THE BEST OF THE WWW

I don't have much to say about these except that they work, and that some of them work very well. Many are the default or most famous choice for their respective uses, but if you're new to FOSS or trying to do something unfamiliar you might not have heard of them, so here you go.

• Blender - 3D Graphics (the only one on this list I have not touched myself, I fear)
• Audacity - Audio editor (basic)
• LMMS - Digital Audio Workstation (somewhat less basic, electronic music-focused)
• Sound Juicer - CD Ripper
• Foliate - eBook reader
• FontForge - Font editor
• GNU Image Manipulation Program - Image editor, raster
• Inkscape - Image editor, vector
• VLC - Media player
• MKVToolNix - .mkv/Matroska editor
• Lollypop - Music player (clean and "i have all my stuff on a pretty virtual shelf"-core)
• Strawberry - Music player (busy and "i fucking love metadata"-core)
• LibreOffice - Office suite
• Ubuntu Linux - Operating system (yeah I'm as normie as they come)
• MuseScore - Scorewriter
• OBS Studio - Screen recorder and streaming
• JPEXS Free Flash Decompiler - SWF Decompiler
• Swivel - SWF to Video Converter (note: crashed when attempting to combine uncompressed video and audio)
• Kdenlive - Video editor
• Mozilla Firefox - Web broswer
• Wine - Windows compatibility layer for Linux
• yt-dlp - Web video downloader (command-line)

Literally one of the most important software libraries ever, half the software that plays or processes video uses it. Includes encoders and decoders for both open-source formats and reverse-engineered proprietary ones (at least in some builds). It is a command-line tool and kind of imposing, so here's a guide to a bunch of common tasks.

One of the Internet's twin pillars of knowledge, in my opinion. Famous for the Wayback Machine, a fairly wide and deep set of snapshots of the whole public Web, containing many treasures otherwise lost. Aside from this, it is a digital library with many collections to its name, some digitized or compiled by its own efforts and some mirrors. Also allows anyone to make an account and upload, so hosts a heck of a lot of other media (with very little apparent moderation so be warned about browsing without a set goal.)

I don't know what this is doing here. Hyperlink. I don't know what that's doing there either. Definitely do not click that one. More seriously though, MakeMKV is an optical disc ripper (not open-source). Making copies of media you own for personal "space-shifting" use is legal in the US and some kind of grey area in a lot of other places. If doing so requires breaking encryption then you might be breaking a law anywhere though. Obviously don't break any laws, everyone knows laws always serve your interests and not just those of some kind of "privileged economic class"

Extremely comprehensive documentation for HTML, CSS, and JS, always written to the level of detail needed to actually follow what things do (and often with demonstrations.)

An emulator for Flash media, available both as a browser extension and as a library that can be used directly in webpages. It does not support every feature of newer versions of Flash but is getting close, so most SWF files will mostly work.

An adblocker (and a general content blocker for anything malicious or annoying). It's probably the most popular blocker out there, so the blocklists it uses are actively maintained. Most effective on Firefox, and a bit less effective on Chrome due to some recent API modifications.

Slightly less comprehensive HTML, CSS, and JS reference than the MDN docs, but covers every commonly used feature, has beginner-friendly tutorials, and is a reference for a bunch of other web technologies and programming languages!

The Internet's other twin pillar of knowledge, most known for Wikipedia. The average person knows what Wikipedia is, but maybe not their other projects like Wikimedia Commons (open-licensed image and media repository) or Wiktionary (comprehensive multilingual dictionary, complete with etymology and usage examples), both of which I consult fairly regularly.

Begun on the MSPA forums, this story quickly reached a level of plot and mechanic complexity greater even than that of Homestuck. Kind of reminiscent of Matt Smith era Dr Who (meant in the good way.) Instantly root-for-able protagonist, excellent horror, dodgy but conceptually fascinating science. Dialogue is a bit jank once the story gains more characters but it was written on a forum ok

Fixed-art comic using premade dinosaur graphics that apparently gave Ryan North's computer a virus when he downloaded them. Aside from the occasional story arc or running gag, serves as a staging ground for the author's random thoughts.

