly at everything* like this, these days.

AI data centres can warm surrounding areas by up to 9.1°C

by New Scientist

Hundreds of millions of people live close enough to data centres used to power AI to feel warmer average temperatures in their local area

this link goes some strange place beyond this website go with care

Let us take you at your word, that you are someone who believes the value of AI/LLMs/etc is the solutions they bring to People. If you see that many People feel emotionally reactive towards these technologies, and your value system believes in People, wouldn’t you be better served by moving your scope to include those People? That is, wouldn’t you be better off viewing “solutions don’t knowingly create new problems” as creative constraint for the way that you solve problems?

I value you, person-who-believes-AI-creates-good, for thy optimistic spirit. I just also believe you ought to spend your energy in realms where that spirit has more economy. There is something noble about the work of common-ground reframing — considering the possibility you might do more good by inventing solutions that people also want, than by inventing ones that they don’t and then criticizing those doubters for their lack of nuance.

I’ll say this: I’m frankly not a wise enough person to magically solve the schism here. I reckon there is a bit — and even a lot — of alignment between folks who think they can make the world better using AI, and people that don’t use AI because they don’t want the world doesn’t get any worse. I just mean to encourage those big-hearted folks with technological optimism to spare to reassess their thinking — “making the world better with AI” should be more about the world than about AI.

Economics & labor rights in AI skepticism

Reading Time: 6 minute read
Last updated: Last updated June 3, 2025

War is not hell: war is war, and hell is hell

Henry Desroches — Tue, 31 Mar 2026 01:43:04 GMT

It just seemed natural that the thing to come after proxy war of imperial aggression for us is direct war of imperial aggression. The other day, I was shown this quote from an episode of M*A*S*H:

Capt. Benjamin Franklin ‘Hawkeye’ Pierce: War isn’t Hell. War is war, and Hell is Hell. And of the two, war is a lot worse.

Father Francis Mulcahy: How do you figure that, Hawkeye?

Hawkeye: Easy, Father. Tell me, who goes to Hell?

Mulcahy: Sinners, I believe.

Hawkeye: Exactly. There are no innocent bystanders in Hell. War is chock full of them - little kids, cripples, old ladies. In fact, except for some of the brass, almost everybody involved is an innocent bystander.

There are no innocent bystanders in Hell.

While on the subject, I am reminded of another old eschatological Internet classic:

is this hell?

in what sense?

the present moment is both eternal and painful.

in Hell, there is relief in utter helplessness. here, our actions have consequences for both ourselves and others.

truly, it is worse

Sorry to post so doomfully on the blog today. There is still immense value in acting in solidarity with our neighbors and moving with grace and patience and noble intention. It just feels small in the face of the immense violence American empire commits in our name, this afternoon.

Old friends, we have been owed a better world for so long, and what an utterly irredeemable one we have built in its stead.

AI at work is anti-labor by design

Henry Desroches — Tue, 31 Mar 2026 01:43:04 GMT

27 January 2026 — Added Pinterest layoff news.
4 March 2026 — Added Block layoff news.

In regards to recent announcements by Amazon and now Pinterest, and now Block that they’d be laying off historical numbers of workers, only a few months after Amazon CEO Andrew Jassy announced AI adoption would be directly responsible for reductions in workforce:

Is artificial intelligence to blame for Amazon job cuts?

by Al Jazeera

Amazon confirms 14,000 layoffs after CEO says AI likely to lead to job losses.

this link goes some strange place beyond this website go with care

Pinterest will lay off 15% of its workforce as the platform pivots resources to AI

by AP News

Pinterest will lay off 15% of its workforce as the platform pivots resources to AI

this link goes some strange place beyond this website go with care

Block lays off nearly half its staff because of AI. Its CEO said most companies will do the same

by AP News

Block lays off nearly half its staff because of AI. Its CEO said most companies will do the same

this link goes some strange place beyond this website go with care

AI/LLMs are by design anti-labor technology. The feverish pushing of LLM adoption by all levels of management is exemplary of this: You are not asked to use this tech because it will enable better work and ideas, but because it is cheaper to your boss than your coworker’s salary.

The goals of capital are not interested in the lofty ideals of magically improving your day-to-day workload, or enhancing your ability to think, be creative, enact your will — these are marketing promises made by those who benefit from eliminating your role when your coworker’s output increases.

Your boss is not incentivized by utopian imagination, he is incentivized by showing his boss a lowering of costs so he can keep his job and lifestyle. The miraculous science fiction future AI shills often proselytize will not be realized in the halls of SaaS companies, because the incentives for that future do not exist in a capitalist framework.

