AS Web

OpenAI's AI agents reportedly targeted the United Nations website, according to a Wall Street Journal report. The claim suggests automated agents developed by OpenAI accessed or attempted to access the U.N.'s site, raising questions about how autonomous AI systems interact with government and institutional web infrastructure. Details on the nature, purpose, and consequences of the targeting have not been made clear.

A new open-source project called e2e, published under the tester-army organisation on GitHub, bills itself as a next-generation end-to-end testing framework for web and mobile applications. Written in TypeScript, it is attracting early attention from developers, though the project is young and details on its feature set and adoption remain limited so far.

Microsoft is winding down Internet Explorer mode in its Edge browser, retiring the compatibility feature that allowed businesses and users to open legacy websites built for the old Internet Explorer engine. The move pushes organisations still relying on aging internal sites to modernise their web applications or seek alternative solutions.

Cloudflare has introduced a Web Search API, announced in its official changelog. The release gives developers a way to integrate web search directly into their applications and services via Cloudflare's developer platform. The announcement drew significant attention on Hacker News, ranking among the day's top stories, with discussion centring on how the API compares with existing search APIs and its usefulness for AI-powered applications.

The Orange web portal is among the most searched topics in France, with more than 1,000 people looking it up. The portal is the landing page Orange offers its customers for email, account management and news. No specific incident or announcement has been confirmed, so the exact trigger for the surge in interest remains unknown.

A new research paper analyzes the privacy practices of web and mobile conversational AI agents, examining what data these chatbot services collect and share with third parties. The study, shared widely on Hacker News, draws attention to how popular AI assistants may leak user conversations and metadata to trackers. Readers are debating the findings' implications for everyday use of AI tools.

Apple's Pass Designer, a tool on Apple's developer site for creating Wallet passes, is getting attention among developers. The web tool lets developers design and configure passes such as coupons, tickets and store cards for Apple Wallet. Discussion is centered on the tool's usefulness for building pass-based features, though specific reactions remain thin.

A new piece titled 'Stumbling Lightways in the Furtive Ground' has been published on subspacewagon.systems, accompanied by a network of linked sites including saturation.earth, tilley.earth and letters.directory. The essay appears to be part of an experimental personal web-writing project circulating among independent online writers and readers.

Rockstar Games has taken down a free browser-based port of Grand Theft Auto V after it went viral, letting people stream the full game without owning or installing it. The project spread quickly online for making GTA 5 playable in a web browser, but the shutdown highlights Rockstar's firm enforcement of its intellectual property, with fans debating whether the takedown was justified.

A developer has released a free alternative to Burp Suite and Caido for API testing, emphasising zero setup and instant use. The tool is being shared with the Hacker News community, where readers are weighing its convenience against established security testing tools used for intercepting and inspecting web traffic.

An unofficial port of Grand Theft Auto V built to run in a web browser was removed just hours after going live. The project was created using WebAssembly and reportedly built with AI assistance, but the takedown came quickly, underlining how firmly Rockstar Games protects its most profitable title, which continues to sell more than a decade after release.

Nolan Lawson has published an essay asking why fewer web developers build directly on browser-native features rather than turning to frameworks and layers of tooling. The piece has drawn strong engagement in the developer community, reigniting a familiar debate about framework fatigue, complexity in modern front-end work, and whether the web platform's built-in capabilities are being overlooked in favour of heavy dependencies.

A new open-source tool called Agent-Reach, published on GitHub by Panniantong, is drawing attention for giving AI agents direct access to major platforms including Twitter, Reddit, YouTube, GitHub, Bilibili and XiaoHongShu. Written in Python, it works as a single command-line interface that lets agents read and search across these services, with the developers promoting it as requiring no paid API fees. The project is trending in developer communities.

An old browser game called Wood Tape, released in 2004 and hosted on the site Games by Email, is being shared again online. It is a small title from the early era of play-by-email web gaming, and its renewed attention appears to be nostalgic interest in simple, quirky games from that period. Little recent coverage or commentary exists beyond the link being circulated.

A web developer has published a detailed write-up explaining why he moved his projects from Deno back to Node.js. The article walks through the practical reasons behind the switch and how the migration went. Developers are discussing it on Hacker News, where it has drawn several hundred upvotes, with many weighing in on whether Deno still justifies its ecosystem split from Node.

Japanese comedian and TV host Akira Kawashima revealed that excessive drinking left his liver close to 'exploding', according to comments reported by TV Asahi's web outlet. He said a medical check produced shocking results and that the doctor 'wasn't laughing at all' when explaining his condition, drawing wide attention to his drinking habits.

A new service now generates RSS feeds for Last.fm, letting users track their listening history and friends' activity in any feed reader. The tool comes as interest grows in returning to simpler, open web formats like RSS instead of algorithm-driven social feeds, and it has drawn attention among technology enthusiasts.

Vincent Bernat has published a guide explaining how to expose self-hosted web services to the internet by tunnelling HTTP traffic over SSH, using Nginx on a public server to route requests. The article covers the mechanics of reverse tunnels and alternatives to paid tunneling services. Developers running home servers are sharing and discussing the approach as a free, self-controlled way to publish sites without opening ports.

Caddy, the open-source web server written in Go, is trending among developers. The project bills itself as a fast, extensible HTTP/1, HTTP/2 and HTTP/3 server with automatic HTTPS, meaning it provisions and renews TLS certificates by default. It runs across platforms and is widely used as a reverse proxy and lightweight alternative to Nginx. Developers are discussing it for its simplicity and secure-by-default configuration.

ICANN is preparing to expand the internet's domain name system, allowing many more custom top-level domains beyond .com and .org. Wired reports this could flood the web with new suffixes, including playful and adult-oriented ones, reshaping how websites are named and found. Critics and commentators are weighing what a broader, more commercialized domain landscape means for brands, spam and internet culture.

Ghost says its $3,499 core device can run AI models directly on the hardware, without needing a connection for local tasks. However, web search functionality still requires internet access. The news is drawing attention to the trade-offs of on-device AI: privacy and offline capability on one hand, but limited features when offline, with the steep price also raising eyebrows.

OpenAlex, the open scholarly metadata catalogue, is being shared among researchers as a way to query publication data more efficiently. Users note the service provides a free API key, and that API queries consume only about a tenth of the daily usage quota compared with running the same search through the web interface. Guides to setting up queries with OpenAlex Query Language are circulating to help people get started.

A Spanish-language compilation exploring the origins of strange and mysterious videos found online is drawing large audiences. The second volume in the series examines odd clips that have circulated on the internet, asking where they came from and what they show. Viewers are engaging heavily with the eerie, unexplained footage and the questions it raises about the weirder corners of the web.

ICANN is preparing to add hundreds of new top-level domains to the internet, including playful options like .meow and .fart. WIRED reports on the internal politics behind the decision, noting that the web's address system is set to expand dramatically, potentially making way for even more cats and adult content online.

The Stremio project's stremio-web repository, described as 'Freedom to Stream', is trending among developers on GitHub. Stremio is an open-source media center app that lets users organise and stream video content from multiple sources in one interface. The renewed attention suggests growing interest in the app's web-based interface as streaming audiences look for flexible, self-directed viewing options.

A developer has published a write-up on running web hosting and services outside the major cloud platforms, relying instead on independent infrastructure. The piece covers the practical trade-offs of opting out of Amazon, Google and Microsoft, and it is drawing attention among technically minded readers debating whether self-hosting and smaller providers are a realistic alternative to hyperscale clouds.