A look at search engines with their own indexes
Posted , updated
A cursory review of all the non-metasearch, indexing search engines I have been able to find.
About 5 thousand words; a somewhat long read
Seirdy’s Home
I’m 
Rohan Kumar (He/Him). I’m also known by my more casual online handle Seirdy (It/Its). Mixing them up is fine.
About this site
In addition to its canonical url, a “rough draft” of this website also exists on my Tildeverse page. This site’s content also appears on my Gemini capsule.
This is a basic IndieWeb site that contains articles, notes, and bookmarks. You can subscribe to a combined feed of my articles and notes using the site’s Atom feed, or you can subscribe to sections independently. If your feed reader has problems displaying entry contents (I know Outlook does), I also have a legacy RSS feed for the whole site and for each section.
About me
The Director’s Cut of my bio is at my About page.
I care a lot about accessibility, and often use screen readers and forced colors to deal with overstimulation. I’m a FLOSS enthusiast, software minimalist, and a CS+Math undergrad who likes watching anime and tweaking his Linux setup. Current interests include search engines, security, privacy, and the IndieWeb.
My perspective on software freedom is a bit different from the FSF’s; I’ve been trying to distance myself from “fossbro” culture.
Git repos: Sourcehut, GitHub, Codeberg, and GitLab
Contact
Contact me via email (PGP), or on the Fediverse where I’m @Seirdy
Chat with me: I’m on several IRC networks. Alternatively, I’m @seirdy
Articles
Here’s a selection of my best articles, in featured order. To see the rest, visit my Articles page.
I edit some of these articles quite often; some are updated indefinitely. Check the “updated” timestamps.
Timestamp format: YYYY-MM-DD, as per RFC 3339 and ISO 8601. Sorted newest to oldest.
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Best practices for inclusive textual websites
Posted , updated
A lengthy guide to making simple, inclusive sites focused on content before form. Emphasizes brutalist design and accessibility to include under-represented users.
About 19 thousand words; a very long read
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WhatsApp and the domestication of users
Posted , updated
WhatsApp's rise and recent PR efforts highlight a class of business models that I call "user domestication".
3192 words; a read
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The right thing for the wrong reasons: FLOSS doesn't imply security
Posted , updated
While source code is critical for user autonomy, it isn't required to evaluate software security or understand run-time behavior.
4328 words; a somewhat long read
Webrings
This site is part of 14 webrings. A webring is a collection of sites in a circular doubly-linked list; each website links to the next and previous site in the list.
Some of the “next” and “previous” links contain JavaScript; you need to enable it to be re-directed to the correct page. I’ve marked these links with “JS”.
Toggle webrings list
If you’re part of a webring and would like me to join, just ask. I’ll probably accept if joining only requires me to add hyperlinks to this page (no scripts, external content, or images), and if the ring doesn’t seem to promote anything I find objectionable.