This comic doesn't have an RSS feed and now I've forgotten to read it and I have no idea what's going on!! Ahhh!!! Pretty good science fiction story. Unwinnable wars... technological thefts... missing identity... UPDATE: This User Has Found The RSS Feed

Somehow makes "random equals funny" and "smashing together badass things makes a more badass thing" work. A serious contender for the title of greatest web comic of all time. Occasionally the comedy is overly edgy and grating near the start of the comic but this gets ironed out.

ok I haven't read many of the comics here yet but look at this freakin website! Look at it!!!

Magic school story (uh, science school, rather) where the school is not all that it seems... known for its beginnings as a slice-of-life blended with a longer-form epic plot, the plot has tipped more into epic these days.

Sprite comic with then-unusual animated elements. Very silly and early 2000s but turns surprisingly philosophical by the end.

*sigh* yeah i'm a homestuck. the first two ms paint adventures are dumb and probably not worth reading. Problem Sleuth is a lil edgy but very much worth reading. Homestuck will likely poison your mind for life. It's simultaneously one of the most artistically important web comics ever made and flawed enough to make many readers bootstrap the entire structure of media criticism while thinking about it. It's hilarious, poignant, epic, and medium-breaking, but dare I say... problematic...

Fun in the Arctic Circle with Pokey and friends! Sometimes hard to understand!

Haunting one-off comics by Juan Santapau. I mean if you describe the premise of half of these they just sound goofy but no, they're more haunting.

Funnier than XKCD

Weirdly preoccupied with robots exterminating humanity, though.

Straddles the line between gag-a-day and space opera. Nowadays not quite as elegant in doing so but still worth checking out, and the original arc is great in the way of concept, humor and character.

Seasonal stories featuring fully characterized GeoCities gifs, including the titular tisTree. As a love letter to GeoCities-era creativity, Taras Tymoshenko appears to have built the whole project using a fairly old-fashioned HTML edifice.

Notable for being composited from old (turn of the 19th century) line illustrations. Infrequently updated nowadays.

It's the classic geek webcomic. Some people knock XKCD for being relatively unfunny, "too reddit," etc but it's charming and indisputably a good source of digestible infographics. Also the "What If?" pages completely live up to the promise of their concept.

Eerie and amusing performance art, 3D animation and comedy sketches and horror shorts, often speculative-technological.

While the name would suggest this is a superhero parody series, Baman and Piderman share no features with their namesakes besides appearance. The cast quickly grew beyond these two and also are the cutest bunch imaginable. Usually visually minimal, but expressively animated, and characters' bodies often are seen disobey laws of anatomy and physics.

Fever dreams you'd have falling asleep at the computer circa 2009.

If you were on YouTube as a kid Cyriak's initially innocent body-horror animation loops may have either traumatized or fascinated you. Luckily I was in the latter category. Most original videos are synchronized to his dissonant, poppy electronic tracks.

Will (fictional) is tasked with completing the platformer his sister made for him before her death. Tone bounces between a high-energy twitch stream and a nearly unfiltered exploration of grief.

Central to much of 2000s online culture. Weird Flash animated comedy sketches in the town of Free Country USA, with a population rarely visibly exceeding a dozen. You will never forget these characters.

Begins as a Petscop-inspired game development log, ends as a machinima puppet show character drama and a growing mythology. The series might be over or there might be a new storyline in the works, it's been unexpectedly revived several times.

The Analog horror O G, introducing what are now worn tropes with an untarnished gravity.

The story of Paul and the unfinished PS1 game he found. The game and his life are full of compounding mysteries, many answers we are never privy to. Pretty much nothing else feels like watching this.

A main progenitor of surreal, deliberately error-laden animation on YouTube. Visually evolves from MS Paint-core to something a 90s alt cartoon to writhing digital painting. Also makes excellent music under the names PilotRedSun and PilotRedSky.

Mixed-digital-media children's series that teaches the values of ??? ??? and often terrifies stragglers. Beautiful soundtracks. Possibly indoctrination into a metaphysical system of world-as-dream.

STOCK-A-DOODLE-DOO, MONEYGRUBS. A beautiful tale told through screen recordings of the recovery and coming-of-age of a definitely-late-30s business man. To be clear this isn't actually a financial advice channel (well, The Stockroach attempts to make it such but is usually distracted by his creative talents and personal troubles).

A guy named Alec who is extremely enthusiastic about how technologies work, from the omnipresent to the obsolete and obscure, and always succeeds at sharing that enthusiasm. Also has killer scripts, delivery, and recording setups. Only nonfiction in this section so far, oops

A master of two particular forms of Blender animation: photorealistic stop-motion and 2D composite. Beyond looking gorgeous, his animations are usually of the living-vicariously-through-hilarious-strangers'-relationships comedy type and i live on that stuff.

