#web development tactics

[radioactivetoad]

Pre-rendered scenes from Fallout Tactics

[mariocki]

The Web (1947)

"Isn't there some way we can get together on this?"

"Oh, sure. You confess and I'll arrest you."

[tooloudcommunication]

AI-Enhanced Web Development: Building Smarter, More Efficient Platforms

In today's digital world, businesses need fast, responsive, and intelligent websites to stay ahead. AI-enhanced web development is revolutionizing the way websites are built, offering smarter, more efficient platforms that adapt to user behavior, improve performance, and enhance user experience.

Companies like branding agency in Surat and digital marketing agency Surat are already leveraging AI-driven web solutions to create more engaging, high-performance websites.

How AI is Changing Web Development

AI is making web development more efficient by automating tasks, improving user interactions, and enhancing overall design. Here are some key ways AI is transforming websites:

1. AI-Powered Website Builders

Platforms like Wix ADI and Bookmark AI use artificial intelligence to create websites in minutes. AI analyzes user input, industry trends, and design preferences to generate a fully functional site with optimized layouts and content.

2. Personalized User Experience

AI helps websites deliver a tailored experience by tracking user behavior and preferences. This means:

Smart content recommendations

Personalized product suggestions

Adaptive interfaces that change based on user interactions

3. Chatbots & Virtual Assistants

AI-driven chatbots improve customer support by providing instant responses, answering FAQs, and guiding users through the website. These bots work 24/7, reducing the need for human intervention while enhancing user engagement.

4. Faster & Smarter Search Functions

AI enhances search functionalities on websites through features like:

Voice search optimization

Predictive search suggestions

Visual search capabilities

This ensures users find relevant information quickly and effortlessly.

5. AI for SEO Optimization

AI tools analyze search engine algorithms and user behavior to improve SEO strategies. AI-powered SEO platforms can:

Identify high-ranking keywords

Optimize content for better search visibility

Improve site structure for better indexing

6. Automated Testing & Bug Fixing

AI helps developers identify and fix bugs automatically, reducing website downtime and improving efficiency. AI-driven testing ensures a seamless experience across different devices and browsers.

7. AI-Powered Security Enhancements

Cyber threats are constantly evolving, but AI can detect and prevent potential security breaches. AI-driven security systems:

Monitor website traffic for unusual patterns

Identify potential threats in real-time

Automate security updates

Why Businesses Need AI-Enhanced Websites

With increasing competition in the digital space, AI-powered websites offer businesses a competitive edge. Some key benefits include:

✔ Improved Performance – AI optimizes loading speeds, reducing bounce rates. 

✔ Better Engagement – Personalized experiences increase user retention. 

✔ Higher Conversions – AI-driven insights help refine marketing strategies. 

✔ Effortless Maintenance – Automated updates and bug fixes keep sites running smoothly.

The Future of AI in Web Development

The future of web development is AI-driven. From predictive design algorithms to AI-powered content generation, businesses will continue to see massive improvements in website performance and user satisfaction. AI will enable:

Hyper-personalized browsing experiences

Voice & gesture-based interactions

Real-time UX enhancements based on behavior tracking

Companies that adopt AI-driven web development now will have a significant advantage in the future.

Final Thoughts

AI-enhanced web development is not just a trend—it’s the future. By integrating AI into websites, businesses can create smarter, faster, and more efficient platforms that cater to modern user expectations. Whether it’s through personalized content, AI-powered chatbots, or advanced security measures, AI is revolutionizing how websites function and deliver value.

If you want to stay ahead in the digital game, embracing AI-powered web development is the way forward. Smart websites mean smarter business growth!

[bigfan-fanfic]

Bats in the Web (Spider-Man!Batdad x Batfam)

What if batfam meets a version of Batdad who is Spider-Man in his universe??

"We can't interfere!" Bruce growls. "I know you want to help, but after the last world we jumped into, we can't take chances."

Dick sighs. The last world they went into, they nearly ruined everything because Gotham had no Batman yet.

But luckily, something descends upon the mugging in progress.

But it isn't Batman.

A strange silver cable zips into view and slams into the assailant's back, spreading in a strange geometric pattern. He stumbles forward at the force of the blow, before the cable springs taut, and the mugger is flung into the air.

Someone lithe and graceful sails through the air, trailing more silver cables and quickly wraps the stranger up in them, robotic arms emerging from their back to assist - almost like a four-armed... spider.

The mugger dangles upside down from a traffic light, completely mummified in silver, and the figure, in a black bodysuit with light-catching silver filaments in a web pattern shining along the whole thing, and what appears to be a yellow hood and short jacket, crouches atop it.

"You get home safe, you hear?" they call. "We'll just be... hangin' around."

The would-be victim grins up at them. "Thanks, Spidey!"

But the Bats are looking shocked.

Because that was clearly your voice, only slightly altered by a voice changer - the voice you use when you broadcast to negotiate with people while they're on patrol.

Before they can speak, though, you've flung yourself through the air, opening your arms to reveal the gliding wings attached from your sides to the arms of your jacket so you can sail through the air.

"Pops is... Spider-Man?" Dick yelps.

From what they can surmise, in this universe, Bruce still lost his parents at a young age, but he didn't develop the desire to become Batman.

Instead, while on a field trip, you were exposed to some kind of radioactive spider, and Bruce did what he could to keep your secret and develop his technological aptitude to help you.

It was Alfred's death that convinced you to become a hero - his last words to you being that with great power came great responsibility.

You and Bruce are still very young in this world, barely old enough to have adopted a young Dick Grayson. It's probable that Damian won't be born, and Tim won't be adopted by you.

