Tuesday, August 5, 2025
Massive Ukrainian drone strike targets Russian railway station in Volgograd Oblast — Pokrovsk is the city of my childhood. Now I watch it die — Ukrainian soldier working as Russian ‘mole,’ sending GRU military positions — Zelensky says mercenaries from Asia and Africa fighting for Russia in northeastern Ukraine … and more
https://activitypub.writeworks.uk/2025/08/tuesday-august-5-2025/
Some goals for my website:
1. I want to get onto a webring somehow. Or maybe create one. Would anyone be keen? I don't know how to do it yet lol
2. Single source of truth / "syndicate to many" set up. So I can post on there and sync it to here.
3. Ability to reply from Mastodon.
Again no idea how to do any of this yet. 
I absolutely hate web services that only offer magic link login through Gmail and don't let me set up my own 2FA. It's surprising how many just take the easy way out and do this.
How to make a responsive navigation menu in HTML and CSS? #development #websites #webdevelopment #webdesign
A Simple Website, by (not on Mastodon or Bluesky):
#writers, #blog aficionados, #web enjoyers, #website browsers: lend me your ears! i need help with a big push to get the word out about #writing for GOOD INTERNET magazine's autumn issue! a digital AND physical magazine that ships all over the world, run & contributed to by volunteers! (
)
in case you're unaware, GOOD INTERNET covers a lot of different aspects of the #SmallWeb: unplugging from the corporate web, fighting #enshittification, migrating from data-harvesting corpo social media, creating your own personal website, using code and website-building as an art form, federation, and creating websites for fun. the aim is to be approachable for beginners and enjoyable for seasoned #indieweb travelers!
you don't have to be a professional #webdev or a #coding smartypants to write about all the good things happening on "this side" of the web. the idea here is to spread the word about and share thoughts, independent web projects, services, methods, sites, meet-ups, and celebrate the non-corporate web together while making it easier for us to partake and unplug from #bigtech.
looking for 1,000- to 4,000-word articles aimed at website owners and hobbyists, digital (and traditional) #artists, #internet culture enthusiasts, #technology nerds, #socialmedia expatriates, & anyone who wants to unplug from the corporate-owned #web.
the deadline is AUGUST 22, 2025
more info here: https://goodinternetmagazine.com/contact/
Mastometrics is gone? https://mastometrics.com
rankedvote.co 
Use ranked choice voting with your friends and family!
NOT a sponsored video, we just think it's a cool tool to learn about RCV 
Btw, did you know that we're trying to bring RCV to elections in IL? RCV gives voters more power and more choice and allows you to vote your true preference without fear of "wasting your vote" or "spoiling the election." Join us at FairVoteIllinois.org/join or click the 
in bio!
So I've decided to join the 90's and do a blog. I have a domain, looking for a host. Cheaper = better, up to a point. Any ideas?
Must haves:
(1) Markdown support
(2) Math typesetting
(3) Good tagging
(4) RSS support (multiple RSS feeds by tag preferred)
I've tried static sites and I've not gotten very far.
I'm open to static - that IS probably best for my needs - but DIY static hasn't worked.
Boosts for visibility appreciated.
Tech support scammers inject malicious phone numbers into big-name websites - Tech support scammers have devised a method to inject their ... - https://arstechnica.com/security/2025/06/tech-support-scammers-inject-malicious-phone-numbers-into-big-name-websites/ #techsupportscams #googleads #security #websites #biz&it
my neocities redesign is now LIVE!!!
completely new layout with light/dark mode, a "pause gifs" buttton, and rewritten from the ground up. take a look around, and sign my guestbook before you go 
@Gynux
Nope. No static IP. That's a bit complicated for me. Just a regular WordPress site setup with my domain and a non-WP webhost.
So many login attempts now. Used to be just a couple every few weeks. It's become almost daily now and quite a few in 1 day.
I do have a WP #plugin installed #LimitLoginAttempts that blocks them for X number of hours before they can try again. I take the IP addresses from the email notifications and add them to the Deny list.
Tier list of websites:
without javascript 
,
with simple javascript 
,
with need of DOM Storage 
,
with need of cookies 
,
with trackers 
(adiós) 
.
Thanks for attention.
Just Fucking Use React, by @omercan.io and @burakcan.me:
Product designers, web designers, and anyone who makes or uses web software—I think that’s all of us—should read Josh’s letter on why the Arc browser failed and the idea driving Dia, its newer and simpler-to-use replacement.
https://browsercompany.substack.com/p/letter-to-arc-members-2025?r=ejkct&utm_medium=ios&triedRedirect=true #ai #browser #saas #ProductDesign #websites #arc #dia
Can you meaningfully measure how environmentally friendly a website is?
Think global; act local. That's the mantra, right? I can't stop coal plants belching out suffocating pollutants, but can I ensure my website is as environmentally friendly as possible?
There are several services which claim to be able to detect just how lean, green, and clean your website is. But, in my opinion, they're all a bit inadequate.
WebsiteCarbon
The WebsiteCarbon.com service gives me this very pleasing report
But what does that actually mean? There's an almost content-free description of their rating system. It boils down to how large your web pages are and whether your data centre runs on green energy.
I specifically chose Krystal as my host because of their green energy credentials. So it got that right.
WebsiteCarbon seems to just be an advertising pitch for their paid-for auditing services:
You can get a comprehensive view of a website’s emissions and potential improvements by carrying out a Website Carbon Audit.
Let's try another service.
EcoGrader
EcoGrader gives me a lower score but provides a lot more detail about why.
They also give tips on how I can improve things.
Do you notice anything about those tips? They're basically the same as Core Web Vitals! A set of useful, if generic, tips to optimise your website.
Others
There are several other services which claim to measure your site's eco-credentials. But, as far as I can tell, they're all doing the same thing; reskinning Core Web Vitals or similar products.
Some, like, Blacklight are promoted on the claim that excessive tracking scripts are an environmental disaster. In the end, the message is the same - clean up your website to make it faster more efficient.
What Does This Mean?
The energy efficiency of modern codecs is often asymmetric. It might be energy intensive to encode a movie - but that's paid back a thousand-fold by having to store and stream less data and by the efficiency of the decode process at the user's end.
If you operating at planetary scale then, yes, a small saving affecting a billion users will have a huge impact. If you're optimising a single hero image on your recipe blog, probably not so much.
Much like the discredited idea that by switching off your "standby" devices you can save £££, most of these website changes are marginal at best.
Yes, we should strive for svelte and performant websites - as much for usability as for environmentalism. It makes ecological sense to choose a hosting provider who is at least somewhat responsible in their energy usage - as much for cost as for anything else.
If these websites help convince your boss that you can remove horrific amounts of JS, upgrade images to WebP, and set sensible caching policies - great! Sell them the shiny accreditation badge while you go about making the site better.
Finally, a word of caution to anyone implicitly trusting these services - there's no way to know what's going on in the background of a website. An ultra efficient looking website served from a green data-centre, might be spinning up a dozen LLMs just to churn out the page content. A slow website might be solar powered. All those ultra-compressed images might be adverts for fossil fuels.
And every time you leave a comment on my blog, I shoot a panda.
