DigitalDilemma

  • 6 Posts
  • 469 Comments
Joined 3 years ago
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Cake day: July 22nd, 2023

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  • I used wview for years, and published a couple of weather stations publically. Sadly that looks to be abandoned now.

    Nowadays I just run Home Assistant and combine an anenometer, a rain tip gauge and about a million different temperature sensors into that, mostly with 8266’s running Esphome to collect and forward that data. It’s a fun and cheap little hobby if you like collecting data. The gauge and anenometer were off aliexpress for about £5 each, the esps about the same, and temp sensors less than a quid each. All software foss of course, and uses almost no resources so can run on any linux server.




  • “Boys will be boys” by Stella Donnelly. Best listened to blind, imo, so won’t give context.

    Hero of War by Rise Against. An American soldier’s view of war.

    Raoui by Souad Moussi (I can’t understand arabic so she might be singing a shopping list, but the pain in her voice gives me shivers every time)

    No Bravery by James Blunt. A British soldier’s view of war.

    I have a long playlist of stuff like this called “Managed Melancholy” - it’s part of my mental health self care to immerse myself in sad sometimes and really feel. (I’m fine btw, and this is part of giving me an outlet)










  • Google Tasks isn’t listed here.

    This was something I relied upon heavily. When I de-googled, I didn’t want to just move it to another cloud platform, and as a selfhoster I tried quite a few self hosted solutions. Some were very good, but also quite complicated and filled with features I didn’t want.

    So I wrote my own - Taskpony - and made it FOSS. It evolved into something that’s not a Google tasks copy, but suits my own needs better. Simple, easy, useful. I’ve really enjoyed the process of writing and sharing this.





  • Even if you do know code, nobody reads all the source code when trying something out.

    We still rely largely on trust, and herd protection. Lots of stars on github? Been around for a while? Keeps showing up in “Top lists” and on those posts on social media where people list the foss software they use? Issues get solved reasonably quickly and there’s no ancient and ignored posts on there? It hasn’t changed hands recently to somebody with a new account and no history? It’s probably a good project.

    It is still a risk, but a managed one.



  • I’ve been playing with computers and writing code since 1981, so have seen a few things change, and the past couple of years have been alarming from a world new stage, but that’s not so much about tech as global unrest.

    It started with the cookie banners… “We value your privacy” == “Of course, it’s worth money to us” The internet has shifted a lot over the past couple of years particularly, and it was inevitable. Just as inevitable is the loss of the small internet (I speak as someone who runs several small websites that get scraped and stolen from constantly), and the attempts of governments to control it. That was all going to happen, and just as inevitable is the impossibility of complete control - it’ll just make life harder for the honest person.

    We’ve seen some shitty changes to software too through global business. With hindsight, that was inevitable too - it took a long time for someone to realise just how locked in the likes of vmware’s customers were. How cloud and then AI additions were reasons to charge more for features we don’t like. There’s a lot of fear about global instability for obvious reasons, and that’s hard to shake.

    But also… People haven’t changed. For every big name enshittification, there’s people sprouting two more things without such controls. Where we are now - founded largely because of shenanighans at Reddit. You mention Linux - again, most of it free and accessible and those are baked into it. (We’ll skip over Redhat here, I think, perhaps the exception that proves the rule). There’s a lot of free software projects that are born out of love for the free and open community. A place where respect is more common than rudeness.

    So I’m certain there’s a balance. Yes, crappy things. But also good things. I’m constantly amazed at new inventions and how tech is genuinely improving life for many people. I grew up in England in the 70s and the quality of life today is better despite what we might think, but it’s also far more complicated, and makes us feel helpless and small. Back then, our world was small, we knew people. A disaster on the other side of the world took days to arrive on our newspapers, and we weren’t made to feel like we should do something about it.

    Perception may be playing a big part in your view here, and you sound both burnt out and depressed. Not uncommon with the bombardment of badness in the news that we can do nothing about. Understanding that, and stepping outside of the doom cycle, definitely helps.

    Ultimately, you’ve got to do what’s right for you. If tech is a hobby to you, then it’s the same as any other hobby. When it stops being fun, it’s time to find something else that you enjoy instead of, or as well as. Hope you find a better balance.