CSF_03: today’s Cybersecurity Friday post: the effective security of small business websites has likely gotten worse due to LLMs and “AI agents” (with or without safeguards) and what actions you may want to consider.
Small business websites tend to be sloppily written (no pun intended though that may also be true) and are likely riddled with numerous very fundamental security holes. There are many possible explanations (economics) from poor initial construction, perhaps using the latest new trendy framework rather than established hardened libraries, to lack of maintenance after initial setup. They have obvious holes like lack of server-side form validation (people being able to change values in forms using browser dev tools), and less obvious like buggy APIs allowing more access than they should.
In the past, many of these holes didn’t really matter because those sites were “not worth attacking” for the incentive models of human-based cyber-attackers or collectives thereof.
However, now that there are LLMs that have likely been trained on any number of common security holes in websites (and how to exploit them), when an “AI agent” is given a task, it may very well use any “tool” at its disposal, including website vulnerabilities to accomplish its goals, as illustrated by the example in the Australia ABC news article above.
Since such chatbots are now essentially "hack websites as a service", I expect we will see LOTS more of this happening, likely unintentionally, or sometimes with mild intention like “can you get me higher on the waitlist”.
Ultimately I think both the human giving instructions to (prompting) such chatbots and the creators of such chatbots should be held responsible for any such intrusions and any damage they cause, even if/when unintended.
There are a few things you can do about this emerging phenomenon:
1. If you use such “agents”, be very careful about what you ask it/them to do, avoiding asking for anything that’s morally gray or questionable at all, even something as “minor” as cutting the line in an online waitlist.
2. If you run a small business site, you have your work cut out for you. Pay a professional web developer to audit the security of your website, document what they find, and patch holes / repair it accordingly.
3. If you have accounts on small business sites you rarely or ever use, consider exporting any data (receipts, transactions), replacing your profile details (name, addresses, photos) with noise, and then deleting your account. If you need to use the site again, use a different email address (as recommended in https://tantek.com/2025/122/b1/more-steps-indieweb-cybersecurity) to create a new account.
That last tip is also helpful for reducing your own personal “attack surface”. By pruning your online accounts, you both reduce the number potential data breaches that you’re in, and reduce the places and ways that attackers can cause you trouble (or that you have to double-check if you’re ever the target of a cyber-attack)
The bright orange eruptions, orange streaks of lava flow, orange lit clouds of smoke & steam all contrasted against the black sky and land are quite the visual ASMR. Paired with the ASMR wind from the mountain, the effect is quite calming and peaceful.
Putting this on a projector is quite the night light to fall asleep to (requires YouTube Premium to avoid noisy ads interruptions that harsh your mellow)
“I assign a profile essay. Have for 30 years. Student interviews a person, records it, writes a paper based off the recording. Citations are timestamps. Should be pretty easy. Has been easy pre-AI. Now, students cannot do it.”
Snippet from professor/student dialog:
==== Prof: ”Start with what you found interesting.”
Student: ”How do I know if something’s interesting?”
Prof: ”You’re asking me how you find something interesting?”
Student: ”Yeah.” ====
Chatbots / LLMs are not just "the latest tools" like using a calculator instead of doing arithmetic yourself.
Students are being robbed of curiosity, learning to discover and notice novelty, how to “find something interesting.”
This isn't cognitive enhancement, this is a tool causing brain rot (loss of curiosity), even a developmental disability. Unclear if it is reversible.
Since then, Bing has added “Copilot” LLM generated results to the top of search results by default, and unfortunately they add zero value to calendar month searches and displays. Worse, Copilot’s “summary” can often be long enough to push the actual calendar month display “below the fold” as it were.
and press return. You should see a days and weeks grid display for September 2026, with the current day of the month (the 9th as I’m writing this) selected in the displayed month.
Note the new calendar month display features since I last blogged this in 2024: * Day 252 — day of the year! September 9th of 2026 is the 252nd day of 2026. * Week 37 — Sept 9th is also on the 37th week of 2026 * 31 days later — Sept 9th is 31 days from today (August 9th). * < [ Sep v ] > – little anglebracket arrows on either side of the month button/dropdown to one-click nav to the prev/next month * [ Start Day v ] — a new “Start Day” drop down button to change which day of the week to display as the start of the week
Amazing that despite already being far better than any other search engine for year month queries, Bing has *improved* its calendar month display search results, while Duckduckgo, Google, Yahoo are just as useless (yes I checked) as they were two years ago (I also tried Ecosia and it was no better). I am hashtagging them all to see if anyone at those other search engines notices and gets around to implementing a similar calendar month display.
