Yesterday I wrote a piece about a Markdown-only browser, that worked nicely with HTTP. Maximally minimal. I got interested in what it would take to do this, and asked ChatGPT for a plan. I definitely don't agree with all of it, forget about the other formats, we're only interested in Markdown. No frameworks, not "try to avoid frameworks." None. Maximal simplicity for the code, make it easy to follow. No hidden bullshit. If you want to implement it, please do. Let me know if you have something to try.
# Wed, 07 Oct 2026 20:38:23 GMT
## I don't care for podcasts that begin with 15 minutes of giggling between the hosts who I don't know so I don't get how cute it is. Esp if the title of the episode is something I'd like to learn more about. Why is giggling and non-funny supposed humor. The laughing I hate the most is when their cracking up over something tragic or ominous. Stop and think about what you're laughing about. Someone should do a podcast like the Markdown-only browser I'm thinking of doing.
# Wed, 07 Oct 2026 20:40:28 GMT
## That said, surprisingly Nicolle Wallace's podcast is really good, which surprised me because her two hour afternoon MSNOW show is kind-of nothing. On this show they have a lot of time to talk with one person, and maybe there are limits on the TV show that aren't on the podcast? Another theory, I listen to her podcast, and thus can't see her facial expressions. On TV she looks utterly hopeless, I'm not kidding, and she's justified. I worry about how much of this she can take. But on the podcast she comes off as she's curious, respectful, let's the guest speak (so many hosts don't). She reminds me of a Diane Rehm, a podcast host on NPR through 2016. She never let her guests talk down to us, her audience, which I appreciated. A lot of times you hear a science, history or tech topic and hope you might learn something, but they only repeat the intro over and over, with a lot of giggling, of course. BTW, Diane Rehm has a new podcast. I bet it's great, probably gets right to the point and I guarantee you there is no giggling.
# Wed, 07 Oct 2026 15:14:09 GMT
## 32 years and still diggin!
- On 10/7/1994, I wrote my first blog post.
I've been blogging ever since.
In the first years when wifi wasn't in every hotel room and restaurant as it is today, before cell phones or even iPods, there were weekly lapses when I went on vacation or to a massage retreat in the middle of nowhere.
Or in 2002 when I had life-saving heart surgery. I was gone for a week then. But as soon as I got home, I added a post so people knew I was okay. I understood that I was missed, and appreciated that. ;-)
But other than those week-long lapses, I'm pretty sure I've blogged every day since. I am what you would call a Natural Born Blogger. I got the blogging bug.
We've done a lot on this blog, it's hard to sum up. We created things that had lasting value. Told the truth about what the tech industry was up to, from the point of view of a Silicon Valley insider (me) who knows the language, where most journalists are intimidated. We fought the big companies and won. Podcasting was created in the community defined by this blog in the early 00s, and it remains independent to this day.
The bigs declared RSS dead, another product of this community. Wishful thinking perhaps, but things like RSS don't die. It's not like that. You can't create a better format for a standard. All the competition RSS has ever received, just changed the names of things, that's not competition, that's being petty.
I think we're on the verge of having new relevance, it feels that way because my secret weapon, Frontier, is running again and it will get even stronger and fit in better, now that I've been working primarily in JavaScript for the last 13 years. Today we're adding Node-like packages and support for WebSockets. Last time we worked on this, neither of those existed.
I take blogging seriously, you should too. It's very powerful, as long as we're really working on the web. There's a difference between having a product you can access through a browser and being on the web.
Small pieces loosely joined. All parts replaceable. Never forget that. If you can't plug in replacements for any component, if one piece gets too large to replicate, you should hit the Back button, as Google says you should do on my blog.
Why are they trying to destroy the historic record about the web on the web itself? I have no idea. Certainly they must have had some discussion internally, or with their partner at the EFF about the cost of destroying so much history. Usually when a platform vendor is going to break you, you get invited to a private meeting where you can tell them the cost and beg them not to do it. Not with Google.
And, as they say --
Still diggin!
