I have to restore entries from a backup that is not entirely reliable in the date/time that the entries were posted. The good news is that I have a backup.
I have posts in the pipeline, I need to make time to polish and publish them. Stay tuned to this channel.
I had an inkling that this might be the case. I often think about how much we were able to do with limitations in thechnology. We don't (usually) program write software in machine code anymore and I wonder how much faster apps would be if we did. Of course there are drawbacks. Hardware architecture changes very fast and coding in high level languages affords us portability with our code, much like what the language Java promised us in the 90's.
It turns out that if you let it, some sites will download over 512MB of content due to how the advertising platform works. The site in question seems to think that using RSS will resolve this issue (it will) instead of fixing the web page to be more efficient (which the author of the original article pointed out). I first saw this post on Shubham Bose's website via HackerNews that depicts the 49MB website. The comments on HackerNews are good insight and Shubham points out that Windows 95 consumed less space than the post from NYT. As with the post about PC Gamer, NYT's page bloat is mostly due to ads. I hate ads and will block ad networks on my personal network. Browsing the web on another network is a real treat. I have maintained to myself when I see a pop-up asking me to disable my ad blocker taht I would not use one, if I could trust as servers. In the not too recent past I came to distrust second party ad platforms because Doubleclick was hijacked and malware was installed via banner ads. Lovely. Since then I've been wary.
There is discussion about ad blocking equating piracy and there is real merit to that argument. For my part, I usually do what I do when I'm hit with a paywall, I bounce from the site. I have a hope that some data nerd somewhere sees that I left as soon as I was asked to disable my ad blocker and brings that to someone who can make a decision about how ads are being served. I recognize that not all publishers can afford to have a department that manages their ad content and the tech skills required to keep that functional. I understand that decentralization is easier to work with, letting a dedicated external team handle the ads. That's another post for another time though. I pine for an Internet that feels more personal and less driven by capitalism.
I forget exactly how I came to learn of this site and I was inspired. eWaste is a growing concern and the current AI fuckery is driving up the cost of components. Arguably, we need more servers/services and are throwing out older generation tech because it's too slow or won't run the latest and greatest operating system, apps, or games. Worse yet, some people throw out old tech because it's no longer "useful". I see a lot of waste in perfectly servicable equipment in corners of office spaces doing nothing at all. What if we borrowed from this venture and put not only older laptops, but other devices like old Android TV boxes (as long as they have wired ethernet) to use as personal web servers, mail servers or other small low-resource services.
The only set backs I see is electricity costs and "waste" heat, as a bunch of older equipment might draw more power than a single better equipped server. Still, we can solar power these low draw devices, or hack a standard power supply to power a few laptops and use the generated heat to warm places with the right ducting. It may not be as efficient, but it will keep "perfectly usable" equipment out of landfills. Perhaps non-working hardware can be donated to hacker spaces so that the individual components can be used to manufacture something else. Or maybe… a small business harvesting connectors and components can be built that can help other pieces of equipment from going to disuse.
I saw this image before. The one associated with this post. My inner-child squealed, I was nostalgic for the tech of the time. I wanted to run a BBS back in the 90's, I could only dream to have one with this many nodes. Another thought that I had was about a modern version might be 4-5 lines each per single pentium-powered node with a POSIX multitasking OS or a modern eWaste PC running a Telnet powered BBS. With Discord doing it's fuckery, I have the thought I'd archive and discontinue "my" server and put up a IRC server. I wonder how hard it would be to convert my groups to follow suit. Somethign to consider.
There's a Youtube video that discusses the purpose of this website here. Well, not really as I started this last year and only watched the video today. Actually,
Here's the embed:
Turns out there's a geocities clone called neocities. This is great, fantastic even. I would rather go here than Reddit, (though I really digg that digg.com is back! Seriously, check this shit out. Make a website, get off the platforms! Reach out to me and I'll help you get set up. I love this kind of technology and this is what started my love of networking. All the cool things.
Once again, I regret not saving previous versions of my websites. I would love to have that little time capsule. I didn't see my GeoCities account on archive.org and I'm not entirely sure of the address anyway.
This video also informed me of a neat project, a web server powered by solar energy that seems right up my alley. It's tech, sustainable, and DIY all in one site.
The wonders of new (and old) technology never cease to amaze. This article from SciTechDaily posits that your own body could be used to see you based on capturing and analyzing WiFi radio signals. The tech has an incredible success rate and seems like no special firmware needs to be deployed. Who needs Ring Cameras when you have WiFi just about everywhere.
I wonder, could LTE cellular signals be used for the same purpose? What about FM Radio, or some other radio waves? I expect that LTE/5G may be the closest in density that could be used for this.