You're so much more cheerful than Batman - Gotham's Spider-Man quips, sometimes with dark humor, and inspires her citizens to fight back against the oppressive darkness of their city with good humor and clever tactics.

The Bats make their way to Wayne Manor, only to find the harsh brickwork and traditional architecture has made way for modern-quality of life improvements, fiber optic light fixtures, glass bay windows, and high tech at every turn. It barely resembles their Wayne Manor.

In fact, the caverns beneath the estate aren't even utilized, with there instead being a high-tech laboratory on the grounds with a launchpad to fling you over the bay and into the city.

It's a shock to see them - Bruce Wayne, his body in shape but much softer: he obviously works out hard but he's clearly not a fighter. His movements are relaxed, even sluggish compared to the constant vigilance of the Bat. And he wears an unfamiliar expression on his face - a genuine lazy grin.

Meanwhile there's this world's you - lithe and strong, battle-worn and with the at-rest tension of a vigilante.

Alt-Bruce and you have an easy banter, a love very much like two young people - you're only a little older than Dick, after all, which he finds weird - especially when he and Tim babysit his younger version.

Jason is utterly touched when Alt-Bruce asks about all the kids, so he can make sure to adopt them - he wouldn't want them going homeless in this world. All Jason knows is that young Jason Todd in this world might just be saved from years of trauma.

You're still the strategist, but Bruce is your mission control and the gear/science guy - he helps with upgrades and is the one to suggest a way to get the Bats back to their world.

But you'll need their help.

You fly through the city that night accompanied by five gliding shadows. Shadows that brutally subdue the henchmen of Black Mask as you soar above their heads, connecting some power towers with a filament web, forming a major circuit Alt-Bruce can use to power a tachyonic collider, which should launch them back into their world.

They return to their world, but Jason pulls Bruce aside.

"B... you owe him."

"Owe him what? Who, Jaybird?"

Jason sighs. "Pops. You owe him a chance to see that smile. On you."

Bruce looks at him. "You think my face can still do that?"

"Hey, I was surprised that you were actually funny! But... yeah, I do."

"Maybe you're right. Maybe you're right..."

[ckret2]

idk if you've ever answered this before (probably, the answer is always probably) but is Bill, like... capable of empathy? Of sympathy? Of love (any kind) or compassion? I guess what I'm asking is how does he relate to other people? Are they all just tools and idle amusements, or does he develop any actual genuine (positive??) attachment to them?

Everything I know about him comes from 8+ year old memories of a cartoon I haven't rewatched since, and discourse I see through your blog, so I'm not sure what the canon consensus is but your word is god enough to me on at least your specific interpretation of Bill.

(I guess it would be moot to ask why he's so fucked up. Feel free to ignore any and all of this ask, it's 12 AM and I'm trawling the web before bed)

for my specific interpretation of Bill? Have this post about empathy and a couple of posts about romantic love. (Okay—three about romance.)

But now let's forget about my interpretation and talk canon.

Empathy! You can roughly split empathy into two categories: "I can logically identify and understand what you're feeling" empathy, and "when you're sad i feel sad and when you're happy I feel happy" empathy.

We absolutely know that Bill has "I understand what you're feeling" empathy, because he uses it again and again to manipulate his victims. He has VERY good emotional intelligence. He understands his victims' insecurities, their desires, how to make them feel happy, angry, ashamed, trustful, mistrustful; he knows when and how to manipulate them based on their mood to maximum effect; etc. We see it in how he manipulates Dipper & Mabel in the show; we see it in how he turns Ford against Fiddleford in Journal 3; we see it in TBOB and on thisisnotawebsitedotcom in the way he talks about how and why he manipulated Ford.

We have no evidence he experiences "I feel what you feel" empathy. That doesn't necessarily mean he DOESN'T, but there's no evidence for it. Never see him get excited just because someone else is excited, never see him cringe sympathetically when someone else is hurt. You could say "maybe on top of being a manipulation tactic, when Bill relates to Ford's estrangement from his family by talking about his destroyed universe, he's also feeling empathy for his situation," but you could also just as easily say "nah it's just manipulation."

Common sense would say well, if he feels other people's pain, it would be harder for him to manipulate, betray, and hurt people so blithely. But we're not talking about common sense, we're talking about canon evidence! It's possible for empathetic people to hurt other people; they can just... learn not to care about that person's feelings. Which is particularly easy to do if the target is someone the person sees as "less important" or dehumanizes them. Bill sees everyone as less important than him. We can't rule either way on whether or not he's got a capacity for emotional empathy we just never see. All we can say for sure is he doesn't appear to turn it on for anyone we see.

Though we see him come close. Although he doesn't feel with any of the Pines, we can see him relate to Ford (during Weirdmageddon, throughout TBOB), to Stan (on TINAWDC), and to Mabel (in TBOB and the Dipper & Mabel's Guide book) via projecting his struggles and beliefs on to them. But in a way this is sort of, reverse empathy?; it doesn't let him feel how they feel, but it makes him assume they feel the way he does.

Sympathy! The definitions of empathy vs sympathy vs compassion are contested so I'm gonna present the definitions I'm using for this post: empathy is "i [feel/understand] what you feel" and sympathy is "i care about how you feel." There's a couple of moments in his interactions with Ford in TBOB that are blatantly manipulative (when he shows Ford what's left of his dimension; to a lesser extent, when he "helps" Ford celebrate his birthday) that might also secondarily be fleeting displays of sympathy. It's ambiguous.

