It's 2026, and the headphone jack is NOT obsolete!
https://hisvirusness.com/im-staying-wired
#opinion #post #smallweb #indieweb #wired #headphones #audio
Recapping the Formula E race in Mexico City
https://jacen.moe/rants/20260110-formula-e-race-review-2026-mexico-city-e-prix/
I've just added a search bar and a new section for minimalist recipe websites to quietportal.com. Feedback welcome! #indieweb #smallweb #rss #blogging #personalweb
A Requiem for My Dignity, Sacrificed at the Altar of AI https://sightlessscribbles.com/posts/20250902/ #Blog #Blogs #Blogging #IndieWeb #NoPaywall
I publish on Medium, even though my opinion about Medium itself is… complicated.
My registration there was motivated by fairly base motives: Medium ranks high in search results, and I hoped that if I dropped a few solid pieces there, I’d gain some momentum and send a bit of traffic back to my actual work. That part still makes sense. Medium is a distribution channel, and I am not too proud to use distribution channels.
But every time I publish, I get the same sinking feeling: my content is getting diluted into an endless flood of "content", much of it clearly generated by AI and pasted in with minimal thought.
I have nothing against AI as a tool. It can be an excellent proofreader. It can help you sanity-check a claim, find a missing link, or summarize background faster. Medium itself even draws a line in its Partner Program rules between AI-assisted work and fully AI-generated writing behind the paywall.
What I *can’t* respect is the mindless conveyor belt approach to publishing. You know the genre:
- "10 bash commands every programmer should know"
- "5 tools that improved my workflow SO MUCH"
- "12 settings you should turn on on your iPhone"
- "15 settings you should turn off on your iPhone"
- "7 projects that ruled 2025"
- "13.2 projects that will rule 2026"
And then a swarm of near-identical variations from hundreds of accounts, boosting and clapping in a tight loop until the whole thing becomes an attention arbitrage market.
Is it fair that thoughtful writing competes with mass-produced listicles? Probably not. But "fair" is a bad metric for systems built around engagement and volume. The system is not trying to reward originality. It’s trying to maximize throughput and retention. If you aim for fairness, you’ll mostly collect frustration.
So here’s the conclusion I’m slowly settling into:
1. Medium is where I *drop* pieces, not where I *build* my archive. My home base needs to be somewhere I control, where the work stays findable and coherent over time.
2. I won’t compete on volume. I’ll compete on specificity. The kind of post that solves a real problem, or makes a real point, will always have a small audience that actually cares.
3. This is also a backup problem, in disguise. If your entire writing life depends on one platform’s feed and incentives, you’re not publishing, you’re renting attention.
If you’re on Medium (or any large platform) too, what are you optimizing for? Search reach? Community? Monetization? Habit?
And if the answer is "because it’s where people are", at what point does that become "because leaving is too costly"?
#Medium #TechWriting #Writing #Publishing #AI #ContentQuality #SEO #IndieWeb #TechCulture #ByernNotes
Welcome to this week’s The Programmer’s Fulcrum.
It’s your weekly review of the essential news in the Open Media Network and Fediverse development communities with a focus on devastating big tech via Techno Anarchism. We aim to provide actionable content you can use to destroy Techno Feudalism each week.
IMHO, the best way to do that is to use tools from the Techno Anarchist Manifesto to […]
Resources for the Personal Web: A Follow-Up Guide · brennan.day
"We must find moments of joy in the horror of our present. Joy is not a prize for getting through it all—joy is a tool that enables us to get through the horror. Our joy is an act of resistance.
The independent web is already here, quietly thriving while Big Tech implodes under its own extractive weight. All you have to do is join it."
https://brennan.day/resources-for-the-personal-web-a-follow-up-guide/
#indieweb #web #webdev
If there’s one thing that I’ve learned, and everyone here can probably attest, is that having thousands of followers on social media does not translate to meaningful engagement. You end up engaging with the same few dozen people mostly, which is fine.
