Apple's grudging accommodation of European law -- allowing third-party browser engines on its mobile devices -- apparently comes with a restriction that makes it difficult to develop and support third-party browser engines for the region. From a report: The Register has learned from those involved in the browser trade that Apple has limited the development and testing of third-party browser engines to devices physically located in the EU. That requirement adds an additional barrier to anyone planning to develop and support a browser with an alternative engine in the EU. It effectively geofences the development team. Browser-makers whose dev teams are located in the US will only be able to work on simulators. While some testing can be done in a simulator, there's no substitute for testing on device -- which means developers will have to work within Apple's prescribed geographical boundary. Prior to iOS 17.4, Apple required all web browsers on iOS or iPadOS to use Apple's WebKit rendering engine. Alternatives like Gecko (used by Mozilla Firefox) or Blink (used by Google and other Chromium-based browsers) were not permitted. Whatever brand of browser you thought you were using on your iPhone, under the hood it was basically Safari. Browser makers have objected to this for years, because it limits competitive differentiation and reduces the incentive for Apple owners to use non-Safari browsers.

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CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) is a ubiquitous markup language for describing the layout and design of a webpage separate from the content, typically specifying things like text formatting, background color, page alignment, etc. But as with emoticons and ASCII art before it, CSS can be repurposed to become the content. Enter CSS drawing, an intricate art form that uses the conventions of the language to create illustrations and even animation using only standard design elements. Some standout examples from around the web: A Single Div, where every new illustration is contained within one <div> tag; designer Lynn Fisher also has a previous version along with a whole catalog of "weird websites, niche data projects, and CSS experiments" - Another collection of single-div projects - Start a digital bonfire - The Simpsons (animated!) in CSS - 173 CSS drawings on Dribble - How I started drawing CSS Images - css-doodle, a web component for drawing patterns with CSS - Creating Realistic Art with CSS - The CSS Zen Garden, a collection of beautiful CSS stylesheets - CSS previously on MeFi

Stack Overflow's new deal giving OpenAI access to its API as a source of data has users who've posted their questions and answers about coding problems in conversations with other humans rankled. From a report: Users say that when they attempt to alter their posts in protest, the site is retaliating by reversing the alterations and suspending the users who carried them out. A programmer named Ben posted a screenshot yesterday of the change history for a post seeking programming advice, which they'd updated to say that they had removed the question to protest the OpenAI deal. "The move steals the labour of everyone who contributed to Stack Overflow with no way to opt-out," read the updated post. The text was reverted less than an hour later. A moderator message Ben also included says that Stack Overflow posts become "part of the collective efforts" of other contributors once made and that they should only be removed "under extraordinary circumstances." The moderation team then said it was suspending his account for a week while it reached out "to avoid any further misunderstandings."

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For many people, the first time they tried to take control of a computer centered around learning to program in BASIC (Beginner's All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code), a simple, interpreted programming language designed around easily-understandable keywords and syntax. BASIC turned 60 a couple of days ago, so find one of the many online BASIC interpreters and write yourself a little bit of history.

C++ guru Herb Sutter writes about how we can improve the programming language for better security.

The immediate problem “is” that it’s Too Easy By Default™ to write security and safety vulnerabilities in C++ that would have been caught by stricter enforcement of known rules for type, bounds, initialization, and lifetime language safety.

His conclusion:

We need to improve software security and software safety across the industry, especially by improving programming language safety in C and C++, and in C++ a 98% improvement in the four most common problem areas is achievable in the medium term. But if we focus on programming language safety alone, we may find ourselves fighting yesterday’s war and missing larger past and future security dangers that affect software written in any language.