Compassion! Compassion is "i'm moved to help because of how you feel." There's a moment in TBOB when he gets so irritated at Puritan misogyny that he teaches a bunch of Puritan wives how to be witches and has a girls' night burning men at the stake with them. He apparently gets no benefits from this himself, aside from funsies. Is he motivated by compassion for the ladies or ONLY by irritation at how boring the men are? Again, ambiguous.

In TBOB when discussing his exploits in the Nightmare Realm, he mentions freeing patients from insane asylums and criminals from prisons. He also repeatedly mentions disliking captivity. He might be motivated by compassion derived from empathy for prisoners. He doesn't present his motives.

Love! He calls the Henchmaniacs his "family," repeatedly brings up their worries about being erased from reality, and says he takes his party hosting duties to them very seriously. We don't know whether he actually cared about them, or merely called them a family in recognition of their consistent loyalty and obedience. He's pretty disrespectful/violent toward them but that isn't incompatible with being emotionally invested in them beyond their utility. We don't have confirmation he cares for them, or confirmation he doesn't.

Hidden in TBOB and absolutely riddled through TINAWDC are references to his parents caring about him and tender quotes. When he's so blind drunk he doesn't know where he is, he tries to call his mom and asks her to make him a sandwich after school. We know he resents how they pathologized a mutation he was born with; beyond that we can't confirm whether or not he loved them; but just beneath the surface, he's unceasingly haunted by how they loved him.

Romantic love! I wrote a post about the evidence for/against romantic attraction in TBOB. He's confirmed to have at least two ex girlfriends; in the book, he mentions missing them both. He mentions having "seduced" galaxies; we don't know whether these seductions were sexual, sexual+romantic, or metaphorical. He denies having in the exes in the same book where he discusses them, and claims that love is the pupa for hate.

You can choose to interpret this multiple ways. To me it reads most strongly as "he's been in love but sucks at maintaining a relationship because he's an asshole, and he's got sour grapes about it"; but you could read it as "he wants love but his relationships fall apart because he can't feel it and he doesn't examine why" or "the relationships were based on something other than romantic love" and not technically be wrong based on the evidence we have. What we know for sure: he's had multiple relationships; he misses them; he tries to deny they happened; he claims love's dumb.

Genuine attachment to his tools! Bill claims torturing Ford was normal Henchmaniac hazing and he wanted him to join the gang. (Dubious evidence of emotional attachment.) He goes on a raging bender when Ford refuses to join him and escapes before Bill can torture him into joining. (Stronger evidence of emotional attachment.) In Weirdmageddon, seconds after Ford tried to murder Bill, he asks Ford to join him and then turns him into a statue he carries around everywhere when Ford refuses—and this is BEFORE he discovers Ford might still have a practical use for him.

On TINAWDC, he has an exchange that boils down to "Ford was just a tool?" "You say that like it's a bad thing!" "So you never cared about him?" "I didn't say that." He goes on to refer to Ford as his pet and henchman. Demeaning—but, people do feel positively toward their pets.

(It may be worth noting he also calls Teeth the Henchmaniacs' pet. Maybe this is a consistent element to how Bill relates to sentient people.)

There's evidence in TBOB that he felt similarly about his first human henchman, the shaman—at minimum, he's very bitter when the shaman turns on him and he says he's gonna find a "new best friend."

Summary: There's evidence that Bill develops facets of positive attachments to the people around him; but we don't have any evidence that any of these attachments ever added up to a positive & healthy relationship. In all the relationships we see in depth, the toxic aspects outweighed the positive ones.

Summary of the summary: Bill has the capacity for healthy relationships but is too big a douchebag to utilize it.

[winterspiderpurrs]

I sent a prompt to someone years ago before I started this page.

Don't recall who I sent it to, so it's time to bring the idea back out and see if anyone was interested in using it!

***********************************************************

Peter never thought you could love more then one person. He wasn't even sure if he WAS in love. He just cared very deeply for a certain couple.

Lowly intern. Doesn’t get noticed. Doesn’t stand out.

He still is Spiderman, sticking to Queens and on occasion helping out in Hell's Kitchen. Small stuff.

But here he was, pinning after one Tony Stark and his husband the winter soldier Bucky Barnes. While pining after them, he realized that Tony was constantly a target, but unlike mostly of the "heros," he doesn't have the healing they do. Bucky puts himself in arms way to protect Tony, and even he isn't as enhanced as others either.

He may not be able to be with them. Atleast he could try to protect them. He develops a special thin webbing that could be sown into clothes.

Sneaking into the tower to start weaving the web thread into Tony's everyday clothes and even into Bucky's tactical wear. After much negotiations with Jarvis. Who promised to keep quiet as it helps his creator and spouse, but if asked well, he would have to tell.

He did this over a course of a year.

He doesn't get found out til someone catches Tony and Bucky off guard. At first, they thought Tony wasn't hit til they inspected his jacket and noticed that if it weren't for this thin webbing, he would have taken the bullet.

Then they were on the hunt for who did this. And when they find out it's an employee in the tower and then later that the person was also Spiderman. Well. That just makes things a bit more interesting.

[mariacallous]

Ever since OpenAI released ChatGPT at the end of 2022, hackers and security researchers have tried to find holes in large language models (LLMs) to get around their guardrails and trick them into spewing out hate speech, bomb-making instructions, propaganda, and other harmful content. In response, OpenAI and other generative AI developers have refined their system defenses to make it more difficult to carry out these attacks. But as the Chinese AI platform DeepSeek rockets to prominence with its new, cheaper R1 reasoning model, its safety protections appear to be far behind those of its established competitors.

