Happy Anniversary of the Battle of Cable Street, to all decent people.

Computing some preliminary analysis over the #StateOfHTML pain points data and some …interesting patterns are emerging 🙃

I believe it's fundamentally impossible to ship Chrome on iOS meeting the same high quality bar we have on other platforms when we are forced to rely on WKWebView and very slow and unreliable issue handling.

Developers! If you want to distribute software "applications" that don't depend on the whims of multi-billion dollar organisations romantically linked to illiberal regimes across the globe, there's a brand new vague-but-exciting technology you can use, called "the Web"! pwa.dev

I'm jolly glad that @vivaldi.com is once again sponsoring the fantastic State of the Browser conference, curated lovingly by its crew of splendid volunteers. 2026.stateofthebrowser.com/supporters/ - See you there, I hope!

At SmashingConf NY next week, say hi to @brucel.bsky.social from the @BrowserChoiceAlliance.org — they stand for choice in desktop browsers. Their coalition includes big names (Chrome, Opera, Vivaldi, etc.), all working to keep innovation alive and fair. Glad to have you on board!

כְּתִיבָה וַחֲתִימָה טוֹבָה to all my Jewish chums. xx

כְּתִיבָה וַחֲתִימָה טוֹבָה to all my Jewish chums. xx

Prolonging the life of another Windows 10 machine by installing Linux while keeping a Windows look and feel. Thanks, ZorinOS! Naturally, Vivaldi is available from the Software store, and LibreOffice is pre-installed. My 80 year old mum took very little time to feel at home with it.

Inside the Microsoft Excel Championships www.huckmag.com/article/micr... "You could hear a pin drop in the room, but on the YouTube live stream, it’s getting wild."

A website to show you places with rude names. Splendid.

Epic says it has proof Apple was scaring users off third-party app stores But Google still makes them intentionally difficult to install. www.theverge.com/news/789421/...

RIP Brian Patten, a fine poet who could use simple, conversational words to express the lyrical magic of love and everyday life. Here's a song from my last album, whose title I shamelessly stole from him. bruce-lawson.bandcamp.com/track/as-qui...

I'm reading some shocking misapprehensions about web apps in the Malaysian government's report into mobile competition - big PDF: www.mycc.gov.my/sites/defaul...

Regulation fun with lawyers and economists - in which I recount what I learned as a grubby code-monkey at the third annual UK Digital Markets Competition Regulation Forum, a posh London conference for legal/ economist types last week brucelawson.co.uk/2025/regulat...

"I fancy a new iPhone, but don't want to pay for it, so I think the laws against shoplifting should be repealed." - the comments on Ars Technica's report on Apple asking EU to repeal the DMA are brutal, and show how much devs have fallen out of love with Fruitco. arstechnica.com/tech-policy/...

"The idea that Apple is so committed to its users' privacy that it will exit a major market rather than expose users to surveillance risks is an obvious lie – just ask China." pluralistic.net/2025/09/26/e...

I see Reform UK have added Charlie Kirk to their Football Club, following the success of the Nigel Farage football shirt. reformfc.uk

Don't risk being shunned by glamorous people at high-society parties because you don't know what's going on in the world of Big Tech, browsers and Web Standards! My 347th Reading List is the perfect cheat-sheet, and it's hot off the trouser-press. brucelawson.co.uk/2025/reading...

Dinner at the Apple Canteen today is "Serf and Astroturf", served by ACT (The App Association) www.aei.org/technology-a...

The UK government's technology policies are ridiculous. Online Safety Act; making people use proprietary software to file tax; trying to force Apple to backdoor their messaging; frotting Big Tech, and getting moist for "A.I.", and now Digital ID.

Apple's Antitrust Playbook infrequently.org/2025/09/appl... "If it's good enough for Big Oil and Big Tobacco, it's good enough for Cupertino."

Microsoft forced to make Windows 10 extended security updates truly free in Europe www.theverge.com/news/785544/... Damned Brussels bureaucrats stifling innovation again, eh!

I'm currently co-hosting the next couple of talks in the free accessibility conference #ID24. Co-chair of W3C Technical Architecture Group, Lola Odelola, talking about "the Gaps We Inherit". Free to view www.youtube.com/inclusivedes...

Apple asks the EU to repeal the Digital Markets Act (DMA) because it's like really hard for them to comply without giving up a lot of its monopoly and they keep getting caught out trying to circumvent it. The maker of Liquid Glass seem to have a liquid ass. www.france24.com/en/live-news...

I see that Reform UK have added other "players" to their football team, so you can buy other shirts to go with your "Farage" number 10 shirt. reformfc.uk

Vivaldi 7.6 Desktop is out - customise *everything*, and no crappy AI browsing for you. It includes the new TTB - which stands for "Tyrannosaurus terrifies Bruce" (and also 'The Tab Button"). vivaldi.com/blog/vivaldi...

