Video Games’ Hottest New Platform is an Old One
Web-based video games are experiencing an unexpected revival as the broader $189 billion industry stagnates. Sales for browser-based titles like GeoGuessr and chess were expected to triple from 2021 to 2028, reaching $3.09 billion, according to Google and Kantar. Playgama hosted more than 15,000 new web games in the first half of 2025, exceeding the combined total from 2021 throug … ⌘ Read more

@aelaraji@aelaraji.com yeah, it looks tedious because it is. LOL. I can twt no matter where I am because a) with Yarn is as easy as opening a web browser, and b) with jenny is as easy at SSHing to my VPS. But, the keyword is fun. That’s what matters!

@lyse@lyse.isobeef.org Hm, I couldn’t trick yt-dlp into downloading the correct format. Works in the browser, though. 😅

@kat@yarn.girlonthemoon.xyz I reckon the original <details> need to have the open attribute set in order to expand it, so I cannot just define some custom CSS rules to do that in my browser.

But in regards to twtxt, my client won’t hide anything in that realm anyway. :-) It’s just more noise.

How about no longer using in-browser Git repo viewers? Make the AI bots do the work and actually clone the repo.

This probably means that I can no longer host my own website. I don’t want to deploy something like Anubis, because that ruins the whole thing: I want it to be accessible from ancient browsers, like OS/2 or Windows 3.11.

I’ll keep an eye on it for a while. Maybe try to block some IPs.

Sooner or later, I’ll take the website down and shift everything to Gopher.

@movq@www.uninformativ.de According to this screenshot, KDE still shows good old application icons: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/94/KDE_Plasma_5.21_Breeze_Twilight_screenshot.png

And GNOME used to have them, too: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9f/Gnome-2-22_%284%29.png

I like the looks of your window manager. That’s using Wayland, right? The only thing on this screenshot to critique is all that wasted space of the windows not making use of the full screen!!!1 At least the file browser. 8-)

This drives me nuts when my workmates share their screens. I really don’t get it how people can work like that. You can’t even read the whole line in the IDE or log viewer with all the expanded side bars. And then there’s 200 pixels on the left and another 300 pixels on the right where the desktop wallpaper shows. Gnaa! There’s the other extreme end when somebody shares their ultra wide screen and I just have a “regularish” 16:10 monitor and don’t see shit, because it’s resized way too tiny to fit my width. Good times. :-D

Sorry for going off on a tangent here. :-) Back to your WM: It has the right mix of being subtle and still similar to motif. Probably close to the older Windowses. My memory doesn’t serve me well, but I think they actually got it fairly good in my opinion. Your purple active window title looks killer. It just fits so well. This brown one (https://www.uninformativ.de/blog/postings/2025-07-22/0/leafpads.png) gives me also classic vibes. Awww. We ran some similar brownish color scheme (don’t recall its name) on Win95 or Win98 for some time on the family computer. I remember other people visting us not liking these colors. :-D

@lyse@lyse.isobeef.org Hm, I don’t think so, the requested page was a Linux-specific post. 🤔 I sometimes wonder if privacy-oriented browsers might do this on purpose, to create garbage data? 🤔 No idea.

Looks like here’s something wrong with Markdown parsing. 🤔 The original twt looks like this:

>This extension was turned off because it is no longer supported

Thanks Google.
This browser was uninstalled because it absolutely sucks!

So only the first line should be a quote.

@lyse@lyse.isobeef.org which browser do you use? Chrome, Edge, and Firefox, under Ubuntu, all show it fine.

@movq@www.uninformativ.de This one is too bleeding edge for me, not even my browser can render it.

FFS! Can’t I just get results, accurate no BS results? No erroneous/misleading AI-Slop of a summary I’ve never asked for ? I get it, there is plenty of people who LOooove (if not worship) that shit, Good for them! But at least make it opt-in or add in some kind of “Do Not Slop” browser option (as if the “Do Not Track” one made a difference, but I digress). Shit’s only going down-hill from here, I might as well as just spin up my own Searx instance and call it a day.

@movq@www.uninformativ.de this is mind boggling. How come it looks just fine under Mosaic, and not under IE3? Man, am I glad I don’t use a Microsoft browser!

