People and blogs involved with and about the IndieWeb community, the fediverse, and/or the open web in general.
Matt Mullenweg
• Matt
Pretty heads down at WordCamp US, which has had amazing energy and talks so far. I wanted to take a moment to note two things, first being a great essay from Dave Winer asking people to Think Different about WordPress. I’ve done this before — asked people to think differently about things, like public writing, … Continue reading Think Different →
Thursday session
Brent Simmons reminiscing about Frontier and why modern development environments aren’t as good:
I’m not saying apps these days need to be Frontier-like in any details. But it seems absolutely bizarre to me that we — we who write Mac and iOS apps — still have to build and run the app, make changes, build and run the app, and so on, all day long. In the year 2025.
I also used Frontier a lot during that time. It was great. Personally, instead of Swift, I would’ve loved to see RubyCocoa taken to the next level. And with React Native we do have some of the quick iteration Brent blogs about.
Threads is testing long-form text attachments on posts. Not good. It would centralized blog-like content that should be on someone’s own site.
AI might eliminate some programmer jobs. It’s also going to create new programmers, people who don’t have a traditional CS background. I’m not convinced the sky is falling on work.
The greatest challenge is not to the economy but to a fractured society, with AI becoming as divisive as politics.
bookmarked Bridging identity with account links
John Gruber blogging on RFK vs. the CDC:
We really needed the CDC five years ago. We’re in big trouble if we need them again before the US electorate ousts these wingnuts.
There are new vaccines approved by the FDA but the guidance is really confusing. Going to differ to my doctor rather than RFK.
Dave Winer: Think Different about WordPress:
WordPress has a deep and powerful API, well designed, documented, and they don’t break it. Developers who know me know that the last part is the most important. A platform must remain unchanging.
Dave’s work is similar and well aligned with Micro.blog.
Watched The Yogurt Shop Murders on HBO, even though it’s not my kind of show. I was in high school during that time, and the shop wasn’t far away. Just sad and still a little surprising that it could not be solved.
I’ve been wanting to make this change for a while: Micro.blog’s Design page has now been split into separate “design” and “blog settings” pages. This makes more logical sense and keeps each page cleaner.
Accessibility, performance, privacy, security, sustainability …some of the things I value more than “developer experience” when I’m working on thesession.org
Ben Werdmuller
• Ben Werdmuller
A new survey suggests that scientists vastly prefer Bluesky to X - and to its other alternatives.
This week was another Homebrew Website Club here in Düsseldorf. Mark and Jochen came around. It was mostly chatting about IndieWeb and AI topics, but each of us also managed to get some work done on one or more of our projects. I, for example, published a new photo journal entry. And I registered that site with a WebSub hub and send out WebSub notifications for this new post. I’m also having fun creating these little animated AVIFs of our little group.
beesbuzz.biz/blog/11155-A-fair-independent-streaming-platform
anthonymoser.github.io/writing/ai/haterdom/2025/08/26/i-am-an-ai-hater.html
I wanted to quote an excerpt of this post, but honestly I couldn’t choose just one part—the whole thing is perfect. You should read it for the beauty of the language alone.
(This is Anthony Moser’s first blog post. I fear he has created his Citizen Kane.)
Put the kettle on. This is a long one!
Matt takes a trip down memory lane and looks at all the frontend tools, technologies, and techniques that have come and gone over the years.
But this isn’t about nostalgia (although it does make you appreciate how far we’ve come). He’s looking at whether anything from the past is worth keeping today.
Studying past best practices and legacy systems is crucial for understanding the evolution of technology and making informed decisions today.
There’s only one technique that makes the cut:
After discussing countless legacy approaches and techniques best left in the past, you’ve finally arrived at a truly timeless and Incredibly important methodology.
smashingmagazine.com/2025/08/optimizing-pwas-different-display-modes/
There’s really good browser support for display-mode media queries and this article does a really good job of running through some of the use cases for your progressive web app.
