If you watched Rich Harris’s SvelteKit preview, you were probably swooning over the state-maintaining source updates he demoes in his talk. These are thanks to Snowpack’s support for hot module replacement via esm-hmr. In this short post, I want to explain the concept from scratch using Snowpack...

There’s some exciting work being done with projects like SvelteKit to reduce complexity and improve the developer experience when building web applications. At the heart of these efforts are basically three core elements: A front-end framework like Svelte or Vue. Native browser support for...

Who else remembers printing out code on a dot matrix printer? Ah, those were the days... (Image courtesy Arnold Reinhold.) At the end of the week, I added the following regular expressions to JavaScript Database (JSDB), to sanitise queries: Disallow list. this.query this.query...

Yesterday, I released version 1.0 of JavaScript Database (JSDB), a new database for Node.js optimised for use with Small Web sites and apps. It does things a little differently to other databases. It’s an in-memory JavaScript database that persists to an append-only transaction log. And it’s all...

Code? Data? Data? Code? Update: This is now a thing and it’s not called WhatDB but JavaScript Database (JSDB). Read more about it in my Introducing JSDB post. This is a little idea I’m throwing around for WhatDB, the transparent in-memory JavaScript database for local server data that I...

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: The Small Web. To understand what the Small Web is, let’s compare it to the Big Web. In other words,...

A sneak peek at hosting a web site on a PinePhone using Site.js 14.2.0 Alpha. This event has now ended. You can watch the recording above. #vimeo padding:56.25% 0 0 0; media only screen and (max-width: 512px) #vimeo padding:100% 0 0 0; margin-top: -12.5%; margin-bottom...

No, we will not be teaching people to conjure lightbulbs from iPads. Laura and I will be mentoring teams developing civil society applications at the Eastern Partnership Civil Society Online Hackathon. The event kicks off today at 2PM Irish time with the introductory session. During the...

Zoom is malware... if you have to run it, run it in its own prison. Update (8 Jul, 2020): I ended up doing my talk over our Vimeo Live account instead. You can watch the edited recording on our web site. We gave the folks in the Zoom meeting a link to my talk and they watched it there....

Contact Tracing is all fun and games and opt-in... until it is not. I was on Al Jazeera Live today and spoke about why Apple and Google teaming up to offer a Contact Tracing Framework from iOS and Android devices is worrying to say the least. Quick take-aways: These two US companies, between...

The hard-won civil liberties we hand over today out of fear will not be easy to regain, if we do regain them at all. I was on Al Jazeera Live today and spoke about how we must remain vigilant in the face of surveillance capitalists and governments that want to use the COVID-19 pandemic as an...

Apple just threw the baby out with the bathwater by killing offline web apps (purportedly to protect your privacy). Blocking third-party cookies, good. Killing offline web apps, bad. On the face of it, WebKit’s announcement yesterday titled Full Third-Party Cookie Blocking and More...

Missing arguments are not fun. I’ve been working on Auto Encrypt to use in Site.js for the past few weeks and it’s at the point now where I’m going through the codebase to increase coverage and improve quality. As part of that process, a few moments ago, I had an idea about implementing...

I will be presenting in Antwerp on Thursday. It will look something like this. Photo: Gregor Fischer. Links The conference web site An article on my involvement (in Dutch). About Cultuurconnect (in English).

It’s going to work out in the end. TL; DR: Apple have been in touch and offered us a way to migrate to our new not-for-profit without impacting the experience of existing Better Blocker customers. At the start of this month, Laura and I asked Apple for some help to migrate our Apple...

Apple: Computer says... blub-blub-blub’ Last time on Dances With Drones, Apple had accepted the iOS version of Better Blocker but rejected the macOS one because of invalid app metadata even though both apps had the same metadata. In response to my asking for some consistency (either...

Apple: Computer says... maybe?’ Yesterday, I wrote about how Apple’s refusal to update a couple of fields in their database has impacted the future of Better Blocker, the tracker blocker that Laura and I build at our tiny two-person not-for-profit, Small Technology Foundation. I also...

We didn’t want to do this. What’s going on? In my previous blog post, I asked Apple for a little help with a problem we had with Better Blocker after moving to Ireland and setting up a new not-for-profit here: We’re a tiny two-person not-for-profit. We used to be based in the UK, where...

Apple: Computer says no? Dear Apple, We’re a tiny two-person not-for-profit. We used to be based in the UK, where we were known as Ind.ie (and incorporated as a not-for-profit called Article 12). We left the UK (for reasons) and now we have a not-for-profit here in Ireland called Small...

Because CSS sucks. Hack courtesy of https: css-tricks.com NetMag FluidWidthVideo Article-FluidWidthVideo.php .videoWrapper position: relative; padding-bottom: 56.25%; 16:9 padding-top: 25px; height: 0; .videoWrapper iframe position: absolute; top: 0; left: 0; ...

Because CSS sucks. Hack courtesy of https: css-tricks.com NetMag FluidWidthVideo Article-FluidWidthVideo.php .videoWrapper position: relative; padding-bottom: 56.25%; 16:9 padding-top: 25px; height: 0; .videoWrapper iframe position: absolute; top: 0; left: 0; ...

Small Technology Foundation Personal Web Prototype-01: an always-connected portable personal web server that fits in your pocket. Imagine holding your personal web site in the palm of your hand. Imagine carrying the digital aspects of your self in your pocket instead of having them on...

small-tech https with globally-trusted Let’s Encrypt certificates Today’s my birthday so I thought I’d give you a little present: small-tech https. Plug-and-play https This is essentially a drop-in, batteries-included version of the Node.js https module that: Automatically provisions...

