2025-02-28

preface

Seems like there are some unwelcome changes going on at Firefox.

A friend sent a link earlier today of a Firefox PR in which the following question gets removed from the FAQ in the FAQ source code:

- Does Firefox sell your personal data?
- 
- Nope, never have, never will. And we protect you ...

here is also the link if you want to check it out.

It’s fine that they do want to sell data to sustain themselves. Now that some problems in funding could come up with the Google anti-trust lawsuit, but still it makes me not want to use their tool anymore.

My biggest problem is the following, how few (at least usable and privacy respecting) alternatives exist.

It’s not like with text editors, for which you can select between a dozen good options, but instead you have a lot of untrusted parties such as Google or Opera and now apparently also Mozilla. Plus a few tiny players who can’t compete or even build a competitive Project due to the sheer size that a web browser needs now.

You do have some Firefox forks like Librewolf or zen-browser, but Librewolf has its own problem (that being it’s hard to configure with nix) and for zen I don’t know if the “spying” will just be added there too.

So now I am having my eyes on two other options

1. qutebrowser
2. nyxt browser

But with them, even though there is great appeal to them, I am still concerned about a few things. Mainly the possibility to use an ad-Blocker, as both both of them don’t really seem to have extensions in the way a chrome or Firefox has, or even “just” to use uBlock origin.

“conclusion”

So here a question instead of a conclusion as normally:

If anybody has experience with qutebrowser / nyxt, found a good alternative or a good way to e.g. just block ads locally, please let me know via mail or matrix.

I will update this note if I get any good results.

2025-01-17

Early october when I moved away from home to go to uni I did not have a coffee machine, so I had to decide if I want to drink bad coffee or just stop.

Not wanting such a thing to have any influence on my heart rate and wake schedule, I then decided to just quit.

As alternative I just went to black tea instead, which I soon realized can also very easily affect one in the same way after 3-4 cups a day. So I stopped consuming that too.

That was about 4 months ago. Today I had the little idea of just making a liter of chai, when coming home exhausted from uni, with too much black tea to just stay up and work on a programming assignment, but that only went mediocre.

It ended up making me rather agitated and I probably should’ve just gone to sleep instead of trying to go around natural exhaustion.

I’m currently up and can’t sleep. That has it probably been then for the next few months, won’t consume caffeine any time soon.

Thought it was rational to get away from caffeine for a longer time now but when I tried the first time for a few days I’ve went through caffeine withdrawl symptoms and had a light headache for a few days.

This time it has gone better and I’m glad I did that choice.

Sleep thanks me, heart-rate too.

2025-01-05

One big achievement of the last century is perhaps the advancements in digital, written, communication.

We went from the closest electronic form of communication being the telegraph (at least I think so) to emails and from there further to instant messaging.

Those I’d say are the few big changes we’ve had in this period. But what else changed?

We went from telegraphs having to be sent and received by a professional to then be carried to you or sent by mail. Furthermore it was not available or normal for the everyday people.

After some time of mails being available and personal computers being widespread that was able to become a part of daily life even for the average people.

Then later with the introduction of instant messengers and social media that too became a notable addition that the average people could use.

But one thing changed rapidly on this step, the inclining speed of communication and the declining volume of content in the messages.

Instead of it being used for longer form communication, as how email substituted written mail, it instead just substituted sms and written dialogue.

That also brings it to being used in exchange of talking, by having both parties writing instant messages as if it were spoken which just makes the conversation more tedious and slower than the alternative of actually speaking.

Those were my initial thoughts on the topic, now I can come to the idea that I’ve came here to share.

I think it would be reasonable to have receive and send times for emails and instant messaging.

Due the volatility of those being different each with a fitting time.

1. Receiving instant messages each day at 17:00 and sending own ones out at 18:00.
2. Receiving and sending mails every 1. of the month or perhaps at the 1. and 15.

Here you should obviously exempt personal matters such as friends or family that are around you that could perhaps ask/tell you things relevant within the periods in which you’d be available (e.g. friend A asks you if you want to go eat lunch with them or friend B asks you for help on an assignment that you have to hand in at 15:00).

On the proposed way I imagine I’d much more consciously reply to messages and more importantly have a designated time for it without being stressed about it or waste to much time on it.

With instant messaging you occasionally fall into the trap of “wasting” hours and with designated times:

1. People would get used to it and know until when to leave messages.
2. They’d write something more than “Hello” because there won’t instantly be an answer to form a pseudo conversation.

Will spend some more time thinking on how to implement it, I do like the idea in theory.

I would also be interested in your thoughts, feel free to reach out to me at the mail here.

2024-12-08

For the last ~two years I’ve mostly exclusively consumed my news via RSS, chose who I want to get my input from, in that way selected what my sources of information will be, who to rely on.

There were some things I’ve noticed throughout the time and it was for once that I’ve curated my own little bubble of people who share my opinion and then later formed it.

If we take for example german politics I had two “voices” that I listened to and got my information from, them being “blog.fefe.de” (tech/pol blogger) and “lage der nation” (trans. “situation of the nation”, podcast).

I would say of both of them that they have good and strong opinions on politics and that’s good, the problem was that I have not.

From “fefe” I’ve heard of most news only hours after they happened and remembered his funny comments and opinions on it. Didn’t understand what was going on but that’s the part I got. And that’s still not the problem.

The problem then came to be when it came up in discussion with friends and I thought I had a stance on it but I really had not, because I only knew a opinion without knowing anything about how the guys I got it from got there.

And german politics here were only an example, it was pretty similar with tech and other “areas of life”.

Then after I got busy and the RSS reader became a distraction I just shut it down (as it was running on a server) and didn’t feel the need to have it back yet, around two weeks later.

I like the idea of RSS, but if I’ll make it run again then I don’t want anybody on there that influences me in any way and instead just use it to see what friends are up to on their blogs.

Not taking in too many news or none at all on most days does not feel like a loss to me. For the most part I really don’t care about what is happening and then I don’t need to feed my brain with stimulating opinions and things to worry about that I can not realistically influence.

It’s just useless for the most part.

I would like to know what you think on the topic or if you have insights that I seem to have forgotten. Feel free to reach out if you have something to add. contact