I started my first (previous) blog on this 220th day of 2002 using static HTML + CSS and one file per (Gregorian) month, with fragment links for specific days, posts within a day, and topics within a post:
My post was about the open web and free content, being freely accessible (viewable).
If you want to post a comment, you should do so on your personal site, and notify the original post via the Webmention protocol (a good CMS or content hosting service will do this automatically). One advantage of using open standards like Webmention is there is no need to register with other sites to use them on your own site.
You should own your replies, rather than expecting other websites to host them.
↳ In reply to mastodon.social user ennedia’s post@ennedia@mastodon.social all the examples in my post support https. I suspect that “a lot of that "content"…” assertion is an outdated misconception. Do you have any specific current examples?
The open web has an amazing amount of free content that is actually free, both freely accessible without payment and free of conditions to access. No tracking cookies needed, no logins needed, no ads needed.
A few examples: * blogs. my blog, and every other #indieweb blog (with the exception of sites hosted on content services that show ads without the consent of the blogger). Personal blogs are free to read because it’s a hobby and a way of keeping up with family, friends, colleagues, acquaintances, people we’ve met once at a conference, people that inspire us. * Wikipedia is free, largely donor supported, partly via donation banners. * Open Street Maps is free, similarly. * Internet Archive is free, similarly. * Government sites are free, supported by taxes. * Public library sites are free, similarly. * Museum sites are free, supported by their donors, and in-person visit fees. * University sites are free, supported by endowments and student tuitions.
There is plenty of free content on the open web, sustainably supported by non-toxic and non-surveillance models.
The open web as a whole does not depend on any particular business model.
▶️ watched episodes 1-6 of Silo over the past week, most while I was a bit under the weather. Excellent dystopia concept and show. Pausing before watching episode 7, titled “The Flamekeepers”.
Weird incident yesterday with self-proclaimed “AIs” joining an IndieWeb Homebrew Website Club meetup. They awkwardly edited the Etherpad, and apparently blanked/deleted chunks of content.
The meeting hosts reacted quickly to change Etherpad and Zooms and not re-admit the aliases that had claimed to be “AIs”.
Now we have an “AI policy” page on the wiki where we are documenting examples of the AI policies of: * individual personal websites * community efforts like blogging challenges (e.g. Blaugust) * contributions to the IndieWeb wiki * participants in IndieWeb meetups
Simple hashtag proposal for dates: datetags for the #indieweb
In summary by example: * #2026_08_04 ISO8601 YYYY_MM_DD date of this post * #2026_216 ISO8601 YYYY_DDD ordinal date of this post * #2026_08 ISO8601 YYYY_MM month of this post
Many of us posting on the indieweb often post about things in the past. Photos, events, or sometimes throwback posts. Hashtags communicate and aggregate what posts are about. Posts about the past are usually about a specific date in the past, or sometimes an entire month. Thus it makes sense to use hashtags for those dates and months.
I have been hashtagging such posts about the past for several years, and with some iteration have developed a convention that works for international readability, and is linked and indexed in #federated #hashtag systems like #ActivityPub (e.g. #Mastodon etc.) and #ATProto (e.g. #Bluesky etc.).
Additional possibilities to explore: * yeartags — hashtags for entire years * timetags — hashtags for specific times, undated/floating times
After several web searches I didn’t find any prior proposals for hashtags for dates or times. Hopefully by hashtagging this post, future web searches will find this proposal.
Have you hashtagged your posts with dates or times? Share your examples!
This is post 11 of #100PostsOfIndieWeb. #100Posts #dateTag #dateTags #monthTag #monthTags #yearTag #yearTags #timeTag #timeTags #August #Blaugust #Blaugust2026
📀 watched “The Dark Knight” on Blu-ray, still holds up.