Sorry, your browser doesn’t support embedded videos. But that doesn’t mean you can’t watch it You can download this video directly, and watch it with your favourite video player. A quick demonstration of the new auto-reload feature. Site.js version 12.10.2 introduces automatic updates in...

Sorry, your browser doesn’t support embedded videos. But that doesn’t mean you can’t watch it You can download this video directly, and watch it with your favourite video player. A quick demonstration of the new auto-reload feature. Auto reload Site.js version 12.9.7 brings the second...

Laura demonstrating the new live reload feature last night. I just released version 12.9.6 of Site.js with live reload support for static pages. There’s also a fix for the update command, so please update to this version so that you can keep updating using the update command when we move to 12.10...

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...

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...

Yesterday, I asked folks following me on my Mastodon1, if they’d help me blow up my Raspberry Pi Zero W: A story in three toots... Earlier this week, I got to test Site.js on the Pi Zero and saw that it runs flawlessly. Using ngrok, I exposed the Pi to the harsh and cruel Interwebs and then - for...

Earlier today: the new update command seamlessly updating and restarting Site.js on SiteJS.org. I just released Site.js version 12.9.5. This version brings with it some new commands, the most important of which is the update command1. # Update Site.js to the latest version. site update...

I just got the following error while trying to push to my git-lfs-enabled repository: ref master:: Error in git rev-list --stdin --objects --not --remotes origin --: exit status 128 fatal: bad object f895c581f0ff52b2272318105ad7bcc09b5fb8eb Some quick ducking revealed scary stories of repository...

What is git-lfs? Git Large File Storage is an open source Git extension for versioning large files. I use it on a number of our git repositories at Small Technology Foundation, including for the Site.js web site. Why Pi? As I announced yesterday, since version 12.8.0 of Site.js with Raspberry Pi...

Chatting about Pi, on a Pi, with a chat server running on Site.js on the same Pi. Yesterday, I released Site.js 12.8.0 which brings initial ARM support for Linux. What that means is that it’s now easier than ever to get a static or dynamic (Node.js) web server up and running on a...

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...

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...

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...

Small Technology: my opening slide. I’m about to take off for Frankfurt via Zurich to talk about Small Technology at the Interactive Future Exhibition in Darmstadt tomorrow. This is the graduation event of students on the Interactive Media Design programme at the Hochschule Darmstady...

Just a quick note that this site is now running on a new (as of yet unreleased) server. Most of the functionality should be the same as before with the caveat that the DAT version is temporarily unavailable. I’ll be re-enabling it once I’ve added native DAT support to the server itself. More info...

You... yes you. Who should you thank for Facebook’s Libra? One of the UK’s leading privacy researchers University College London The DECODE project And, if you’re an EU citizen who pays their taxes, You. Surprised? Don’t be. None of this was unforeseen Today, the EU acts like an...

Today, I had the need to experiment with rerunning cloud-init on a virtual machine created with multipass. You can use cloud-init with multipass by specifying a cloud-init.yaml file when creating your instance. e.g, multipass launch --name my-instance --cloud-init . cloud-init.yaml This is all well...

GitLab CE (the free open source version of GitLab) has an import issues feature but doesn’t have an export issues feature (because, not enterprise, apparently). So if you fork a project and want to transfer the issues also, you’re out of luck. Unless you use the API, that is. So I ducked around and...

The Al Jazeera segment from yesterday. Source (Warning: The video is embedded here without trackers. If you watch it on Al Jazeera you will be tracked, including by Facebook). Yesterday, I was interviewed on Al Jazeera news about the Macron-Zuckerberg meeting (Warning: the linked page on Al...

The cover of Issue 32 of the Kulturstiftung des Bundes magazine. This is the original English version of an article that I wrote for Issue 32 of the Kulturstiftung des Bundes (The German Federal Cultural Foundation) magazine. You can also read the German version. Thanks to Mauro Morales,...

Indie Web Server version 9.1.0 is a minor release that handles the following two, related (and common), errors more gracefully: Trying to enable a web server daemon when one is already enabled Previously, this would succeed even though the earlier server would continue to be served. Now, it gives...

I just released Indie Web Server version 9.0.0. This is mostly a housekeeping release and nearly all the changes are under the hood. Maintainability I refactored the command-line application quite extensively to pull out all the commands into their own modules and remove any redundancy in the...

Cascading archives for an evergreen web. I just released version 8.2.0 of Indie Web Server. This version brings with it a cascading archives feature to make it easier than ever for you to support an evergreen web and not break existing links as you evolve your sites. Easier than the 404...

Ah, consistent icons. After installing Pop OS 19.04 yesterday, my desktop experience became an eyesore as the previously consistent icon set was replaced with what I can only describe as icon vomit soup. If you want to get your pre-19.04 consistent icon set back, do this: Method 1 ...

I just released Indie Web Server version 8.1.1 which introduces a reverse proxy feature. What’s Indie Web Server? Watch this quick 2-minute demo video to find out. Reverse proxy In local mode (for development use), if you run the server with an HTTP URL instead of a path to serve, Indie Web Server...

In the interests of eating my own hamster food1, I just switched this site from nginx to Indie Web Server. The only complication in the process was that I had to update the hostname of the server to match the domain name. Otherwise, the whole process was basically as follows: # Disable nginx. sudo...

Watch as I set up a secure static personal web site in seconds from installation to live. On April 1st (no joke), Indie Web Server 7.1.0 introduced the ability to set up a live static web site in seconds on any server that had Node.js installed. Two weeks of hitting my head on a wall and multiple...