California has passed the Opt Me Out Act that will require browsers to include functionality that enables consumers to limit the sale and sharing of their information by sending an opt-out preference signal to businesses. cppa.ca.gov/announcement...

Hosting a WebSite on a Disposable Vape bogdanthegeek.github.io/blog/project...

Malaysia Competition Commission's Draft final report: Mobile operating and payment system, Aug 2025 [PDF] www.mycc.gov.my/sites/defaul...

Today I shall be tutting at Windows 11, and rolling my eyes while snorting incredulously as I read FruitCo's response to the CMA's proposed decision about their mobile ecosystem, written by the celebrated law partnership of Messrs Wriggle, Squirm and Weasel Esq. www.gov.uk/government/c...

"Former Meta user experience researcher Cayce Savage said the company shut down internal research showing Meta knew children were using its VR products and being exposed to sexually explicit material." www.reuters.com/sustainabili...

Vivaldi's response to the CMA's investigation into Apple's mobile platform is at www.gov.uk/government/c..., along with those from Mozilla, Which?, FruitCo itself, EPIC, Spotify and some Anons. (Nothing says 'healthy ecosystem' like stakeholders fearing retaliation from platform gatekeepers, right?)

Here's my copy of "This is for Everyone", next to my late grandma's 1930s copy of "Enquire Inside", a knock-off of "Enquire Within Upon Everything" - the Victorian encyclopedia after which @timbl named his precursor system to the WWW. (My grandma lived long enough to be fascinated by the Web.)

BRB, writing an extension for Vivaldi that listens to the accelerometer so that when you shake your screen, a random untrue fact will be overlaid over the site you're on, from one of the first sites I loved on the Web: Dave's Web Of Lies (from 1995!) davesweboflies.com/dwol.htm

"I’ve been seeking ways to de-Google my life … For the past several months, I’ve been using Vivaldi's built-in email client… The interface adapts to me rather than demanding compliance … What stands out most is how Vivaldi doesn’t lock you into its ecosystem." www.makeuseof.com/vivaldi-best...

Apparently, it's bad luck to mention a "MacBook" in a software company. You have to call it "the Scottish laptop".

We go live to Apple explaining to a Regulator that it has many browsers in its iOS App Store, so cannot possibly be thwarting competition.

EU slaps Google with €2.95B fine despite Trump trade threat www.politico.eu/article/eu-s...

I really love the way that, even in EU, long pressing a word in a webpage viewed in Vivaldi (or any non-Apple browser) shows a context menu with a "Search web" option. Choosing it goes to Google, regardless of your browser's default engine, with "client=safari" query string. Kerching!

UK government trial of M365 Copilot finds no clear productivity boost www.theregister.com/2025/09/04/m... "AI tech shows promise writing emails or summarizing meetings. Don't bother with anything more complex"

"Apple has worked to disempower users, depriving them of choice in the market, and thereby devaluing the effectiveness of interoperable, standards-based platforms.… Apple has done violence to the founding ethos of internet and web standards development" - Big Al. infrequently.org/2025/09/appl...

Initial personal thoughts on the Google anti-trust remedies: I'm glad Chrom(ium) isn't divested, because I can't see a good steward in Perplexity or Meta, or VCs. Everything else is a bit … meh. And by the time this is appealed and litigated, the Web will be 50% LLM-generated SEO slop & 49% fascism.

OnlyFans owner paid $701m in dividends as platform readies for potential sale www.theguardian.com/business/202... "reports $1.4bn revenue and rising usage". Not being an owner, I've only received £3million this year from my channel, "The Bruce Juice Sluice".

""Ribera will not order Google to sell part of its adtech business … a U.S. judge has set a September trial date on potential remedies for Google's dominance in ad tools used by online publishers." Lots of Washington lobbying, according to "sources". www.reuters.com/legal/litiga...

Featuring a voice over from yours truly! (They rejected both my comedy hillbilly and my brilliantly accurate French accents, so I had to go with my normal suave tones.)

Well dress me up as a sultry otter and call me "Tarka", it's Reading List number 346! brucelawson.co.uk/2025/reading...

Meta might be secretly scanning your phone's camera roll - how to check and turn it off www.zdnet.com/article/meta... "Some Facebook users have noticed new settings that let Meta analyze and retain your phone's photos. Yes, you read that right." Hurrah for the security and privacy of Native apps!

Not in my browser! Vivaldi capo doubles down on generative AI ban www.theregister.com/2025/08/28/v... - "Web browsing belongs to the people, not the bots.."

I'm glad we've expressed this. I regularly use "AI", for transcribing videos and podcasts (I prefer to read), and translating. What I do not want is someone else's biased machine summarising the news for me, editorialising the opinion pieces I read, and so on.