The Internet, the interconnection of most of the computers in the world, has existed since the late sixties. But no protocol existed to actually exploit that network, to explore and
search for information. At the time, you needed to know exactly what you wanted and where to find it. That’s why the USA tried to develop a protocol called “Gopher.”
At the same time, the “World Wide Web,” composed of the HTTP protocol and the HTML format, was invented by a British citizen and a Belgian citizen who were working in a European
research facility located in Switzerland. But the building was on the border with France, and there’s much historical evidence pointing to the Web and its first server having been
invented in France.
It’s hard to be more European than the Web! It looks like the Official European Joke! (And, yes, I consider Brits Europeans. They will join us back, we miss them, I promise.)
…
Google, Microsoft, Facebook may disappear tomorrow. It is even very probable that they will not exist in fourty or fifty years. It would even be a good thing. But could you imagine
the world without the Web? Without HTML? Without Linux?
Those European endeavours are now a fundamental infrastructure of all humanity. Those technologies are definitely part of our long-term history.
…
There are so many ways in which the UK has had to choose – and continues to have to choose – which side of the Atlantic it belongs on: the North American side, or the European side.
Legally, politically, financially, culturally… And every time we swing away from Europe, it saddens me.
This wonderful article by Lionel Dricot encapsulates one of many reasons why. European tech culture, compared to that in the USA, leans more open-source, more
open-standards, more collaborative. That’s the culture I want more of.
He observes that the design of feed readers – which still lean on the design of the earliest feed readers, which adopted the design of email software to minimise the learning
curve – makes us feel obligated to stay on top of all our incoming content with its “unread counts”.
Phantom obligation
Email’s unread count means something specific: these are messages from real people who wrote to you and are, in some cases, actively waiting for your response. The number isn’t
neutral information. It’s a measure of social debt.
But when we applied that same visual language to RSS (the unread counts, the bold text for new items, the sense of a backlog accumulating) we imported the anxiety without the cause.
…
RSS isn’t people writing to you. It’s people writing, period. You opted to be notified of their existence. The interface implied debt where none existed. The
obligation became phantom.
I use FreshRSS as my feed reader, and I love it. But here’s the thing: I use the same application
for two different kinds of feeds. I call them slow content and fast content.2
It’s an idealised interpretation of how I subscribe to different kinds of incoming messages, but it works for me. The lesson is that slowing down your consumption is not
an antifeature, it’s a deliberate choice about how you prioritise your life. For me: humans come first – what about you?
Slow content
Blogs, news, podcasts, webcomics, vlogs, etc. I want to know that there is unread content, but I don’t need to know howmuch.
In some cases, I configure my reader to throw away stuff that’s gotten old and stale; in other cases, I want it to retain it indefinitely so that I can dip in when I want to.
There are some categories in which I’ll achieve “inbox zero” most days3…
but many more categories where the purpose of my feed reader is to gather and retain a library of things I’m likely to be interested in, so that I can enjoy them at my leisure.
Some of the things I subscribe to, though, I do want to know about. Not necessarily immediately, but “same day” for sure! This includes things like when it’s a friend’s
birthday (via the Abnib Birthdays feed) or when there’s an important update to some software I selfhost.
This is… things I want to know about promptly, but that I don’t want to be interrupted for! I appreciate that this kind of subscription isn’t an ideal use for a feed reader… but I use
my feed reader with an appropriate frequency that it’s the best way for me to put these notifications in front of my eyeballs.
I agree with Terry that unread counts and notification badges are generally a UX antipattern in feed readers… but I’d like to keep them for some purposes.
So that’s exactly what I do.
