Re: Reviving the terminal internet -- looking for collaborators

On Mon, Aug 03, 2026 at 12:07:19AM -0400, Karen Lewellen wrote:
> First, I suggest reading an article from wired magazine entitled.
> "I turned off Javascript for a week, and it was glorious."
> Illustrates there would be quite a market for  simple text focused
> Internet..but there may be a few factors to focus on first.

That article[1] was written in 2015, and unfortunately things are
different now.

In fact I do do most of my main browsing with JavaScript turned off.
(I say turned off, but it has to be selectively enabled for work's RT
instance because that has become basically unusable without it, and
for work's authentication system because that is based on Microsoft
Entra and is heavily JavaScript-based - it certainly can't be used
in Lynx).

Anyway, as a result I am now mostly prohibited from using Google
search in my graphical non-JavaScript browser.  Lynx is actually
useful on this front, because although Google denies service if your
user-agent mentions Lynx, for now it still works if you lowercase
the 'L' in Lynx.

But worse, because of stupid AI scrapers pummelling web servers to near
death, a fair percentage of the web is now behind either CloudFlare or
Anubis, both of which deny you access if you don't have both JavaScript
and cookies.  Some of the rest are of the kind that deny service based
on the browser's user-agent string, and Lynx is a common victim of that
discrimination.

Ian.

[1] https://www.wired.com/2015/11/i-turned-off-javascript-for-a-whole-week-and-it-was-glorious/