WebIdiot.Online

On Writing

“To me, all creativity is magic. Ideas start out in the empty void of your head — and they end up as a material thing, like a book you can hold in your hand. That is the magical process. It’s an alchemical thing. Yes, we do get the gold out of it, but that’s not the most important thing. It’s the work itself.”— Alan MooreFor 100s more On Writing posts, go here.The Protagonist’s Journey: An Introduction to Character-Driven Scre

This is the only Linux distro I recommend for self-hosting

Self-hosting is a great way to save money on subscriptions and take control of your data, but getting everything running smoothly on one system can be difficult, especially if you have incompatible dependencies.

I built a potato battery to charge my phone

If you've ever attended a middle or elementary school science fair, you must've seen the classic potato clock or potato lamp project. Inspired by this simple project, I started to wonder if I could build one myself, but with a higher ambition. Can a smartphone be charged by a modest tater battery? I put this brain worm to the test.

Tech companies cut more than 206,000 jobs this year while pouring an estimated $700 billion into AI infrastructure

More than 206,000 tech workers have been affected by layoffs in 2026, with employers citing AI in 121,401 U.S. job cuts while ...<img src='https://images.unsplash.com/photo-1653628989927-957b335955be?crop=entropy&cs=tinysrgb&fit=max&fm=jpg&ixid=MnwyMzg1fDB8MXxzZWFyY2h8Mjh8fFRlY2glMjBKb2JzfGVufDB8fDJ8fDE2NTQyMDQwNzU&ixlib=rb-1.2.1&q=80&w=1080' />

Kagi is abandoning its Orion browser on Windows and Linux, but the code is going open source

The modern internet can really suck sometimes. There was a time when being online wasn't so bleak. Now, I'm not here to wax nostalgic about the “good old days of the ‘Net.” The pre-Google, pre-social media internet did have its problems, but things just seem to have gotten worse over the past decade or so. A lot of people have ditched Google for modern search engine

I replaced GitHub with a free, self-hosted alternative. Here&#039;s what I gained and lost

GitHub has become the default home for countless software projects, but I wanted more control over where my repositories lived and how they were managed. That led me to Forgejo, an open-source Git hosting platform I could run on my own hardware. That led me to Forgejo, an open-source Git hosting platform I could run on my own hardware. Moving away from GitHub gave m

This launcher let me play Steam games on my Android phone, no streaming required

Sometimes when you spend money on a powerful phone, there's a moment when the honeymoon period is over, and you realize that you're not really getting the full benefit of the latest graphics and processing hardware. This is especially true if you're a gamer, because when it comes to Android games that aren't free-to-play slop, the pickings are, as they say, slim.

Spec Script Deal: &quot;Non-Refundable&quot;

Netflix acquires romantic comedy spec script &quot;Non-Refundable&quot; written by David Bernstein. Via Deadline:Non-Refundable is billed as a high-concept commercial comedy centered on Nate (Jake Innanen) and Dani (Millie Bobby Brown), an ex-couple who are still on the hook for their wedding venue despite breaking up. This leads them to travel to Mexico out of spite, where they try showing each other up with new dates.The pic is based on a spec by David Bernstein.Bernstein is repped by WME.By m

4 action-packed Netflix miniseries you can finish while working out

Watching a show can make a long treadmill session easier to get through, especially when enough is happening to keep you from checking the elapsed time. A miniseries also gives you a complete story you can finish over a few workouts, without adding too much to your watch time.

USB flash drives have gotten so expensive that you might as well buy an SSD

Flash drives aren’t the cheap choice that they used to be. Sure, you can still find some cheap flash drives around, but have you considered buying an external SSD instead? When you start to get to larger storage tiers, the pricing evens out and the external SSDs actually become a better buy.