How I use FreshRSS (to differentiate slow and fast content)
FreshRSS already provides categories. But what I do is simply… not show unread counts except for designated feeds and categories. To do that, I use the CustomCSS extension for FreshRSS (which nowadays comes as-standard!), giving it the following code
(note that I want to retain unread count badges only for feed #1 and categories #6 and #8 and their feeds):
.aside.aside_feed{
/* Hide all 'unread counts' */.category,.feed{
.title:not([data-unread="0"])::after,.item-title:not([data-unread="0"])::after{
display:none;}
}
/* Re-show unread counts only within: * - certain numbered feeds (#f_*) and * - categories (#c_*) */#f_1,#c_6,#c_8{
&,.feed{
.title:not([data-unread="0"])::after,.item-title:not([data-unread="0"])::after{
display:block;}
}
}
That’s how I, personally, make my feed reader feel less like an inbox and more like a… I don’t know… a little like a library, a little like a newsstand, a little like a calendar… and a
lot like a tool that serves me, instead of another oppressive “unread” count.
I just wish I could persuade my mobile reader Capyreader to follow suit.
Maybe it’ll help you too.
Footnotes
1 Or whenever you like. It’s ‘slow content’. I’m not the boss of you.
2 A third category, immediate content, is stuff where I might need to
take action as soon as I see it, usually because there’s another human involved – things like this come to me by email, Slack, WhatsApp, or similar. It doesn’t belong in a feed
reader.
3 It’s still slow content even if I inbox-zero it most days…
because I don’t inbox-zero it every day! I don’t feel bad ignoring or skipping it if I’m, for example, not feeling the politics news right now (and can you blame me?). This
is fundamentally different than ignoring an incoming phone call or a knock at the door (although you’re absolutely within your rights to do that too, if you don’t have the spoons for
it).
4 I’m yet to see a mailing list that wouldn’t be better as either a blog (for few-to-many
communication) or a forum (for many-to-many communication), frankly. But some people are very wedded to their email accounts as “the way” to communicate!
I’ve had my itch.io account for about six years; I think I first created it to buy a copy of We Are But Worms: A One Word RPG. I’ve since made several purchases, donations, reviews, and comments, but
never really used my account as a “creator”.
I changed that today when I realised that there was nothing to stop me re-publishing games like DNDle and Axe Feather 2021 via my itch.io profile as well as on their current homes (and on GitHub, I suppose). For some folks, itch.io’s
discovery features might be the best way for them to discover worthwhile content weird stuff like this.
I might republish some other “things” I’ve made on itch.io too. It’s not like there haven’t been lots of them over the years!
The <geolocation> element provides a button that, when activated, prompts the user for permission to access their location. Originally, it was designed as a
general <permission> element, but browser vendors indicated that implementing a “one-size-fits-all” element would be too complex. The result was a single-purpose
element, probably the first of several.
<geolocation><strong>Your browser doesn't support <geolocation>. Try Chrome 144+</strong></geolocation>
…
I’ve been waiting for this one. Given that “requesting permission to access a user’s location” has always required user intervention, at least to begin with, it makes
sense to me that it would exist as a form control, rather than just as a JavaScript API.
Implementing directly in HTML means that it degrades gracefully in the standard “if you don’t understand an element, simply render its contents” way that the Web always has. And
it’s really easy to polyfill support in for the new element so you can start using
it today.
My only niggle with <geolocation> is that it still requires JavaScript. It feels like a trick’s been missed, there. What I’d have really wanted would
have been <input type="geolocation">. This would e.g. renders as a button but when clicked (and permission granted) gets the user’s device location and fills the
field (presumably with a JSON object including any provided values, such as latitude, longitude, altitude, accuracy, provider, and so on). Such an element would still provide
all the same functionality of the new element, but would also be usable in a zero-JS environment, just like <input type="file">, <input
type="datetime-local"> and friends.
This is still a huge leap forward and I look forward to its more-widespread adoption. And meanwhile, I’ll be looking into integrating it into both existing applications that use it
and using it in future applications, by preference over the old API-driven approach. I’m grateful to Manuel for sharing what he’s learned!
If you’re not already helping collect benches, you should give it a look. You can install the site to your mobile device as a progressive web app and start snapping benches.
