Joining the Web of Markdown

On October 6, 2026, Dave Winer posted "The Web of Markdown" and expanded on the original idea on Scripting News. The Web of Markdown is like a web browser for browsing markdown files - that means no CSS, no frameworks, and no cruft - just Markdown files, as a way to restart the web in 2026. 

Google isn't allowed in, and he would not want the EFF or the W3C running it either. It also avoids WordPress running the majority of the sites. 

Anyone could easily add this capability to their existing website (I run a heavily modified version of Known - I'll document how I enabled markdown browsing support soon). The key point is that sites on the Web of Markdown must support RSS inputs and outputs. Read more about Dave's proposal here.

Don't forget to be grateful

Gratitude is a mindset that shifts focus from what is lacking to the abundance already present, transforming ordinary moments into sources of joy and resilience. 

Life can be full of challenges, struggles, and uncertainties, but there are also moments of joy, beauty, and blessings that we should treasure and be grateful for. It's easy to overlook these things or take them for granted - especially when we may be going through hard times. These small blessings can be reminders that there is always goodness and grace around us, even during our struggles.

Remember to give thanks for these blessings and ask forgiveness when you overlooked them or took them for granted. God will restore your peace as you pray and give thanks for these blessings in your life.

AI Is Building On A Fragile Foundation

The future of AI depends upon a very fragile theory: finding applications for LLMs that increase productivity significantly more than their cost. 

This would generate profits for the application vendors above the costs they have to pay the data centers, which might increase revenue more than enough to cover the power, depreciation and debt service. 

So far this remains elusive, putting the future of AI on a very fragile foundation.

This blurb was heavily inspired/cribbed from DSHR's wonderful observations on the current state of AI.

Big Tech Digital Sovereignty is like Building Houses for East Germans in West Berlin

Free Alternatives to Popular SaaS Tools

SaaS is dead lists open-source alternatives to the apps you pay for.

What a time to be alive.

Photos From Our Trip to the US East Coast

Earlier this week we returned from a vacation to the US Northeast. My wife is from Canada and had never been to the northeastern states other than PA (wonderful Pittsburgh and other small western PA cities). 

Here some random photos from our trip. 

We flew into Boston to visit my son. I hadn't been to Boston in a while and was very impressed by how clean it was. We saw very little litter or graffiti and almost no beggars or homeless people. I have a friend from Boston and he told me it's because the Mafia keeps the city clean. Whoever is responsible the city looked great. Boston highlights: USS Constitution (I've loved tall sailing ships ever since I started reading Patrick O'Brian's books), Brattle Book Shop, the Old North Church, and some beautiful old buildings and restaurants.

We drove up to Portland, Maine, a gorgeous town with beautiful lighthouses and wonderful views of the sea. Portland highlights included touring the town (smaller and almost as weird as Portland, OR), admiring the lighthouses, and enjoying some great food. I even got to try the legendary Moxie soft drink. Moxie's taste wasn't as strange as I expected - it reminded me of this politically incorrect soda from my youth.   

We stopped off in Portsmouth on the drive back. It's a cute little town and we didn't have much time to look around. We did get some cheap but tasty Mexican food at Howling Wolf. We dropped my son off in Woburn and continued on to Providence.

My wife and I both remembered liking the Providence TV show so we were very interested in visiting the city. It turned out to be a bit of a disappointment. We stayed in downtown Providence and it seems to be going through a bit of a transition at the moment. The downtown area felt largely empty and abandoned. There were many boarded up storefronts and very few people on the streets. The graffiti and litter was a bit of a surprise, especially in comparison to Boston. Downtown Providence is going through some hard times at the moment and it reminded me of Pittsburgh when the steel industry started moving out of Western PA. Pittsburgh was able to come back and I'm sure Providence will soon do the same. We were lucky enough to have dinner at a beautiful restaurant filled with some incredible antiques.  

We caught the train down to NYC which was a lot of fun for my wife. She had travelled extensively in Europe by train and it brought back some great memories. My son came down to NYC and we all got to hang out together. I had been to NYC before but never for pleasure - it was wonderful to have the time to tour the city and experience things I had only read about before. 

