Who’s more powerful today? Democractically-elected governments or multinational tech companies? Corporate taxation is just one element of a power play that has fundamental impacts on democracy and human rights. I did a live interview on Al Jazeera News today on France pushing forward alone with a new tax on big tech companies.
About a month ago, Aral and I launched Small Technology Foundation. In the frenzied rush to get the site up, and general life chaos that has overwhelmed me since, I’d not managed to write about it until now.
Over the last five years or so, I’ve been sharing links to insightful articles with a critical view of technology. It started as Ind.
Catts is a calmer alt + tab task switcher for elementary OS 6 (Odin). - small-tech/catts
Aral Balkan’s personal web site. Covers small technology as an alternative to big tech and surveillance capitalism, human rights in the digital age (cyborg rights), personhood, and democracy.
Updated June 19th, 2023 Sorry, your browser doesn't support embedded videos. But that doesn’t mean you can’t watch it! You can download Small Is Beautiful #23 directly, and watch it with your favourite video player. Small Is Beautiful (Oct, 2022): What is the Small Web and why do we need it? Today, I want to introduce you to a concept – and a vision for the future of our species in the digital and networked age – that I’ve spoken about for a while but never specifically written about:
I’m presenting the opening keynote at Cultuurconnect’s Inspiration Festival this week.
This is my application to get NLnet funding to work on Domain as part of the User-Operated Internet Fund1 I feel it’s important that such grant applications are made public so everyone has visibility into the process. This will allow us to collectively learn from the experience and perhaps even to improve the process itself. As such, I’ll be making my end of the process as public as possible by not only sharing my original grant application but any subsequent communication I receive during the process.
[Moved to Codeberg] Domain enables people to seamlessly get started with their own place on the Small Web in under a minute. - small-tech/domain
[Moved to Codeberg] Domain enables people to seamlessly get started with their own place on the Small Web in under a minute. - small-tech/domain
A tool for creating Small Web places. Contribute to small-tech/place development by creating an account on GitHub.
A very simple Fish shell plugin that adds an empty line after your prompt and before the output of your command to balance the whitespace around them. - small-tech/gills
Site.js + Vite + Svelte starter template. Contribute to small-tech/site-vite-svelte development by creating an account on GitHub.
Simple Site.js WebSocket RPC (Remote Procedure Call) example - small-tech/site.js-websocket-rpc-example
Domain is a free and open Small Web hosting platform.
A very simple Kitten toy in ~60 lines of code for drawing together on a 20×20 grid.
Drop in replacement for Node HTTPS module that automatically handles TLS certificate provisioning and renewal both at localhost (via Auto Encrypt Localhost) and at hostname (via Auto Encrypt).
Automatically-provisioned TLS certificates for Node.js servers using Let’s Encrypt.
Make command-line apps adhere to your light/dark mode setting.
A zero-dependency, transparent, in-memory, streaming write-on-update JavaScript database for the Small Web that persists to a JavaScript transaction log.
A web development kit that’s small, purrs, and loves you.
Say “hello” to Small Technology Foundation. Today, Laura and I want to introduce you to Small Technology Foundation, where we will be continuing the work we started at Ind.ie five years ago. In those five years, we’ve developed a strong understanding of the problem (surveillance capitalism) and we’ve been iterating on solutions to it. Our work led us to leave the UK, move to Sweden, and finally, last year, to settle in Ireland.
/* Windows can’t even take screenshots properly. Fix the borders. 🤦 */ h2 + p img { outline: 1px solid black; outline-offset: -1px; } Last week, I bought a refurbished 7-year-old ThinkPad 440p1 so I could test Site.js under Windows. Long story short, Windows is still shit2. Plus, it’s now also a cesspit of surveillance3. And, over the weekend, I ended up adding native Windows 10 support4 to Site.