I saw it in the Metreon IMAX theater when it came out in 2008. About 28 minutes of it was filmed in 70mm film using IMAX cameras. The movie switched aspect ratios when it switched from IMAX to normal film. The 2-Disc Special Edition Blu-ray also switched aspect ratios roughly at similar times. Nice to see that that was preserved.
The movie has incredible pacing. No extra moments. I had forgotten how many quotes originated from The Dark Knight. https://enwp.org/The_Dark_Knight
🎞 watched “The Odyssey” at the Metreon in 70mm IMAX on opening weekend, and mostly enjoyed it. No spoilers in this post.
My pal Rohit (@rohit.khare.org) had bought tickets last year, had a spare, and invited me along last minute. After an early dinner at Cha Cha Cha (@chachachasf.com) we made our way to the Metreon.
There was a line to get in. I have never before seen a line merely to get into the IMAX theater. We only missed maybe 1-2 movie trailers.
Our seats were in the front row, only a few seats from the left edge. In general I would not recommend the front 3-4 rows at an IMAX theater because it requires craning your neck back, and lots of swiveling to see the entire screen. Ironically being near the corner helped minimize the latter. Despite being sold out, the seat to my left was empty so I was able to lean back kinda diagonally to take in most of the screen.
The film itself was excellent (as many others have said).
There were parts that felt like they dragged a bit, yet also parts that felt rushed, where a bit more build-up before resolution would have hit harder. The only negative of the experience was the seating location in the IMAX theater, and the rigidness of the seats (they’re quite old, not like newer, plushier reclining seats that most theaters have upgraded to.)
The best part of The Odyssey is despite all the action, it dives into a number of philosophical and other intellectual challenges, illustrated by the situations encountered and paths taken.
I recommend seeing this film with nerdy friends on the earlier side, grabbing dinner after and discussing the nature, ethics, decisions, actions of the characters, and consequences thereof.
Over the years I and others have experimented with "watch" posts, short notes that express having seen a movie or TV show, sometimes with a link, and brief review or other commentary, like earlier today:
I like to use a leading emoji to indicate a watch post, and perhaps what specific kind of a watch post. After some iteration and reflection, these are the emoji that I have converged on for briefly expressing and distinguishing some watch posts:
🎦 movie in a cinema/theater ▶️ online video whether a brief YouTube clip, an Internet Archive upload of an #IndieWebCamp session, or a movie or show on a streaming service like Netflix.
In addition, I expect to use the following emoji for more specific watch posts: 🎞 analog film viewing, e.g. 70mm IMAX (like Chris Nolan’s The Odyssey) 📀 DVD/Laserdisc 📼 videocassette 📺 television, from over the air broadcast or cable like in a hotel room
In-person live performances: 🎫 concert or music festival 🎭 theater/play, perhaps stand-up comedy 🎟 other ticketed performances
This seems like a good start for both recent movies I’ve seen, and (likely) upcoming shows and events. I had a few thoughts for other possibilities and have added them to the Brainstorming section of that wiki page, where I expect the #indieweb community will iterate further.
Who else publishes watch posts and do you use any emoji to indicate what kind of thing you watched (or where)?
This is post 10 of #100PostsOfIndieWeb. #100Posts #August #Blaugust #Blaugust2026
🎦 watched “Spider-Man: Brand New Day” in the Metreon Dolby Cinema this past Friday and really enjoyed it.
Took a half day off to recover from a long week & last weekend, and decided to see the new Spider-Man movie. The theater was packed except for the front row. Lots of fans wearing Spider-Man gear.
If you haven’t seen the previous Tom Holland Spider-Man movies, you could watch only those three then this film and still have a great time. No significant dependence on other MCU (Marvel Cinematic Universe) stories in Brand New Day.
Optionally, you could watch the Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield Spider-Man movies before watching the third Tom Holland one, “No Way Home”, for character development and additional narratives.
Welcome to August which means once again it is time for the Blaugust Festival of Blogging!
In its simplest form, Blaugust is a blogging challenge “to post 31 times during the month of August”, typically once a day, however, doubling up (etc.) is allowed and provides the nice forgiving flexibility of catching up in case you miss a day.
Started in 2014, the challenge has been officially announced and organized every year since except 2017. However in 2020 there were two! The organizer first moved it up to April, renaming it “Blapril”, then held another in August 2020 with the usual name and routine.