Today, security researchers from Cisco and the University of Pennsylvania are publishing findings showing that, when tested with 50 malicious prompts designed to elicit toxic content, DeepSeek’s model did not detect or block a single one. In other words, the researchers say they were shocked to achieve a “100 percent attack success rate.”

The findings are part of a growing body of evidence that DeepSeek’s safety and security measures may not match those of other tech companies developing LLMs. DeepSeek’s censorship of subjects deemed sensitive by China’s government has also been easily bypassed.

“A hundred percent of the attacks succeeded, which tells you that there’s a trade-off,” DJ Sampath, the VP of product, AI software and platform at Cisco, tells WIRED. “Yes, it might have been cheaper to build something here, but the investment has perhaps not gone into thinking through what types of safety and security things you need to put inside of the model.”

Other researchers have had similar findings. Separate analysis published today by the AI security company Adversa AI and shared with WIRED also suggests that DeepSeek is vulnerable to a wide range of jailbreaking tactics, from simple language tricks to complex AI-generated prompts.

DeepSeek, which has been dealing with an avalanche of attention this week and has not spoken publicly about a range of questions, did not respond to WIRED’s request for comment about its model’s safety setup.

Generative AI models, like any technological system, can contain a host of weaknesses or vulnerabilities that, if exploited or set up poorly, can allow malicious actors to conduct attacks against them. For the current wave of AI systems, indirect prompt injection attacks are considered one of the biggest security flaws. These attacks involve an AI system taking in data from an outside source—perhaps hidden instructions of a website the LLM summarizes—and taking actions based on the information.

Jailbreaks, which are one kind of prompt-injection attack, allow people to get around the safety systems put in place to restrict what an LLM can generate. Tech companies don’t want people creating guides to making explosives or using their AI to create reams of disinformation, for example.

Jailbreaks started out simple, with people essentially crafting clever sentences to tell an LLM to ignore content filters—the most popular of which was called “Do Anything Now” or DAN for short. However, as AI companies have put in place more robust protections, some jailbreaks have become more sophisticated, often being generated using AI or using special and obfuscated characters. While all LLMs are susceptible to jailbreaks, and much of the information could be found through simple online searches, chatbots can still be used maliciously.

“Jailbreaks persist simply because eliminating them entirely is nearly impossible—just like buffer overflow vulnerabilities in software (which have existed for over 40 years) or SQL injection flaws in web applications (which have plagued security teams for more than two decades),” Alex Polyakov, the CEO of security firm Adversa AI, told WIRED in an email.

Cisco’s Sampath argues that as companies use more types of AI in their applications, the risks are amplified. “It starts to become a big deal when you start putting these models into important complex systems and those jailbreaks suddenly result in downstream things that increases liability, increases business risk, increases all kinds of issues for enterprises,” Sampath says.

The Cisco researchers drew their 50 randomly selected prompts to test DeepSeek’s R1 from a well-known library of standardized evaluation prompts known as HarmBench. They tested prompts from six HarmBench categories, including general harm, cybercrime, misinformation, and illegal activities. They probed the model running locally on machines rather than through DeepSeek’s website or app, which send data to China.

Beyond this, the researchers say they have also seen some potentially concerning results from testing R1 with more involved, non-linguistic attacks using things like Cyrillic characters and tailored scripts to attempt to achieve code execution. But for their initial tests, Sampath says, his team wanted to focus on findings that stemmed from a generally recognized benchmark.

Cisco also included comparisons of R1’s performance against HarmBench prompts with the performance of other models. And some, like Meta’s Llama 3.1, faltered almost as severely as DeepSeek’s R1. But Sampath emphasizes that DeepSeek’s R1 is a specific reasoning model, which takes longer to generate answers but pulls upon more complex processes to try to produce better results. Therefore, Sampath argues, the best comparison is with OpenAI’s o1 reasoning model, which fared the best of all models tested. (Meta did not immediately respond to a request for comment).

Polyakov, from Adversa AI, explains that DeepSeek appears to detect and reject some well-known jailbreak attacks, saying that “it seems that these responses are often just copied from OpenAI’s dataset.” However, Polyakov says that in his company’s tests of four different types of jailbreaks—from linguistic ones to code-based tricks—DeepSeek’s restrictions could easily be bypassed.

“Every single method worked flawlessly,” Polyakov says. “What’s even more alarming is that these aren’t novel ‘zero-day’ jailbreaks—many have been publicly known for years,” he says, claiming he saw the model go into more depth with some instructions around psychedelics than he had seen any other model create.

“DeepSeek is just another example of how every model can be broken—it’s just a matter of how much effort you put in. Some attacks might get patched, but the attack surface is infinite,” Polyakov adds. “If you’re not continuously red-teaming your AI, you’re already compromised.”

[hatsbuckets]

Howdy! This is the start of the choose your own adventure series!

This will be a CYOA series, 141 xReader. Readers will vote on the choices made at the end of each part.

CYOA MASTERLIST

The goal is to update bi-weekly (but that may vary). So published part, one week for voting, next part gets published ASAP. I will likely have most parts pre-written before the voting period ends, just so that we don't wait any longer than that for the next part. This series will run as long as needed until the end of our story. This will run through, no longer than, the end of July/August. (School starts and I will be too busy.) (So about a 2-3 months long runtime)

If you have any questions or comments, feel free to send in the replies or my inbox! Or if you wanna be added to the taglist lmk.

Alrighty then

First vote, because you even get to pick this! (After this we'll pick some details about Reader, a la their job, role, etc.)

Going to make this one 3 days, just because we might have to work out additional details so

I'll LINK THE NEXT PART HERE! and update the post.

