initramfs

Hmm, I wonder what happened to GNUstep. I'd like to call it MooStep (or MuSTEP)

https://github.com/marcus0x62/quixotic bot and LLM obduscator

Thanks!

I did read the article, but I didn't understand it because I am not familiar with that level of cyber security nor AI instruction/coding formats.

This is very interesting. Before I read the article, I thought this one one of those instances where a bank asks a customer to verify a recent transaction to prove they are the account holder (like where did you make your last purchase, and how much did you spend there?), for things like password resets or PIN resets over the phone. It occured to me that a phisher who deposits money into a checking account (a small sum included, could use this if they knew the bank would ask what the most recent transaction amount was. Then when they call in pretending to be the customer, they (if they have other personal information like last 4 of SS# and address, email, phone etc), can get their password reset and gain access to the account. But if the customer blocks any unauthorized deposits, such as ACH/Zelle, then they might not have this issue. Obviously banks should caution or avoid using received funds as an authentication method, except as part of a larger number of evidentiary items.

Was this the type of phishing attack they used? If not, there's two vulnerabilities, and one is not yet patched.

There's a great book that explains how abstract computer systems have become from the machinery: https://dabacon.org/caelifera/2017/02/05/book-overcomplicate...

Yes, that's it- Interpress/PostScript. I remember Forth used it. There's something about the typesetting that I love and can't figure out. But I notice it, even on old monitors. Wonderful stuff. I really like the DTSN displays too: https://retro.swarm.cz/20170902/1143/

This is such a great story. I am glad more people are sharing stories like this. I hope my article the other day inspired more to develop lightweight websites:

https://inavoyage.blogspot.com/2026/06/im-building-parallel-... https://inavoyage.blogspot.com/2026/06/how-about-new-java-ba...

I've always liked basic HTML pages where one can upload a document without having to restart the entire application. That's a great practice you have there with general forms. With each session ID, it can cross reference a page in a multi page application with that session ID, so that the user can maybe type it in if necessary, but it should be able to determine that with enough information, like IP address, upload date, browser, OS and so on. But the most accurate session would be within the browser so that the cookies for a single application aren't mixed up with another applicant, like a relative, who might be using the Playstation Portable.

I have made comics before. Maybe I should again.

Sorry, I meant one of the early X-Window predecessors from the Alto era- I don't remember which one(s), but it had a pixel perfect rendering aspect that appeared at least much lower level and the GUI used far less memory. The most recent one that resembled that is X11R1, which I have tested on a VM linux image from ~2005, called Xwoaf.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X_Window_System#History I recall some pdfs of the Xeroc PARC showed more info on it.

Edit: I might have confused LaTex with https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NeXTSTEP. I think it was more efficient in handling data, but then again, platforms age whenever a new application needs more memory, so they got abandoned because it was more efficient to bundle it into something like Wayland...

>I must admit I am still having a hard time following you.

You're not the first. A "sister" project I started in 2020 is hardware focused, and later on, I determined that a lightweight suite for internet would complement the offline stack: https://ei2030.github.io/FemtoTX/#about

One could say it's a "solution in search of a problem", but game development also is an incubator:

https://www.thediff.co/archive/a-solution-in-search-of-a-pro...

There are other Jobs inspired R&D groups out there- a notable one is Ink & Switch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9s8OA08ggbM They use an aircraft carrier vs. bicycle comparison, as Steve Jobs preferred the bike metaphor as an extension of user capabilities.

Someone here mentioned WAP https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wireless_Application_Protocol which I completely forgot about, and AJAX:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ajax_(programming) These techniques/protocols helped make the Symbian internet experience fast, before other smartphones had many solutions.

>Why should a household or office download windows update files more than once? Seems like a great idea.

I agree with you on that. I also use it to share files and updates on my own network, often when transferring Steam games from one PC to another. I meant for non private networks (like internet cafes) is where I thought there might be a security issue. https://www.tomsguide.com/computing/windows-is-using-your-in... I do not really know whether it's secure enough, but I'm going to leave that to the experts.

I also think they could be useful on internet nodes that are at the end of a network, like an an ad-hoc wifi chain, such as Guifi: https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/2015/10/how-to-build-a-low...

>IPFS in my limited experience is slow but reliable. Torrents are slow in peer discovery but fast after that.

You have more experience than I do on IPFS, so I will take your word for it.

>Digital signature also.

Did not know that, but I've heard of them.

my challenge for the past 6 years has been trying to prove XKCD's conventional comic panel on that wrong :)

Also, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ajax_(programming)

I agree with this, and think even chip designers are starting to rent transistor parcels to advertisers like NASCAR jacket patches.

But seriously, without anyone addressing the elephant in the room, there is no way to make the web simple as ad less.

The newspapers of the late 19th century did this with color page cartoons. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Yellow_Kid

People bought the newspaper for the cartoons rather than the ads, but the ads supported to printing costs. Eventually the competition became so fierce one of the news giants lowered their cost to 1 penny.

Maybe lightweight internet use is a skill that needs to be trained. But with a solid connection for working, I see this less prioritized.

Moss looks great.

I use LaGrange and Kristall, which support multiple protocols.

Awesome. Starred.

It's more like a virtual network alongside the actual one, with a dedicated bike path separated by a curb and a sidewalk.