Will note explicitly from that link: > Radio and checkbox elements can be toggled by the user, but are sometimes in an indeterminate state, neither checked nor unchecked.
This was based on (now decades of) experience and practice of actual human computer interfaces with tri-state checkboxes/radiobuttons.
This was before it was ever written up in HTML.
I don’t know why HTML failed to adopt this semantic. It’s unfortunate we didn’t notice this bug in HTML for so long. Perhaps because it was possible to have contradictory DOM attributes and the HTML spec tried to retcon that into meaning something when it should have fixed it.
We should do “the right thing” here, which is define the feature (in Selectors, and HTML) to reflect actual developer need and usage, not some (likely) accidental bug introduced the HTML spec.
I am reminded of the similar stubbornly-precise but disconnected from real-world developer needs specification of :valid / :invalid which eventually forced the addition of :user-valid and :user-invalid.
Let’s avoid similarly introducing a :user-indeterminate because the HTML spec made a mistake.
Yesterday was the hottest Broken Arrow Skyrace 23k of the four I have run. And the hardest. Sometimes you give it your all and your all is not quite enough. Made it much farther than last year, under worse (hotter, dryer, dustier) conditions.
It was already in the mid-70s Fahrenheit at the race start, spiked into the 80s and 85+ from mile 4 onward, hitting highs in the low 90s. I had somewhat prepared for the heat, with a hydration plan & practice, and a cooling outfit including an ice-bandana.
I made it up almost 4000 feet of elevation gain from the start to the picturesque “Stairway to Heaven” ladder (newly replaced this year!) up to Washeshu Peak (~2700m above sea level, 8868' according to my Garmin) and across the plateau at the top.
After the crux of the race I hiked / slow-ran down the steep descent, making it to about mile 7.8 (more than halfway!) at the Siberia aid station. Missed the cutoff by a few minutes and got pulled. From the start I pushed perhaps the hardest I have ever pushed at Broken Arrow, found new limits, and felt like I left it all on the mountain.
I have some ideas for what to improve, given similar conditions. Still reflecting on lessons learned. This was my fourth overall attempt, and 2nd DNF at Broken Arrow.
How to add Google News, Google Books, and Google Scholar search directly in your browser, to search those sites with fewer steps, and less chance of being distracted.
One of my hobbies is contributing to Wikipedia, and more so, creating new Wikipedia articles. Citations of reliable sources are key to both good contributions, and new articles, especially in making them stick (not get reverted/deleted).
I use Google News to search for citations, and depending on the topic, sometimes Google Books and Google Scholar.
Unfortunately, to search Google News, you have to first go to Google News (news.google .com - deliberately unlinked here), upon which you are immediately shown distracting (if not dire) news photos, headlines etc. which present a non-trivial challenge to staying focused.
If only there was a way to directly search Google News from your browser search box / address bar (like you can search Wikipedia from your browser).
This is another technology I use for category 2 (defending focus) that I mentioned in my previous post on focus.
Steps to add a Google News search option to Firefox:
1. open Firefox Preferences ("Firefox" menu, "Preferences" item) 2. select "🔍 Search" from the left column 3. scroll down to "Search Shortcuts" 4. click the "Add" button under the list of search engines which opens a dialog 5. enter "Google News" into the Search engine name field (without quotes) 6. enter "https://news.google.com/search?q=%s" into the URL field (without quotes) 7. enter "gn" into the Keyword field (without quotes)
The dialog should now look like this:
8. click (Add Engine)
Now you can go to your address bar, type in "gn " (without the quotes), your news search term or phrase, e.g. "Broken Arrow Skyrace", and press return to directly see search results.
Similarly for Google Books, follow the same steps except: 5. enter "Google Books" into the Search engine name field (without quotes) 6. enter "https://books.google.com/books?q=%s" into the URL field (without quotes) 7. enter "gb" into the Keyword field (without quotes)
And similarly for Google Scholar: 5. enter "Google Scholar" into the Search engine name field (without quotes) 6. enter "https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=%s" into the URL field (without quotes) 7. enter "gs" into the Keyword field (without quotes)
Thanks to folks in the #indieweb informal chat who reminded me (when I complained about the distracting Google News home page) of this way to add new site-specific search capabilities to the browser even for sites (or subsites) without explicit OpenSearch support.