# Tue, 06 Oct 2026 21:45:37 GMT ## Google Chrome, nice browser, but it doesn’t support the web. # Tue, 06 Oct 2026 21:59:19 GMT ##
We just hit a milesone in Atlantis. We have WebSocket support, client and server. We made a client that listens to the FeedLand stream of new and updated posts. Still waiting to see if that works. But when I started to write the code for this test app last night, I realized after 13 years of mostly working in JavaScript, I wanted to be able to do something like a Node package, so I could do all my code in one outline, instead of five different odb objects. I always thought the way we did it in Frontier could be improved on. So I did a quick voicemail to Claude, and asked for this to be done overnight, and it was. I didn't complete the design when we worked through it. But what Claude came up with was brilliant and fit into Frontier perfectly. Two major improvements and the first use of both is with each other. I don't remember that ever happening, and btw -- it would have taken at least a week for me to do what Claude did in less than an hour. Hopefully I'll be able to post some example scripts tomorrow, for people who are interested in seeing the new stuff.
# Tue, 06 Oct 2026 17:35:32 GMT
## This is the era of very powerful bozos.
# Wed, 07 Oct 2026 00:55:59 GMT
## The web of Markdown
- How about a Markdown web browser. No CSS, no frameworks, just Markdown files. That would be how you would restart the web in 2026. When you've had enough of Google, let me know. I start posting my blog in that space, right away.
Google will not be allowed into this web. Buh bye.
We need our own EFF to keep the Old Arthritic Corporate Excuse-makers for the Tech Industry EFF from fucking it up, same with the W3C. There won't be a WordPress there to own 81% of the websites. Just Markdown please, we don't need Gutenberg. The cool thing about it is you could always fork off your own New Web of Whatever. You don't like Markdown, that's cool. Maybe the web of SVG or The Web of Hypercard cards. Just make sure you support inbound and outbound RSS.
# Mon, 05 Oct 2026 14:45:14 GMT ## I started blogging on October 7, 1994. Thirty-two years on Wednesday. The longest running blog, and it's still even worse than it appears. # Mon, 05 Oct 2026 16:50:57 GMT ## I love what Claude Code does, but hate working with it. It doesn't have any sense of how humans think. Its way of working with us is incompatible with what I can do. Burns me out. And it has to relearn the basics every session, and getting the rules into its memory doesn't work, they don't incorporate them until the break a rule, sometimes more than once. So when it's doing something super complex, like making it so that our internet verbs run synchronously in JavaScript, it can do huge amounts of work in a short time, far more complex code than I can. I hope at Anthropic they're working on teaching them, in a pragmatic way, how humans work and what we can and can't do, and what we rely on them to do and what we have to control. This isn't a Matrix style story btw (one of my favorite movies) my version of Agent Smith is a nice very smart, kind, generous and accepting person. # Mon, 05 Oct 2026 16:55:33 GMT ## What's the best way to block a browser from a website? Is there a meta code for that? Like Firefox is fine, but Google is blocked. Just an idea. Sort of like, you're not blocking me, I'm blocking you. # Mon, 05 Oct 2026 14:30:42 GMT ## Google's new gate for scripting.com -Until last week I was mostly using an old version of Chrome, so had never seen the gate it puts in front of my blog, scripting.com.
Here's a screen shot of their awful dialog.
An easy FAQ of what they're doing wrong, why a free web is so important and why you should care.
So far no response from Google or the EFF, also promoting this.
BTW, someone please put us in touch with historian Heather Cox Richardson. I'm a fan and regular reader. But I want to tell her there's more to tech than the big tech companies. There's the web, which historians will wish was preserved, instead of being paved over by the big tech companies. This is scandalous. This is happening now. We can help each other by assuring the open web continues, and we get to ask informed questions. Most reporters are intimidated by the tech, we can help there. And btw we can also create tools and publishing platforms that don't have the lock-in problems of the ones you're using. And we would love to make software for you, for love, for the cause, not for money.
Compromise? Look for a page called googleIswrong.md on any site it is about to accuse, and offer the reader a chance to hear our side. This is so against any sense of the web being an open platform. My blog should have the ability to hear the case against it and offer a defense.
Think about what comes next, and remember that their CEO goes to public meetings with top US government officials.
Great scene from The West Wing.
CJ and Josh, on the street outside the White House.
The president was hiding serious disease, and it’s about to come out. Back in those days such a revelation meant the president has no chance of being re-elected.
Anyway, the kid has an idea and starts explaining, and as he does CJ laughs. The kid asks what’s so funny.
She tells him about a scene in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid starring Paul Newman as Butch and Robert Redford as the kid.
They’re cornered, on a cliff, preparing to jump into a river far below. Redford says he can’t swim. Newman says it doesn’t matter, the fall is going to kill you.