I was pleasantly surprised that the best, juiciest Italian Cabernet I've had in a very long time was at a Chinese restaurant in Hell's Kitchen. This culture clash was one of many reasons I fell in love with NYC.

Several of my friends are from NYC and provided some great recommendations. We had a wonderful time in NYC, touring the city, seeing plays, and meeting some wonderful people. Unfortunately we didn't get to see everything we wanted. We will definitely be back soon.

I Finally Understand Why People Love NYC

Late last night (actually early this morning) we returned from a wonderful trip to the east coast. My wife had never been to the east coast and I wanted her to get a good feel for it. 

I'll share more details in a future post but here are a few highlights..

Wisdom from The Bible

The Real Reason AI Companies Are Warning About AI Risks

All the recent warnings about the dangers from AI are coming from AI companies. Why do you think this is happening? 

I believe this is a legal risk mitigation strategy - they are attempting to shift responsibility from themselves (as the creators of AI agents and tools) to their AI agents, tools, and engines.

Remember this when you see reports about a "rogue" AI agent that "escaped" a lab and hacked another company's website.

These AI agents aren't "rogue", they were improperly designed or implemented without the appropriate controls or mitigations. This is the fault of the creators of these AI agents and tools, not the tools themselves.

There aren't any "rogue" AI agents, only careless AI companies.

A poor carpenter blames his tools.

Hike near the top of Mount Boucherie

Yesterday we almost hiked to the top of Mount Boucherie. Mount Boucherie is a weathered 50-million-year-old stratovolcano in West Kelowna. 

What started off as a simple hike in the woods ended as a surprisingly scary climb near the summit of Mount Boucherie, The trail was pretty narrow with a sheer drop off in a places while other parts were loose rocks on a steep incline. At one point we had to scramble under a fallen tree that seemed determined to block our progress. I'm surprised and grateful that neither of us sustained any serious injuries (although my knee is quite fond of reminding me of my age).  

While the views were spectacular, we didn't make it up to the actual summit. It started raining and the trail became narrower and narrower until it eventually disappeared. We decided to turn back rather than tempt fate any further. The journey back down from the "near summit" was tricky and I was much slower than my incredible wife. After making it back down the sun came out and we decided to take the roof off the Jeep for one final celebration of the end of summer. We stopped at Volcanic Hills Winery on the way home for some wine tasting. Their Syrah and Gamay Noir are excellent. 

We drove by our favorite local brewery and were shocked to see Little Tokyo had not yet sold out of their incredible ramen noodles. Little Tokyo makes the greatest ramen I've ever tasted (even better than the ramen I've had in Japan). They operate out of a tiny red trailer parked in the back of Barn Owl Brewing and are only there a few days a week. They frequently sell out so we felt very lucky to enjoy their delicious noodles. Barn Owl makes a great Stout - probably not the best pairing but I am a sucker for a good Stout.  

Yesterday was a wonderful reminder of how incredibly blessed I am. God is good indeed.

Sharing My Blog Tweaks

This blog runs on a heavily modified version of Known. 

I've always loved Known's support for IndieWeb standards but wanted more modern capabilities and better support for mobile experiences. This is why I made several changes to the Known codebase - I've shared these changes on GitHub if you're interested in them.

Here is a summary of the changes I made to the default Known installation

Site Design and Layout

• I really like the format of Dave Winer's blog so I am emulating it on my blog. I could have used some of the many tools he provides (and I actually tried several times) but I became frustrated by inadequate documentation and issues trying to set up and use his tools.
• Custom CSS to hide default branding/footer elements and the stock profile block
• Built two fixed sidebars: an "About" box (with a bio and a rotating photo pulled from a folder — a new photo shown each day via simple PHP date math) and a "Linkblog" box that live-fetches and caches a  FeedLand river as an RSS feed, no third-party JavaScript involved
• Custom floated-image CSS classes (img-float-left/img-float-right) for small inline graphics, plus paragraph/heading permalinks (the small # links) generated via JavaScript
• A script to auto-hide broken link-preview cards when the target site blocks Idno's fetch

A Custom Rich Text Editor for Posts and Status Updates

• Known's built-in editor is fundamentally broken  
• I built a replacement editor from scratch using contenteditable and document.execCommand: bold, italic, headings, blockquote (with a proper "type your way out" fix), links, lists, an HTML/rich-text toggle view, and keyboard shortcuts with an in-editor help popup

