The concept of enshittification, as coined by the author and activist Cory Doctorow, just feels right. Whether you’re searching on Google, shopping on Amazon, or scrolling on Facebook, large platforms often feel like they’re not trying to bring us value so much as extract every bit of value they can out of us. It wasn’t […]
Today, I’m talking with a very special guest: Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the World Wide Web. Tim is a legend in the history of the internet. He created HTML, the standard language for creating and structuring web pages, and the HTTP protocol that allows those pages to communicate using browsers and servers. It […]
X’s new link experiment on iOS may be artificially inflating traffic. Websites like Substack and Bluesky noticed a sharp increase in “fake” views following the update, something that Nick Eubanks, the VP of owned media at the digital marketing platform Semrush, attributes to a new behavior that preloads content before users click on it. “What’s […]
The FBI is attempting to track down the identity of the owner of Archive.today and its numerous mirrors, like Archive.is and Archive.ph. As reported by 404 Media, the FBI subpoena, which was posted on the official Archive.today X account, was sent to web domain registrar Tucows on October 30th demanding the “customer or subscriber name, […]
OpenAI didn’t plan to make a browser. Not at first, anyway. But ever since the company launched ChatGPT, it started to see lots of users do the same thing. “You’d have this tab open on chatgpt.com, and you’d be working on something else somewhere in your browser,” says Adam Fry, a product lead on the […]
Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales has jumped into a conflict over the online encyclopedia’s page on “Gaza genocide.” Just days after a Wikipedia editor froze changes to the article, Wales posted a statement on a page dedicated to discussing edits, saying the article “requires immediate correction” and is part of a broader neutrality problem on the […]
Samsung is bringing its mobile web browser to bigger screens. It’s launching a beta version of its Samsung Internet on PC with support for cross-device syncing, which should make it easier to access all your browsing data if you’ve never switched to a different default browser on your Samsung device. The desktop browser is only […]
AOL will soon have a new owner. Bending Spoons, the Italian software company that has bought up a range of other digital businesses like Evernote, MeetUp, WeTransfer, and soon Vimeo, announced plans to purchase AOL from Yahoo after securing a $2.8 billion debt financing package. Over the past couple of decades, AOL has been passed […]
Hi, friends! Welcome to Installer No. 101, your guide to the best and Verge-iest stuff in the world. (If you’re new here, welcome, hope you like silly accessories, and also you can read all the old editions at the Installer homepage.) This week, I’ve been reading about Intel factories and Nobel Prize winners and ATM […]
Mozilla is introducing profiles to its Firefox web browser that make it easier to separate and organize your online activity. The profile management update will roll out starting October 14th, allowing Firefox users to create specific browsing spaces that house bookmarks, logins, history, extensions, and themes. Firefox already supports multi-account containers, an extension that organizes […]