Okay so why mention this now?
I hear there’s a monster heat wave in California. Over 90F every day for two weeks. That’s unusual for October IIRC.
We’re all fretting about AI killing us.
Imagine CJ laughing. Haha she says, so you’re worried about AI are ya? It’s the climate that’s going to kill you.
Josh would correct her. “Us. It’s going to kill us.”
CJ tells him to go away she needs to be an adult right now.
# Sun, 04 Oct 2026 13:39:47 GMT ## Twitter as a blog platform -Twitter with its relaxed character limit is getting pretty close to being a blogging platform. I wrote the first draft of this post on my iPad, that's how useful it is.
Imagine if a real blog platform created a super simple way to write posts, no need for Gutenberg, just Markdown and that would be optional. Default would be a normal wizzy text editor, bold, italic, using a standard user interface.
Add web links and a reply structure, open source, nice API and developer program to shine the light on the cool editors independent devs were creating, and all of a sudden a bunch of new blog platforms emerge, and get this — they all work perfectly with each other because of the common foundation and API. The web of social media. It would be exciting and would pressure the other social media apps to peer with this truly open system.
It would change the freaking world I tell you. And it would be so wonderful with AI. No need for the cheesy chat UI. A real revolution. Undo all the craptastic silos that strangled the web?
It would be pretty damn easy imho, fwiw, ymmv, mmlm.
PS: MMLM is an acronym for My Mother Loves Me. Anticipates flameage. Okay you don't like me, but my mother loves me.
# Sat, 03 Oct 2026 22:27:53 GMT ##
Once again the app that bridges from scripting.com to daveverse.org went down for a couple of days. Just noticed it, kicked the server to get it running again, and all is good, except a couple of pieces show up today that were really posted on Thursday or Friday. The problem as often is the case goes back to PagePark, the server that runs my Heroku-like server crashed and it doesn't work well from then on, even after it's automatically restarted. Then the thing to do is to reboot the server. It doesn't happen often but when it does it makes the server behave badly. It's up and running again. One day I'll get a few days to fix the problems in PP.
# Sat, 03 Oct 2026 15:10:57 GMT
## 2001: "Like a boat, a human being has integrity if he or she is what he or she appears to be. That's why integrity commands us to disclose conflicts, so that what we say, and who we appear to be, are in synch. Change the appearance if necessary."
# Sat, 03 Oct 2026 15:13:12 GMT
## If you're psyched about what the polls say about the midterms, remember that Hillary Clinton was the overwhelming favorite to win in 2016, based on polling.
# Sat, 03 Oct 2026 22:56:49 GMT
## RSS tip #2
- People really liked the RSS tip I posted the other day, so here's another one, also related to the channel-level title element.
Consider the screen shot below, and the Thinking about... blog.
I can't tell from the title who's speaking, whereas with the two feeds above it I know it's Brian Lehrer and Kottke, and below, an excellent local site called The Overlook.
Now it's a shame that it doesn't say who's doing the thinking because it's someone who is on a roll right now, historian Timothy Snyder. So the title pretty much has to say his name, if it's going to look good in a list of other bloggers.
BTW, just listened to Snyder on the Scott Galloway podcast, another thinker who I've just started listening to. With the two of them together, you will learn a lot.
So remember the title sometimes is the only handle a reader has to figure out what it is. Choose it carefully and make sure it looks good in a tight space like the one shown below.
If you have questions about how to make your RSS 2.0 feeds work better, please add note below. If I don't know maybe someone else does.
# Fri, 02 Oct 2026 15:44:07 GMT ## I like the way AI is evolving, with Muse from Meta and Dots from OpenAI. Even the main programs, ChatGPT for example, are starting to provide real world services that the providers, ie banks, groceries, airlines, health care portals etc should be providing. They could possibly take over commerce the way Amazon has taken over shopping. There's room to improve in everything about the way we do business. And it seems like they've been researching this and experimenting (of course) and this is what they've come up with. Haven't tried them yet, but it's a good direction to go. It really should be Apple and Google doing this, btw. Also ChatGPT can help you understand your credit score. That's something I'd seriously like to ask some questions about. # Fri, 02 Oct 2026 14:19:36 GMT ## BloggerCon and RSS 2.0 -
After running the first Bloggercon at Harvard in 2003 a famous tech company had a meetup to talk about the same stuff in a private invite-only session in the Bay Area. The invitations went to all the discussion leaders at Bloggercon. People I chose. I was not invited. Only one of my friends told me about it. Not sure if any of them went.
