📢 Announcing WebThings Gateway 2.0 webthings.io/blog/2025/12... Build your own smart home hub. The WebThings community are very excited to announce the WebThings Gateway 2.0 release, with a new groups feature and W3C WoT standards support.

Excited to welcome @jamiedriscoll.bsky.social to @nclgreenparty.bsky.social today Jamie thinks deeply about how we tackle inequality and the impact of a broken economic system on people and planet As former North of Tyne Mayor he brings so much to our teams working with our communities. Welcome!

Hands off our BBC Donald. www.theguardian.com/media/2025/d...

Copilot just correctly diagnosed that my regular expression wasn't matching because it contained invisible zero-width space characters. The problem? It put them there in the first place. #DontTrustAI

📣 Strawman Proposal: Web Thing Protocol HTTP Sub-protocol w3c.github.io/web-thing-pr... A dedicated HTTP-based application protocol for the Web of Things.

This is why I have trust issues. #AI

We told our five year old daughter that this box contains the missing matter of the universe, and now she won't let us get rid of it 😂 #H2G2

The ambitious plans for a "forest city" east of Cambridge, where a million people would live in modular wooden buildings inter-weaved with pedestrian streets, tram lines, ancient woodland and 12,000 acres of newly planted native forest. www.theguardian.com/environment/...

An average AI prompt consumes 0.3-3Wh of electricity (2-3g CO₂). 3Wh could power my LED desk lamp for an hour. In the context of the average UK resident's daily power consumption of 12,000Wh that's not awful, but it's also not awesome. Use sparingly. www.sustainabilitybynumbers.com/p/carbon-foo...

Twitter ("X") is down due to a Cloudflare outage. How exciting.

Say hi to Kit. 🦊 www.firefox.com/en-US/kit/

I currently have availability for part time consulting/contracting work. I'm a full stack Software Engineer with 15+ years of commercial experience, specialising in Web Apps and the Web of Things. Please let me know if I can help with anything. #OpenToWork tola.me.uk/consulting

An interesting new range of Matter smart home devices from IKEA www.theverge.com/news/814241/...

New blog post: Introducing the Web Thing Protocol tola.me.uk/blog/2025/11... A dedicated real-time protocol for the Web of Things.

Still within the margin of error, but an opinion poll showing the Greens ahead of both Labour and Conservatives is quite a moment in British politics. 💚

Dia is still the best attempt at this "AI Browser" thing so far IMO. Despite my serious misgivings about the whole concept, it kind of feels like what a web "user agent" was meant to be all along.

Only just noticed Firefox now has a chatbot sidebar to chat with Claude, ChatGTP, Gemini and Mistral. But unlike Dia, Comet and Atlas it cannot use open tabs as context for prompts - which is by far the most useful feature of chatbots in a browser. support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/ai-...

"This Jen, is the Internet." #AWSOutage

British.

So Nvidia has now invested billions in both OpenAI and xAI... to enable them to buy Nvidia GPUs. The deal has a "unique deal structure, backed by the GPUs as opposed to the company". I can't see any way this could possibly end badly... 🫧 www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

💚 www.youtube.com/watch?v=qxt4...

Proud to have Krellian featured in the ICC's “Opportunity of a Lifetime” campaign. "The climate crisis is not only the defining challenge of our time, it is also the greatest opportunity to build a more sustainable and inclusive future." iccwbo.org/news-publica...

"Why I gave the world wide web away for free" www.theguardian.com/technology/2... "If we are able to muster it, we have the chance to restore the web as a tool for collaboration, creativity and compassion across cultural borders." -- Tim Berners-Lee

Android is eating the world. www.theverge.com/news/784381/... It always seemed inevitable that Android and Chrome OS would eventually converge in some way, but I was cheering for the other team. The one built on the open web.

🇺🇸🙊 www.youtube.com/watch?v=DyoY...

Google's new data centre in Essex will have CO2 emissions equivalent to 500 short-haul flights a week, amid the scramble to supply a predicted 13x increase in computer processing power needed by "AI" by 2035. www.theguardian.com/technology/2...