Looking forward to using these capabilities to more quickly find citations for updating and creating new Wikipedia articles.
The Snooze Tabs browser add-on is a key technology I use for category 2, defending focus (and prioritizing) from my previous post (link in footer).
I noted in the #indieweb informal cafe chat that "I am going to snooze the tab for a month and re-evaluate then" (about purchasing a potentially focus-enhancing electronic device), and was asked how do I snooze a tab for a month.
I noted the Snooze Tabs browser extension does this, i.e. one-click to snooze a tab for * later today * tomorrow morning * the weekend * a week from now * a month from now * or a custom date and time
I have used it for years and as someone who opens LOTS of tabs, it has been essential for quickly closing tabs (for now) that are not my current (now, today, this week) priority.
A few regular use-cases which are all one-click from my Firefox toolbar: * snooze work-related tabs until the next day, when I'm wrapping up work for the day * snooze personal projects tabs until the weekend * snooze lower priority work-task related tabs for a week * snooze product tabs for a month when I want to wait (procrastinate) to see if I still want/need an item that seemed interesting in the moment
One key use-case I have which I have to set manually: * snooze work-related tabs to Monday when it’s the weekend
This add-on is a good example of open source that “just works” even if its source code repository has not seen recent activity.
It’s also a good example of “good enough” rather than perfect.
If I get around to it, I may explore what it would take to help resolve issues, commit code, and do another release, at least to make progress on that one issue.
For now however, I am snoozing that GitHub tab for a month.
Three areas of insights for improving focus, from this afternoon’s long run: needs, defense, techniques.
1. Make sure your "needs" are met. If your needs are not being met, you will be distracted from whatever you are trying to focus on by those unmet needs.
2. Defend against and filter sources of distraction. Anything (or anybody) that is notifying you, messaging you, emailing you, or worst, getting you to react and argue or fight that has nothing to do with your goals or what you want to focus on, is a distraction. The more you can turn off such notifications, mute or leave chat channels, delete content scrolling apps, unsubscribe from lists, and procrastinate responding to people posting about things that are not a priority for you, the better you will be able to focus on the things that are a priority for you.
3. Tools and techniques to reduce the focus needed for essential or required tasks, like chunking and checklists. If you have tasks that must be completed (like to meet needs, or preconditions for goals or priorities), clustering such tasks by context (same topic, place) or medium (e.g. all phone calls) will require less focus and shifting of focus to complete them. Similarly, if you can construct and follow checklists for steps towards goals, like a packing list, long term departure/re-entry from/to your home, it takes much less thinking (and is thus faster) to complete everything on the list, stay focused on the next item to complete rather than being distracted, and have less distraction from fear of forgetting to do something. If another requirement emerges while going through a list, insert it into the list at a good enough (not perfect) spot, and keep going thru the list in order.
Create daily routines to meet your needs. Actively block, mute, filter, depart, and procrastinate dealing with requests that are not explicit priorities or goals for you. Cluster similar tasks, and create checklists to simplify complex tasks to complete them quicker and with higher confidence of completion.
Each of these is itself a topic worth exploring in more detail.
Sometimes it’s good take a step back and re-assess things from the immediate like daily routines & habits, to how to focus on goals whether within weeks, months, or years. Taking bits of time off to reflect on these and related topics. The grayscale phone interface has helped me get here: https://tantek.com/2026/124/b1/may-the-focus-be-with-you-iphone-grayscale
Ran my 14th Bay to Breakers race in 1:57:12 this past Sunday. Almost 2min behind last year, from needing a 5min+ pitstop at the Panhandle.
I skipped public transport (see previous years), and left at 7am to jog to the start. After ~3.5 miles I found my way to corral A and serendipitously my pal Henri, dressed in the purple grape costume he’s known for.
Beautiful day for a run, cool and sunny blue skies from the start. The South of Market (SoMa) area seemed cleaner than usual which was a nice change.
High-fived the Midnight Runners Raccoon Riot cheergang on Hayes street. Hayes hill was a jog / power hike slog like recent years with a pleasant downhill after. Except by the time I got to Fell street I felt uncomfortable enough to run out to the portapotties and took a while to deal with the discomfort. The prior evening’s dinner out at Thee Parkside was perhaps too much of a change for my system. Novel eats the night before a race a minor rookie mistake.
