Category: thoughts

Posted on

Never trust only one source

While heise.de praises a TV from LG as the best buy ever, arstechnica tells more of the real story, namely that our TVs now also spy on us. Reminds me of what my grandma said about her parents – they believed they had to dress properly when sitting in front of a TV, because “they” could see us, too…

And while we all were chuckling with our grandma about this, it seems that times have moved on, and while we don’t (yet) have that Orwellian “Big Brother”, we now seem to have many “Little Brothers” in all of these big global tech companies – no matter where they’re from (like in the case of LG and Samsung, South Korea).

And no, switching off both LAN and WLAN from your “smart” TV is no option, since that would cut off all streaming to and from the device as wll, which would mean: no “Mediatheken“, and no more content even from your computer to the TV. So I want my TV to be as dumb as possible; thanks.

Like always, thanks for reading.

Posted on

A pretty penny indeed…

Just read an enthusiastic review of the Trek Madone SLR 9 AXS Gen 8 (what a name!) racing bike, which sells for $15,999 in the US of A. By the way I still don’t know how to pronounce their line of racing bikes, is it “Madone” like in “Al Capone”? I’d rather think of these as “Mad One”s 😉

And yes, 15.999 is indeed a hefty sum for a bicycle, don’t you think? I once got a second hand Peugeot racing bike from an uncle of mine (RIP Wolfgang) for IIRC about 200DM or so (100€). Peugeot cycles was the big name during that time, even Eddy Merckx rode one, as you can see here. I know I know, apples and oranges, but I loved that old steel bike, still have a steel bike from another German manufacturer today. And to further compare prices, I think I bought my Honda NTV motorcycle used for about 2.500DM – today you won’t even get a Honda Cub for the same amount in Euros… and our used Toyota Yaris Hybrid was also less than 16k…

Why do I even mention that all here? Because of the latest trade tariffs of the US against China of course. I don’t know much about Trek, but last time I looked, pretty much all of today’s modern carbon frames were made either in Taiwan (which is the world’s number 1 bicycle maker), or in mainland China. And now imagine +145% tax for importing these into the US – that same bike could soon cost north of 30k or so – which will make it a hobby for the rich I guess. Which would be, as mentioned in the headline, a pretty penny indeed, way out of reach for mere mortals. Crazy times, aren’t these?

I’m happy with our steel bikes which 10 years ago did cost some 800€ or so each. More than enough for me, even if I can’t race with that one, but who cares?

As always, thanks for reading.

Update, from April 22nd, 2025: it had to come; everyone except a sad clown in the white house knew it (or he doesn’t care)…

Posted on

RIP DivestOS…

Oh my – bad news from last December which I saw only now: Tavi, lead and sole developer of DivestOS (see Wikipedia EN, DE) announced in his project news that he ends support of the project immediately:

“I believe the projects were highly successful in their goals, however this month will mark the end. DivestOS and its apps will not receive any further updates.”

Very sad news indeed, as this was the one project which saved us all from throwing away our old devices, keeping up updates and thus, security as long as it could. Which means that from now on we have to rely solely on the time span provided by our hardware vendors like Apple, Google, Samsung, or Xiaomi to name a few. And even GrapheneOS, the most secure system of them all only supports (google only) devices only as long as hardware vendors (of the internals, like Qualcomm and others) do. After that, they’re toxic waste.

Maybe it’s time to go back to dumb phones next time, me thinks – for those of us who really need mobile phones at all (I certainly don’t). Let’s see.

As always, thanks for reading.

Posted on

Yddoh

“Your daily dose of horror”. Or so I thought after more or less “innocently” clicking on a video link to the intenet’s biggest video site to watch Nat King Cole’s “Calypso Blues“. And no, I’m not using a login on that site, and my browser also doesn’t save any cookies from it – but on the right hand side, in their “suggestions” about what to watch next, I saw several video links which point to the extreme far right party here in Germany (won’t even name them), or to “reports” about them from some self-centered “influencers” or “mentors”.

Enough of that; really. Enough of automatically tracking my IP address coming from Germany and suggesting such far right crap. Oh, and have you tried using their main page without being logged in? You won’t see much, and if you do, you’ll see what’s “trending” – which makes you shake your head about mankind, really. Try it via some 3rd party site to save you from your own filter bubble, and which at least covers where you’re coming from… that is what I’d call “Yddoh”.

So at the moment I’m really considering to boycott that site once and for all – with deleting all of my own stuff there first of course. And to do that, I’d have to log in one last time.

And yes, it really would be the last time, since I don’t log in into anything Google or Apple even when using my mobile phone – I have something far better than their clouds, and I also can do without their “app stores”, thank you very much. I’m using Flickr far less since I unsubscribed from their paid “Pro” service, and opened an account in the Fediverse instead – not much to see there yet, but who knows? And maybe I should do the same with video – I’m not a big “content creator” in that art form anyway. So in case I will delete everything from that big video site, this will also be the end of my accounts with Google – deleted the Apple one right after I had to give back the iPhone SE to my last employer.

And for now, back to more pleasant things. And thanks for reading, as always.

Posted on

2025

A new year has started, but there isn’t that much to report, or so I think.

