Web

The Settings menu got reorganized in Firefox 152 so everything’s easier to find and manage, and it’s bringing Tab Groups to mobile, starting with Android.

Mozilla’s new roadmap lays out more changes on the way, like its AI Smart Window, Quick Answers, and the “Project Nova” redesign announced last month.

Markdown is a system for writing that makes it readable to both humans and computers. It’s all about the symbols. You use - to make a list, * for emphasis, ** for even more emphasis. Brackets and parentheses turn into links. Right now Markdown is absolutely everywhere: people are maintaining their Claude.MD files for conversing with AI bots, and writing their notes in Markdown editors like Obsidian. So where did Markdown come from? It came from John Gruber. John joins the show, along with Anil Dash, to tell the story of where Markdown came from and how it took over the world.

(Also, if this title breaks something in your podcast player, PLEASE tell us about it. I really hope it does, and I’m sorry in advance.)

If you grew up enjoying Stephen Biesty’s cross-sections like me, you’ll appreciate this brilliant project from Google engineer Bryan Macomber. The website breaks down mechanical objects, like the G2 retractable pen (my favorite), the PEZ dispenser, and the Zippo lighter. I can’t wait to see what comes next. (h/t to Kottke for spotting it.)

Brave Origin comes with the same privacy-focused features as the free version, but it will allow you to fully switch off certain features — not just hide them — including Leo AI, Brave rewards, the browser’s built-in wallet, and more. The standard version of Brave “will remain free and fully supported.”

Links from sites that utilize the standard.site schema — which, at a high level, lets users people blog posts on the AT Protocol — will include things like the publication’s name, an estimated reading time, and a call to action in Bluesky posts. Bluesky itself is built on the AT Protocol, so this is a cool integration of initiatives.

And it seems like WordPress.org co-founder Matt Mullenweg is growing frustrated with the legal battle, which has dragged on for nearly two years:

Since Google announced its Search box overhaul at I/O last week, DuckDuckGo says its own iOS installs have increased by an average of 33 percent week over week in the US. Visits to the “No AI” version of DuckDuckGo’s search platform also jumped by up to 27.7 percent compared to the week prior.

How Google’s CEO is reshaping the company — and the internet.

After launching for iPhone last year, Firefox users on Android can now shake their device on any webpage under 5,000 words to get an AI-generated summary of its contents. You can disable the feature entirely, or select “Summarize Page” under “More” in the three-dot menu if you prefer tapping.

Back in 2000, people were legitimately wondering if anyone would want to use the internet on their phone. At a time when i-mode phones connected to primitive mobile-specific pages were cutting-edge, and the concept of a smartphone wasn’t really in the public consciousness, the skepticism is understandable.

At this point, when you open TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, X, or any other social media platform, you should assume that every single thing in your feed is paid for in some way. Some of it is clips; most of it is marketing; all of it wants you to think it’s just regular ol’ content. All the views are lies. (Gudea, which shows up a bunch in this NYMag story, is… complicated.) Some of it is real! But at some point the only thing you can do is not trust a bit of it.

Journalist Maggie Mertens chats with other writers about their experience leaving Substack — and escaping its tax:

Big tech companies control so much of the infrastructure of our lives, and they maximize that by relying on the fact that we will gravitate toward whatever is easiest and fastest, whatever provides the “better” experience, even if that better but immediate experience is worse for us as a society in the long run.

AI is empowering a generation of vibe coders to build exactly what they want. The personal software revolution is here.

Google is sure to tell us that the web is healthier than ever next week at IO, but out here on the streets everyone knows search traffic is collapsing — a phenomenon we’ve been calling Google Zero for years now. Well, here’s Conde Nast CEO Roger Lynch on TBPN saying they are assuming all search traffic will be zero from now on. I’m just saying — give us credit for naming the concept, bro.

I’m Not a Robot has a simple premise: Finish a series of CAPTCHA to prove your humanity. But quickly, your usual click-a-box or identify-the-stop-sign gives way to Where’s Waldo, Tic-Tac-Toe, and word searches. I got stuck at level 17, and now I’m not sure if I actually am a human.

A new wave of writers is porting their publications to rivals like Ghost and Beehiiv.