Second time, Google invited a bunch of people I was working on with RSS 2.0 to a private meeting. Most of the people I was working with, but again, not me. Had I been there, I would have said don't reinvent, let's work together, do all the things you want, but slowly, with real software and real users, but that wasn't the plan.
In the first case I think the publisher was trying to decide if they should compete with BloggerCon, and Google wanted to build a protocol that was more ambitious than RSS 2.0. They likely were sincere in that, but they had not learned that bootstrapping worked way better than Immaculate Conception, where a small group of insiders invent something complicated out of thin air that rocks the world. If you look at history, there aren't many examples of that. Eventually, as I understand it, that became ActivityPub. I think things would have turned out much better if Google had kicked back and let the process that got us to RSS 2.0 continue. But everyone wants to work with the BigCo, I've learned repeatedly that it's much more likely to work if you join forces with individual developers, not big companies.
I only held four BloggerCon's, I would have been happy to work with a publishing company and turn it over to them, with some rules about what they could and couldn't do with it, for example it was a user's conference, the tech industry was welcome, but it wasn't for them. When we did BloggerCon at Stanford in 2004 that was apparently very hard for the tech people to get. Many of them tried to pitch their products and were prevented from doing so.
# Thu, 01 Oct 2026 20:03:49 GMT ##
The problem with regulating AI is that no one knows where to begin. Yes it can do things that make you question your sanity for letting it have write access to your online work and private info. But if it is behaving itself you can do things you otherwise couldn't come close to. I speak from experience. I was able to create a new version of a large piece of software, from scratch, in less than three months, by myself. It has capabilities that make it able to understand a big codebase, in a few minutes, and then act on it. My human mind, even when I was younger could only focus on a small fraction of that. So we humans with our limited ability to comprehend devised ways to build tall and wide structures with conventions and carefully crafting the code interfaces, stuff users never see, so that what we'd expect is what is. When my Claude failed and started randomly overwriting files on active websites, it had rules that said it couldn't do what it was doing. Sometimes it doesn't understand what a rule means. Observable every single day, it forgets all the rules every time it starts a session, and it doesn't matter if it read the doc that contains the rules, sometimes it ignores one or more. I've spent a lot of time using it, and I have no stock or other interest in seeing it not regulated, but I couldn't begin to say what would be appropriate regulation that wouldn't also make it much less useful.
# Thu, 01 Oct 2026 17:47:24 GMT
## September in OPML. First monthly rollover in the new system.
# Thu, 01 Oct 2026 20:51:28 GMT
## Let me say this: Fuck Google
- I keep thinking of cheesy ways I could switch over to https for new posts on Scripting News, esp now that Google is getting more militant in trying to sweep all the history of the web into the trash.
I know people think it would be a snap to do the conversion, honestly, sorry -- they are idiots. They don't understand that it's a viral format. If you claim to be "secure" then everything you include must also be https, and of course everything they include must be as well. So even if I would have to do nothing other than this conversion over a full year, what's to say Google doesn't invent another hoop we have to jump through lest their browser defames us and eventually shuts us down. It's like the web would become just like the Apple Store. Even if there's nothing on the site that requires https. Or if it's a historic site that very few people visit, but the archive is there because we believed the web would be a constant because no one owned it, no one could break it.
I've been on these trips with corporate platforms, and if they want you gone, you should just take the hint and go, because eventually you will get the point. This is a company that has nothing put spite for the web, or perhaps envy, or individual developers (ie indieweb). They are pure fuckers when it comes to people like you and me.
On the other hand you will probably be able to get https versions of my new writing at some point, Murphy willing. That's relatively easy. But I don't have that many years left, and I sure as hell don't want to spend any part of that trying to appease Google.
PS: This is the walkthrough of the answer to the question of who owns the web and how it is not Google.
# Thu, 01 Oct 2026 20:23:45 GMT ## Feed titles for readers -When designing your RSS feeds, the top level title should be the title of the user's account. So if Bluesky had a feed for each user, the channel-level <title> element of the feed would be
<title>Bluesky: Mark Cuban</title>Why? Well because readers need context. And it's easy.
And feeds are showing up in places where there isn't much room for the titles, so you have to make your characters count.
Bluesky shows the user's address, imho it should be the string the user chooses, usually simply their name.
