Tech-inzichten door Niek de Greef. Reflecties op technologie, software development en de impact van digitale innovaties op cultuur en maatschappij.
There is no good reason why you should still rely on Google search for your search engine. Read this excellent article on Google’s practices, and Big Tech chills run down your spine. There are ample good alternative search engines these days that do have integrity:
Bing (though also Big Tech and historically suspect)
And there are more.
Lately, I’ve been using Ecosia and DuckDuckGo side by side. I don’t feel like I’m missing anything about Google.
When Artificial Intelligence-generated images win photo contests, should we oppose that?
I just think the developments of AI are telling us to do things differently, to stand out. AI has become the competition (and maybe just a tool), just like all other photographers are. So, we have to treat AI as competition, too. You can try to deny this reality, but you can also look at how you, as a photographer or artist, can differentiate yourself from this new collegue/competition.
Ideas:
Personal and analog distinguish you from the aggregated, statistically generated products of AI.
Amazon makes us pay too much, which is friendly phrasing for Amazon rips off all off.
Don’t buy through Amazon anymore. I quit.
How do you read comics digitally? On Windows I use SumatraPDF which is good in comic book reader formats. On my iPad I use Chunky. I use the excellent Calibre tool to manage my ebooks. It also has great tools to convert one ebook format to the other, transfer books to my ereader (currently an old Kindle Paperwhite 7th generation, I believe more than 5 years old. I like it despite its useless web browser).
Test your environmental footprint and how to better the world.
Here is the Dutch version I took. My usage result was 2.6 earths, which I did not really understand as a measure. But it is too high, yet somewhat below the average person in NL. This is the UK version of the footprint calculator. This has different questions, are a different measure as outcome. Most interesting is, of course, the advice about what you can do to reduce your footprint.
I ran out of max feeds on Feedly. I like the tool, but since I do not want to any more subscription-based software, so I looked for an alternative RSS reader.
It is a service but based on open source.
Tried to install in on my laptop.
Runs for a while, tries to run a sudo. That won’t work on Windows… 🙁
Immediately gave up. Considered for a minute running it on my Linux server, but I am actually looking for something simple.
Install, needs Java. Installed Java.
Needs Java 1.5. That is a very old version.
Gave up.
Installed like a charm.
Unfortunately no OPML import. So took some time to copy from the OMPL export from feedly into this tool.
Now trying this out.
Lovely old-style interface.
Reminds me of the old RSS reader I had years ago.