Web

I love this map project that documents the world’s historical strongholds, which I usually only come across when someone posts a decrepit European castle going up for sale on Zillow. Historical maps are getting more popular these days and Castle Map is a good one. Tell us which fortress you’d choose in the comments. (h/t BoingBoing)

A federal judge dismissed Google’s lawsuit against the web-scraping service SerpApi after finding that the tech giant’s allegations were “insufficient” to prove a copyright violation.

This is a story about how AI destroyed a long-running site of film data. It’s not just that search no longer refers traffic or that the site itself, The Numbers, is getting scraped. It’s also that there’s no way to defend 30-year-old webpages against malicious actors attempting to get the data early so they could win their Polymarket bets.

In a post on Instagram, Patreon CEO Jack Conte says the move will prevent AI crawlers from training on creators’ work. Last year, Cloudflare began blocking AI crawlers by default and recently announced plans to give publishers more granular control of the kinds of scrapers they allow in.

Developer Josh Pigford created a “Knockoff” browser extension that detects alphabet-soup brands — like LUENX, EHEYCIGA, and YXYL — that have become ubiquitous on Amazon. It hides, dims, or labels these listings in your search results based on your preferences.

Starting September 15th, Cloudflare will block bots that scrape ad-supported websites for search indexing and AI training at the same time. The goal is to encourage AI companies to separate their crawlers for different purposes, giving publishers more control over which ones to allow into their websites.

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.

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.

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.

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:

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.