I canceled my BritBox subscription after this tool showed me where to stream my favorite shows for free

<p><!-- obsidian -->When it comes to streaming, buying, selecting, or watching, I'm a picky viewer. It drives my wife bonkers. When I'm not being a thorn in her side about picking media to watch, I'm usually searching for ways to cancel subscriptions.</p><img src='https://static0.howtogeekimages.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/wm/2026/10/streaming-fi.jpg' />

What is Gatsby JS? How to Use It in 2026

You typed "gabsy js" into Google and landed on a Gatsby site anyway. It is one of the most common misspellings of Gatsby.js, the React framework that made static sites interesting again.The harder question in 2026 is whether Gatsby still earns a place in a new project. It ships releases and runs in production, but it is also in maintenance mode after Netlify bought the company in 2023 and retired Gatsby Cloud.This guide covers what Gatsby JS is, how the build pipeline works, and how to get a sit

I&#039;m selling 6 side projects I built (React + Supabase, Shopify). Honest numbers inside

I built these six sites myself and I'm selling them because I don't have time to grow them. Revenue is small or zero, and I say so below. Each sale includes the domain, full source code, the backend (React + Supabase, or Shopify) and 30 days of handover help.72fm.com ($900): a browser radio player with 30,000+ live stations, podcasts and radio tools. Premium is one-time PayPal passes; the first one sold in November 2026. About 1,440 human visits a month from search, social and GitHub, rising.eve

Prepare a WebMCP Review Without Submitting the Request

A business-class trip in my demo produced four facts at the same time:the saved fields were valid;the request could be submitted;the cabin required review;nothing had been submitted.An assistant that compresses those facts into “approved” or “blocked” changes the meaning of the application.I added prepare_trip_review to Trip Workbench so a WebMCP client can bring the saved request and its findings into the React editor without performing the consequential action. The result explicitly includes s

Redux for Beginners: Predictable State Management Without the Headaches

Redux is a state management library for JavaScript apps. When your app grows past a few components, state starts living everywhere — in props, in local variables, in three different places at once — and bugs become hard to find. Redux fixes that by putting all your app's state in one store, and changing it only through clearly defined actions. It is strict, and that strictness is the point.The core idea has three parts: the store holds the state, actions describe what happened, and reducers deci

Building an accessible price range filter in React

A dual-thumb price slider that works with a keyboard, a screen reader and a form, without fetching on every pixel of a drag.Every shop has one: a slider with two thumbs, "$200 – $800", and a product list that updates when you let go. It looks like a ten-minute job. It isn't.The usual first attempt is two &lt;input type="range"&gt; elements stacked on top of each other with some CSS to hide one track. That gets you surprisingly far, and then the details arrive:The thumbs cross each other, or get

How I Built a Full-Stack Quiz Platform with React, Node.js, and Socket.io

As a software engineer, I love building tools that solve real problems. I noticed that traditional online testing platforms often feel dull and disconnected. I wanted to build something different—a platform where students could compete in real-time, and teachers could easily create secure, private assessments.That’s how King Ice Quiz was born. It is a full-stack web application with a React frontend, a Node.js/Express backend, and real-time chat capabilities powered by Socket.io.You can check ou

Service area map with ZIP code checker in React

The client request I hear most often on home services sites is some version of "can the map show all the areas we serve?" The first few times I answered it with an embedded Google Map and a list of suburbs. It looked like every other contractor site and it did not answer the visitor's real question, which is not "where are you" but "will you come to me." The Service area block in Facade is the version I settled on after building this section for HVAC companies, plumbers and cleaning services. He

Building Zero-Server Micro-Utilities: Web Audio DSP Timing &amp; NEC Electrical Sizing in Pure TypeScript

When building modern web apps, developers frequently reach for backend lambdas or Python microservices for calculations that modern browsers can execute in sub-milliseconds on client CPUs.Over the past week, I expanded ZeroBloatTools—a suite of privacy-first, 100% client-side web calculators—to solve two distinct computational engineering problems entirely in the browser:Sub-millisecond Web Audio API Delay &amp; Reverb SynchronizationNational Electrical Code (NEC Article 220) Residential Service

How I Built 100+ Client-Side E-Commerce &amp; Dev Utilities With Zero Server Storage

Most online calculators and PDF/image utilities upload your sensitive data—unit costs, ad spend, or private documents—to a backend server and clutter the screen with intrusive ads.I built SwiftKitHub (swiftkithub.com) to solve this: a fast, 100% client-side utility workbench running entirely inside browser memory using React, TypeScript, and WebAssembly. Architecture Highlights0 KB Cloud Payload: All calculations, PDF merging, and image conversions run locally in the browser with zero serve