Off the back of my project to un-suckify BBC News’ RSS feeds (https://bbc-feeds.danq.dev) by removing non-news content and duplicate items, I
received an email this week (addressing me by the wrong name, I might add) from somebody who asked if I could do the same… for the Daily Mail.
I’m so very tempted to provide an empty RSS feed and say “there you go; that’s an RSS feed of the Daily Mail but with the crap bits removed”.
Turns out my distaste for the Daily Mail is greater than my love of clean RSS.
This article is probably “safe for work” (depending on your workplace).
It makes reference to a popular pornographic website and the features of that website. It contains screenshots, but the porny bits are blurred. The links are all safe.
Verify your age
After Pornhub introduced age check to comply with the Online Safety Act1,
I figured that I’d make an account to see how arduous and privacy-destroying the process of verifying that I was old enough to see naked people2. I thought it would make an
amusing blog post.
I felt confident that my stupid name, if nothing else, would guarantee me a hard time with this kind of automated system.
Unfortunately3,
it turned out to be super-easy for me to pass the age verification.
I just hit “verify by email” with the third-party age verification tool they use, entered an email address that’s associated with a few online accounts (not even the one I gave
Pornhub!), and… everything just worked.
Sooo… this isn’t a blog post about how insurmountable age verification is. This is a blog post about something else I discovered as a result of doing this research:
Pornhub has “achievements”!
Achievement unlocked
I was slightly surprised to see how many “social networking”-like features Pornhub accounts have. You can upload a profile photo… you have a “wall” that you can post to, and you can
post to other people’s. Your profile (unless you tell it not to) shares which channels you’ve subscribed to, which videos you’ve favourited, and so on.
Who on Earth wants those features? I mean: really? 😅 I consider myself pretty sex-positive, but I’m not sure I’d want there to be a web page with my name, photo, and a
list of all my favourite dirty vids!4
Anyway… the other thing a Pornhub profile seems to provide is… achievements:
Hurrah, I guess? The Virgin was easy, at least (snerk), unlike most of the things on my Steam profile.
I’ve only got the one achievement right now, of course, and it’s the one that you get “for free”. So it didn’t feel like I’d earned it.
I suppose I was an actual virgin, once. And I had to prove that I’m a real human to get an account. So… maybe I earned it?
Your profile page encourages you to ‘earn and show off more achievements’. Because, yes, your ‘achievements’ are on your public profile too!
But just stop and think about what this means for a moment. At some point, in some conference room at Pornhub HQ, there was a meeting in which somebody said something like:
“You know what we need? Public profile pages for all Pornhub accounts. And they should show, like, ‘achievements’ like you get for videogames. Except the achievements are for
things like how much porn you’ve watched and how often. You can show it off to your friends!”
If it weren’t for the time-based achievements like ’10 year-old account’, I’ll bet there’d be people competing to speedrun Pornhub.
Complete list of Pornhub Achievements
I’ve reverse-engineered the complete6
collection of Pornhub Achievements for you. Y’know, in case you’re trying to finish your collection:
The Virgin
Congrats! You have accessed your account for the first time! Enjoy the ride on Many Faps Road.
The Freshman
You have accessed your account for the 10th time! I take it you’ve enjoyed the 9 last times?
The Sophomore
You have accessed your account for the 100th time! Maximus Fappitus, you’re a true Pornhub warrior!
The Junior
You have accessed your account for the 500th time! If only you could get air miles for this.
The Senior
You have accessed your account for the 1000th time! If only you could get air miles for this.
The Porn Buff
You’ve watched 10 videos – This is just the beginning, trust me.
The Two Thumbs
You’ve watched 500 videos – Lotion or no lotion, that is the question.
The Cinephile
You’ve watched 5,000 videos – Be careful, carpal tunnel is a thing.
The Connoisseur
You’ve watched 50,000 videos – you are a veritable porn expert now.
1 Year Old Account
Our very first anniversary, I wish us many more!