Reject AI: reject its devaluation of your fellow workers’ labor and its destruction of our ecosystem. Look always to improve the world you live in, instead of inventing new ones where all the problems are solved by handwaving at unrealized technology.

Frequently-used ffmpeg recipes

Henry Desroches — Tue, 31 Mar 2026 01:43:04 GMT

I use a ffmpeg at least twice weekly for stupid side projects and non-stupid side projects; here’s a list for posterity and for my future self (who I adore) to keep track of commonly-used recipes.

Converting .webm to .mp4

ffmpeg -fflags +genpts -i ${filename}.webm -r ${target frame rate} ${target filename}.mp4

The +genpts format flag generates presentation timestamps, which IME fixes some jank when trying to copy the file over directly. The -r ${framerate} bit is not required, but it’s one more thing to sort out jank outputs.

Converting a video to frames

ffmpeg -i ${input filename} ${output filename prefix}%d.png

The %d in the output filename adds a frame number to the end. If you have like 400 frames and you want all the filename numbers padded, you can do something like %3d instead, to output something like frame_001.png instead of frame_1.png.

Converting frames back to video (or GIF)

ffmpeg -i frames/frame_%d.png output.gif

This one’s pretty obvious lol, it just ingests the frame format however you specify. There might be different rules for converting to something other than .gif but I only tested .gif for this post.

For what it’s worth, I tested both .gif with a soft G sound and .gif with a hard G sound but the output is the same.

Generating & consuming a color palette for GIFs, etc.

To generate a color palette:

ffmpeg -i input.mp4 -vf "palettegen" palette.png

To use that palette to optimize a GIF output:

ffmpeg -i frames/frame_%0d.png -i palette.png -filter_complex "paletteuse" output.gif

A bookmarklet for clearing cookies for the current page

Henry Desroches — Tue, 31 Mar 2026 01:43:04 GMT

TL;DR

Here’s the one-liner:

javascript:!(function(){try{const o=window.location.hostname;const t=document.cookie.split(";");const c=(new Date).toUTCString();t.forEach(e=>{const t=e.match(/^(.*?)=/)[1];if(t.startsWith("__Host-")){document.cookie=`${t}$=;expires=${c};path=/;secure`}else{document.cookie=`${t}=;expires=${c};path=/`;document.cookie=`${t}=;expires=${c};path=/;domain=${o}`}})}catch(e){alert(`Error clearing cookies: ${e.message}`)}})();

How do I use this?

Create a new bookmark:
- In Firefox: In the top menu, navigate to Bookmarks > Manage Bookmarks, click the gear icon, and add a bookmark.
- In Chrome: Navigate to chrome://bookmarks/, then click the ⁝ icon and Add new bookmark.
Name it whatever you want (I use “Clear cookies”) and set the URL to the snippet above.
On a page with cookies you want to clear, click the bookmark you created, and it will execute the JS that invalidates all the cookies.

Walk me through what this JS does before I run some stranger’s code in my browser

Lol sure, here’s the code beautified and commented out. Some things to note:

You can’t actually delete cookies, you have to just set their expiration date to Before Now, so the browser considers them invalid.
__Host- prefixed cookies need the secure flag in order to be updated.
__Secure- prefixed cookies cannot be set via JavaScript.
This code doesn’t address cookies set on a subdomain. You could add some logic to break out a subdomain but it starts to get pretty RegEx-y and I figured we could keep this far simpler and cover most use-cases.

// Create an IIFE¹.
(function () {
  try {
    // Get the domain name in order to remove domain-specific cookies
    const domain = window.location.hostname;
    // Get all the cookies set on the document and break 'em up'
    const cookiesList = document.cookie.split(';');
    // Create a new date from right this instant, we'll use this to invalidate all existing cookies.
    const dateToInvalidateBy = new Date().toUTCString();

    cookiesList.forEach((cookie) => {
      // Cookies are set like `cookieName=cookieValue;`, this grabs ONLY the name segment.
      const cookieName = cookie.match(/^(.*?)=/)[1];
      // I found I needed to select cookies that started with __Host
      // and pass them the `secure` flag in order to properly invalidate them.
      if (cookieName.startsWith('__Host-')) {
        // For all cookies, we just tell the document cookie manager that the cookie's value has changed
        // Basically: cookie name has an empty value, expires right now, and has some metadata (path, security, domain, etc)
        document.cookie = `${cookieName}$=;expires=${dateToInvalidateBy};path=/;secure`;
      } else {
        document.cookie = `${cookieName}=;expires=${dateToInvalidateBy};path=/`;
        document.cookie = `${cookieName}=;expires=${dateToInvalidateBy};path=/;domain=${domain}`;
      }
    });
    alert('Cookies cleared. Feel free to reload.');
  } catch (err) {
    alert(`Error clearing cookies: ${err.message}`);
  }
})();

Footnotes

¹ — IIFE: Immediately Invoked Function Expression. More on IIFEs here.