The Browser Company is being acquired by Atlassian substack.com/home/post/p-...

Technically feasible? Sure, given enough time and resources. But where would the nine figure annual revenue come from to support "ChromeCo" as a standalone business? kgi.georgetown.edu/research-and...

What an incredible experience exhibiting Krellian's climate tech innovations at the Houses of Parliament in London yesterday, with Sage and @techuk.bsky.social.

I am honoured to have been invited to showcase Krellian's climate tech innovations at the Houses of Parliament next week, as part of the Digital Tools for Net Zero Parliamentary Showcase in partnership with Sage and techUK. www.techuk.org/what-we-deli...

I've been using Dia (@diabrowser) for a week now and I what I like about it is that it enhances rather than replaces web pages, using your open tabs and browsing history as context to provide meaningful insights.

Dia (@diabrowser.com) read my last ten blog posts and concluded "Ben’s writing is a tapestry of technical exploration, open-source advocacy, and a gentle, persistent optimism about the web’s potential to empower users and communities." I'll take that.

An exhilarating and exhausting few days in Atlanta, representing Krellian at the Sage Impact Entrepreneurship Programme Summit with Village Capital. I've learnt a huge amount over the last three months and built valuable new relationships. #Impact #Startup #ClimateTech

Dia, from The Browser Company www.diabrowser.com

navigator.install() Good idea or bad idea? github.com/w3c/manifest...

"AI will consume up to 82 terrawatt-hours of electricity this year—roughly around the same as the annual electricity consumption of a country like Switzerland" www.wired.com/story/new-re...

With "AI" looking likely to disrupt computing one way or another, I've increasingly been thinking about how conversational interfaces can be built without killing the open web. NLWeb seems like an interesting experiment in this area news.microsoft.com/source/featu...

Well that's a bit of a curveball 9to5mac.com/2025/05/23/d...

RIP Pocket blog.mozilla.org/en/mozilla/b...

I honestly can't tell whether this is an epoch in the history of technology, or just two rich white men stroking each others' egos and expelling gas into a trillion dollar bubble that's ready to burst. #AI www.youtube.com/watch?v=W09b...

I love the vision of a "decentralised web without blockchain" that @jay.bsky.team describes in this interview, but I can't help but think it's disingenuous to claim that anyone can just self-host Bluesky in the same way that they can self-host a blog. www.wired.com/story/big-in...

Web components > React components. Use the platform. #webdev dev.to/besworks/so-...

Mozilla on US vs. Google: "We recognize the importance of improving search competition. However, doing so shouldn’t come at the cost of browser competition... Without this, we risk trading one monopoly for another..." blog.mozilla.org/en/mozilla/g...

Unicorns vs. Zebras unfolded.venturra.com/unicorns-vs-... "Unlike unicorns, which often prioritize growth above all else, zebras focus on building sustainable and profitable businesses that benefit the community and the environment." #startup

🚨 New Article: Industry Voices Caution Against DOJ’s Plan to Force Sale Of Chrome ⭐️We support the DOJ’s goal of ending Google’s monopoly⭐️ but we along with many voices from across the tech industry are concerned about collateral damage to the web Read: open-web-advocacy.org/blog/industr... 🧵(1/7)

New Article: Is It Worth Killing Mozilla to Shave Off Less Than 1% From Google’s Market Share? 🚨 The DOJ is seeking to cancel all of Google's revenue-sharing deals with browser vendors. 🧵 (1/7)

The open web is under threat. The way the US courts decide to remedy Google's monopoly could shape its future. "Break Google’s Search Monopoly without Breaking the Web" open-web-advocacy.org/blog/break-g...

Today is Krellian Ltd.'s 5th Birthday! 🎉 And what a roller-coaster it has been so far.

I had some great conversations at Silicon Mingle last night, really nice to catch up with everyone. #NorthEast #Tech

I'm delighted to share that I have been selected for a StandICT.eu Fellowship, with a six month project working on out-of-the-box interoperability on the #WebOfThings.