My website is compatible with many old browsers, but Internet Explorer 3, uhm, not so much.

https://movq.de/v/d038528c00/s.png

Also spent the morning continuing to think about a new design for EdgeGuard’s WAF. I’m basically going to build an entirely new pluggable WAF that will be designed to only consider Rate Limiting, IP/ASN-based filtering, JavaScript challenge handling, Basic behavioral analysis and Anomaly detection.

The only part of this design I’m not 100% sure about is the Javascript-based challenge handling? 🤔 I’m also considering making this into a “proof of work” requirement too, but I also don’t want to falsely block folks that a) turn Javascript™ off or b) Use a browser like links, elinks or lynx for example.

Hmmm 🧐

And on a similar note, cross-post from Mastodon:

What I love about HTML and HTTP is that it can degrade rather gracefully on old browsers.

My website isn’t spectacular but I don’t think it looks horrible, either. And it’s still usable just fine all the way down to WfW 3.11:

• Some blog post in various browsers
  
• Git repo viewer (stagit)
  
• Older photos of WfW 3.11
  

It’s not perfect, but it’s usable. And that makes me happy. Almost 30 years of compatibilty.

The biggest sacrifice is probably that I don’t enforce TLS and that HTTP 1.0 has no Host: header, so no vhosts (or rather, everything must come from the default vhost). (Yes, some old browsers send Host:, even though they predate HTTP 1.1. Netscape does, but not IBM WebExplorer, for example.)

(On the other hand, it might completely suck on modern mobile devices. Dunno, I barely use those. 🤪)

Hahaha! And now they show tiny! I had to reload the page. So, I see the problem on iOS and macOS Safari too. I have no other browser to test with, I exclusively use Safari.

@prologic@twtxt.net, from IRC:

1. Saving preferences is failing. Specifically trying to save “Open Links” on the same window. For sure it isn’t happening. Check errors on browser’s console.
   
2. Search results pagination is broken. Search for “twtxt.net” and see it. Also, picking oldest/newest makes no difference on that search query.

Can you confirm the fix temporarily in browser before I make the CSS change? I’m rubbish at CSS 🤣

@lyse@lyse.isobeef.org @prologic@twtxt.net 😆 There was something weird going on with my #Timeline instance, the text input box was visible even though I was logged out and I was able to twt from it … It has to do with cache because it wouldn’t disappear unless I whip my website’s cache from the browser.

Poke @sorenpeter@darch.dk and @eapl.me@eapl.me I have no Idea how to reproduce this.

I tried using Firefox Focus as my default browser for a while but it was to extreme. It’s still the only one on my home screen. 50-60 is sort of my intent, but then it keeps being “just one more…”.

@lyse@lyse.isobeef.org yep, I gave it a spin locally! I freaking love the cute logo and the UI is fiiiine 👌 my TUI browsers love it just as much …

Image

@eapl.me@eapl.me why not https://domain.com/.well-known/twtxt/:domain/:user ?

the business card test is this can you write it on your business card and have someone you give it to be able to figure it out without added context?

• phone number: yes because everyone knows what a phone number is.
  
• email address: yes, everyone knows an email and their aol or prodigy will let them email.
  
• twitter/x/insta/pintrest handle: no, whats a twitter? do i need to sign up?
  
• domain name: yes its simple and you just type it in a browser right?
  
• twtxt url: kinda? its a bit long and is that a forward slash? or a backward slash?

One benefit with bluesky is your username is also a website. And not a clunky URL with slashes and such. I wish twtxt adopted that. I have advocated for webfinger to for twtxt to let us do something like it with usernames. Nostr has something like it

By default the bsky.social urls all redirect to their feeds like: hmpxvt.bsky.social
Many custom urls will redirect to some kind of linktree or just their feed cwebonline.com or la.bonne.petite.sour.is or if you are a major outlet just to your web presence like https://theonion.com‬ or https://netflix.com

Its just good SEO practice

Do all nostr addresses take you to the person if typed into a browser? That is the secret sauce.
No having to go to some random page first. no accounts. no apps to install. just direct to the person.

Reading about browser security measures and getting sad we don’t live in a world where cross-site scripting is a feature instead of a bug.