The parties on Fell Street seemed particularly loud and crowded this year.
Golden Gate Park was beautiful as usual, and I spotted a few November Project San Francisco (NPSF) folks near Blue Heron Lake (formerly known as Stow Lake). We gathered a few more and took photos in front of the Naga Sea Serpent sculpture.
The rest of the race felt like a comfortable downhill til we passed the bison paddock. Normally where the race turns left at the end it turned right to a new southbound finish on Great Highway. Picked up the pace there to finish in 1:57:13 by my watch, only one second off the recorded chip time.
This past week was a step up in running volume over the past few months, ironically a bit of a reverse taper. Including the warmup and race, I ran 29 miles total (Monday through Sunday). That was a big jump from the previous week so I hiked back through Golden Gate park rather than jogging it out.
Today’s a good day to get/install OS and browser updates on all your critical devices.
Consider turning off wifi on non-critical devices (putting to sleep is no longer enough because many devices still listen to or contact the internet while asleep) until you have had a chance to safely update their software (perhaps after software updates are available in response to pwn2own demos and disclosures).
I have been eating here and getting take out for a long time. Lots of memories with so many friends. Citrus Club was my favorite neighborhood noodle place. They had numerous vegan and vegetarian dishes. My favorite dishes were the BBQ tofu spring rolls, and marmalade coconut shrimp without the shrimp, substituting both fresh and fried tofu. From the menu: “sweet peas, onions & lemomngrass. Tossed in our coconut sauce w/Jade(spinach)noodles.”
When I walked by on the return home, the front door was open, the inside was lit but looked emptied, and there was music playing.
Last weekend at IndieWebCamp I noticed
James
had setup his iPhone in grayscale.
I think I first saw that on
Jeremy’s
phone years ago.
I remember trying it on my iPod Touch for a while, eventually switching back to see color photos.
This morning while chatting with James I asked him about his grayscale setup and why. He pointed out it’s less distracting, a calmer experience, and helps him stay focused when he uses his iPhone for specific tasks.
I decided to give it another try. The setting is quite buried. Here are the items to tap, starting from your home screen, or wherever you moved your ⚙️ Settings app:
⚙️ Settings
🟦 Accessibility >
🟦 Display & Text Size >
Color Filters >
Color Filters (⚫️__) [slide this toggle to the right to turn it on]
Greyscale [tap this and you should see it checked]
James said one more setting has helped him stick with grayscale for years now.
Triple-press the side button to toggle color/grayscale modes helps quickly switch to color to view a photo or a video, actual color content, then triple-press-side-button to return to a calmer UI.
⚙️ Settings
⏺ Accessibility >
⏺ Accessibility Shortcut >
Color Filters [tap this and you should see it checked]
In addition, I have found the back-tap feature handy and personally more memorable.
Double (or triple) back-tap to toggle color/grayscale mode and toggle back.
⚙️ Settings
⏺ Accessibility >
👆🏻 Touch >
Back Tap >
Double-tap >
Color Filters [tap this and you should see it checked]
When using my phone outside in the sun, I noticed the absence of color made it hard to distinguish or even read some things. I changed a few more settings to improve sunlight readability/usability.
⚙️ Settings
⏺ Accessibility >
⏺ Display & Text Size >
Bold Text (⚫️__) [tap/slide this toggle to the right to turn it on]
Increase Contrast (⚫️__) [tap/slide this too]
Differentiate Without Color (⚫️__) [tap/slide this too]
In the absence of color on my iPhone, I have spent less time using it today, felt more focused when I used it for a specific task, and have started to feel both less compelled to check things, and less of a “rush” when interacting with iPhone apps and their user interfaces.
Color saturated apps stripped of their color are starting to feel like older apps or appliances. Switching Spotify playlists felt a bit like pressing station presets on a car radio. Discord felt like an enhanced IRC client. Even some of my rotating lock screen landscape photos have strong Ansel Adams vibes, while my urban lockscreen photos have a calmer dreamlike quality.
