Looks interesting but explicitly says it’s “alpha software “ and hasn’t been updated in five years. I’d be weary of using something like this in such a critical situation.

Thanks for reading and for the feedback!

My goal with the series is to start small and make it digestible for people to see they can make simple changes that make big results. I 100% agree there’s hurdles and more points to make, which is why I decided to write it as a series.

The goals I have is to show we don’t need to be dependent on the apps themselves, alternatives exist (fediverse, RSS, etc), and yes AdBlockers and recognizing dark patterns. To me, it’s a slow burn for people to see the way they hate the way things are can be changed, but IMO it has to be presented in pieces that don’t feel like a massive overhaul.

If anyone is looking for a great wallpaper app that supports a good company, Wallaroo from Icon Factory is absolutely fantastic and supports good devs that have made great software for a long time.

AFAIK Anubis is a bot checker and not a caching service.

Full unsupervised robotaxi while your car makes money for you as you sleep, in 6-months. Pinky promise.

Yup. Spent about 1.5 seconds on that site before closing it out.

Stopped reading as soon as I saw an AI image for the article.

I’m in the market for a self hosted file server so I can use it as a destination for website backups. Absolutely going to give this a look next week. Thanks for posting about it!

Crazy how good it is, right?

Google enshittified so gradually, we never even noticed.

Kagi is worth it though. Been paying for 3-months and the ability to search, get info, click through quickly is a breath of fresh air. It’s what Google USED to be. Plus it downranks pages with excessive trackers, you can prefer or omit websites from results based on personal preference, and it’ll even alert you when websites have paywalled answers. The Kagi free trial is all I needed to be convinced.

Kagi. Kagi is the answer. Been using it for 3-months and it’s absolutely worth the $5 a month.

It’s to keep you on Google as long as possible. Google doesn’t care about ad impressions off-site. Look at it this way:

You search for something and AI surfaces full answers to you at the top. Now, Google can “alter the deal” in the near-future where “sponsored AI results” come into play and are incorporated into The Answer. THAT is the gold mine. Right now (and forever) it’s been about being on the first page of results and now it’s about being the first result “above the fold” so people don’t even need to scroll. This is going to change to be the “AI answer” so your website / product / service is mixed into the answer. Pay-for-play just like everything else.

This method will rapidly train users to just search, view AI results, then click through those paid results or move onto something else. Those AI incporated impressions will make Google money and the possible click-through from the AI answer will yield more money.

Companies are already working to optimize so AIs will recommend their products and services when people ask things like “I’m going on vacation to the mountains for a week. What gear would you recommend?”

That’s not their fault. Libby / overdrive is what the market offers. If a library wants to loan digital books, that’s the answer. This is a competition and marketplace and monopoly problem. Not a library problem.

That may be true but until a better solution for ebook lending exists, libraries in their current form using Libby / Overdrive is still an enormous public benefit and is a direct service from local taxes that benefits humanity.

I don’t agree with Overdrive’s practices but I absolutely don’t hold libraries accountable for that because they can’t control what the market offers.

Just use your local library and get all the books you want for free and in the most legit way possible. No idea why you feel the need to pirate books.