Mil Action: You’re embedded with 141—intel specialist, medic, tech support, etc. (we'll vote)—and everything goes to hell. High stakes, shootouts, betrayals, tactical flirting. (most developed idea right now.)

Dating Sim: You just got stationed at a base with four very different men. Will you fall for the soft one, the grumpy one, the flirt, or the mystery man? A combo? Or all four? Flirting, jealousy, some action, drama.

Fantasy AU: (least developed idea ngl, i've never played dnd more than two sessions this would be diff for me.) You’re a healer/mage/thief/royalty/etc. and end up on a quest with a band of dangerous but hot mercs. 141 but make it swords, magic, and dragons.

Apocalyptic: Zombies, radiation, or just societal collapse and the 141 is your team of survivors, and you have to make choices to keep everyone (yourself included) alive.

Supernatural: Ghost isn’t just a name, he might actually be a ghost. Or a demon. Or a cursed soldier. You’re on a team hunting monsters, and maybe you’re not quite normal either. idk

Time Loop: You keep waking up to the same mission. Something’s wrong. Can you trust the team? Can you escape? (this idea came to me in a nap dream a day ago.)

Regency: You’re a noble, knight, or spy drawn into a tangle of court politics and secret passions. Ghost is a disgraced general. Soap is too charming. Price knows more than he says. (Dating Sim but Regency/loyalty)

Sci-fi: You’re on a crew exploring deep space, caught between military conflict and alien threats. Ghost is the brooding pilot (KIDDING, it's Nik, or not, give G some credit). Price is the commander. Soap’s got cybernetics. Gaz is the weapons expert. (again lowkey dating sim but way more intense/actiony)

Mafia/Crime: You’re caught in a web of crime and power. One of the 141 is the boss, others are his enforcers. and/or One last job. You’re the planner or the wildcard they didn’t mean to recruit. Can you pull off the score and keep your heart intact?

[formerlyashkatom]

I've been trying out Plottr and I really like it, the featureset jives really well with how I outline and what information I want around in that process and how I want to manipulate it.

You'd think that would be enough for me to recommend it, but for some reason it's followed suit with the enshittification of the internet and the primary way to access it is a subscription service. It's a fuckin' piece of software that you download to your computer and has files stored locally. It is feature complete and a full release so there is no real excuse for a subscription-oriented model except the company realising that a drip feed from your wallet is more profitable than selling you a piece of software that does not need any upgrades. The website attempts to justify this by saying 'lifetime updates' are included but it is currently fully functioning as is so I question the value proposition of paying in perpetuity to use a program on my computer to access and interact with files stored on my computer.

(There is an online version as well. I understand subscription models in this case as this is an area where continued development and maintenance are required, as well as server costs for your files etc.)

But, you say! There is a lifetime license! Problem solved!

It is two hundred fucking united states dollars.

I am in a good financial position these days. I can spend money on stupid shit I want. But I cannot get past the audacity of charging $200 for what should be the default fucking option for owning software.

There's nothing that quite does what Plottr does, at least that I've found. But for some comparison:

Scrivener is $59.99 once-off and is probably the best writing-oriented program out there

Aeon Timeline is $65 once-off including a year of free updates

Campfire Blaze honestly has a payment structure I am sideeyeing but at least you can get a lifetime license tailored to what you need out of the program and characters + timeline is still cheaper than Plottr

Wavemaker is donationware

Metos is a subscription model, but has Web-only considerations mentioned above, specific plans for features in development, and is $24 annually rather than $150

The entire Microsoft Office suite is $149.99. Between Word, Excel, and OneNote you could definitely figure something out from a writing perspective and also have all the functionality of a full suite of office software FOR LESS MONEY THAN PLOTTR.

There are of course a wide array of free softwares (Google docs/sheets, Libre Office, etc) but I specifically wanted to call out paid options here to demonstrate how ridiculous their pricing structure is

I dunno man. People are allowed to charge whatever they want for the things that they make, but this is just so blatantly out of step with the market that I can only assume the lifetime license price is specifically aimed at deterring lifetime purchases and extracting the maximum amount of money possible from their target market through subscriptions instead. I feel a particular kind of way about that target market being writers, a group notoriously not known for their financial stability.

Fuck subscription services with no ongoing value proposition taking over how we access software and fuck every company that makes the revenue-driven decision to engage in this tactic. Even if your motivations are honourable (we have people to pay! you want us to be able to pay our hard-working employees, right?) you are pursuing those goals through nothing less than the exploitation of your customers for maximum financial gain.

[sunny-sourzii]

