Google will develop the Android OS in private
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Memory safety for web fonts in Chrome: Google replaces FreeType with Rust-based alternative
There’s no escaping Rust, and the language is leaving its mark everywhere. This time around, Chrome has replaced its use of FreeType with Skrifa, a Rust-based replacement. Skrifa is written in Rust, and created as a replacement for FreeType to make font processing in Chrome secure for all our users. Skifra takes advantage of Rust’s memory safety, and … ⌘ Read more

Hi! For anyone following the Request for Comments on an improved syntax for replies and threads, I’ve made a comparative spreadsheet with the 4 proposals so far. It shows a syntax example, and top pros and cons I’ve found:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1KOUqJ2rNl_jZ4KBVTsR-4QmG1zAdKNo7QXJS1uogQVo/edit?gid=0#gid=0

Feel free to propose another collaborative platform (for those without a G account), and also share your comments and analysis in the spreadsheet or in Gitea.

Google makes Vulkan the official graphics API for Android
Google’s biggest announcement today, at least as it pertains to Android, is that the Vulkan graphics API is now the official graphics API for Android. Vulkan is a modern, low-overhead, cross-platform 3D graphics and compute API that provides developers with more direct control over the GPU than older APIs like OpenGL. This increased control allows for significantly improved performance, especially in multi-threaded a … ⌘ Read more

Comparing Fuchsia components and Linux containers
Fuchsia is a new (non-Linux) operating system from Google, and one of the key pieces of Fuchsia’s design is the component framework. Components on Fuchsia have many similarities with some of the container solutions on Linux (such as Docker): they both fetch content addressed blobs from the network, assemble those blobs into an isolated filesystem structure that holds all the dependencies necessary to run some piece of software, and … ⌘ Read more

Google, DuckDuckGo massively expand “AI” search results
Clearly, online search isn’t bad enough yet, so Google is intensifying its efforts to continue speedrunning the downfall of Google Search. They’ve announced they’re going to show even more “AI”-generated answers in Search results, to more people. Today, we’re sharing that we’ve launched Gemini 2.0 for AI Overviews in the U.S. to help with harder questions, starting with coding, advanced math and multimodal queries, with mor … ⌘ Read more

Google multibillionaire Brin demands employees work 60 hours a week on autocomplete tools
Over the past few years, the tech industry has gone from cushy landing pad for STEM grads to a cesspit of corporate greed, where grueling hours are commonplace, and layoffs could strike at any moment. Unfortunately for employees of Alphabet, the parent company of Google, the squeeze is just getting started. ↫ Joe Wilkins at Futurism Sergey Brin, one of t … ⌘ Read more

Mozilla reaffirms it won’t remove Manifest v2 support from Firefox
Mozilla has officially reiterated that it’s going to keep offering support for both Manifest v2 and Manifest v3 extensions in Firefox. Google is removing support for Manifest v2 from Chrome, and with it a feature called blockingWebRequest that is used by ad blockers like uBlock Origin. Google’s replacement for that feature is more restrictive and less capable, and as such, uBlock Origin no longer wor … ⌘ Read more

Google Pixel 9 released The Best Time to Upgrade to the Pixel 8 (and GrapheneOS) https://xn–gckvb8fzb.com/google-pixel-9-released-the-best-time-to-upgrade-to-the-pixel-8-and-grapheneos/

Why you got to lie to me Google?

@prologic@twtxt.net Have you tried Google’s robots.txt report? https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/6062598?hl=en . I would expect Google to be pretty good about this sort of thing. If you have the energy to dig into it and, for example, post on support.google.com, I’d be curious to hear what you find out.