This is the year that Microsoft will stop supporting their operating system Windows 10, so everyone including the ARD and the CCC are recommending to upgrade rather sooner than later, and if Microsoft thinks that your machine isn’t fit for Windows 11, try Linux instead. I still remember that old joke where someone wrote: “The box said to install Windows 7 or better – so I installed Linux” 😉

Yesterday one year ago I bought a fitness tracker, and started to investigate in free software for it, using Gadgetbridge since January 10th, 2024. You can search this page for the term “Xiaomi” in case you’re interested. The main thing for me is the step counting, and that my data isn’t saved in some 3rd party cloud, neither in China nor in the USA. Anyway, since last year I have now walked over 4.2 million steps, so that’s a bit more than 10,000 steps a day, and I’m planning to continue this. With a step length of about 75cm, that would sum up to over 3,100km so far, so I’d say that I’d have covered Europe by now… and maybe reach my father-in-law’s after some 3 years or so 😉

What else is new? Oh, I volunteered to assist with the upcoming elections here in Germany. In case you’re not sure whom to vote for, from 6th of February you could consult the “Wahl-O-Mat” again. What would also help to reach informed decisions is to stop living in your “filter bubble“, or “Filterblase” like we say here in Germany. So it could help to stop using search engines which belong to giant companies, and also to avoid (a-) social media sites and services which belong to tech billionaires, like my friend Peter just did – bravo to him!

So – let’s hope that this year will be better than the last one, and that we can continue using more and more renewable energy; Germany is on a good way here even if we broke the 1.5° barrier already. So don’t throw away your old PCs which I mentioned above, and also your old mobile phones – use alternative operating systems instead, and save money and toxic waste. I wish us all a good new year 2025.

And like always, thanks for reading.

Posted on

In German /Auf Deutsch: Denk ich an Deutschland…

“Denk ich an Deutschland in der Nacht, dann bin ich um den Schlaf gebracht”

Heinrich Heine, Nachtgedanken, 1844

Was Heinrich Heine von 180 Jahren schrieb fällt mir ein wenn ich Nachrichten und Umfragen wie diese sehe…

Edit: … und ja, natürlich weiß ich daß er das vom Exil in Paris aus schrieb, und daß er vor Allem seine Mutter vermißte die er nicht sehen konnte. Heine meinte das also weniger politisch, auch wenn man zwischen den Zeilen einige Hinweise auf seine eher unfreiwillige Ausreise bekam – Deutschland mochte ihn zu dieser Zeit nicht.

Egal; an diese Zeilen denk ich oft wenn ich an Deutschland denke… auch wenn meine Gründe andere sind als die von Heinrich Heine. Einen frohen vierten Advent wünsch ich Allen die das feiern.

Posted on

In German / Auf Deutsch: Lesenswert…

… ist der Artikel “Perle Europas” von Elena Wolf in der Stuttgarter Kontext: Wochenzeitung. Allein schon wegen des “Kasperletheaters”. Aber bitte trotzdem nicht ultra-rechts wählen. Nicht mal schwarz – die haben die ganze Misere ja erst verbrochen die “die Ampel” jetzt nicht mehr viel Zeit hat noch ausbaden zu müssen…

Und wie immer: danke für’s Lesen. Und die kontextwochenzeitung ist einen Bookmark wert, trotz des Stuttgarter Lokalkolorits. Immerhin werdet Ihr nicht von Trackern verfolgt…

Posted on

Half a year. Two million steps.

On January 9th this year I’ve bought that little step counter, and one day after that, which is now half a year ago, I installed Gadgetbridge on my phone to keep track of everything without sending all my data into anyone’s cloud. The first days I more or less played around with the software to see what it could do, and in the beginning I wasn’t sure how many steps a day would make sense, so I started reading about that. I started with some 6000 steps a day which was the default setting on the device makers’ software, corrected that to 8000 steps a day later which was recommended as the perfect in-between measure for the 60+ year generation. But end of January, I finally settled on a daily minimum of 10000 steps.

And I kept that minimum since 164 days now, so my grand total since I installed the counting software is now a bit more than two million steps, or with my average step length of 75cm, around 1500km:

So in case someone wants to follow that example, expect to have some 4 million steps after the first year – if you can keep up and do this every day of course. And if you look at my last blog post, I think I’ll add some kilometers on a bicycle to that as well.

Anyway, and like always: thanks for reading.

Posted on

Links from Wednesday, July 3rd, 2024

Our “Tagesschau Online” has a wonderful feature of Larry, Chief Mouser of Downing Street 10 today. And they also inform us that from today, those plastic caps on bottles *have to* be fixed (instead of avoiding plastics at all).

Hessenschau reports about a rental company who has to pay a ticket for a falsely parked e-scooter.

And the Kontext:Wochenzeitung from Stuttgart writes about an Italian company whose workers took over since about three years now, still fighting for justice, and against vulture capitalism. The same magazine has a peace speech from 85 year old pastor Paul Schobel.

Thanks for reading (if you speak German or are willing to have those texts translated).

Edit:

And before I forget it, here’s one more. The current Tour de France bicycle race reminded me that I finally want to buy a bicycle helmet. My wife & daughter both wear theirs since – like – forever; I was the only silly one refusing to ever consider one of those life saving tools until now. And I’ve found a video from “Anke is awesome” which I found both funny *and* informative, even if she’s advertising a bit too much for my taste. Still well done, so thanks Anke! Now at least I know more about “Mips” 😉 And to save Anke’s reputation, she writes in her video notes: “Loudly presented by @anke_is_awesome Surprisingly supported by Specialized, Rapha, Shimano, Bike Components, Oakley, Fidlock, Ortlieb, Komoot und Wahoo Spread by Gran Fondo Cycling Magazine und Bergwelten Magazin”