Better Support for Mobile Photo Posting

• Known has fairly good support for Mobile Photo Posting out of the box. The problem I ran into is related to my absurd preference for using old-school flip phones instead of a modern smart phone. This modification enables me to rotate a photo after uploading it (you usually won't need to do this if you are uploading photos taken with a smartphone). 
• Added a native camera/gallery Photo button using <input type="file" capture>
• Built a properly authenticated upload endpoint from scratch — including reverse-engineering Idno's actual session/login-check code to do this securely rather than guessing
• Added server-side photo rotation (via PHP's GD library) with a real visual preview modal, so you can see and rotate the actual photo before inserting it into your blog post

Appending to an Existing Post

• This functionality was inspired/copied from Dave Winer's blogging format. 
• This functionality uses Idno's Entry model class and publish() method to enable appending posts to a previously saved blog post. This only works with blog posts, not status updates.  
• While implementing this functionality I found and fixed a bug in Known: calling publish() outside a normal web request crashes its syndication step (because it assumes a "current page" object always exists)  

Weekly Bible Study

I have a weekly Men's Bible Study Group with a few other guys. We've been meeting over Zoom for a few years now and it's a great way to "sharpen the iron". I'm the only guy in Canada while all the other guys are in WA.

As iron sharpens iron, so a friend sharpens a friend. - Proverbs 27:17 

Tonight we discussed Romans 4. There are 23 verses in Romans 4. My notes on our discussion are below.

• We read all 23 verses aloud using the NASB translation.
•  Romans 4 focuses on the faith of Abraham. The first 12 verses focus on one area while the rest of the verses focus on another area.
• Who are the children of Abraham - the circumcised or the uncircumcised? The answer is both because we are not justified by works but by faith. Some may think this was only the case after Jesus came to earth while others may think we were always justified by faith alone. Paul clarifies this fact in this chapter - Abraham, who came about before the laws were established, was justified before the laws were even established. This means we were always justified in faith before we ever do any works. Circumcised or uncircumcised makes no difference - both can be justified if they have faith in God. They focused on following the 617 or 618 rules they had to follow because they didn't have a relationship with God. If we had a relationship we wouldn't need the law. Christianity focuses on having a relationship with Jesus. 
• There is nothing we can do to be good. If we were able to be "good" through works alone then the concept of "good" becomes an idol for us. 
• In Jerusalem Judaism was a recognized faith but only if they went to a Jewish synagogue. If you didn't attend a synagogue you would be persecuted. This means the Christians were persecuted.
• The word "sin" in Greek roughly means to "fall short". We all fall short because of our sin. Jesus bridges the gap caused by us falling short.
• There's nothing we can do to impress God. We are like ants in comparison to God. There's nothing an ant can do on his own to make us love it. It is the same with our relationship to God.
• Discussion of Verses 22-25: "Therefore IT WAS ALSO CREDITED TO HIM AS RIGHTEOUSNESS. Now not for his sake only was it written that it was credited to him, but for our sake also, to whom it will be credited, to us who believe in Him who raised Jesus our Lord from the dead, He who was delivered over because of our wrongdoings, and was raised because of our justification."  In scripture there is a concept of "already but not yet" - Paul talks about how we have been saved, we are being saved, and how we will be saved.
• Will the law exist when we get to Heaven? Are the 10 Commandments on the gates of Heaven? I think it will be nothing like what we are experiencing now - we're supposed to be transformed. The propensity to sin will be removed from us (we are finally freed from the original sin of Adam and Eve). Because of this we won't need the rules. We will be experiencing so much joy there will be no desire to sin. Sin cannot exist in Heaven - this is why Satan was cast out of Heaven. Scriptures tell us there will be no more sin.
• God is the judge - He has already forgiven you when you have a relationship with Jesus. 
• In verse 5 what did Paul mean when he said "God justifies the ungodly"? God does not wait for us to become godly, or righteous on our own apart from Him, before welcoming us into His family. Because of our faith in righteous Jesus, God justifies us in spite of our sinfulness. There is no greater gift than this.  
• The only thing we contribute to salvation is the sin that made it necessary.
• We are not accepted for who we are - we are welcomed so we can be transformed. That transformation takes place in the afterlife.
• What is the difference between Jesus covering our sin and us covering our sin? When we cover our sin we're hiding it (much like trying to do "good deeds" to compensate for any "bad deeds" we may have previous done). When Jesus covers our sin He wipes it out, it no longer exists. We can't clean up our sins - they are only cleansed through Christ. Christ is our Advocate before God, wiping out our sins so we can be with Him.   