Disabling WebGL in your browser

Henry Desroches — Tue, 31 Mar 2026 01:43:04 GMT

For testing different scenarios and user preferences, you can use these steps to disable WebGL in different browsers. These work for MacOS. If someone tells me how to do it in Windows or I get the gumption I’ll update this post lol.

Disabling WebGL in Firefox & Zen

Navigate your browser to about:config
In the search bar, type webgl.disabled.
Set the property that shows up to true.

To re-enable WebGL, you’ll need to un-set this configuration property.

Disabling WebGL in Google Chrome & Arc

For Chrome/Chromium-based browsers, you have to pass a special flag when you start the application. If you’ve installed Chrome somewhere other than the default location, you’ll need to update this script accordingly.

In your Terminal, run:

/Applications/Google\ Chrome.app/Contents/MacOS/Google\ Chrome --disable-webgl

To re-enable WebGL, just close the browser completely and start it again how you normally would.

Disabling WebGL in Safari, Edge, etc.

Sorry to bait you here with the headline. Haven’t worked out how to do it yet, but I’ll update when I do!

Quickly checking HTTP response headers

Henry Desroches — Tue, 31 Mar 2026 01:43:04 GMT

Fastest cleanest way if you’re a Terminal Enjoyer™ is with curl:

curl -I https://henry.codes/

The -I flag, short for --head, includes only HTTP headers in the output. Here’s a tidy little curl cheat sheet for you; don’t spend it all in one place.

But if you prefer using a browser dev inspector, you can go Inspector > Network > HTML > [the current page] and scroll to Response Headers.

Human-readable date formatting with vanilla JavaScript

Henry Desroches — Tue, 31 Mar 2026 01:43:04 GMT

Have one of these?

Sat Mar 22 2025 19:50:03 GMT-0500 (Eastern Standard Time)

<!-- or perhaps one of these? -->
<!-- 2025-03-22T01:23:48.693Z -->

Need one of these?

March 22, 2025

Or some other format? You probably don’t need moment.js or piles of StackOverflow-ing into your apartment, you just need Date.toLocaleDateString(). Here’s some common use cases:

YMMV with the en-US locale tag — if you’re based somewhere else you might be better served by using another locale.

Date Only

March 22, 2025

new Date().toLocaleDateString('en-US', {
  month: 'long',
  day: 'numeric',
  year: 'numeric',
});

This .toLocaleDateString() method exists on any Date object. If we’ve got a string that represents a date, we’ll need to parse a Date object from it first:

const someArbitraryDate = new Date(Date.parse('2025-03-22T01:23:48.693Z'));

someArbitraryDate.toLocaleDateString();

3/22/2025

new Date().toLocaleDateString('en-US');

03/01/25

new Date().toLocaleDateString('en-US', {
  month: '2-digit',
  year: '2-digit',
  day: '2-digit',
});

22/03/25 (blimey lol)

new Date().toLocaleDateString('en-GB', {
  month: '2-digit',
  year: '2-digit',
  day: '2-digit',
});

Saturday, March 22, 2025

new Date().toLocaleDateString('en-US', {
  dateStyle: 'full',
});

Time only

Now we’ll mix it up and use Date().toLocaleTimeString()

8:08:03 PM

new Date().toLocaleTimeString();

20:08:03 PM

new Date().toLocaleTimeString('en-US', {
  hour12: false,
});

8:08 PM

new Date().toLocaleTimeString('en-US', {
  timeStyle: 'short',
});

8:08:03 PM EST

new Date().toLocaleTimeString('en-US', {
  timeStyle: 'long',
});

8:08:03 PM Eastern Standard Time

new Date().toLocaleTimeString('en-US', {
  timeStyle: 'full',
});

8:08:03 PM East Africa Time

new Date().toLocaleTimeString('en-US', {
  timeStyle: 'full',
  timeZone: 'Africa/Nairobi',
});

For a full list of time zone options, you can use the TZ identifier column on the Wikipedia list page for tz database time zones.