Blogception: a post on VSCodium as it’s being written in VSCodium. I am writing this blog post in VSCodium. What? Is that like VSCode? Yes, it’s basically VSCode minus the corporate bullshit like surveillance and proprietary-licensed binaries. An ode to VSCode VSCode is the best code editor I’ve ever used. It’s actually rather delightful. There, I’ve said it – and I’ve used a lot of editors across 30+ years of programming.
I upgraded an old server from Ubuntu 14.04 LTS to 16.04 LTS today and, when it restarted, I started getting “Read-only file system” errors on the root partition. Ouch! Here’s how I investigated and fixed the issue, including a list of the sites I found that helped me along the way. Am I out of disk space? I wasn’t sure if perhaps the installation had failed and corrupted something because I was out of disk space.
Site.js version 12.9.6 improves the developer experience with live reload support for static pages.
When you change the source code for a dynamic route, your Site.js server automatically reloads.
Auto updates of production servers is a crucial security feature.
A brief write-up of my talk at the EU Parliament last week with embedded videos of my talk and a link to my slides.
Last week, we got a definite “computer says no” from Apple’s “developer support.”
A neat little method for adding some more safety to your JavaScript functions.
Apple will delete your data if you don’t use an app for seven days. This effectively kills offline web apps.
Updated June 19th, 2023 Sorry, your browser doesn't support embedded videos. But that doesn’t mean you can’t watch it! You can download Small Is Beautiful #23 directly, and watch it with your favourite video player. Small Is Beautiful (Oct, 2022): What is the Small Web and why do we need it? Today, I want to introduce you to a concept – and a vision for the future of our species in the digital and networked age – that I’ve spoken about for a while but never specifically written about:
JSDB is an easy-to-use, in-memory JavaScript database for Small Web that persists to a JavaScript transaction log.
A basic example to show how HMR works in Snowpack
I’m porting JSDB to EcmaScript Modules (ESM) and one of the issues I had to look into was module cache invalidation. JSDB is my little in-memory native JavaScript Database that writes JavaScript operations to append-only JavaScript logs that have UMD headers. And it loads in these tables either via a dynamic require() call, or, for very large tables, by streaming them in and evaluating them line by line1. When a table is loaded in, it is stored in the require cache.
Some syntactic sugar for quickly getting started with Node.js starter templates.
This template makes it easy to start using vite and svelte in your Site.js sites.
How to use the load() handler and the context property to flow data from layouts to pages in SvelteKit.
These corporations will employ you for as long as they can launder their reputations by using your legitimacy. And when you become too problematic, they will spit you right out again.
Going forward, I will no longer be checking Twitter or responding on it … I plan to concentrate as much of my time and energy as possible on building the Small Web.
Download the video. A live demonstration from today’s S’update. Transcript) Clean audio = clean USB power You can connect the headphone out of a Blue Yeti microphone into the mic in of a Sony a6400 camera but the quality of the audio you get will depend on how clean the USB source powering your Blue Yeti is. In order to get analog audio into your camera from a Blue Yeti, you need to plug the Blue Yeti into a computer1 via USB and into your camera via an auxiliary cable.
Fish is an intelligent shell with beautiful defaults.
Documenting it here in hopes it might help somebody else (e.g., future me) ;)
Learn how to apply a chroma key that maintains transparencies/soft edges without colour spill using ImageMagick.
Comet is a distraction-free Git commit message editor with spell-check, first line character limit warnings, and emoji support.
Our tracker blocker for iOS and macOS, Better, was poisoned by a rotten apple and died.
The Universal Declaration of Cyborg Rights states that we extend our selves using digital and networked technologies and that this extended self must be protected under human rights law. As the primary means by which we extend ourselves today are through our everyday personal devices – computers, mobile phones, the so-called “Internet of Things” and “smart” homes, cars, etc. – we must enshrine the human rights that pertain to our extended selves within concrete laws that protect personhood in the digital network age.
The web0 manifesto is a short and sweet middle finger to web3.
NodeKit gets its own command and instant server start times.
