Hey, dipshit! You know what loads faster than your bloated, overengineered mess? Plain, unadulterated HTML. And you know what doesn't break every motherfucking Tuesday? HTML that just fucking works. Why the fuck are you overcomplicating things, you masochistic fuck? You're out here acting like you're building the next goddamn moon landing when all you need is a button and some text.

It’s a common adage amongst us Internet weirdos that you should really have your own website. Your own digital space where you are free to express yourself without being beholden to manipulative algorithms or hostile user experiences. We espouse the virtues of owning your data and breaking free from walled gardens and all that, but I think we often forget that the majority of Internet-users are put off by the massive resistance such things come with.

I’m interviewing fellow Indigenous metalheads at a heavy music festival on the Blackfeet Nation, with Russel Daniels (Diné and Ho-Chunk descent), a photographer who’s not into metal.

I've been trying to write this piece for years, really ever since I finished the first version of Open Source Explained (a v2 will drop early next year). Every time I get started I'm just overwhelmed with paralyzing visions of the commentariat accusing me of WrongThink.

By far the most popular npm package I’ve ever written is blob-util, which is ~10 years old and still gets 5+ million weekly downloads.

Alchemists in medieval times apparently believed it was possible to transmute matter into gold—or, at least, were attempting to find out if it was possible to do so through an early, rudimentary version of what would eventually become chemistry.

Following in Amazon's footsteps, two student projects independently use 'collaborative filtering' to bring recommendations and social networking to online music; soon they will join forces.

Music is super important to me and has been for as long as I can remember. I grew up "fighting" with my parents for control of the radio on long roadtrips (we didn't exchange blows - "name that tune" was the ring of choice). I raided my dad's library of CDs he'd get sent (he was a youth pastor at the time). I'd exchange mix tapes (on actual cassettes) with my older cousin whenever we saw him. In college napster was a revelation (followed by the attempt to do the right thing with all-of-mp3.com).

It took me by surprise to learn that this post was now a decade old: Last week I decided to leave Spotify. I've been using the service for almost 2 years now, and overall I've really liked it... It's hard to explain why [I'm leaving], but I guess I feel apprehensive about Spotify being in control of how and where I listen to music in ways I haven't been before.

I’ve been thinking about a note from Alex Russell where he says: any time you're running JS on the main thread, you're at risk of being left behind by progress. The zen of web development is to spend a little time in your own code, and instead to glue the big C++/Rust subsystems together, then get out of the bloody way.

“Tabs were great, but we haven’t seen a lot of browser innovation since then.” These are brave words spoken by the CEO of a company that's using Chromium to power their new browser, which, at the time of writing this, they even failed to attribute correctly. I wish I could say I'm shocked, but this is a company led by someone who thinks artists, creators, writers, etc should not be paid for their work.

OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, released their own browser called Atlas, and it actually is something new: the first browser that actively fights against the web. Let's talk about what that means, and what dangers there are from an anti-web browser made by an AI company — one that probably needs a warning label when you install it.

OpenAI has announced it’s launched a new browser, Atlas, with ChatGPT built in. For those familiar with ARIA, OpenAI outlines what to expect.

Last week, the United States Department of Homeland Security—last seen brutalizing journalists, children, and clergy in the streets of Chicago—joined the Bluesky social internet platform and began, with the White House and other federal agency accounts, trolling and threatening Trump administration political opponents.

I am so tired of hearing about AI. Unfortunately, this is a talk about AI.

I’m trying to figure out how to use generative AI as a designer without feeling like shit. I am fascinated with what it can do, impressed and repulsed by what it makes, and distrustful of its owners. I am deeply ambivalent about it all. The believers demand devotion, the critics demand abstinence, and to see AI as just another technology is to be a heretic twice over.

I was privileged to deliver the opening keynote at this month's FediForum, a conference for people building and supporting the open social web. My talk touched on what's happening now, drew on my experiences building Elgg and Known and investing at Matter Ventures, and gave participants three important questions to ask themselves as they build platforms and serve communities.

Whether I like it or not, the first line of my obituary will probably be that I was the founding editor of Gawker.com, the flagship site of Gawker Media, a sprawling blog network that was put out of business by Peter Thiel and Hulk Hogan in 2016. Nick Denton and I started Gawker in 2002 and I left in late 2003 to go to New York Magazine, so I missed some of Gawker’s greatest hits and biggest misses, but the early ‘00s were what I now think of as the heyday of blogging. (Talking Points Memo was s

The platform era is ending. Rather than build new Twitters and Facebooks, we can create a stuff-posting system that works better for everybody.

I know you’re sick of talking about AI. I am too. This is only a little bit about AI, I promise. Like all my writing about technology, it’s mostly about people.

Well, I'd appear to have a whole bunch of new readers after the last article: welcome, everyone! This is a blog/newsletter/place to publish long-form articles about the intersections of tech, politics and culture that I write: I try and publish about once a week, but there is sometimes slippage. This is entirely reader-supported: if you like what I'm doing and want to help me make more of it, there are avenues to do so, with links at the bottom of the article.

The release of the Sora slop-feed monstrosity has really done some shock and awe on the general public and on the press. People are wowed by the fidelity and the stability of the product, especially when compared to what previous iterations of Sora, and models like it, have been able to generate. This fidelity has also lead more people to ask questions than they were initially when it was mushy/sliding/morphing junk.

My recent post on removing classes from my personal site was unusual in a few ways; I got a surprising number of kind emails about it, and on the flip side, it broke containment and ended up on Hacker News. I know you shouldn’t look at the comments. No good can possibly come from looking at the comments. I looked at the comments.

Today’s world requires us to make complex and nuanced decisions about our digital security. Evaluating when to use a secure messaging app like Signal or WhatsApp, which passwords to store on your smartphone, or what to share on social media requires us to assess risks and make judgments accordingly. Arriving at any conclusion is an exercise in threat modeling.

It’s not widely understood that it is technically possible for privately hosted data to be obtained by government, law enforcement, or even private parties without your knowledge.

One of my favorite stories from Chicago's recent history is the invisible flood that happened in 1992 that forced the shutdown of downtown Chicago for days. Repair work was happening on the Kinzie Street bridge, one of many that span the Chicago River. They were replacing nearly hundred-year-old pilings with updated ones that were driven deep into the ground beneath the river. Unbeknownst to anyone, one of the pilings was too close to an forgotten coal delivery tunnel that had been dug in 1906.

Trump’s National Design Studio has an executive order to “modernize the interfaces that serve everyday citizens”. That means rich/white people (but not the ‘disabled’ kind). The US government had digital service agencies that cared about a performant and accessible web until they got the DOGE treatment.

There was a time when I could ask, “Did you see the latest NPM attack?” And your answer would be either “Yes” or “No”.

Imagine listening to your favourite podcast. You rewind it to go over something you missed, but each time you replay it, it’s somehow different.

I want to take control of my music library and be responsible for organizing and tagging all of my music files. This probably sounds like making work for the sake of work, but it’s something that I’m passionate about. Like a well-curated and organized collection of records, clothes, make-up, or books, it feels good knowing everything is there for a reason and where it should be.

Ages ago, when I was still a student, I taught myself Ruby on Rails for my senior thesis and fell in love. Fifteen years later, and I’ve used Rails at every job I’ve ever held in the tech industry. Fifteen years, and I still love Rails! But there’s something rotten at its core, and we share a name.