8:08:03 PM GMT+3

new Date().toLocaleTimeString('en-US', {
  timeZone: 'Africa/Nairobi',
  timeZoneName: 'short',
});

8 PM

new Date().toLocaleTimeString('en-US', {
  hour: 'numeric',
});

Date & Time

You can use Date.toLocaleString to combine the two:

3/22/2025, 8:08:03 PM

new Date().toLocaleString('en-US');

Mar 22, 2025, 8:08 PM

new Date().toLocaleString('en-US', {
  dateStyle: 'medium',
  timeStyle: 'short',
});

I Know About The Date In The Footer

Henry Desroches — Tue, 31 Mar 2026 01:43:04 GMT

I appreciate you looking out, but thankfully this is just a bit of tongue-in-cheek humor and I am eternally my own ~~worst enemy~~ target audience. A better man with a better sense of humor might stop trying to beat this particular horse, but I’m not him bro.

All I’m gonna say is that it seemed like a good idea at the Date().getTime().

Hinting & autocompletion for JSON in VS Code

Henry Desroches — Tue, 31 Mar 2026 01:43:04 GMT

Here’s a short and sweet guide to typing your JSON with JSON Schema and having VSCode validate and autocomplete based on that schema. Shoot me an email with questions or corrections!

Create JSON Schema

There’s a standard for typing JSON called JSON Schema, which you can use to model your data. For instance, I have a file _data/recentReading.json in the repo for this project, and when I add new articles, I want VSCode to suggest the required fields, and warn me when I forget a field.

The JSON goes something like this:

{
  "posts": [
    {
      "title": "A Brief History & Ethos of the Digital Garden",
      "author": "Maggie Appleton",
      "url": "https://maggieappleton.com/garden-history"
    },
    // ...
  ]
}

This is a pretty simple example, so it ought to be noted that JSON Schema of course does way more than this.

Following the guides on the JSON Schema site, I can create a file recentReading.schema.json, which I’ll keep in my .vscode directory for now, since VSCode is the only interested party.

// .vscode/recentReading.schema.json
{
  "title": "Recent Reading",
  "description": "A list of recently read articles online.",
  "type": "object",
  "properties": {
    // The top-level object should take a property "posts",
    // which is an array of post objects.
    "posts": {
      "type": "array",
      "items": {
        "type": "object",
        // The post object should accept properties "title", "author",
        // and "url", and no additional properties:
        "properties": {
          "title": {
            "type": "string"
          },
          "author": {
            "type": "string"
          },
          "url": {
            "type": "string",
            "format": "uri"
          }
        },
        "additionalProperties": false,
        // "title", "author", and "url" must be present.
        "required": ["title", "author", "url"]
      }
    }
  },
  "required": ["posts"]
}

I reckon this is pretty self-explanatory, but I recommend checking out the JSON Schema reference for more information.

Make VSCode observe the schema

Supposedly, you can set the schema for a glob of URLs using json.schemas: [{ fileMatch, url }] in .vscode/settings.json, but I found this didn’t work properly. Instead, I set the $schema property directly in the recentReading.json file:

// src/_data/recentReading.json
{
  "$schema": "../../.vscode/recentReading.schema.json", // or whatever the path to schema you created is, relative to the current JSON file.
  "posts": [ /* ... */ ]
}

This isn’t ideal, because it makes the files concerned with their own validation, and I prefer them only to be concerned with their content. If someone knows why the VSCode settings json.schemas configuration didn’t work, email me lol.

Now in my JSON file, if I create an object under "posts" that contains anything but a title, author, and URL, it’ll throw an error in the VSCode Problems view:

Autocompletion in VSCode

We can use a special VSCode schema property called “defaultSnippets” to show VSCode how to automatically scaffold our entries. In the schema file, where you define the properties for the item you want auto-completed, you can add the following:

{
  //...
  "posts": {
    "type": "array",
    "items": {
      "type": "object",
      "defaultSnippets": [
        {
          "label": "New recent reading",
          "description": "Creates a post in recent reading list",
          "body": { "title": "$1", "author": "$2", "url": "$3" }
        }
      ],
      "properties": { /* ... */}
    }
  }
}

More on defaultSnippets formatting can be found in the VSCode docs.

Now, in my recentReading.json file, under my posts entry, I can use the keyboard shortcut Control (^) + Space to show my available auto-completions:

Which will auto-expand into the shape I expect for an entry:

I’m not sure what the keyboard shortcut is on Windows or Linux, I would guess Alt + Space, but the action in VSCode is “Trigger Suggest” if you want to look it up in Keyboard Shortcuts.

