There was a time I thought about how to change my life. A lot of things changed in my life but I needed to adapt somehow. I also wasn’t very happy with how I used my time and needed a purpose in my life. I started writing blog posts daily (on Medium back then - see my archive of many old Medium articles here).
Today I finally read an article, which I wanted to read for a long time.
It’s impressive how Zach Leatherman built an archive of all his tweets on his personal website to take ownership of them. That way all his tweets will be preserved even if Twitter goes away one day.
I’ve invested a lot into Twitter and I’ve received a lot of value from Twitter. I’ve made a lot of friends and professional connections on the site. I’ll be sad when Twitter goes away. Without a doubt, it will go away. It’s only a question of when.
He is using his static page generator Eleventy to generate over 27k pages with every build (unfortunately he doesn’t tell us how long each build takes - I would be very interested to know this).
Instead of archiving all my tweets on my website, I try to post nothing important on Twitter, but use my blog whenever I have something to say that should be preserved for all eternity. I then post the link to my fediverse account and Twitter. I also mass-delete tweets sometimes.
I know, it’s a medium.com link again, but I’m still a Medium member until my membership expires next March. OneZero has some great articles though. If you don’t have a Medium membership, open the link in a private browser tab.
To compensate open-source programmers for this kind of service, Stenberg believes that large companies should pay for support contracts from the developers of a library, which would compensate them for their time and help ensure a project is actually maintained for the long haul.
This is an interesting article about open source / free software, companies rely on, but refuse to ensure (by donating or buying support contracts) that they keep getting maintained. Open source monetization is a difficult and controversial topic, but I think companies that rely on those software and earn billions by using it in their products (like Apple does by using cURL), should take some responsibility and reward the free work by maintainers. Sure, some people do the maintaining work just for fun, but that doesn’t mean they should be exploited.
It’s probably not that easy to understand, why I (as a strong Linux advocate) bought a Microsoft Surface Go and use Windows on it, but let me try to explain…
In about one week the new semester at university begins and I thought about how to take notes during lectures. The last years I often used my normal laptop (a ThinkPad Yoga S1, a convertible, running Linux) but was very distracted sometimes.
Sorry for sharing a Medium.com link, but this is an article I really want to highlight.
Yesterday, Apple held it’s keynote presenting new iPhone, iPad and Apple Watch hardware as well as Arcade and TV+. I didn’t watch the event that was praised by Apple with “By Innovation Only”, but I read it was super boring. Old hardware with a new package.
But that’s probably a good thing. Because the new iPhones / iPads / Apple Watches are so boring, a lot of people probably won’t upgrade their Apple hardware like they did the last years. Because why should one buy a new phone for more than a thousand bucks, if it just has a slightly bigger battery, a slightly better processor and slightly better camera? Nothing groundbreaking.
The most environmentally friendly phone is the one that’s already in your pocket.
This article on OneZero (soft paywall, open it in a private browser tab) talks about Apple trying to tell people they are doing good, because they are using “recycled aluminum”. Although “most of the aluminum in circulation is already recycled”. It also criticizes Apple’s “iPhone Upgrade Program, which encourages consumers to switch to a new model every year.”
The best way to help the environment is to continue using your existing phone (the phone already in your pocket) as long as possible and after that buy a phone that’s better repairable like the Fairphone. It would be also great if manufacturers, especially of Android devices, provide software updates for a longer time, but unfortunately that’s just an impossible dream.