Bound functions provide a way to unit test EcmaScript Modules that have private configuration.
I just released a little tool called Lipstick on a Pig that helps keep the visual appearance of supported command-line applications in sync with the current light/dark mode setting (colour scheme) of your system in GNOME. But why is this tool even necessary to begin with? Let’s start at the beginning… Getting to GNOME you The GNOME display environment1, since version 42, implements support for light and dark appearance styles (aka colour schemes).
Privileged ports were a security feature in the days of dumb terminals, in the age of the World Wide Web, they are a security vulnerability.
Questions on Domain from NLnet and our answers as part of the NLnet grant application for Domain.
Every time I post something that gets lots of engagement, I essentially end up carrying out a denial of service attack on myself. What does this say about the design of Mastodon and ActivityPub and the future of the fediverse?
Here’s a little script I hacked together to install the Language Servers I use for web development in Helix Editor. Please feel free to adapt and use.
Sorry, your browser doesn't support embedded videos. But that doesn’t mean you can’t watch it! You can download Small Is Beautiful #27 directly, and watch it with your favourite video player. Small Is Beautiful (Feb, 2023): End-to-end encrypted Kitten Chat (an example peer-to-peer Small Web app using Kitten. Follow the tutorial to build it yourself from scratch or browse the source code). In this hour-and-a-half long Small is Beautiful live stream recording, I show you how WebSockets, project-specific secrets, and authenticated routes work in Kitten and migrate a centralised WebSocket chat application to an end-to-end-encrypted peer-to-peer Small Web chat application in Kitten.
Join me as I take you through building Draw Together – a little collaborative drawing toy I made and released over the weekend – from scratch.
Sorry, your browser doesn't support embedded videos. But that doesn’t mean you can’t watch it! You can download the video and watch it with your favourite video player. Yours truly demonstrating the new Interactive Shell (REPL), Multi-page Settings, and backup and restore (data portability) features. Links Kitten interactive shell (REPL) tutorial Streaming HTML tutorial Domain Like this? Fund us! Small Technology Foundation is a tiny, independent not-for-profit.
Another day, another application for funding from the commons for our work on realising the Small Web for the common good.
Download the video and watch it with your favourite video player. Recording1 of the live stream of a computer science colloquium on the Small Web I presented at the University of Groningen on June 11th, 2024. (Transcript) Update: I was going back and forth between calling the personal social network Place and Yarn. In the talk, I refer to it as Yarn. As I’ve been working more on it, I’ve reverted to its original name, Place.
Interactive embed (play with it) Kitten Kawaii is a Kitten port of React Kawaii by Miuki Miu (Elizabet Oliveira) that you can play with in the interactive embed above (also try it out in its own window/tab so you can see its responsiveness and URL-based state). I stumbled on Muiki Miu’s (Elizabet Oliveira’s) adorable React Kawaii web site and wanted to use one of the characters in my Kitten app.
Notes from “Careless People: A story of where I used to work: Power. Greed. Madness.” by Sarah-Wynn Williams
Aral Balkan’s personal web site. Covers small technology as an alternative to big tech and surveillance capitalism, human rights in the digital age (cyborg rights), personhood, and democracy.
Chat room Status: Offline Nickname: Message: Send Messages // Shorthand for basic DOM lookup via CSS selectors. const element = document.querySelector.bind(document) // Display a message in the messages list and ensure // that the list always shows the latest messages. function finalVersionDisplayMessage (message) { const nickname = `${message.nickname}:` const text = message.text const messageHTML = `${nickname} ${text}` // Update the message list. const messageList = element('#final-version-messages') messageList.
Yesterday’s Small is Beautiful video is now up on our site with transcript, captions and links to all the cool sites we mentioned!
New blocking rules! On 25th May 2021, I blocked three blocker blockers, fixed five sites and blocked four new trackers. In the battle of me vs blocker blockers, I have once again emerged victorious (x4) 💪