Set the default language for a file extension in VS Code

Henry Desroches — Tue, 31 Mar 2026 01:43:04 GMT

In .vscode/settings.json:

{
  "files.associations": {
    // extension as blob: language
    "*.webc": "html"
  }
}

Animated link underlines with skip-ink effect

Henry Desroches — Wed, 13 Oct 2021 06:00:00 GMT

You can use -webkit-text-stroke and paint-order in CSS to animate a link underline without losing the really neat text-decoration-skip-ink effect from standard text-decoration.

Here’s a demo.

See the Pen Animated Underline with text-decoration-skip-ink Effect by Henry Desroches (@xdesro) on CodePen.

Create an SVG gradient from an array of colors

Henry Desroches — Wed, 13 Oct 2021 06:00:00 GMT

Alright this isn’t actually usable yet, I created this for a specific side project and have yet to sanitize it for reusability in new contexts.

If you’ve a random list of colors and you want a perfect gradient between them, here’s how. I’ve got it in Vue here but I’ll add templating for like Nunjucks or Liquid down the line.

This uses the mapRange linear interpolation function I talk about in this post.

In Vue single-file components:

<template>
  <svg>
    <defs>
      <linearGradient id="fill-mask" x1="0" y1="0" x2="100%" y2="0">
        <stop
          v-for="(color, index) in colors"
          :stop-color="color"
          :offset="mapRange(index, 0, colors.length, 0, 1)"
          :key="index"
        />
      </linearGradient>
    </defs>
    <rect
      mask="url(#rating-percentage-shape-mask)"
      fill="url(#fill-mask)"
      width="100%"
      height="100%"
      x="0"
      y="0"
    />
  </svg>
</template>

Hint VS Code for eleventyConfig autocompletion

Henry Desroches — Wed, 13 Oct 2021 06:00:00 GMT

Allows VS Code to start offering intellisense and autocompletion options for the eleventyConfig object. Super useful when you’re trying to remember the capitalization on eleventy.addPassthroughCopy().

In .eleventy.js or eleventy.config.js:

/**
 *  @param {import("@11ty/eleventy/src/UserConfig")} eleventyConfig
 */
module.exports = (eleventyConfig) => {
  return {};
};

(Maybe obvious, but the /** ... */ comment is the important part for VSC.)

Find and kill processes at a given port

Henry Desroches — Wed, 13 Oct 2021 06:00:00 GMT

In your terminal or .zshrc, etc:

function killport {
    echo '🚨 Killing all processes at port' $1
    lsof -ti tcp:$1 | xargs kill
}

Usage

killport 8080

# 🚨 Killing all processes at port 8080

Code snippets and brave beginnings of ideas from the desk of Henry (From Online)

There is yet room for techno-optimism

AI data centres can warm surrounding areas by up to 9.1°C

Further reading

Economics & labor rights in AI skepticism

War is not hell: war is war, and hell is hell

AI at work is anti-labor by design

Is artificial intelligence to blame for Amazon job cuts?

Pinterest will lay off 15% of its workforce as the platform pivots resources to AI

Block lays off nearly half its staff because of AI. Its CEO said most companies will do the same

Further reading

Frequently-used ffmpeg recipes

Converting .webm to .mp4

Converting a video to frames

Converting frames back to video (or GIF)

Generating & consuming a color palette for GIFs, etc.

A bookmarklet for clearing cookies for the current page

TL;DR

How do I use this?

Walk me through what this JS does before I run some stranger’s code in my browser

Footnotes

Disabling WebGL in your browser

Disabling WebGL in Firefox & Zen

Disabling WebGL in Google Chrome & Arc

Disabling WebGL in Safari, Edge, etc.

Quickly checking HTTP response headers

Human-readable date formatting with vanilla JavaScript

Date Only

March 22, 2025

3/22/2025

03/01/25

22/03/25 (blimey lol)

Saturday, March 22, 2025

Time only

8:08:03 PM

20:08:03 PM

8:08 PM

8:08:03 PM EST

8:08:03 PM Eastern Standard Time

8:08:03 PM East Africa Time

8:08:03 PM GMT+3

8 PM

Date & Time

3/22/2025, 8:08:03 PM

Mar 22, 2025, 8:08 PM

I Know About The Date In The Footer

Hinting & autocompletion for JSON in VS Code

Create JSON Schema

Make VSCode observe the schema

Autocompletion in VSCode

Set the default language for a file extension in VS Code

Animated link underlines with skip-ink effect

Create an SVG gradient from an array of colors

Hint VS Code for eleventyConfig autocompletion

Find and kill processes at a given port