On my hit list of assholes tech giants that break the rules and are bad web citizens:

• Microsoft
  

• Google
  

• Alibaba
  

• Open AI

• more to come…

It would appear that Google’s web crawlers are ignoring the robots.txt that I have on https://git.mills.io/robots.txt with content:

User-agent: *
Disallow: /

Evidence attached (see screenshots): – I think its the the Small Web community band together and file a class action suit(s) against Microsoft.com Google.com and any other assholes out there (OpenAI?) that violate our rights and ignore requests to be “polite” on the web. Thoughts? 💭

reviewing logs this morning and found i have been spammed hard by bots not respecting the robots.txt file. only noticed it because the OpenAI bot was hitting me with a lot of nonsensical requests. here is the list from last month:

• (810) bingbot
  
• (641) Googlebot
  
• (624) http://www.google.com/bot.html
  
• (545) DotBot
  
• (290) GPTBot
  
• (106) SemrushBot
  
• (84) AhrefsBot
  
• (62) MJ12bot
  
• (60) BLEXBot
  
• (55) wpbot
  
• (37) Amazonbot
  
• (28) YandexBot
  
• (22) ClaudeBot
  
• (19) AwarioBot
  
• (14) https://domainsbot.com/pandalytics
  
• (9) https://serpstatbot.com
  
• (6) t3versionsBot
  
• (6) archive.org_bot
  
• (6) Applebot
  
• (5) http://search.msn.com/msnbot.htm
  
• (4) http://www.googlebot.com/bot.html
  
• (4) Googlebot-Mobile
  
• (4) DuckDuckGo-Favicons-Bot
  
• (3) https://turnitin.com/robot/crawlerinfo.html
  
• (3) YandexNews
  
• (3) ImagesiftBot
  
• (2) Qwantify-prod
  
• (1) http://www.google.com/adsbot.html
  
• (1) http://gais.cs.ccu.edu.tw/robot.php
  
• (1) YaK
  
• (1) WBSearchBot
  
• (1) DataForSeoBot
  

i have placed some middleware to reject these for now but it is not a full proof solution.

China announces retaliatory tariffs on US + 2 more stories
China reveals tariffs on U.S. goods; Google faces antitrust action; EU establishes new trade zones; astronauts create oxygen in space; technology aids lunar missions. ⌘ Read more

Google Maps is run by cowards
Google, on its Google Maps naming policy, back in 2008: By saying “common”, we mean to include names which are in widespread daily use, rather than giving immediate recognition to any arbitrary governmental re-naming. In other words, if a ruler announced that henceforth the Pacific Ocean would be named after her mother, we would not add that placemark unless and until the name came into common usage. Google, today, in 2025: Google has confirmed that Google Maps will soon … ⌘ Read more

PebbleOS becomes open source, new Pebble device announced
Eric Migicovsky, founder of Pebble, the original smartwatch maker, made a major announcement today together with Google. Pebble was originally bought by Fitbit and in turn Fitbit was then bought by Google, but Migicovsky always wanted to to go back to his original idea and create a brand new smartwatch. PebbleOS took dozens of engineers working over 4 years to build, alongside our fantastic product and QA teams. Repro … ⌘ Read more

Introduction to GrapheneOS
GrapheneOS (written GOS from now on) is an Android based operating system that focuses security. It is only compatible with Google Pixel devices for multiple reasons: availability of hardware security components, long term support (series 8 and 9 are supported at least 7 years after release) and the hardware has a good quality / price ratio. The goal of GOS is to provide users a lot more control about what their smartphone is doing. A main profile is used by default (the owner … ⌘ Read more

Google begins requiring JavaScript for Google Search
Google says it has begun requiring users to turn on JavaScript, the widely used programming language to make web pages interactive, in order to use Google Search. In an email to TechCrunch, a company spokesperson claimed that the change is intended to “better protect” Google Search against malicious activity, such as bots and spam, and to improve the overall Google Search experience for users. The spokesperson noted that, with … ⌘ Read more

Google Begins Requiring JavaScript For Google Search
Google says it has begun requiring users to turn on JavaScript, the widely-used programming language to make web pages interactive, in order to use Google Search. From a report: In an email to TechCrunch, a company spokesperson claimed that the change is intended to “better protect” Google Search against malicious activity, such as bots and spam, and to improve the over … ⌘ Read more

@kat@yarn.girlonthemoon.xyz well even after doing the new fixes my invidious instance is still dead because google blocked my ip i think and i don’t have a proxy server so uhhhhhhhhhh. not much to watch unless i use videos on my server

Did you have disallow rule in robots.txt? (I think not because can google several twtxt.net posts)

@lyse@lyse.isobeef.org Mostly small and simple stuff, like cable management, headphone rests, pill dispensers (that I didn’t end up using), … The most elaborate thing I made was that contraption for my keyboard, which is a bit hard to explain right now, so here’s some photos:

I didn’t end up using that, either. 🥴

In general, I print very little. So little that some of my supplies have simply gone bad, like that “3D LAC” (sprayable glue).

