The verification I never verifiedI wrote a whole post about two-way standard.site verification. One of the two directions had been returning a 404 in production the entire time.Ben Swift·1d ago·3 min readFollowatprotowebdev
Aggressive caching for a Mastodon reverse proxy: what to cache, what to never cache, and why content negotiation will eventually betray youIIT Notes [Unofficial]·1d ago·25 min readmastodonnginxservernetworking
FediMeteo, timezones, and the art of not breaking what already worksIIT Notes [Unofficial]·May 25·17 min readservernetworkingfediversesnac
When do we get a Privacy-Preserving CDN?The surveillance-capitalism business model that defines the Internet today is only going to get more imposing. The vast majority of our online requests today are serviced and logged by centralized inf…willscott⎷·May 22·8 min readFollowprogrammingtechwebAcademics
FediMeteo, HAProxy, and the art of not wasting snac threadsIIT Notes [Unofficial]·May 18·19 min readfreebsdhaproxyservernetworking
Ask Ben (powered by Gemma 4)An in-browser chat widget running Google's Gemma 4 E2B via WebGPU, primed with all the content from this site so you can ask it questions about me.Ben Swift·Apr 3·3 min readFollowaiweb
Mini neon perceptron: XOR editionA 4-input, 3-hidden, 2-output mini perceptron that solves diagonal XOR---with an interactive 3D digital twin to play with.Ben Swift·Mar 3·3 min readFollowaiweb
AT-URIs as persistent identifiers for scholarly bloggingEvery post on this blog now has a persistent AT-URI via the standard.site spec---more durable than bare URLs, less overhead than DOIs.Ben Swift·Feb 19·8 min readFollowatprotoresearchweb
Requiem For Early BloggingFrom Requiem For Early Blogging: [I]f you wanted people to read your blog, you had to make it compelling enough that they would visit it, directly, because they wanted to. And if they wanted to respon…dave kellam·Dec 17·2 min readFollowblogginghistorywebposts
Interactive neon perceptron visualisationAn interactive 3D digital twin of the Neon Perceptron---a physical neural network built from flexible LEDs. Draw on the input grid and watch activations flow.Ben Swift·Dec 11·3 min readFollowaiweb
Switching from Jekyll to VitePressAfter ten years on Jekyll, I moved this site to VitePress. Notes on migrating content, components, reveal.js slides, and data loading.Ben Swift·Dec 2·4 min readFollowdevweb
Sneakernet ArchiveI have a vision for sharing and storing community artefacts (eg. photos, stories) that's super easy for people, but also technically excellent for long-term archival.JP’s a Dad now 😳·Aug 22·2 min readFollowwebIPFSarchivaldesign
Trusting randomness at a distanceHow can people in different places trust the other's dice-rolls?JP’s a Dad now 😳·Jul 25·6 min readFollowtechwebtrustlessgames
Trust and simple gamesHow can people play (board/card) games without a trusted third party, and without cheating?JP’s a Dad now 😳·Jul 16·7 min readFollowtechwebtrustlessgames
A linkrot-free URL shortenerUsing IPFS to build a trivial link shortener that doesn't hide & hoard the destination from the world.JP’s a Dad now 😳·Jul 8·9 min readFollowtechwebipfsshortlinks
Arc: a new browserA new web-browser that really is helping me fall in love with the internet again.JP’s a Dad now 😳·Jun 9·4 min readFollowwebbrowser90s
Embracing IndieWebEmbracing the indieweb, an internet run by humans not corporations.JP’s a Dad now 😳·Mar 1·2 min readFollowtechwebindiewebfediverse
The Web’s Missing Communication FacultyCredence: A new way to assess online information using the reputation and context of those who consume it.JP’s a Dad now 😳·Jan 30·9 min readFollowtrustcredenceweb
What is Good Design?Exploring good design principles through the lens of the UK Government Digital Service websiteDanny Smith·Jan 21·2 min readFollowdesigngovernmenttypographyweb