@aelaraji@aelaraji.com Yep seems alright! Really fast too. I’m still using my main Firefox in general cos.. well it’s set up so much and it’s hardened, profile running in RAM, all that crazy stuff that got it working the way I want 😂

But keeping a good eye on Zen Browser’s progress.

Interesting.. QUIC isn’t very quick over fast internet.

QUIC is expected to be a game-changer in improving web application performance. In this paper, we conduct a systematic examination of QUIC’s performance over high-speed networks. We find that over fast Internet, the UDP+QUIC+HTTP/3 stack suffers a data rate reduction of up to 45.2% compared to the TCP+TLS+HTTP/2 counterpart. Moreover, the performance gap between QUIC and HTTP/2 grows as the underlying bandwidth increases. We observe this issue on lightweight data transfer clients and major web browsers (Chrome, Edge, Firefox, Opera), on different hosts (desktop, mobile), and over diverse networks (wired broadband, cellular). It affects not only file transfers, but also various applications such as video streaming (up to 9.8% video bitrate reduction) and web browsing. Through rigorous packet trace analysis and kernel- and user-space profiling, we identify the root cause to be high receiver-side processing overhead, in particular, excessive data packets and QUIC’s user-space ACKs. We make concrete recommendations for mitigating the observed performance issues.

https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3589334.3645323

@prologic@twtxt.net My pod, which is running the same commit you are, does not return an error like that. It returns the same HTML it always has. Try it. I nuked my cache before restarting.

Edit: Oh wait, the plot thickens. I do get an error if I use curl or if I use a web browser that isn’t logged in. That’s good!

@prologic@twtxt.net This does not seem to fix the problem for me, or I’ve done something wrong. I did the following:

1. Pull the latest version from git (I have commit 7ad848, same as on twtxt.net I believe).
   
2. make build and make install
   
3. Restart yarnd
   
4. Refresh cache in Poderator Settings
   

Yet I still see these bogus /external things on my pod when I hit URLs like the one I sent you recently. When I hit such a URL with curl I think it’s giving an error? But in a web browser, the (buggy) response is the same as it was before I updated.

So, this problem is not fixed for me.

@prologic@twtxt.net I believe you are not seeing the problem I am describing.

Hit this URL in your web browser:

https://twtxt.net/external?nick=lovetocode999&uri=https://socialmphl.com/story19510368/doujin

That’s your pod. I assume you don’t have a user named lovetocode999 on your pod. Yet that URL returns HTTP status 200, and generates HTML, complete with a link to https://socialmphl.com/story19510368/doujin, which is not a twtxt feed (that’s where the twtxt.txt link goes if you click it). That link could be to anything, including porn, criminal stuff, etc, and it will appear to be coming from your twtxt.net domain.

What I am saying is that this is a bug. If there is no user lovetocode999 on the pod, hitting this URL should not return HTTP 200 status, and it should definitely not be generating valid HTML with links in it.

Edit: Oops, I misunderstood the purpose of this /external endpoint. Still, since the uri is not a yarn pod, let alone one with a user named lovetocode999 on it, I stand by the belief that URLs like this should be be generating valid HTML with links to unknown sites. Shouldn’t it be possible to construct a valid target URL from the nick and uri instead of using the pod’s /external endpoint?

HTTP/2 differs from 1.x by becoming a binary protocol, it also multiplexes multiple channels over the same connection and has the ability to prefetch related content to the browser to lower the perceived latency.

HTTP/3 moves the binary protocol from HTTP/2 over to QUIC which is based on UDP instead of TCP. This makes it better suited to mobile or unstable networks where handling of transmission errors can be handled at a higher level.

@lyse@lyse.isobeef.org wow on my browser it shows up as all stars! •••••••

After that talk about the Ladybird browser the other day, I see this article just pop up:

https://devclass.com/2024/07/03/ladybird-web-browser-project-now-funded-by-github-co-founder-promises-no-code-from-other-browsers/

Seems it’s gaining some recognition and support, I hope it can gain traction as we sure as anything need some genuine alternatives.

Google Chrome will have Gemini LLM built into the browser.