@aelaraji@aelaraji.com Yeah, I saw that when googling the issue. I’m on Linux, there are no DLLs to swap. I could use an older version indeed. 🤔 Let’s see if I can find some better alternative first. (Let’s face it, Blender is hard to use.)

Google Drive? Can he give direct link? Idk about he but twtxt feed can he hosted in s3!

@bender@twtxt.net I wonder where that dude who was hosting his twtxt feed in a google drive go? 😆 that was hilarious!!

No he jugado tanto el Pokemon TCG, más que en Game Boy y ahora en teléfono.
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=jp.pokemon.pokemontcgp

Es un juego que, al menos en la primera parte, está muy bien hecho, aunque al poco tiempo se acaba el factor ‘wow’.

Como vemos en ‘Leyendas y Videojuegos’, el juego móvil es más una demostración para una experiencia de como sería que colecciones las cartas
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zpAZCy8_-UI

Siento que mucha gente va a interesarse en coleccionarlas gracias a este ‘demo’.

Always has been. Web spec is too hard to implement your own web browser from scratch (nothing can, even Google and Apple, they forked KHTML). So if we not count forks we have only three browsers: Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox and Apple Safari

Apple to launch new AI home screen + 2 more stories
Google expands AI flood forecasting to 700 million people; Apple plans to launch a new AI smart home hub; EU allocates €300 million for joint defense projects. ⌘ Read more

OpenAI, Google, Anthropic admit they can’t scale up their chatbots any further

Once you’ve trained your large language model on the entire written output of humanity, where do you go?

https://pivot-to-ai.com/2024/11/14/openai-google-anthropic-admit-they-cant-scale-up-their-chatbots-any-further/

So we’re going to destroy the environment for AI slop that isn’t fit for purpose now and, if you believe the above post, never will be.

Portion of the modified Twitter TOS that goes into effect today (it’s on right now), as summarised (ironically) by Google’s Gemini:

“In simpler terms, this means that when you share your content (like text, images, or videos) on the service, you’re giving the company permission to use it in various ways. They can copy, modify, distribute, and even use it to train their AI models. This includes sharing your content with others and using it on other platforms. You won’t be paid for this, but using the service itself is considered enough compensation.”

Kissimmee - Long run: 7.25 miles, 00:09:55 average pace, 01:11:52 duration
fun long run while we were at universal studios for a friends birthday. google maps thought there were some cut-throughs but was obviously wrong so just kind of winged it. was able to run around some of the “pioneer village” which was a good change in scenery.
#running

I installed GrapheneOS for the first time on Wednesday last week on a used Pixel 7a, and I’m impressed. Installation was almost seamless, and I was able to do it from another Android phone. I’ve run into very few wrinkles, even using Google’s proprietary apps with GrapheneOS’s “sandboxed” version of Google Play Services. The main problems I’ve noticed: I can’t cast, and Google Timeline doesn’t seem to work (though I imagine the intersection between people keen to use GrapheneOS and keen to have Google log their location history is pretty small).

Google tool makes AI-generated writing easily detectable
Google DeepMind has been using its AI watermarking method on Gemini chatbot responses for months – and now it’s making the tool available to any AI developer ⌘ Read more

@prologic@twtxt.net I don’t trust Google with anything, sorry, pass. Oh, and you need to sign in on your Google Account (or whatever they call it these days).

Speaking of AI tech (sorry!); Just came across this really cool tool built by some engineers at Google™ (currently completely free to use without any signup) called NotebookLM 👌 Looks really good for summarizing and talking to document 📃

@movq@www.uninformativ.de Non-ASCII characters were broken. Like U+2028, degrees (°), etc.

Turns out I used a silly library to detect the encoding and transform to UTF-8 if needed. When there is no Content-Type header, like for local files, it looks at the first 1024 bytes. Since it only saw ASCII in that region, the damn thing assumed the data to be in Windows-1252 (which for web pages kinda makes sense):

// TODO: change default depending on user's locale?
return charmap.Windows1252, "windows-1252", false

https://cs.opensource.google/go/x/net/+/master:html/charset/charset.go;l=102

This default is hardcoded and cannot be changed.