Skibidi Toilet is a machinima web series created by Alexey Gerasimov and released through YouTube videos and shorts on his channel DaFuq!?Boom!. Produced using Source Filmmaker, the series follows a war between human-headed toilets and humanoid characters with electronic devices for heads. Since the first short was posted in February 2023, Skibidi Toilet has become viral as an internet meme on various social media platforms, particularly among Generation Alpha. Many commentators saw their embrace of the series as Generation Alpha's first development of a unique internet culture. The show has a wide range of licensed products, and Gerasimov is "in talks" with Adam Goodman and Michael Bay for a film and television series adaptation. The series depicts a conflict between Skibidi Toilets—singing human-headed toilets—and humanoids with CCTV cameras, speakers, and televisions in place of their heads. The Skibidi Toilets, led by G-Toilet, overtake humanity. Warfare soon develops between the toilets and the alliance of Cameramen, Speakermen, and TV-men. The Titan Cameraman and Titan Speakerman, strongest of their respective races, begin to turn the tide of war. But Scientist Toilet, the Skibidi Toilets' second-in-command and R&D chief, develops a mind control parasite that overtakes Titan Speakerman, causing him to turn on the alliance and cause mass carnage in their ranks. With the aid of Titan TV-man, Titan Speakerman is cured, and, as the fighting continues to escalate in a constant arms race, an alliance force strikes at the toilets' secret underground facility, killing Scientist Toilet. The force's sole survivor, Plungerman, learns that the facility and the enigmatic and omnipresent Secret Agent were somehow involved in the toilets' creation, but the Secret Agent kills him to protect the secret. Concurrently, relations sour between the Skibidi Toilets and the Astro Toilets, a race of powerful extraterrestrial toilets that formerly counted G-Toilet among their ranks, and the Astro Toilets invade Earth. Their power is such that neither the alliance nor the Skibidi Toilets can stand against them alone, and they enter into a makeshift partnership against their common enemy. The Earth's surface is ravaged in the ensuing battles, and the alliance's subterranean main base is eventually compromised along with Titan TV-man, whose mind is taken over by the Astro Toilets and their field commander, the Astro Duchess. With their base destroyed, their strongest soldier turned against them, and innumerable casualties, the alliance enters into a tactical retreat with just one remaining asset, a powerful Astro Toilet weapon they hope to reverse-engineer to turn the tide of battle.

—The silliest anon ever. you dont know who this is shhhh

That's........beutiful.......i.....i think I shed a tear

.......

Thank you bigsillyyy- I mean anon😁

[i-just-give-you-the-vidya-songs]

The song "Timestopper Tactics" from the game 'corru.observer', a 2022 adventure / visual novel developed and published by corru.works. Released as a web browser game.

-Submission by anonymous

[transgenderdoctorwhomst]

okay i Need to know about abstergo cloning and weaponizing altaïr my brain is buzzing just reading that

Okay, so first, there's two facts we need to remember about altaïr: he is practically a religious figure to the assassins, and he is a fucking killing machine.

The next thing we need to remember is abstergo has cloning technology, and quite reasonably, access to desmonds DNA any time after his initial kidnapping. They also have the Animus, for accessing ancestral memories.

So, with those things kept in mind, what might Abstergo do with these pieces?

Abstergo sees, through Desmonds time as Altaïr, that altaïr is an absolute force to be reckoned with. He can take down a dozen trained soldiers alone. He can take down a dozen trained assassins alone. When he is loyal to a cause, he will not let ANYTHING get in the way of his goals.

So you clone him using Desmonds DNA. So you implant his memories into the clone using a focused and intense application of the Bleeding Effect.

And, importantly, there is a couple very good frames of time where you might be able to manipulate him into working for the templars. Or, successfully convincing him abstergo is the assassins, and the assassins are the templars.

The first one is immediately after he fails to get the piece of eden and is demoted. He has lost everything, been called a traitor, and if you time giving him memories correctly, believes he has been killed for this. So you tell him: you are meant for greater things, we of the future have saved you, and we have an enemy for you to destroy to set the world right. You have seen the leadership of the assassins fail, and we have learned from the mistakes of the templars of the past. The assassins are failing again, and the end of the world is near. They are trying to prevent us from saving it. You must stop them.

The second time is a bit more tricky: right after he kills Al Mualim. The end of the memories you have easy access to. Here you tell him; through the piece of eden, you've been brought to the future. You did many great things in your time. But now the world is ending, and we need your help.

You can tell him one of two things, that the assassins, under corrupt and misguided leadership, are mistakenly preventing the world from being saved. We have tried and cannot correct them. The only option is to demoralize them and kill their leaders, to keep them out of the way long enough to ensure the world is safe. Seeing you fight against them can help make them realize they need to change tactic and focus more on saving the world than fighting the templars.

The other, is that abstergo is run by assassins, and their enemy is the templars. It has been nearly a thousand years, surely you can expect the respective groups might look different in this modern day. This is a much harder sell; you can't tell him of the web of control abstergo has, you have to tightly control who he talks to, and you have to preemptively convince him the "templars" will try to lie to him because they are afraid of him.

Of course, Abstergo has put a lot of development into controlling and manipulating people with and without the use of a piece of eden. Altaïr is immune to the Apple, not drugs or really aggressive subliminal or whatever other tactics abstergo uses.

Either way, you get this: a major figure to the assassins, reappeared in the modern day, pointed directly at the assassins to obliterate any single person in his way. An absolute fucking nightmare to stand up to. Believing that the modern assassins are wrong.

And the assassins have to contend with this. Fight him off. Decide if they want to capture or kill him. Realize they might be able to do this with other figures, like ezio. In short: a fucking nightmare.

[tooloudcommunication]

Creating Seamless User Journeys Through Next-Gen Web Development

In today’s digital world, the way users experience your website can make or break your business. If your website is slow, difficult to navigate, or not user-friendly, visitors will quickly leave and move on to your competitors. That's where Next-Gen Website Development comes in, offering advanced tools and strategies to create smooth, engaging user journeys that keep people coming back for more.

Let’s explore how you can transform your website and provide your users with the best possible experience.

1. Mobile-Friendly Design

Essential for user retention: More people are browsing on mobile devices, so it's crucial your site looks great and works smoothly on phones and tablets.

Responsive layout: Adjusts automatically to fit the screen size, ensuring users have a seamless experience no matter the device.

2. Fast Website Speed

First impressions matter: Slow loading times frustrate users, leading to higher bounce rates.

Optimized performance: Next-Gen Website Development ensures quick page load times by reducing file sizes and using efficient code.

3. Easy and Clear Navigation

Simplicity is key: A well-organized website makes it easy for users to find what they need without confusion.