2 Year Old Account
Two years of pleasure!
3 Year Old Account
Three years… Ah! The memories!
4 Year Old Account
Most relationships don’t even last this long #funfact
5 Year Old Account
That’s half a decade of watching porn.. woah… that’s impressive.
6 Year Old Account
I guess we were a match made in heaven. Who would’ve known that 6 years later, you would still be fapping on me.
7 Year Old Account
No 7 year itch here! Thanks for 7 fappy years
8 Year Old Account
The Outlook is good: you’ve had 8 magical years on Pornhub!
9 Year Old Account
In 9 more years, your account will be old enough to view itself.
10 Year Old Account
You were really ahead of the wave – here’s to a decade on Pornhub!
I have no idea who this feature is “for”. I’d feel the same way if YouTube had achievements, too7, but the fact
that you can, and by default do, showcase your achievements on a porn site is what really blows my mind.
But maybe they ought to double-down and add more achievements. If they’re going to have them, they might as well make the most of them! How about achievements for watching
a particular video a certain number of times? Or for watching videos in each of many different hour segments of the day? Or for logging in to your account and out again
without consuming any pornography (hey, that’s one that I would have earned!)? If they’re going to have this bizarre feature, they might as well double-down on it!
I also have no idea who this blog post is “for”. If it turned out to be for you (maybe you wanted to know how to unlock all the achievements… or maybe you just
found this as amusing as I did), leave me a comment!
Footnotes
1 Don’t get me started with everything that’s wrong with the so-called Online Safety Act.
Just… don’t. The tl;dr would be that it’s about 60% good ideas, 20% good implementation.
2 Obviously if I were actually trying to use Pornhub I’d just use a VPN with an
endpoint outside of the UK. Y’know, like a sensible person.
3 I mean: it’s probably pretty fortunate that – based on my experience at least –
it seems to be easy for adults to verify that they’re adults in order to access services that are restricted to adults as a result of the OSA. But it’s unfortunate in that I’d hoped
to make a spicy blog post about all the hoops I had to jump through and ultimately it turned out that there was only one hoop and it was pretty easy.
4 Of course, the Indieweb fan within me also says that if I did want
such a page to exist, I’d want it to be on my own domain. Should there be an Indieweb post kind for “fap” for people who want
to publicly track their masturbatory activities as an exercise in the quantified self?
Or should there be a “sex” kind that works a bit like “invitation” in that you can optionally tag other people who were involved? Or is
sex a kind of “exercise”? Could it be considered “game play”? What about when it’s a “performance”? Of course, the irony is that anybody who puts a significant amount of effort into standardising the way that a person
might publicly catalogue their sex life… is probably rendering themselves less-likely to have one.
I think I got off-topic in this footnote.
5 To be fair, I’ve worked places where committee groupthink has made worse
decisions. Want a topical example? My former employer The Bodleian Libraries decided to call a podcast series “BodCast” without first
performing a search… which would have revealed that Playboy were already using that name for a series of titillating vlogs. Curiously, it was Playboy who caved and renamed their
service first. Presumably the strippers didn’t want to be associated with librarians?
6 It’s possible there are achievements I’ve missed – their spriteset file looks like it
contains others! – that are only available to content creators on the platform. But if that’s the case, it further reinforces that these achievements are for the purpose of
consumers who want to show off how many videos they’ve watched, or whatever! Weird, right?
7 “Congratulations: you watched your 500th YouTube ‘short’ – look how much of your life
you’ve wasted!”
It adds a layer of humanity and personality to the Web. It introduces me to cool new people, and re-introduces me to cool people whom I’d crossed paths with at a distance: Joe’s one of
the latter, but I’ve now taken the time to ensure he’s in my RSS reader… and, by proxy, in my blogroll.
I don’t have a return address for anybody who posted anything to me, yet (obviously I’d have masked it out from the postcard if I had!), but I feel like I ought to buy some postcards
now too. It’s only a matter of time.