The Google Docs-style editing feature won’t appear in the upcoming WordPress 7.0 update, according to an announcement on Thursday. WordPress.org co-founder Matt Mullenweg cites concerns surrounding recurring bugs and memory efficiency, but plans to launch the feature in a future version of WordPress.

An update to Google’s spam policies includes a new “malicious practice” that could get websites demoted: “Back button hijacking,” which is when a website stops users from leaving with their browser’s back button.

“Pages that are engaging in back button hijacking may be subject to manual spam actions or automated demotions, which can impact the site’s performance in Google Search results. To give site owners time to make any needed changes, we’re publishing this policy two months in advance of enforcement on June 15, 2026.”

Google is officially rolling out Device Bound Session Credentials (DBSC) to Windows users in Chrome 146. The new security feature cryptographically binds your login cookies to your device’s hardware. So, even if malware steals your browser cookies, they should be useless to remote hackers. MacOS support is coming soon.

The web hosting platform is working with Cloudflare to integrate the company’s AI Crawl Control tool, which lets publishers choose how web crawlers can access their site. Publishers can use the tool to permit or block bots, or ask them to pay.

Cloudflare began blocking AI crawlers by default last year.

A hacker took over an account belonging to the lead maintainer of the JavaScript library, Axios, which is used to handle HTTP requests, as reported by Cybernews. Security researchers found that versions 1.14.1 and 0.30.4 contained the script for a remote access trojan capable of giving hackers access to a user’s Windows, macOS, or Linux device.

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Developer Niels Leenheer decided to see if he could recreate the classic FPS using the language that describes webpage formatting. cssDOOM is a bit messy and definitely pushing the limits of what is possible using cascading style sheets, but it’s undeniably impressive.

You get a few seconds to sear a color into your brain. Then you have to find it again with a set of hue, saturation, and brightness sliders. Then you do it four more times. You can challenge yourself, your friends, or play against the entire world.

The European Commission has preliminarily ruled that Pornhub, Stripchat, XNXX, and XVideos have insufficient measures in place to prevent minors from accessing their platforms. The porn sites are being advised to remedy the DSA breaches or risk facing fines:

“At this stage, the Commission considers that Pornhub, Stripchat, XNXX and XVideos need to implement privacy preserving age verification measures to protect children from harmful content.”

A New Social’s Bridgy Fed tech has been linking microblog posts and accounts across services like Mastodon and Bluesky for a while, but now that ability applies to more macro content as well:

….users on platforms like Mastodon will see the announcement with the article attached, but platforms that support long-form like WordPress and Ghost will get the whole article, and both will be treated as the same post across the Fediverse.

By joining the beta test and connecting a Beehiiv account to AI chatbots like ChatGPT or Claude, its paying customers can ask the chatbots for help with things like a grammar check on posts or insights on subscriber lists and specific performance details. Down the line, the Model Context Protocol (MCP) link will let people use AI chatbots to directly draft posts or send offers to particular groups of subscribers.

Leonid Radvinsky died at age 43 “after a long battle with cancer,” an OnlyFans spokesperson told The Wall Street Journal. Radvinsky acquired Fenix International Limited, the parent company of the adult content platform, in 2018.

Superhuman CEO Shishir Mehrotra says the intention of Grammarly’s expert review feature was not to impersonate real-life journalists. But he wouldn’t defend it.

A modest proposal from law professor Kate Klonick: acknowledge the failure of the ubiquitous “accept cookies” screen and abolish it posthaste:

Government can point to the highly visible cookie banner and declare its promise met in addressing data privacy issues. Industry, now that a compliance solution has been agreed on and normalized, prefers a known system with which they can easily comply and are unmotivated to push for a reform. While users, faced with endless click-throughs, learn not to assert their rights but to surrender them reflexively.

A new digital trading card game called Wikigacha lets you open packs of Wikipedia articles and have them battle each other. (My Pyramid of Neferirkare card lost against the Great Sea Interconnector, in case you were wondering.)

The game isn’t affiliated with the Wikimedia Foundation, but it could be a whole new way to fall down Wikipedia rabbit holes.

Kit apparently isn’t a red panda either, according to Mozilla, but its own creature “with attributes from both.” The browser developer says that Kit may appear in Firefox branding and “moments that are meant to feel welcoming or encouraging,” such as discovering new features or changing settings.