So, the fact that I’ve had 60 people sign up for email alerts on my new website is huge. That includes many of you. Thank you. Please be encouraged to leave comments and engage with others.
Micropub popup zoom meeting on 31 January 2025. Micropub is a standard to define tools to enable posting to our own websites (versus silos!) https://events.indieweb.org/2026/01/micropub-HoibP09v7PiS #IndieWeb #Micropub
Next 6pm Eastern US time #Indieweb Homebrew Website Club will be on Wednesday. https://events.indieweb.org/2026/01/homebrew-website-club-eastern-gzQxUYO9GCB8 All are welcome to come commiserate and exult in the websites and web-like things.
Writing First, Tooling Second: https://susam.net/writing-first-tooling-second.html
It's the #DailyBlogroll with @inventoryfull.bsky.social@bsky.brid.gy, @scopique.bsky.social@bsky.brid.gy, @scripting.com@bsky.brid.gy, @tofutush.bsky.social@bsky.brid.gy, @anarchaeopteryx.bsky.social@bsky.brid.gy, @eblong.com@bsky.brid.gy, @warnercrocker.bsky.social@bsky.brid.gy, @sypster.bsky.social@bsky.brid.gy, @axxuy.xyz@bsky.brid.gy and more!
westkarana.xyz
#WoWClassic #BaldursGate3 #ARCRaiders #IndieWeb
It's #DailyBlogroll for Saturday, January 10! Stories by Bhagpuss, @scopique, @davew, Tofutush, @anarchaeopteryx, @zarfeblong, @WarnerCrocker, Syp, @axxuy, @Joar and more!
#WoWClassic #BaldursGate3 #ARCRaiders #IndieWeb
Some will consider it pathetic, but 16 scifi books in 15 months represents an intense period of reading for me, more stressful than I would like to admit.
My write-up represents a new start to my online presence, and is my introduction to the Indieweb (please be gentle), and the blog will develop out from this.
https://khleedril.org/blog/2025-12-31--cleared-a-tbr-pile.html
#scifi #reading #indieweb #bookblog @books @bookstodon
Aside from releases and videos, I have been known to include archives dedicated to the old MTV logo and post links to photographs of abandoned Little Chefs in my newsletter. You can follow along if you like weird stuff like that. 📸
https://robertafidora.com/mailing-list
#BeYourOwnPlatform #MailingList #Newsletter #Blogs #Weird #Curiosities #FediMusic #MTV #Email #IndieWeb #Music #Musicians
Code Sketching
Exploring some ideas for how to create and publish code sketches for Lzon.
Daily Grateful Series: Dream Trawler
Today I’m grateful for Dream Trawler, a card from the game Magic the Gathering.
I'm looking for any feedback - good or bad - on a website I've put together to serve as a doorway to the small web for anyone who feels a bit trapped by infinite scroll. Social media has evolved, but bookmarks have kind of stayed the same. Hopefully this will close that gap for some, by helping people stay connected with their favourite self-hosted creators. Link: quietportal.com #indieweb #smallweb #rss #blogging #personalweb
Host your own webmention receiver | Brain Baking
"Yesterday’s “Webmentions Beyond Webmention.io” IndieWeb event (see notes) exposed a problem: many bloggers exploring the IndieWeb and Webmention world simply make use of webmention.io, a hosted solution that handles receiving mentions, enabling you to treat the whole system as a black box. Aaron wondered: “why are so many people using webmention.io?” - and the answer is quite obvious: because it’s easy. Just add <link rel="webmention href="https://webmention.io/something"> to your HTML header..."
https://brainbaking.com/post/2021/05/beyond-webmention-io/
#indieweb #webdev #webmentions
aaronpk/indielogin.com: Sign in with your domain name
"IndieLogin enables users to sign in with their domain name by linking their domain name to existing authentication providers."
https://github.com/aaronpk/IndieLogin.com
#indieweb #webdev