@prologic@twtxt.net It’s weird though cos I could reproduce it on any of my browsers on either my laptop or phone 🤔

@prologic@twtxt.net Firefox but it happens on Brave and Chromium on my laptop, or any browser (Brave, Chromium, Vanadium) I try on my Android phone.

@movq@www.uninformativ.de time to write your own browser? Or at least a fork maintained outside the EU?

@stigatle@yarn.stigatle.no @prologic@twtxt.net @eldersnake@we.loveprivacy.club I love VR too, and I wonder a lot whether it can help people with accessibility challenges, like low vision.

But Meta’s approach from the beginning almost seemed like a joke? My first thought was “are they trolling us?” There’s open source metaverse software like Vircadia that looks better than Meta’s demos (avatars have legs in Vircadia, ffs) and can already do virtual co-working. Vircadia developers hold their meetings within Vircadia, and there are virtual whiteboards and walls where you can run video feeds, calendars and web browsers. What is Meta spending all that money doing, if their visuals look so weak, and their co-working affordances aren’t there?

On top of that, Meta didn’t seem to put any kind of effort into moderating the content. There are already stories of bad things happening in Horizon Worlds, like gangs forming and harassing people off of it. Imagine what that’d look like if 1 billion people were using it the way Meta says they want.

Then, there are plenty of technical challenges left, like people feeling motion sickness or disoriented after using a headset for a long period of time. I haven’t heard announcements from Meta that they’re working on these or have made any advances in these.

All around, it never sounded serious to me, despite how much money Meta seems to be throwing at it. For something with so much promise, and so many obvious challenges to attack first that Meta seems to be ignoring, what are they even doing?

@thecanine@twtxt.net wow this is horrifying. What happened to Opera? It used to be my favorite browser but now they’re like that one cousin who started getting into drugs, and then got in trouble with the law, and then before you know it they’re scamming old ladies out of their pension money.

@mckinley@twtxt.net i use pass along with the android and browser-pass clients. it is very good and keeping in sync is pretty simple.

FIDO 2 isn’t too difficult. modern-ish browsers will support it natively now so the JS required is quite minimal.

That’s the effect I’m after, but I want it not on my main browser. Turns out the Brave mobile app does this.

I want a browser for iOS that’s basically Mobile Safari but without JavaScript (or at least an easy toggle). Does such a thing exist?

What if i told you for a browser it doesn’t matter what the extension is.. it will use the file magic mime value instead.

I believe the selling point is to “mobile optimize” the page and send it to the browser faster than over mobile network direct.. But yes you are giving them the keys to your kingdom.

I remember similar things back in dialup days where your ISP would proxy things to you and supercompress the images.

@fastidious@arrakis.netbros.com the things Gemini has going for it are mutual TLS and lack of JavaScript. Which makes for a secure albeit boring experience (much like gopher). The fake markdown is a bit of a drag.

A render mode for Gemini probably wouldnt be too hard. There are markdown to Gemini libs out there.

With Web3 the whole trust a 3rd party browser ext + high fees + env impact for compute and storage are serious no gos for me.. I have heard one too many horror stories about clicking the wrong link and some script draining your metamask wallet.

Lots of downsides, too, but overall I still find it the most comfortable environment for anything that doesn’t need a web browser. :-)

Is it me, or Gmail’s web interface is going down the drain? Using Safari—my default browser—often takes two, or three clicks to open an email. If it weren’t because its search is amazing, I would never visit its web interface.

@prologic@twtxt.net @jlj@twt.nfld.uk @movq@www.uninformativ.de

 /p/tmp > git clone https://www.uninformativ.de/git/lariza.git                                                                                                    Mon May 24 23:48:18 2021
Cloning into 'lariza'...
 /p/tmp > tree lariza/                                                                                                                                    12.5s  Mon May 24 23:48:32 2021
lariza/
├── BUGS
├── CHANGES
├── LICENSE
├── Makefile
├── PATCHES
├── README
├── browser.c
├── man1
│   ├── lariza.1
│   └── lariza.usage.1
├── user-scripts
│   └── hints.js
└── we_adblock.c

2 directories, 11 files

Are you able to coax your webserver to add the charset to the content type header? Browsers are having a hard time thinking you are sending latin-1

content-type: text/plain; charset=utf-8