Strava for all

Funny article in Wired about Strava and an interesting battle for first place in what they call a segment. And the segment is not somewhere outside but in Denver’s airport. I agree with writer David Howard that Strava is one of the last good social apps. And it is all about analog, real-world activities.

I mentioned Strava before in an article on cheap tools. I am using (the free version) to keep track of my hikes after initially using it for my road cycling activities (I stopped after rupturing my tendon). Since my first bike ride on 27-8-2012, Strava has recorded almost 200 activities for me. (You can follow me.)

Podcast enshittification

A.J. Jacobs
A.J. Jacobs

The iHeart radio podcast company creates podcast enshittification with A.J. Jacobs’s very nice podcast The Puzzler. Of the 14 minutes a podcast lasts, 5 minutes are filled with ads, that is 35%.

Yes, Tim Ferriss (‘double-r-double-s’), arguably the best podcaster out there, preambles and postambles his podcasts with 5 minutes of ads; also annoying, but at least his podcasts are between 1 and 2 hours long!

Opting out of Instagram AI

As European users, we can opt out of Instagram and Facebook using our posts for AI training. I’ve exercised this control, as I am the product of Facebook and Instagram, but I strive to limit their use of me as such.

Opting out on Instagram looks deliberately cumbersome. However, from Facebook, which is also owned by Meta, I received an email with very simple instructions.

Now, I am curious if they can prove they are not using my data for AI.

RSS update

Earlier I wrote that today there are excellent search engines as an alternative to Google search. To repeat the argument against Google search use: with Google search, in addition to being an Internet user, you are also part of the commercial product a product of Google, with all the consequences for reliability of results.

newsblur image

Another way to consume content from the Internet is through RSS feeds. Google doesn’t like that either, because with that, they can’t show you ads either. I switched to Newsblur after using locally installed QuietRSS for a while. I was missing the shared nature of the web, so I switched back to a tool with a web interface. Newsblur is good and has a fair price, but there are excellent other alternatives out there.