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Tucson's Molly Holzschlag, known as 'the fairy godmother of the web,' dead at 60

Rest in peace, Molly. We've lost one of the really good people who made the web better.

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In Europe, a regulatory vise tightens around big tech

Good overview. I think European tech regulations have been broadly good, establishing the anti-competitive and pro-privacy rules that US legislators have failed to enact. If we could only all be so protected.

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Educational Sensational Inspirational Foundational

A really great list of foundational and/or influential writing about how to build the web, starting with Tim Berners-Lee's Cool URIs Don't Change post from 1998.

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Web Scraping for Me, But Not for Thee

Good commentary on the dissonance between vendors like Microsoft banning scraping of their platforms while simultaneously releasing products that depend on scraping other peoples' data. Some sort of commons agreement would go a long way here, but it won't happen while platforms can get away with this one-sided relationship.

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Introducing the 100-Year Plan: Secure Your Online Legacy for a Century

I'd love to understand what prompted Automattic to offer a hosting plan for $38K. On one level, I love it - it lasts for 100 years! and I love Automattic! - but I can't justify this, and I'm not quite sure who it's for? If this is marketing, what are the goals?

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Changes to UK Surveillance Regime May Violate International Law

The UK seems to want to break international law to retain its ability to mass surveil by forcing software vendors to break their protections for users everywhere. It's an anti-democratic approach that puts journalists and vulnerable populations at risk. It also counter-productively undermines the UK's own technology sector.

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'We're Winning': Apple Formally Endorses Right to Repair Legislation After Spending Millions Fighting It

I'm a little bit suspicious that Apple is suddenly into right-to-repair, but broadly this is good. I just wish it was a nationwide law instead of one that is limited to California. Hopefully the idea can expand to the federal level.

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404 Media

A new, independent, worker-owned venture by ex-Motherboard journalists. I'm a subscriber.

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The Secret Weapon Hackers Can Use to Dox Nearly Anyone in America for $15

It costs $15 to uncover an American's personally identifiable information illegally for potentially violent purposes. But also consider the number of entities that have access to this information legally, without any oversight. None of it should be allowable.

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RSS Zero isn’t the path to RSS Joy

“RSS is not email. You don’t have to get to inbox zero!” is a correct take, in my opinion; that’s certainly how I approach my feed reader. But also, I’ve got bad news about my email inbox.

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Thousands of scientists are cutting back on Twitter, seeding angst and uncertainty

Scientists are fleeing X for Mastodon, citing far-right science denialism - and far-right hate in general. I don't exactly know what Musk thinks he's going to be left with after all this.

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Datasette Cloud

Simon Willison's Datasette now has a SaaS version that saves you having to install or set anything up. This is perfect for smaller newsrooms and orgs that are technically stretched but want to analyze data. I'm excited to see where he goes with it.

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StreetPass for Mastodon

Genuinely brilliant. StreetPass finds the Mastodon accounts of people whose websites you browse, allowing you to check out their accounts and follow if you're interested. I love it.

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An Opinionated Guide To Alt-text

A great, short guide to writing alt text to support data visualization from Jasmine Mithani.

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Elon Musk's Twitter throttles links to Threads, Blue Sky and New York Times

Really, truly: there is no good reason for any media company or publisher to still be posting on X.

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Announcing the Tor University Challenge

This is a worthwhile project, and would be a major win for freedom of expression and freedom from surveillance. I'd love to see more of my higher education friends take part.

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How to verify your Threads account using your Mastodon profile

It's truly beautiful to see Threads begin to embrace indieweb and federated social web protocols. This is a first step; true federation is, I've been assured, coming.

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Why Sam Altman wants to scan two billion eyes

We’ve seen the United Nations share their biometric registration of Rohingya refugees with the Myanmar government without their consent. A private company that subcontracts services in other countries makes accountability very difficult when there are rights violations.”

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Raku: A Language for Gremlins

That's a giant "nope" from me, but your mileage may vary.

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PIE failed. But it’s a failure worth celebrating and learning from.

It's very painful to see accelerators that are also vibrant community hubs shut down because of business dynamics. I've lived that. What I can see here is someone who cares about his community. I was never a part of PIE, but I know Rick did it for the right reasons. And I know from Matter that the community continues long after the thing itself has disappeared. The legacy is long lasting. Congratulations, Rick - on to the next thing.

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How I make annotated presentations

It's been a long time since I've given any talks (the pandemic put a stop to that) but I really like this approach, and I'll do something similar in the future.

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Just normal web things.

Yes to all of this. These are basic functions that the web gives you almost by default. Everything on the web should let you do them.

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The open source licensing war is over

I broadly agree with this piece, which is a kind of rallying cry against dogmatism in open source. I think dogmatism is harmful in all parts of tech; divisive and often a kind of gatekeeping. Let authors build and release according to their needs.

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How to Search for a Better Deal on Broadband

The broadband situation in America is surprisingly bad - so I love that there's a new version of the National Broadband Map. The Markup has done a public service by taking us through it.

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The BBC on Mastodon: experimenting with distributed and decentralised social media

The fediverse is how every major new social network will be built for the next decade, and every media company will need to have a presence. Welcome to the BBC.

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