mgz

I continue with my suite of mobile apps for parents:

* https://screenspy.app - observe what youd child is doing on desktop PC. Roblox or homework?

* https://weblock.online - a VERY restricted, whitelist-first mobile browser for kids, use it instead of Safari. I want to feel calm when my children browse the web.

Definitely better. Next edit makes a difference. But it is not free, I think I pay $10/month.

I use Sweep’s Jetbrains autocomplete plugin daily, it really stands out.

I work on my iOS app - Weblock Browser, a restricted browser for kids with strong parental controls: https://weblock.online Recently I've added AI classification of websites to determine if a website is safe for a child to visit. If AI disallows a website, you can ask your parent to allow it. To give AI some context about a website, I used Cloudflare Intel API - it returns domain content categories, very handy to provide them to AI to help it make a decision. But turns out Cloudflare Intel has a ridiculous limit of 100 requests PER MONTH for non-Enterprise users.

Didn't get to this detail yet. What the app currently does is allow all resources but block the ones that come from any youtube domain (this will block youtube embeds). Currently this is enough for my kids.

Also I add some relaxing rules, eg: If you navigate to domain A and it redirects you to domain B, do not block B immediately, give it a couple of seconds. It may redirect you back to A and it just wanted to set a cookie on B.

I am adding some gift codes for those who want to check the app but not bother with trial/subscription:

* https://weblock.online/al/gift?code=438912467308

* https://weblock.online/al/gift?code=336293589225

* https://weblock.online/al/gift?code=021644422165

When Weblock asks you to subscribe, just open one of these links on the same phone and it will work for you for free.

Hey, more technical details follow.

Weblock uses a whitelist, not a blacklist, and it is domain based. Once you allow a domain, it can be browsed by a child. You can allow it forever/15 minutes/1 hour.

How it works: WKWebView, before loading a page, asks the backend if the domain is allowed. If not, it shows "Not allowed" screen and a "Request access" button - child can tap it and you (parent) will get a notification.

So traffic is not going through the backend or a filtering VPN, the app just asks the backend if a page (domain) is allowed to visit.

Visits are logged, so you, as a parent, can see what your child has been browsing. How much time did he spend on a homework website.

Some WKWebView callbacks used for that: * onShouldStartLoadWithRequest - to intercept a request and check if it's allowed * onLoadProgress - to show loading progress bar * onNavigationStateChange - to track browsing history

Also I had to implement a workaround for buggy Screen Time in iOS 26 - even if you add Weblock to "always allowed" apps, iOS will still treat each website as a separate "app" and block it, asking to you "allow' each website on system level. It happens inside WebKit codebase, but luckily this bug has another bug in it - if you re-open a website, it suddenly works and all other websites in this session work tooSo I need to listen to `onScreenTimeBlockingStateChange` event and automatically reload a website if that happens.

Also I added an ad blocker to Weblock. It uses uBlock Origin filters, converts them to WKWebView content rule JSON format and feeds to WKWebView. The app checks the backend if rules are updated and updates a local copy.

What's next: need to get "Default Browser" entitlement from Apple. Then you can block Safari on kid's phone using Screen Time and have Weblock open all HTTP(S) URLs.

App is written in React Native, no performance issues. Backend is Ruby on Rails.

Just launched a restricted browser for kids for iOS: https://weblock.online Now testing on my kids. The idea is that the browser is whitelist-only, so kids can open only approved websites. I receive a notification when they want to visit an unknown website and I can allow or deny it. Works great for my family, hope it will be useful for someone else.

The best autocompletion for Jetbrains IDEs, highly recommended.

No way currently( I hope Apple will open something in the next iOSes.

I wanted to know what my kids were doing on the computer: homework or watching youtube shorts, so I built https://screenspy.app to monitor them. Now I’m working on turning it into a product.

Ruby one love

Dokku is great, I switched to it from Capistrano and never looked back.

I built an iOS app to control what my kids watch on Youtube: https://kidstv.family

Now it makes $1500/month.

Giant plastic spiders chasing kids. Momo. Kids behaving silly in front of camera and playing silly games. Kids with masks of superheroes. Something about SCP.

When my kids were small, I was fighting with crazy Youtube videos. Kids started with something innocent and soon were watching sick and disturbing pieces.

So I built an app to control their Youtube consumption, which later turned to a cool small business https://itunes.apple.com/app/id1431645198

It is a hobby project for 3 or 4 years.

No advertising except for $20/month for Apple Search Ads… I guess I should advertise more.

I built an app to control what my kids watch on Youtube: https://kidstv.family Makes $1500/month

Why do Russians like Putin? Look at Ukraine. Ukraine is Russia without Putin. Poor, ruled by american agents and going to disappear as a state, just like Russia in 90s.

Choose 1 photo that you like among 4 random photos. Repeat 10 times. Can your friends guess which ones you liked? See if they know your taste. http://contaste.com

Please note that pro-american Georgia attacked Russia and its allies back then. Russia was defending.

apachetop works fine with nginx logs too.

Couple hundred dollars from running ads on http://standartgost.ru

You can check what AOL Search users were "aoling" in 2006: http://search-logs.com

http://geospeak.co.uk - talk about places on Google Maps.

I have built http://search-logs.com back in 2006 in a couple of days and ad revenue still lets me work on interesting projects, not worrying about getting a "real" job.

My http://pastehtml.com/udid got 130k hits yesterday. PasteHTML.com itself and this UDID tool are running on a moderate dedicated server, nginx/rails/postgresql.

If you want to lookup your UDID but afraid to expose it, use partial search at http://pastehtml.com/udid

Just made a page where you can check if your UDID is leaked: http://pastehtml.com/udid

http://emojiblog.com - blogging for introverts.

Waiting for my designer to make it nicer. And have to create a switch to make Sunday the first day of week instead of Monday for you americans:)