I have long thought about going back to the way things were. It could be that I'm really close to level 50 and a half-century of existing living on this planet. It could be nostalgia, it could be overwhelm, it could be a rampant ego. Back in my day! things were different. We didn't have the Internet growing up. My family were early adopters, we had dial-up in 1994 or 1995. 14.4kbps. That kind of speed was pretty quick but nowhere near acceptable today. I have more bandwidth than I need now, and I often think that 10Mbps is enough for most things. Though my internal network is 1Gbps for wired devices. I see literally no need to upgrade to 2.5Gps or higher.
Anyway, I have been thinking a lot about going back in tech use. I am more aware of my reddit and youtube habits and find myself stopping and doing something else instead of refreshing the page or closing the apps and then opening them right back up. Digg is back and I really missed it. I like that it's smaller than it was and part of me really hopes that it stays that way. Reddit is large and full of nice and not so nice people. My tech use started with stopping to journal and collect notes on my iPad. I have moved to a small sketchbook for daily notes and a proper journal for journalling. I still make digital notes for side jobs where applicable, and I'm using this platform instead of social media to share with whomever happens to read this.
My partner and I have been casually looking into less smart phones as she's not keen to continue giving her information to Google and I'm not keen to stick with Apple. I still enjoy my apple devices, despite being less enamoured with the company and the not quite honest portrayal that they are privacy focussed. I am really annoyed that my carefully ripped CD collection is not available on my iPhone becuase some of the content is region locked. This lead me to two devices, one from a small Brooklyn firm and a seemingly Polish firm who both make distraction free handsets. There is trepidation in moving away from Apple, even though I am familiar with the alternatives. When my iPhone is no longer supported with maintenance OS updates, I will put more effort into finding an alternative handset.
I am qutie comfortable in linux and am anxiously awating the release of the Steam Machine to replace my laptop-come-desktop setup that I use when at my desk. I want the capability to move it to my TV for gaming which will be a minor task, as all I would need is power and HDMI in both places, easy for someone with my skill and knowledge. Some research needs to be done to manage music and video.
I am working toward moving back to my iPod for music and am also considering a dedicated MP3 player, though I prefer to use AAC for music. Another alternative is to use my recently brought out MiniDisc player. That is really cool tech too. I have enough MiniDiscs to have variety and found a seemingly decent app for putting music on it quicker than manually recording from the CD player. Though analog recording method has a certain appeal to it. It's similar to making mixed tapes back in the 80s and 90s.
When my iPad battery and support finally die I will have to find another way to get my RSS feeds. Perhaps I'll hack my Kobo with KOReader or pick up a second hand Kobo specifically for RSS feeds. I had the thought that I would go back to digial nottaking and get a Remarkable or Kobo Clara Colour as a notebook/eReader/RSS device. This seems less likely as my Kobo can be made to do two of these tasks and I already am making notes on paper with success.
In writing this I almost forgot the point. I wanted to share an article via Kotke with a theme that has been popping up in my various feeds.
I was reading an article this morning. As I was reading the following passage I had a memory about a conversion with a previous boss some 20 years ago.
Thus, as Mark Atwood, an open source policy expert, pointed out on Twitter, he had to keep telling Amazon to not do things that would mess up FFmpeg because, he had to keep explaining to his bosses that “They are not a vendor, there is no NDA, we have no leverage, your VP has refused to help fund them, and they could kill three major product lines tomorrow with an email. So, stop, and listen to me … ”
I had found some open source software that I wanted to use and could not convince my boss it was a good idea. I now have the thought that he might have foreseen an issue where the company relied heavily on the software that was no longer maintained and could not be updated without significant cost.
As we barrel forward through technology, issues brought forth as indicated in the article cause me to pause. What systems do I use now that rely on the kindness of strangers whom are maintaing their projects out of passion? What if that passion fades? We're already seeing this in video games. Some publishers decided to make their cames function only online and as new games come out, the servers that power this game gets used less. This causes them to shut it down due to costs to maintain. They game you paid $80 for 5 years ago is now useless, save as a coaster (if it's a disc) or a curiosity. Meanwhile we have games that are literally 40 years old that run just fine (as long as you have the original hardware in good working order and your TV has the requisite interface to dispaly the video signal from the hardware). Still, not-so-old TVs have the ports, and most of the vintage consoles I own still function just fine.
I used to claim that I had technolust. Now I'm older, perhaps a little wiser. I still like new tech and get excited about the possibilites afforded by ever advancing technology. I think Open Source software is awesome and will continue to use it. I am grateful for the authors and maintainers who keep that software running. I wonder if maybe it's advancing too quickly.
