‘Your Frustration Is the Product’ by John Gruber
The web is the only medium the world has ever seen where its highest-profile decision makers are people who despise the medium and are trying to drive people away from it. As Bose notes, “A lot of websites actively interfere the reader from accessing them by pestering them with their ‘apps’ these days. I don’t know where this fascination with getting everyone to download your app comes from.” It comes from people who literally do not understand, and do not enjoy, the web, but yet find themselves running large websites.
I had an interaction with a reader sometime back on a blog I had written about in the problem with read-it-later apps. They had mentioned then that I write what I want and don’t shove ads in your face as you tried to read - which was obvious to me. Reading is the thing you’re here to do.
But I myself don’t read on the web anymore. I use RSS to read. And that provides a great ad-free uniform experience to read.
But now, thanks to incredible advances in WebAssembly (WASM), we can spin up a web server, a database (SQLite or MariaDB), and a full WordPress installation inside your browser in about 30 seconds. Instantly. No server needed. I introduced Playground at State of the Word in 2022.
I did not understand the product - my.wordpress.net. Need to research it a bit more.
Our interfaces have lost their senses by Amelia Wattenberger
Think about how you use physical tools. Drawing isn't just moving your hand—it's the feel of the pencil against paper, the tiny adjustments of pressure, the sound of graphite scratching. You shift your body to reach the other side of the canvas. You erase with your other hand. You step back to see the whole picture.
A beautifully illustrated thing.
Everything happens on screens. There is no variability in our experiences of doing different things.
More Than Half of New Articles On the Internet Are Being Written By AI - Slashdot
The dramatic loss of this work points toward another issue raised by the Graphite study: the question of authenticity, not only in identifying who or what produced a text, but also in understanding the value that humans attach to creative activity.
I guess it has become even more important to read the people you trust. Most of the stuff mentioned here though - listicles read like slop even before AI.
Ladybird Browser Gains Cloudflare Support to Challenge the Status Quo - Slashdot
Cloudflare has announced its sponsorship of the Ladybird browser, an independent (still-in-development) open-source initiative aimed at developing a modern, standalone web browser engine. It's a project launched by GitHub's co-founder and former CEO, Chris Wanstrath, and tech visionary Andreas Kling. It's written in C++, and designed to be fast, standards-compliant, and free of external dependencies. Its main selling point? Unlike most alternative browsers today, Ladybird doesn't sit on top of Chromium or WebKit. Instead, it's building a completely new rendering engine from scratch, which is a rare thing in today's web landscape.
Interesting.
Perplexity’s Comet is the AI browser Google wants
Comet also comes with an AI assistant built in, similar to the Gemini integration that Google is testing in Chrome. Selecting the Assistantbutton in the top-right corner of the browser will open up a sidebar with a chat interface. From here, you can type in a query or use voice mode to chat about different topics, as well as ask specific questions about the webpage you’re on.
I wrote About AI browsers some time back. I continue feeling the same way about them.