journal

Switching from Zen to the Orion Browser from Kagi

Using ublock origin, we can block the pesty Google SSO popup that seems to be added to random websites all over right now.

Head to the uBlock origin settings, the “My Filters” tab and paste the following:

1||id.google.com^
2||accounts.google.com/gsi/$3p
3||smartlock.google.com^
4! Block "Sign in with Google" iframe in top right corner of websites ||accounts.google.com/gsi/iframe

et voila: no more SSO popups. source NB: this might fuck with any google logins you actually wanna use. I figure you can whitelist

I’ve finished reading Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell. I always felt that this must be a very boring read, but the recent rise of trumpism, MAGA, dark enlightenment and all these dystopian things finally made me pick it up. 5/5, highly recommended. Not boring at all.

It paints a picture of a totalitarian regime that utilizes new speak, surveillance and propaganda to control the population. Written with Stalinist USSR and Nazi Germany in mind, we see new crops of totalitarianism rise today trying to use similar tactics. The left makes heavy use of identity politics to restrict language and the right uses propaganda and fake news (like the ministry of truth), especially in trumps current administration.

I think Peter Levels doesn’t need an introduction. He’s the guy behind Nomad List, Remote OK, and Makebook. He’s a serial maker and has been building profitable startups for years now. He’s also a big advocate of building startups without funding.

There’s quite the well known talk from him from six years ago on YouTube.

Here’s a quick guide on how to create startups based on the key points from the talk:

• Idea: Solve your own problems. Look for problems in your daily life that need solutions. Be original by exploring new subcultures and niches. Start small, not with grandiose ideas. Keep an idea list to track potential startup concepts.
• Build: Learn to code yourself using online resources like Google, YouTube, Stack Overflow. Avoid coding bootcamps. If you must, use no-code tools like Typeform or Carrd. Limit development time to 1-2 months max for a prototype.
• Launch: Launch on platforms like Product Hunt, Hacker News, Reddit to get initial users and feedback. Prepare the visuals, copy and be active in the comments. Find niche forums specific to your target audience as well. Build in public by live streaming development.
• Grow: Focus on organic growth, not bots, spam or paid ads. Engage users with a feedback box. Capture emails to re-engage later. Keep launching new features and versions to stay top of mind.
• Monetize: Charge money early on to validate the business. Experiment with different premium features and pricing. Recurring revenue is key. Consider sponsorships, patronage, and limiting free usage. Put buy buttons on everything.
• Automate: Use scheduled scripts, APIs and other automation to run the business so you can focus on improvements. Hire someone to monitor the automation.
• Exit: Have a goal to eventually sell the business. Typical multiples are 4-5x annual revenue. Factor in your personal attachment to the project.

The overall process is: Idea > Build > Launch > Grow > Monetize > Automate > Exit. Trust your intuition, be nice, and keep shipping new projects to find what works. Coding and self-learning are essential skills.

I want to switch things up here. I always considered this blog to be the technical perspective on my live. I always felt that focussing on one topic at a time (and thus, if you want to write about multiple topics, have multiple blogs) is the right thing to do. This is not the case anymore. I’d like to write more and show more of my other passions.

Did you know that I’m also an avid (long distance/ultralight) hiker? I’ve done this for over 15 years now. In my spare time I also (partially) restore a Land Rover Defender Td5 of ‘03. With Google becoming ever more irrelevant, and search engines like kagi or marginalia and the rise of AI-generated garbage SEO becomes less irrelevant anyhow. I think, we’ll move a bit back into the direction of the microweb and personal nieches. No more lost content on facebook, insta, twitter or reddit. More personal blogs, more personal websites.

I did my first “interview” with Mat from Tribe of Builders and it was an interesting experience. He provided me with a list of questions and I could choose the ones I wanted to answer most. I got so into it that I answered quite a lot. After editing I could review the post, but it was good as it was. It was an interesting experience and I really like the outcome. Be sure to give Mat some love, he is gathering advice from builders all over the world and it is a great resource for anyone who wants to start building something or needs some motivation.

At $startup_at_the_time we are building a new authorization system. We’re using Spring Security ACL at the moment, but we’re seeing a number of issues with it. Namely:

• the documentation is outdated at best
• they’re contemplating deprecating it with Spring Security 7
• no migration documentation from Spring Security 5 to 6, which blocks us from upgrading to Spring Boot 3 as well
• it’s finnicky to use, and we’re seeing a number of issues with it
• we regularly have trouble with caching and performance

On top of that, we’re seeing a number of issues with the way we’re using it. I always disliked how bad the testability is. How do you have a meaningful check for an annotation like this?

There are two easy things to clean up a lot of disk space on a mac. The first one will remove all stopped containers and unused volumes.

docker system prune --volumes

The second one will remove all old versions of installed packages.

brew cleanup

Also check out this apple guide  Find and delete files on your Mac

So it’s been a while since my last update and a lot has happened. I launched 2markdown) over the course of a weekend. $startup_at_the_time has taken most of my time while we’ve crunched the last two months. I didn’t have the necessary time to work on newsletterify I’m afraid. I still believe the idea is great and I’m still convinced that it’s worth a shot.

Let’s address some technical decisions that have become stumbling blocks for me. In terms of the tech stack for newsletterify, I initially opted for Golang, Gin, and GraphQL via gqlgen for the backend, along with TypeScript and SvelteKit for the frontend. However, a few unforeseen issues have surfaced:

For whatever reason, people always felt drawn to mysteries, especially unsolved ones. On this page I would like to collect the ones that drew me in, fascinated by the curiosities of life and tragedy. I fell into a rabbit whole the other day and was procrastinating on modern mysteries and search and rescue stories which I’d like to document here. It’s really interesting as a data point about our modern civilization, where we often get the feeling of absolute security. Sometimes it’s good to shift things into perspective. We can still walk into nature and vanish. We can still board a plane and never arrive at our destination and no one knows what happened. This could be a good reminder about living a purposeful live.