Jon Bois' projections of what football will be like in the future. Beloved and unexpected narrators.

Posts about trends in science fiction artwork of the 1970s (or in the same stylistic traditions), often meaning extremely specific recurring elements. Scans are of course featured. Rowe has created an artbook on the subject, Worlds Beyond Time, as well.

Evocative fantasist working with a dizzying array of speculative-fiction concepts. A writer of microfiction, famously, and also longer works.

Usually-weekly online newspaper entirely about trivial events in the life of one Jennifer Mills, running since long before the invention of microblogging. Something about the objective reporter tone contrasted with headlines like "Woman Wears Hat" never gets old for me, I dunno. Each issue also features a Poetry Corner with at least two brief and pleasant works of doggerel.

Simultaneously hyperliterate and inviting essays covering both topical subjects and personal fascinations, including, of course, architecture (Wagner is best known for McMansion Hell, a blog that helps you find new ways to laugh at bad design decisions and really sells the horror of wealth inequality.) She is also on Neocities

Usually-daily blog covering current events and the history leading to them, usually regarding digital freedom and tech policy (what Doctorow has been know for forever, both in his nonfiction and fiction). Also always features interesting links, and often features reviews of recommended new books. One complaint I have is that Doctorow tends to frequently repeat very similar points in very similar language, but at least he's always stating it well.

What began as one short bureaucratic horror piece has become one of the largest creative writing communities on the Web, growing into numerous horror and speculative fiction genres, some of which have reached entirely new depths of expression here.

Apparently biding his time until he can either break into television or become a rural shopkeep. Brian David Gilbert became recognized for his short musical comedy videos. He continues to create the occasional musical comedy video, though usually less frivolous than of old. Also has put out some excellent horror shorts (not intentionally a jorts joke).

Darn fast implementation. The user can load many famous and interesting patterns, from humble still lifes to a full Turing machine. For those unaware of what the Game of Life is: here's the rules: there's a grid of square tiles that can either be "dead" or alive". At each step, cells with three neighbors come to life and cells with zero or more than three neighbors die.

Foone Turing wrote the most entertaining and meandering Twitter threads (especially if you're into computer science) before fleeing to Mastodon and they're all compiled and sorted by (main) topic on their wiki. She also links other resources she's created such as the Death Generator, which creates facsimile dialog boxes for dozens of retro games.

If you've ever watched a classical music video on YouTube you've at least seen the thumbnails of musanim's color-coded piano roll videos. Channel creator Stephen Malinowski has been developing this or precursor software since the 1980s and has created thousands of videos in the last two decades, often testing new visualization methods and emphases. There might be a downloadable version somewhere.

Sometimes regarded as the secret mastermind behind all that was good and hilarious during early Web 2.0. At any rate created or co-created a prodigious amount of comedy, horror comedy, meme, meme comedy, meme horror, and meme horror comedy work, a good deal of which has either aged well or has become a beautiful time capsule. Also he is Lemon Demon, an excellent synth-rock act.

Runouw are brothers Robert and Steven Hewitt (but mostly Robert?) and they made some of the greatest Flash games of all time. The most famous is Super Mario 63, but their originals ought to be equally iconic. Especially the Last Legacy games- get you a flash emulator and check them out pronto!

SFW, I promise. Advocacy and a naming system for Base 6 numbers, and various other resources and systematizations of a similar nature.

Shark ISP. Demoscene artist and unfictionalist.

Micrographs of drawings hidden by silicon chip designers! It's two of my favorite things: niche artistic traditions, and niche artistic tradition archival.

What if the National Park Service used to maintain trails inside a buried Old God? What could possibly have gone wrong?

A forum dedicated to Doctor Who prop references, plans, models, and builds, especially the TARDIS exterior and interior (i am fixated on the latter). Not as active as it was before its months offline but still a great resource.

"All: We are the men men men"

One of the pioneers of the 60s wave of synthesizer music, she created the best-selling "Switched-on Bach" on the Moog and several famous film scores. She later produced innovative works in digital sound synthesis and alternative tuning. Her website details these and other interests and projects, and provides downloadable resources for many. It also remains firmly in the mid-Web 1.0 design tradition, both visually and in its occasional references to the novelty of Web technology.