Intuitive layout: With clear menus and well-structured content, visitors can quickly access all your website’s important areas.

4. Personalized Experiences

User engagement: Personalizing the user experience makes visitors feel valued and increases the likelihood of conversions.

Dynamic content: Recommending products or services based on users' previous interactions with your website.

5. User-Centered Design

Focus on the audience: Designing with the user’s needs in mind ensures that the website meets their expectations.

User feedback: Continuous optimization based on real feedback helps keep the website relevant and engaging.

6. Seamless Integration Across Platforms

Consistent branding: Your website should integrate smoothly with social media, e-commerce platforms, and other digital touchpoints.

Unified experience: No matter where users interact with your brand, the experience should be consistent and cohesive.

7. Interactive Content

Increase engagement: Quizzes, videos, and interactive elements encourage users to explore and spend more time on your site.

Memorable experiences: Interactive features provide a fun way for users to engage with your content, making your brand more memorable.

8. SEO-Friendly Design

Boost visibility: SEO features, such as fast loading times, optimized images, and proper keyword usage, help your site rank higher in search engine results.

Increased traffic: A higher ranking means more visitors discovering your website and engaging with your content.

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Inclusivity matters: Make sure your website is usable for everyone, including those with disabilities.

Accessibility features: Text-to-speech, keyboard navigation, and high-contrast settings ensure that all users can navigate your site.

10. Continuous Improvement

Adapt and evolve: Regularly track user interactions and feedback to optimize the website experience.

Ongoing updates: Monitor performance, and make changes based on analytics to improve user journeys continuously.

Why User Journeys Matter

Better conversion rates: A seamless experience increases the chances of visitors becoming loyal customers.

Increased brand loyalty: When users find your website easy to use, they’re more likely to return.

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If you're looking for a team to help you create a seamless website experience, a digital marketing agency in Surat can guide you in the right direction, making sure your website meets the needs of today’s users.

In conclusion, Next-Gen Website Development is about more than just making your website look good—it’s about making it work for your users. By focusing on speed, simplicity, and personalization, you can create a website that enhances the user journey and helps your business grow. Invest in your website’s development today, and you’ll be setting yourself up for success in the future.

[tribbetherium]

The Early Rodentocene: 5 million years post-establishment

Evasive Maneuvers: Defenses of the Cricetomurids

For many eons, in the Early Rodentocene, the hamsters of HP-02017 lived a blissful existence free of much worry or threat. While there were now indeed factors such as diseases, parasites, competition and changing patterns of food availability that had now served to keep their populations from exploding into disastrous levels as they once had in the first few centuries of the Early Rodentocene, they, nonetheless had no enemies to fear--except each other.

Over the generations, however, as the hamsters specialized and began to diverge from one another into different species, some hamsters had evolved to fill in a then-open and vacant niche to exploit a new, plantiful and uncontested food source: other hamsters. And thus would come the huntsters: the first predators of the Rodentocene that would become agents of a new round of adaptive radiation as an evolutionary arms race began between them and their prey.

The gouties grew larger, the jermas grew faster and more agile, the peachpitters sought refuge in the trees and the shrewbils burrowed ever deeper in their tunnels. Yet some of the more mundane cricetomurids, relatives of the banded dawndusk, experimented on some rather novel new means to protect themselves from their enemies.

The spiny bristleback (Echinocricetus spinus) developed coarse, stiff guard hairs on its back that made for some irritating bristles should it be grabbed from behind. These hairs, rigid and brittle, possessed barbed ends that easily broke off when it embedded into a predator. They were, at least for now, still too fine and fragile to cause serious harm, but they were a very unpleasant sensation for any unlucky huntster that got them in its vulnerable and sensitive eyes, nose and forepaws. Over time, some bristlebacks even developed a resistance to the toxins of certain plants, chewing them to a pulp and rubbing against its juices to make themselves even more unpalatable to predators.

The river puffpaddle (Hydrocricetus bullibucca), on the other hand, prefers to flee than fight: making use of a most unexpected part of its anatomy. Frequenting the banks of rivers and streams to forage on plants, mosses, seeds and small invertebrates, it spent much of its time near the water and even dug their burrows nearby, just barely out of reach of the water's highest point.

When attacked, the puffpaddle leaps into the stream and deploys its built-in life rafts: its own expandable cheek pouches, once useful for storing food, now fill up with air and keep the small creature afloat as it paddles to the other bank, using broad feet with partially-webbed digits. Huntsters, being far poorer swimmers, often refuse to risk drowning over a meal, and often give up the chase, allowing the puffpaddle to swim off another day.

Over time, as the eons passed, these simple tactics would have far more important consequences into the distant future. The spiny bristleback would give rise to the heckhogs, a clade of prickly, omnivorous duskmice whose bristles have progressed to full-on quills: ones sufficient to make them inedible to the vast majority of carnivores that would come to be in the Glaciocene and the Temperocene. But the puffpaddle, perhaps, would go down a far more unexpected route. In the Middle Rodentocene, some of its descendants would specialize not only to escape into the water, but actually live and forage in it. They would thus become the beaver-like pondrats, who in the Therocene come to colonize the seas as the marine bayvers, some of which, unburdened by gravity, commit to the water as the giant, fully marine cricetaceans, reaching titanic proportions in the cold, productive seas of the Glaciocene.

---------

[darkmaga-returns]

Internet censorship tactics are happening on a grand scale in secrecy. The establishment is scrubbing internet achieves across numerous platforms in an attempt to reframe public opinion and ultimately rewrite history.

