Cloudflare intends to become a root CA

Steve Goldsmith, writing on the Cloudflare blog:

Twelve years ago, during Birthday Week 2014, we turned on Universal SSL and nearly doubled the number of encrypted sites on the web overnight, giving free TLS to every site behind Cloudflare, including the ones that never paid us a cent. Encryption stopped being an expensive, time-intensive undertaking and instead became the default.

For more than a decade we have been one of the largest consumers of publicly trusted certificates on the Internet, and have never issued a single one ourselves. That is changing. Cloudflare is announcing our intent to become a public certificate authority (CA).

We have applied for inclusion in the Chrome, Apple, Microsoft, and Mozilla root programs, and we have signed a definitive agreement to acquire an established, broadly trusted root from GlobalSign, so that we can offer certificates with the widest possible device reach the day we begin issuing. We’re also announcing our plans to be one of the first CAs to serve post-quantum certificates, targeting Chrome’s recently announced Quantum-resistant Root Program.

and

To make it easy to adopt, we will be Automated Certificate Management Environment (ACME)-first, an open standard protocol that is widely accepted. Automated issuance and renewal through ACME will be the way you get a certificate from us, which means anyone already pointed at any existing free CA can move to us by changing a directory URL, with no new tooling and nothing to re-architect.

I’ve always wondered why Cloudflare wasn’t already a CA considering the sheer volume they handle, but it’s good to know that their journey and efforts have begun. 

There are a lot of details in the linked post, so don’t miss it.

September 30, 2026 · + Permalink

Post Peek: An Extension for Peeking at Twitter (X) Posts

Inspired by LitterBox, Post Peek is a lovely little browser extension for Chrome and related browsers that lets you “peek” at any Twitter (X) posts linked from other websites. Any Twitter link shows with a tiny blue dot, and clicking on them just loads up a small window with a preview of the tweet. You can, if you want to, click on the open button to view the post on the Twitter website directly, but with this extension, you get to view it right there, with your privacy protected (no cookies sent).

September 13, 2026 · + Permalink

There are 27M Indian Users on GitHub

Kyle Daigle, COO of GitHub, posting on X:

27M devs building on @github in India
2M+ more joined in 2026
1 in 7 new devs are from India

Behind India’s economic growth is a relentless community of devs.

That’s a massive number, especially the 2M+ who’ve joined in 2026 alone. I’m guessing that’s largely due to the rise of AI-assisted coding and apps like OpenClaw, but it’s still good to see an entire generation of devs using modern tools and systems.

When I was in college, it was frustrating to see the world progress with newer programming languages and technologies while the syllabus we were being taught was stuck in the “ASP” era (not even ASP.NET)

April 13, 2026 · + Permalink

Threads adds ‘ghost posts’ that disappear after 24 hours

Sarah Perez, writing for TechCrunch:

Users will now be able to create a ghost post on mobile devices by toggling on the new “ghost” icon on the app’s compose screen. When the post is published, it appears in others’ timelines with a dotted conversation bubble around it to differentiate the post from other content.

Other users on both desktop and mobile devices can reply to the post, but these responses are sent directly to the poster’s DMs (direct messages); these replies don’t appear in the timeline.

May be it’s because I’m old, but I’m failing to see the novelty of this feature.

October 27, 2025 · + Permalink

Automattic CEO calls Tumblr his ‘biggest failure’ so far

Sarah Perez, reporting for TechCrunch:

WordPress co-founder and Automattic CEO Matt Mullenweg called the company’s Tumblr acquisition his biggest failure — but one he hasn’t given up on yet. The comments were made at the recent WordCamp Canada 2025 conference, where Mullenweg went live for a Town Hall session to connect with the open source-focused WordPress community.

The exec noted that Tumblr was still on a different technical stack than WordPress — something he had intended to correct by migrating the back end to WordPress infrastructure. However, that massive undertaking was put on hold earlier this year, as the cost to move Tumblr’s half-billion blogs would be difficult given that the blogging platform wasn’t profitable and continues to be sustained by the profits of other Automattic products.

and

Mullenweg acknowledged these concerns at his Town Hall session, saying, “I need to switch [Tumblr] over to WordPress, but it’s a big lift. It’s over 500 million blogs, actually, and, as a business, it’s costing so much more to run than it generates in revenue.”

I’ve always thought Automattic’s purchase of Tumblr was a bit of an odd decision. It made me wonder what Matt’s endgame was — and honestly, it feels like that vision still hasn’t solidified. With the right leadership and a much-needed cleanup, it could absolutely thrive again. Matt’s juggling too many things right now, but I really believe someone could make Tumblr the go-to platform for the coming years, especially once it becomes part of the Fediverse.

October 21, 2025 · + Permalink

Feedbin Launches a Browser Extension to Subscribe and Read Later

Feedbin Browser Extension

I totally missed this fantastic news last week. Feedbin — my favorite RSS service for the past several years — just launched a browser extension that lets you do two things:

  1. Automatically Find & Subscribe to RSS feeds on websites
  2. Save webpages to Read Later in Feedbin’s Pages feature

The best part? The extension saves pages directly from your browser. That means if you’re viewing a page that requires you to be logged in, Feedbin can still capture the full content without a hitch.

It’s available for Safari, Chrome (and derivatives), and Firefox

With Pocket shutting down, and after finding both Matter and Readwise Reader didn’t work for me, I’ve been relying on Feedbin Pages more than ever. This extension makes that experience even better, and I’m genuinely glad it’s here.

August 8, 2025 · + Permalink

Bluesky Adds More Notification Controls to App Notifications

The Bluesky Team just released a bunch of really nice improvements to notifications on the platform.

[…] we’re excited to introduce three updates to notifications:

  • Activity Notifications: Opt-in to receive push notifications from specific accounts.
  • Enhanced Notification Settings: Controls to fine tune which notifications you receive.
  • Repost Notifications: Receive notifications when someone likes or reposts posts you’ve reposted.

I’ve long missed activity notifications from some fine folks I follow on there, so it’s great to finally have those.

July 8, 2025 · + Permalink

Karnataka High Court orders blocking of Proton Mail in India

Meera Emmanuel, reporting for Bar and Bench:

Justice M Nagaprasanna issued the direction while dealing with a petition filed by a company named M Moser Design Associates India Private Ltd (petitioner) after vulgar emails about its employee were sent using Proton Mail to other employees and the company’s clients.

and

Representing the Central government, Additional Solicitor General (ASG) Aravind Kamath had earlier told the Court that the Centre may have a limited role in giving effect to the petitioner’s prayers concerning investigation into the emails regarding its employee with the cooperation of Swiss authorities.

Jagmeet Singh has some additional bit of reporting over on Techcrunch:

Last year, the police department of the southern state of Tamil Nadu had sought to block Proton Mail after the email service was found to have been used for sending hoax bomb threats to local schools. The Indian government’s IT ministry reportedly notified internet providers to block Proton Mail at the request of law enforcement. However, the Swiss federal authorities intervened to prevent the blocking of Proton Mail taking effect.

April 29, 2025 · + Permalink