And hey, maybe there’s mileage in starting an Personal Web Postcards Club or something…
Amusing announcement from the captain of my plane out of Tenerife South this afternoon. In place of the usual recommendation to keep your seatbelt fastened while seated in case of
turbulence, he advised that there was a “risk of potholes”.
I’m sure the analogy makes sense to the Brits aboard, but I hope it translated well for the Spanish speakers on this plane!
My partner Ruth and I are staying at the Meliá hotel down in the city, from which amazingly I was able to get a WiFi connection despite the
considerable distance!
As others have observed, the hint is misleading for this cache. Substitute the word “right” in place of the word “left” and the hint makes more sense!
Ruth and I made several attempts today without success: a muggle was sat nearby in such a way that access to the GZ was obstructed. We took a
walk to the nearby Anglican church – whose architecture, if you ignore the volcanic rock, is uncannily like that of Anglican churches in the UK – but then we returned the muggle had
very much set up camp and was going nowhere. We attempted to find a way to the cache from the opposite side without luck, and eventually had to give up. 😔
After solving the riddle yesterday, my partner Ruth and I came up from the seafront to find this cache today. What a delightful spot to hide
the cache, and what a wonderful puzzle (and spot of local literary history) with which to bring us here.
SL, FP awarded. Greetings from Oxfordshire, UK. TFTC!
In January 2024 I participated in Bloganuary, a “write a blog post every day for a month” challenge organised by Automattic. I wasn’t
100% impressed by the prompts made available and was – as an employee of Automattic – shuffling towards trying to help make them better in a future year. To be part of the solution!
There’s definitely something in this ‘winter sun’ thing that seems to help me stay sane in the cold dark months. This morning, I’m blogging from a
hotel balcony in Peurtro de la Cruz, Tenerife.
Of course, two significant things changed since then:
As part of a sweeping range of redundancies, I was let go from my position at Automattic2,
and
Automattic ceased running Bloganuary: I’m guessing that the folks responsible for making it happen were among the many that Automattic decided to axe, or else their shifting
priorities – reflected by their waves of layoffs – are no longer compatible with providing that service to bloggers.
Ah well, I figured. I’d just do my own thing. I can write something for every day in January 2026, can’t I?
Generating a chart...
If this message doesn't go away, the JavaScript that makes this magic work probably isn't doing its job right: please tell Dan so he can fix it.
In general, I suppose I’ve been blogging more-frequently lately. Why is that? I guess it’s been a realisation that a blog post doesn’t always have to be polished to perfection.
I still write long-form posts which require research and planning, like setting up a network of Windows 3.x VMs just to get screenshots of what
programming then looked like or making that podcast episode with the music in it… but I’m also feeling more-free to just
express myself in the moment. To share things I see that look interesting or funny or
pretty, or just whatever I’m thinking. I’ve been using “kinds” to categorise my posts so it’s easy for people to avoid my more-inane stuff if
they like, but that’s a secondary consideration because ultimately… I blog for me.
Anyway… all of which is to say that I’ve been writing more and I’ve been loving it. The best way to read more of what I’m writing, if you’d like to, remains: by subscribing via RSS.
1 I’d anticipated having a lack of Internet access, but in fact 4G was widespread
throughout both islands and overall I managed to post something on every day except three in January 2025.
2 Based on friends I’ve spoken to, there seem to have been a lot more folks let go since;
the company seems to be shrinking quite a lot, which might go some way to explaining my second observation too.
My partner Ruth and I were disappointed not to be able to hike any of the trails up here today – they’re all closed – but enjoyed finding both
the nearby Virtual and this Earthcache geocaches. The evidence of lava flows (that remain to this day!) are really quite impressive.
![Screenshot from Pornhub showing Dan Q's profile (0 subscribers, 69 [nice!] videos watched)'s achievements page, showing only one achievement: The Virgin.](https://bcdn.danq.me/_q23u/2026/01/pornhub-achievements-1-640x250.png)