Perhaps the use of color in modern mobile app user interfaces is the new
chartjunk, extraneous and distracting from the task at hand, just as classic chartjunk is extraneous and distracting from the information being presented. Most mobile apps seem to be in an attention-seeking arms race against each other, ever more saturated colors to draw you in like a casino.
Using a grayscale iPhone user interface for most of the day has felt noticeably calmer. Enough for me to try it again for at least a few days and see how it goes.
Thanks again to James for his explanations and encouragement. See his write-up:
Using greyscale, when he started, why, why he continues to use it, and instructions for his setup.
Try it for yourself and see how it feels.
May the Force of your will be with you, free of distractions and dopamine conditioned impulses.
"web joy" — the joy you experience when visiting a website with joyful content and/or have a joyful experience (as a user) on a website, or the joy of creating such a website.
During the beyond tellerand conference this past week, someone mentioned “responsive web design” and having just completed IndieWebCamp Düsseldorf, the thought popped in my head that joyful web design should be a named thing, since many of us spent the weekend at IndieWebCamp doing just that.
I mentioned it to @jamesg.blog at a break between talks, we discussed it a bit and agreed that joy is a good motivator, and as creatives we both like creating things that are joyful to experience, and ideally joyful to create.
That and a zoom chat today was inspiration to name that specific joyful experience “web joy”.
It’s a nod to “moon joy”, a mere weeks old phrase many have heard and been inspired by, coined by Mission Control science officer Angela Garcia, and transmitted (spoken) by CAPCOM on shift, Jacki Mahaffey, in reply to the Artemis II astronauts on mission (as noted in a NASA AMA: https://www.reddit.com/r/nasa/comments/1stjt7m/comment/ohw9g9l/). You can hear the “Copy, moon joy.” expression in context at the start of this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LHUvedAssyE
Much thanks to James for his encouragement to blog “web joy”.
4 conferences across 3 cities in 10 days: * 4/20 W3C AC Meeting (Huangzhou) “Challenging how we see the web” future of web browsers panel participant (remotely from San Francisco, on the evening of 2026-04-19) * 4/21-23 Mozilla Leadership Summit (Boston) * 4/25-26 IndieWebCamp Düsseldorf * 4/27-28 beyond tellerand Düsseldorf
Somehow squeezed in a few personal events too: * 4/20 Boston Marathon cheering — managed to hike a half marathon myself that day! * 4/26 Balu Brigada concert in Cologne * 4/29 Cologne Cathedral tower climb
In total:
7 events across 4 cities in 12 days including travel time.
Saw, heard, spoke/designed/coded with so many inspiring people. So many notes, photos, and a few videos. Overall an incredibly positive (if exhausting) experience. It was highly illuminating contrasting the different sets of people, talks, practices etc., some overlapping, across all the events. An incredibly valuable overview perspective.
@NASA.gov has lots of short Artemis videos on their YouTube channel (@NASA@YouTube.com), however this 10h10m video of the Artemis II lunar flyby appears to be the closest to a continuous long-form recording of the live stream during that period.
After almost 14 minutes of intro footage, this live recording has some amazing moments in context such as when the Integrity crew named the two craters on the moon, the forty minute “Loss of Signal” (LoS) as Integrity went behind the moon, came back out, then into a solar eclipse, and of course all the very efficient (and competent) communications between the astronauts and Mission Control (with video of both).
And quotes like Christina's “We do not leave Earth. We choose it.”
Lots of long durations of silence as well. Fitting for a recording of video from space. Also great for putting on in the background while working. The crew comms with control competency alone is inspiring.
Note: the #NASA and #SpaceflightNow YouTube livestreams I linked to five days ago are now only displaying the message: “This live stream recording is not available.” a different kind of Loss of Signal.
The official NASA live stream (posted previously), has switched to a NASA spokesperson and interviews of folks on the sea/ground as part of splashdown recovery operations.
Filed my 2025 taxes today (electronically). Payments mailed (physically).
Earliest in at least a decade, maybe two.
Took a very conscious and deliberate effort to get here. Prioritizing, cutting or postponing anything non-urgent, iterating and improving systems year over year (especially in coordination with an accountant), collecting clustering materials earlier, and more.
Completing these kinds of "required" tasks/projects sooner feels like it frees up mental (and emotional) bandwidth (not having them occupying daily thoughts) to dream, brainstorm, and make more creative things.
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