Yes, I've used WAP on my Nokia phones. I would really like to bring something from the Symbian era, and covered J2ME in a series of posts from the days before: https://inavoyage.blogspot.com/2026/06/how-about-new-java-ba...

You can already do that. If your home page is a fediverse feed or client, the users provide the content without an algorithm. Many people who have a browser with a Google search bar might think corporations control a lot, but one can set a different browser, DNS, and search engine. The thing Steve Jobs did was simplify the out of the box experience, so when they bought a Mac, there'd only be a dock with Safari at the bottom. One could develop an open source machine with a very unitary goal of accessing a lightweight web using a protocol or extension similar to No script but the average non-technical user might not know how to do that.

Of the many Linux distros I've tested, maybe a handful are actually easy to use and not heavy. One example is Bodhi Linux. But I have something more like Tiny Core Linux in mind, except polished (it features a dock, surprisingly). If the hardware could be developed for this too as open hardware, there would be the added advantage of it having more ways to improve it. I'm a bit oxymoronic in having a vertically integrated product idea and an open source bias, but a lot of great ideas need a coherent outline, which sometimes start out as closed source.

If the project starts out with enthusiasm but it gets forked, then it becomes impossible to develop one feature that many people didn't realize would be overall a better user experience, or streamlined option, at the very least.

Correct. The idea is to narrow the application access view from the desktop or home screen of a mobile device to a limited set of optimized apps and protocols that can traverse the web. It's kind of like a dedicated bike lane alongside a boulevard in a major city. One can bike as fast if not faster than cars, but they'd need to adhere to the rules of the bike path.

AMP was controversial because it initially prioritized Top Stories cached on Google servers as opposed to other operators, but its nominally open source spec eventually allowed other sites to improve their ad optimize revenue: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accelerated_Mobile_Pages#Monet...

I think its current issue with AMP is that it makes the web seem flattened, with pages appearing more the same than having more independent formats. I think that if the average page can be smaller than the average AMP standard e.g less than 1.5MB, then a CDN wouldn't need to prioritize AMP.

A friend of mine referenced the 64KB demoscene competitions, which were creative use of video graphics.https://64k-scene.github.io/

250KB Club seems like a nice place to start with websites: https://250kb.club/

Interesting link! I haven't heard of him, but I didn't have a new protocol in mind per se, since there are many old ones that are still good. But I would have removed the :// from http:// since even Tim Berners-Lee admitted that wasn't needed. I think HTML5 was an improvement from Flash, but there's a lot in the old web, like Xerox Star that had a smooth resolution in the files. Something like LaTeX..

there's also the network effect to deal with. The Internet is a WAN of WANs. you might have a great parallel Meshtastic network, but if few people are using it, its range might be limited.

I haven't heard of that, but thanks. I have heard of Software Defined Hardware- I guess Networks are a type of hardware (SDH).

yes and no. I agree there is some amazing things that can be done with larger websites, but one has to wade through a lot of unoptimal sites to find the good ones.

Make that three.

It's becoming a dream and a curious or nearly unattainable goal, without being adjacent a very heavy software stack. But I think having a separate screen on a phone, like a flip phone with a screen on each side, would help separate the two software and OSes that could run them. One light, and one heavy.

That's because I wrote about QUIC & UDP in my previous post yesterday.

https://inavoyage.blogspot.com/2026/06/5-things-to-lighten-d...

https://blog.cloudflare.com/the-road-to-quic/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QUIC#Client_support

https://nordvpn.com/blog/what-is-quic-protocol/

https://www.fastvue.co/fastvue/blog/googles-quic-protocols-s...

My writing is tangential as it is, so I try to keep the layers separate in different analyses.

Java ME, Azul & OS (Symbian): https://inavoyage.blogspot.com/2026/06/how-about-new-java-ba...

Edit: One thing I didn't include in the article was file sharing protocols, because of security vulunerabilities. I recall IPFS had some known issues, but others have tried to use similar protocols:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_file_synchroniza... There are at least two that use QUIC, such as Kubo/IPFS and Syncthing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/InterPlanetary_File_System https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syncthing

Do they work faster than the regular web? Well, torrents can download faster. But I do not know how much the web depends on it or needs it. I know Microsoft and Steam servers allow downloading games and updates from other PCs, including ones outside a local network. Why they offer it (for Windows system files), is beyond me. Maybe some areas (public networks) share an unsecure wifi network more often and do not own a separate router for trusted internet access. I guess the files are encrypted enough that there is a checksum that can determine if the files are not tampered?

Yes, I now realize it was the antennagate story. I included a link to a Slate article that featured an even more unsympathetic writer, which was in 2010, a year before Jobs died.

In retrospect, I think Jobs knew his time was limited, and telling a customer not to hold it that way wasn't an unforgiveable sin- in fact, there was some truth to it, even if they didn't have a better modem at the time (my article mentions Qualcomm).

And I agree, that yes, hubris is real. I like how Bill Gates told Jobs at the D7 Conference in 2007 that his charisma and spell wouldn't work on him because he was a minor wizard. https://www.businessinsider.com/bill-gates-says-steve-jobs-w...

Btw, an in-house modem is something Apple us finally returning to, now that they are ready: https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidphelan/2026/05/16/iphone-1...