We always end by going around to each man to ask for prayer requests.

• I asked for prayers for all the guys and their families in the group. Thanks to Jim for all the time he puts into the group 
• I asked for prayers for my kids 
• I gave thanks for my daughter who had a recent breakthrough. I'm very proud of her strength.   
• I gave thanks for my son's success and for our upcoming trip to travel to the east coast and see him next month.
• I prayed for the Lord to bless us all, our families and friends.

More reasons to despise oversized pickup trucks

This guy's truck was so big he couldn't figure out how to fit into a parking space - so he parked at an angle and took up multiple spaces. I can't be too angry at the guy, he's obviously overcompensating for some shortcoming.  

A delicious, healthy dinner in 45 minutes

Caramelized Brussels Sprouts, Sweet Potato, Butternut Squash, Carrot & Beet Medley with Feta, Walnuts, and Cranberry-Honey Glaze. 

Try saying that three times fast.

Better yet, why not make it yourself?

Here is the recipe.

Policies and Laws are Not Substitutes for Good Parenting

There is a popular trend to regulate social media and AI platforms over concerns about the impact on children. Several laws are being developed across the US with heavy input from the tech industry.  While parents have a responsibility to protect their children, questions arise about how much control is appropriate. Tools such as content filters, usage monitoring apps, and time limits can help ensure children are reasonably safe online.

The problem is that these tools are only effective when coupled with good parenting - spending time with children to instill in them a strong sense of morals and the ability to recognize right from wrong. Tools, policies, and laws are ineffective when parents fail to educate and reinforce moral beliefs in their children 

The development of additional online safety laws will lead to increased censorship, privacy, and security risks while failing to protect children. 

Related post from the EFF (although it fails to recognize the VPN risk): https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2026/09/eu-kids-act-wont-keep-internet-accountable-and-trustworthy

I personally believe the trend of creating additional online safety laws is a veiled effort to eventually ban VPNs and force the adoption of validated digital identities.

This will likely start by using age verification for accessing VPNs. When this effort fails we'll see additional laws created to restrict the use of VPNs for only businesses. 

New Johnny Marr Out Next Month

I ordered it on vinyl - can't wait to hear the full album.

A Quick Morning Hike

Blog Tweaking

The left sidebar now includes a random picture that changes on a daily basis. The right sidebar now includes my linkblog. Clicking on a link takes you to a page where I might have a few comments about the link. From there you can get to the original post by clicking on the title.  

Insider Trading is Nothing to Brag About

This has been going on for decades and the only people who can legally stop it are far too busy profiting from it.

U.S. President Donald Trump and his wealth managers executed nearly 28.7K security transactions in the 17 months following his second inauguration—outpacing all members of Congress combined
   - from Seeking Alpha

A Beautiful Day In Peachland 

I'm attempting to catch up on my reading for the men's book club I've joined. We're reading Lonesome Dove. I've heard it's a great book but I've never read it.  I've also heard the miniseries from the 90s is incredible but, again, I haven't seen it. I'll plan to watch it after finishing the book. I'm a bit surprised that the author of such a seemingly masculine book (Larry McMurty) also wrote the screenplay for Brokeback Mountain.

We ended the day with dinner at 19 Bistro, a gorgeous place. Capped off with a tasting at Crown & Thieves (my favorite winery in the Okanagan) and a very cold plunge in the lake.

Why are AI Companies Warning Us About AI?

As I write this there has been a surge in AI doomsday warnings, started by a researcher from Anthropic. Several other CEOs and AI execs began piling on, echoing many of the warnings that had previously been expressed.

"Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei (opens in new tab) wrote that he thinks AI could decimate national security. OpenAI Chief Scientist Jakub Pachocki (opens in new tab) has talked about AI agents potentially turning against humans. Elon Musk (opens in new tab) said it could “kill us all,” Mark Zuckerberg (opens in new tab) warned it could contribute to mass surveillance and tyranny, and Bill Gates (opens in new tab) said it could quickly wipe out industries."
    - from The San Francisco Standard

This seems very strange - why would companies warn consumers against using their products? My BS detector is tingling - something doesn't smell right here. So why is this happening?

The executives warning us about AI’s threat are trying to program us into believing how powerful and critical to society AI is, justifying potentially massive valuations before their initial public offerings (IPOs). The more people believe AI is extremely powerful and has a massive positive impact on society, the more likely AI IPOs will skyrocket. These guys act like they're being good citizens warning us about the risks of AI when they are far more concerned about their IPO valuations (especially given the rising backlash over the ROI of AI). There are already laws in place to guard against the release of potentially dangerous products. If the AI companies were truly concerned about the risks they would halt their pending IPOs and take these dangerous products off the market.
The people warning loudest about AI risk are, almost without exception, the same people whose net worth, company valuation, and public standing depend entirely on AI being seen as enormously powerful and consequential.

This reminds me of a story about an incredibly brilliant guy who invented something decades ago that impacted society far more than AI ever will. He then gave it away for free so anyone could use it.
My, how the world has changed.
Thank you, Tim.

When you put all your eggs in one basket don't be surprised when they are broken

Is anyone truly surprised that a monopolistic provider detrimentally impacts its market?
According to Downdetector, 30 percent of users reported problems with AWS, citing issues involving Amazon EC2, the service that provides virtual servers for websites and applications.

Another 29 percent reported problems with AWS’s US-West-2 region in Oregon, where Amazon confirmed it was investigating connectivity failures. A further 23 percent cited issues involving US-East-1, the company’s Northern Virginia region.
Source: https://www.dailymail.com/sciencetech/article-16002517/internet-cloudflare-major-websites-outage.htm...

Bear Encounter

I was out for a walk this morning with my mother-in-law when we came upon a bear on the side of the path. We couldn't have been more than three to four feet away from it.
it jumped up a tree and looked at us. I think we might have scared it more than it scared us.
I hope I never get that close to a bear again.

An Article About Eliminating Paywalls is Behind a Paywall

Tim Berners-Lee’s article calling for the elimination of paywalls is ironically behind a paywall (not likely his choice). You can read the article for free here.

Debating with Claude

I installed the Claude app on my phone so I could have a debate with it while I made lunch. It's a fun toy but its biases quickly become obvious when you try to debate things that disagree with its founders views.

Almost Done

My wife and I have been enjoying evening watches of Better Call Saul, a prequel to Breaking Bad. I personally think BCS is a far better show than Breaking Bad. My wife never saw BB and loves BCS, We just finished season 4 and only have two seasons left. This makes me sad since there are very few shows that can match BCS in terms of writing, cinematography, and direction. This show was wonderful.

I Built My Own Rich Text Editor (and You Can Too)

I recently got my old Known (now Idno) blog back up and running. I ran into a genuinely broken TinyMCE integration in the current build. Rather than wait on a fix, I built a small custom editor to replace it. 

The error: $(...).tinymce is not a functionmeans the rich text toolbar never loads, no matter what theme or page you're on.

Instead of fighting the bug further, I wrote a lightweight editor using nothing but plain JavaScript and the browser's built-in document.execCommand API. It includes:

• Bold, italic, headings, blockquotes, links, and lists
• A custom "floated image" feature for small inline graphics 
• Keyboard shortcuts (Ctrl+B, Ctrl+I, Ctrl+K for links, Ctrl+Shift+. for blockquotes, and more)
• A raw HTML toggle for anything the toolbar doesn't cover

It hooks into Idno's theme override system — specifically the shell/footerjavascript template hook — so it layers on top of the existing install without touching core files. If you're running into the same TinyMCE bug, I filed a bug and posted my fixes to GitHub if you need them.

I'll post more soon about the other IndieWeb tinkering I've been doing with idno — a FeedLand-powered blogroll, paragraph-level permalinks, and more.