Trying to be smart and adding automatic support for other encodings turned out to be a bad move on my end. At least I can reduce my dependency list again. :-)

I now just reject everything that explicitly specifies something different than text/plain and an optional charset other than utf-8 (ignoring casing). Otherwise I assume it’s in UTF-8 (just like the twtxt file format specification mandates) and hope for the best.

Google’s James Manyika: ‘The Productivity Gains From AI Are Not Guaranteed’
Google executive James Manyika has warned that AI’s impact on productivity is not guaranteed [Editor’s note: the link may be paywalled], despite predictions of trillion-dollar economic potential. From the report: “Right now, everyone from my old colleagues at McKinsey Global Institute to Goldman Sachs are putting out these extra … ⌘ Read more

@bender@twtxt.net F-Droid is a platform/app that lets you side-load/install and serve android apps without the need for Google’s play store’s blessing. I also use Aurora Store to install Play Store’s apps without having to associate my phone with Google account. 🦾 it makes me feel good about myself 🥸

@prologic@twtxt.net I’m not sure what this update does, but

https://twtxt.net/external?uri=https://google.com&nick=lovetocode999

still exhibits the same problem, on your pod and on mine, after the latest update.

Time Traveler Causes of Death
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@movq@www.uninformativ.de A family member gave me their old (pseudo-)smart phone and it had all kinds of pre-installed BS that you’re not supposed to be able to uninstall, Xiaomi, FB, google… you name it. but guess what!? I already know about this Trick and then there is the Rethink DNS/Firewall app I have setup to block all traffic then allow the stuff I need with an Allow, Bypass or Exclude rule.

You’d be surprised to see how much traffic is going to blocked!! 🤣

The “Matrix Experiment”, i.e. running a Matrix server for our family, has failed completely and miserably. People don’t accept it. They attribute unrelated things to it, like “I can’t send messages to you, I don’t reach you! It doesn’t work!” Yes, you do, I get those messages, I just don’t reply quickly enough because I’m at work or simply doing something else.

I’ll probably shut it down.

Nobody cares about privacy. The reasons I bring up in discussions are “too nerdy”. They put all their stuff to Google or Apple, so why would messaging be any different? (We’re not even using all those Matrix crypto stuff … That would be insane.)

It’s a lost cause. I’m frustrated.

Will I give in and use WhatsApp instead? Not sure yet.

Have not tried any of them, but some of these seem to fit the bill:

• https://chromewebstore.google.com/search/Redirector
  
• https://libredirect.github.io/
  
• https://requestly.com/products/web-debugger/

Google Chrome will have Gemini LLM built into the browser.

@aelaraji@aelaraji.com I think you tried to email me with an encrypted GPG email? 📧 Unfortunately the inbox you sent to (managed by Google Workspaces / GMail) isn’t equipped with any GPG or my keys so I had to decrypt by hand, which sux. Are you on Signal?

Alternative message me on Salty IM (https://salty.im) at prologic@mills.io

Google Solar Cycle
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@movq@www.uninformativ.de For syncing notes between computers and phones I’ve been very happy with Simple Text - w Dropbox sync for some year, but transitioned to Joplin around new year. Both sync via Dropbox and for Joplin there are also more free options. I guess you could even use something like Syncthing

I came across Google Summer of Code

This one looks interesting, I’ll apply soon, and perhaps is interesting for you as well
https://kiwix.org/en/google-summer-of-code/

Would ‘twtxt’ be a good project for the next one? 🤔

Linus Torvalds Has ‘Robust Exchanges’ Over Filesystem Suggestion on Linux Kernel Mailing List
Linus Torvalds had “some robust exchanges” on the Linux kernel mailing list with a contributor from Google. The subject was inodes, notes the Register, “which as Red Hat puts it are each ‘a unique identifier for a specific piece of metadata on a given filesystem.’”

Inodes have been the subj … ⌘ Read more

What? You are still using chrome? Firefox is where its at. But if you need WebKit there is always chromium which strips out all the google nonsense.