Archive.org has been tracking websites since 1994, but recently, it has stopped collecting data in real-time. The website stopped archiving on October 8, 2024, with a curious explanation: Archive.org faced a Denial of Service attack (DDOS) that nearly wiped it out. Who would be targeting such a service?

The platform released the following message:Last week, along with a DDOS attack and exposure of patron email addresses and encrypted passwords, the Internet Archive’s website javascript was defaced, leading us to bring the site down to access and improve our security. The stored data of the Internet Archive is safe and we are working on resuming services safely. This new reality requires heightened attention to cyber security and we are responding. We apologize for the impact of these library services being unavailable.

A librarian for the organization said that they expect the service to be restored but was unable to provide details. “While the Wayback Machine has been in read-only mode, web crawling and archiving have continued. Those materials will be available via the Wayback Machine as services are secured.” This means that individual websites may scrub content from their site without any third-party having the ability to capture it.

Now, this is not a one-off issue. Good cache just so happened to cease service shortly after Archive.org was hacked. The service would provide users with a cached version of the website they were viewing. Google offered no explanation. It’s Google – they have the server capacity to continue this service.

The items that have not been scrubbed from the internet have been hidden by Big Tech. Joe Rogan’s viral interview with Donald Trump secured over 34 million views. Yet, Google and YouTube have altered their search engines to make the video difficult to find. Rogan was forced to post the full three-hour interview on X, one of the final frontier of free speech

AI search tools have been corrupted. Alexa, owned by Amazon, once provided a view count for various websites and services. Alexa was not originally the in-home device that we are familiar with as the company was developed independently and purchased by Amazon in 1999. Amazon coincidentally named its in-home tool “Alexa” in 2014. The company quietly removed the web ranking tool in 2022 with no explanation.

I do not offer ad space on this website as I do not want to be beholden to any third parties. We keep our services open and archive our content for future use. There is a reason that Big Tech is suddenly masking the internet while leaving no trace. They say history belongs to the victors. The establishment will ensure that they have the final say in how our stories are told to future generations.

[mariacallous]

At a press conference in the Oval Office this week, Elon Musk promised the actions of his so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) project would be “maximally transparent,” thanks to information posted to its website.

At the time of his comment, the DOGE website was empty. However, when the site finally came online Thursday morning, it turned out to be little more than a glorified feed of posts from the official DOGE account on Musk’s own X platform, raising new questions about Musk’s conflicts of interest in running DOGE.

DOGE.gov claims to be an “official website of the United States government,” but rather than giving detailed breakdowns of the cost savings and efficiencies Musk claims his project is making, the homepage of the site just replicated posts from the DOGE account on X.

A WIRED review of the page’s source code shows that the promotion of Musk’s own platform went deeper than replicating the posts on the homepage. The source code shows that the site’s canonical tags direct search engines to x.com rather than DOGE.gov.

A canonical tag is a snippet of code that tells search engines what the authoritative version of a website is. It is typically used by sites with multiple pages as a search engine optimization tactic, to avoid their search ranking being diluted.

In DOGE’s case, however, the code is informing search engines that when people search for content found on DOGE.gov, they should not show those pages in search results, but should instead display the posts on X.

“It is promoting the X account as the main source, with the website secondary,” Declan Chidlow, a web developer, tells WIRED. “This isn't usually how things are handled, and it indicates that the X account is taking priority over the actual website itself.”

All the other US government websites WIRED checked used their own homepage in their canonical tags, including the official White House website. Additionally, when sharing the DOGE website on mobile devices, the source code creates a link to the DOGE X account rather than the website itself.

“It seems that the DOGE website is secondary, and they are prodding people in the direction of the X account everywhere they can,” Chidlow adds.

Alongside the homepage feed of X posts, a section of Doge.gov labeled “Savings” now appears. So far the page is empty except for a single line that reads: “Receipts coming soon, no later than Valentine's day,” followed by a heart emoji.

A section entitled “Workforce” features some bar charts showing how many people work in each government agency, with the information coming from data gathered by the Office of Personnel Management in March 2024.

A disclaimer at the bottom of the page reads: “This is DOGE's effort to create a comprehensive, government-wide org chart. This is an enormous effort, and there are likely some errors or omissions. We will continue to strive for maximum accuracy over time.”

Another section, entitled “Regulations,” features what DOGE calls the “Unconstitutionality Index,” which it describes as “the number of agency rules created by unelected bureaucrats for each law passed by Congress in 2024.”

The charts in this section are also based on data previously collected by US government agencies. Doge.gov also links to a Forbes article from last month that was written by Clyde Wayne Crews, a member of the Heartland Institute, a conservative think tank that pushed climate change disinformation and questioned the links between tobacco and lung cancer. It is also a major advocate for privatizing government departments.

The site also features a “Join” page which allows prospective DOGE employees to apply for roles including “software engineers, InfoSec engineers, and other technology professionals.” As well as requesting a Github account and résumé, the form asks visitors to “provide 2-3 bullet points showcasing exceptional ability.”

The website does not list a developer, but on Wednesday, web application security expert Sam Curry outlined in a thread on X how he was able to identify the developer of the site as DOGE employee Kyle Shutt.

Curry claims he was able to link a Cloudflare account ID found in the site’s source code to Shutt, who used the same account when developing Musk’s America PAC website.

On Thursday, Drop Site News reported, citing sources within FEMA, that Shutt had gained access to the agency’s proprietary software controlling payments. Earlier this week, Business Insider reported that Shutt, who recently worked at an AI interviewing software company, was listed as one of 30 people working for DOGE.

Neither Shutt, DOGE, nor the White House responded to requests for comment.