Adi Robertson
Seeking contributions for the time of monsters.
Do you mourn the old world dying? Will you celebrate the new world’s struggle to be born? Write (or, in a few months, read) about it.
Web
NLWeb starts by offering ChatGPT-level search to any site or app, with just a few lines of code. It’s a new vision for the web.
David Pierce
Jess Weatherbed
Emma Roth
Firefox is finally adding tab groups.
That means you can now organize bundles of tabs into groups labeled by name or color. Firefox is also testing an AI-powered tool that will suggest tab groups and names based on the pages you have open in the browser.
Mozilla says it introduced the feature after a request for tab groups became the most-upvoted post on its Connect forum, with more than 4,500 people showing support for the suggestion.
Image: Mozilla
Wes Davis
4chan explains why it went down for almost two weeks.
After posting to its blog for the first time in 8 years on Friday, 4chan published a new post explaining what took the site down on April 14th, as Engadget spotted. The social media site blames hackers uploading a “bogus PDF” that “exploited an out-of-date software package on one of 4chan’s servers.”
It’s back, but not all the way — as of this writing, images and the ability to post still haven’t returned.
Still standing
[blog.4chan.org]
Wes Davis
You wouldn’t steal a font.
But the folks behind the mid-2000s anti-piracy campaign that once compared pirating software to stealing a car might have, reports Torrent Freak. A social media investigation suggests the campaign used a knockoff of a commercial font. Its creator, Just Van Rossum, told the outlet:
“I knew my font was used for the campaign and that a pirated clone named XBand-Rough existed. I did not know that the campaign used XBand-Rough and not FF Confidential, though. So this fact is new to me, and I find it hilarious,”
"You Wouldn’t Steal a Car”... But Would You Pirate a Font?
[torrentfreak.com]
Jay Peters
4chan is back online.
Following an apparent hack, it looks like the site is back up. The 4chan blog also got its first post in 8 years, but it doesn’t really say anything.
Here’s our post from earlier this month about the hack.
Emma Roth
Automattic is reportedly trying to catch leakers using watermarks.
The WordPress.com maker added “nearly invisible” watermarks to P2, its platform for internal communications, according to a report from 404 Media. The watermarks reportedly appear as a pattern that you can only see by changing the site’s white background or zooming in, potentially allowing Automattic to link leaked screenshots to individual employees.
Consider this a reminder or a PSA: a “view” on the internet means even less than you think.
David Pierce
Jess Weatherbed
Google has felt like a product in decline for a long time. Kagi offers a new, better vision for search, but the only way it works is if you’re willing to pay.
David Pierce
Dominic Preston
Adi Robertson
The true end of the Cold War.
In Soviet Russia, domains will no longer register you — or at least they probably won’t, starting in 2030. So if you’ve been running a website on a .su top-level domain, you might need to find another address in the coming years... just maybe not something on .io.
ICANN moves to retire Soviet-era .SU country domain name
[Domain Name Wire]
Adi Robertson
“Don’t buy stuff.”
CNN delves into the February 28th call to boycott Amazon, Walmart, and other companies — as an act of resistance in a time of political turmoil, but also an influencer-sparked, celebrity-supported viral phenomenon that’s taken on a life of its own:
The “economic blackout” effort is relatively uncoordinated and nebulous. ... But this boycott has gained strength online because it has captured visceral public anger with the American economy, corporations and politics.
Inside this chatbot is an assistant that can remember and do stuff for you. Sometimes.
David Pierce
Ash Parrish
“It’s MySpace for 2025.”
Ahh MySpace. A website from simpler times when the worst you had to worry about from social media was falling out with the friend that didn’t make your Top 8. It has since puttered along morphing into something completely unrecognizable...until now. Game designer Ste Curran has created SkySpace, a website that’ll take your Bluesky profile and make it into a MySpace page complete with a customizable background, a Top 8 you can set, and even a music plugin.
Wes Davis
Opera is adding Bluesky, Slack, and Discord to its sidebar.
The three apps join others available in the Opera One browser’s sidebar, like WhatsApp, Instagram, and Telegram — using them there keeps them from taking up precious browser tab real estate. Users can enable or disable these to keep the sidebar from being junked up with services you never use.
The new integrations are available in the latest update, which you can find here.
Most Popular
Most Popular
- Our long national sunscreen nightmare is almost over
- Kaleidescape’s movie player blows streaming, and your wallet, away
- Barret Zoph is out at OpenAI again after just five months
- Midjourney goes from generating cat images to full-body ultrasound scans
- Hue’s wired wall modules bring non-smart lights into its ecosystem