I rarely change my Notes app because I have a lot of notes and I need to use them. I can’t afford to switch often, plus I could never find anything better than Zettlr for the past years. Until now.
Supports markdown but has a WYSIWYG so it is very easy to use. Text formatting, links, headings, tables, text colors and highlights, paste images, man it has a lot and yet it is so simple!
I add many code snippets and its code blocks are awesome and simple, with auto recognition for the code type:
And you simply hover a piece of text and have all of the options you need to edit, or add blocks via / or a button.
You can even create kaban-style pages:
And if you click on any entry there you get a popup where you can add more details via the same text-rich functionalities like any notes:
WOW! Just WOW. It means that I am replacing not only Zettlr but Vijunka too, in one single app! And it is all local.
And it has a lot more, so give it a try.
They are working to add a search function (a must) and more features!
Yeah they added a ChatGPT integration for those who want to use it and add a API key to it….idk how to feel about that but I proposed to them to at least use GPT4all, the open source and locally run language model.
Anyway, I love this notes app! Give it a try. Trust me, it really is amazing how much you can do with it!
I used to pay around 80 Euros a month for a Dreamhost server with 4GB of RAM 80GB SSD and 4 vCPUS. That’s the price for a managed server. Meaning you don’t do anything, just install WordPress and that’s all basically.
Then I felt equipped enough with some Linux skills to take on unmnaged servers. I found Contabo. They were super cheap and provided some control over the servers. 22 Euros a month for 32GB of RAM, 800GB SSD, and 8 vCPUs. As you can see the difference in price is immense. I moved all of the websites there. Took a while to understand how to manage an unmanaged server, but thanks to Yunohost it was quite easy.
Therefore, a server that we have control over, with an old but ok control panel.
For me it is crucial to have such a control panel. I want to easily install an operating system, like Debian. I want to restart the server in case it gets stuck, and MOST importantly to take snapshots.
SNAP-SHOTS!
They are too important! They saved my ass countless of times. Basically you can take a snapshots of your server, in seconds, and then restore to it in case you have to. Before every major system or apps update, I take a snapshot. Imagine if an update nukes your server….what do you do? If you have snapshots you fix it in a second!
At times I had to update our Matrix server that had a 200GB database. If that update fucked Matrix, then restoring a backup of 200GB is not pretty. A few times I had to resort to snapshots because of Matrix.
Therefore I NEED snapshots. Actually I need to be SAFE.
BE SAFE!
3-4 years ago I was testing TROMjaro on my laptop and wanted to install it on an external HDD I had around. Problem was I had some 5 HDDs connected to my computer and by mistake I chose the wrong HDD to install TROMjaro, thus I deleted 4TB of personal files. Photos, videos, whateverelse. Had no backups… This happened twice to me until I learned a lesson: backups are a must!
Now I backup my computer in the cloud with Borgbase daily. I like it because they are incremental and encrypted. Borgbase has no clue what I host there. That’s how it should be.
I have become obsessed with being safe with my digital files, because you will truly regret it if you are not. So I cannot accept to not have daily backups for our servers, to a remote location!
Yunohost made it super easy to use Borg and backup to Borgbase. So that’s what I’ve been doing for the past years. Daily. Fully. 6TB of data.
Why move?
In short because Contabo forced me to remove a Nitter link a year or more ago and we had a huge fight over it. See the details here. They were wrong and douchebags. I cannot accept to be bullied like that. I had to comply eventually but then Countabo refused to sell me any other service. Look at what they say:
Thanks for reaching out to Contabo customer support. For internal reasons we had to take the decision not to provide you with any new products this time, we are awfully sorry to say. “For internal reasons” means we are not going to communicate our motivation. Our decision is not up for debate; we kindly ask for your understanding. Please do not take our decision personally. It has nothing to do with you but rather with reasons that we are not going to explain since we do not want you to misunderstand us or misinterpret our statements. Exactly because of this, we consider all information as internal company information. Still, we are always available for you personally and will respond to all of your questions as soon as possible. Always feel free to contact us.
Fucking hell. This is insane. You see I could not find a cheaper alternative so I was trying to move past that incident and buy a bigger server because 3 years ago we started this TROM.tf suite of websites that grew and grew and we needed more storage space….
So now that I cannot continue with Cuntabo, I had to look for options.
For this I need around 200GB SSD, 20GB of RAM, and some 6 vCPUs.
For TROM.tf it is a different and developing story. So let’s focus on these TROM-sites for now.
I need a server that allows me to control it from a separate panel (restart, shut down, install or reinstall OS), plus one that has backups/snapshots.
Webdock
After months of searching I caved in for Webdock. A hosting provider that Alexio was bragging about for years now 🙂 – he hosts his websites there. Why them?
Custom builds and low prices.
The fantastic part is that you can configure it any way you want.
So you get exactly what you need. Yes Cuntabo is cheaper, but I only used 200GB our of 800GB of diskspace there, and 20GB of RAM out of 36GB. No point in wasting resources. The above setup is what I got and it is 1 Euro cheaper than Cuntabo 🙂
Upgrade/downgrade
With Cuntabo you could only upgrade and it was not that easy. Here you can upgrade/downgrade even for like 1 vCPU and stuff like that. This is crucial for me in case I quickly need to upgrade, or even downgrade. Great!
Snapshots!
This one I LOVE! You see Cuntabo made snapshots on the same server. That’s like an image of the server. Took seconds to do and restore, which was super fantastic, but these are not backups. If anything happens to that datacenter you are fucked. Webdock on the other hand does FULL backups of your entire server, to another location basically. And yes it can take up to 40 minutes to do one for a beefy server, but the moment you click to create a snapshot that’s it, it will create a backup of your server the way it is when you clicked. So you can do whatever you want on your server from then on, it will not affect the snapshots.
This is super duper cool. They provide 3 manual snapshots, like Cuntabo, but you can store them for 6 months compared to 3 on Cuntabo. Even more cool they do daily automated snapshots and keep 5 of them. This is fabulous! Imagine something terrible happens to your server, but you know that you can restore it with a click because you have daily automated snapshots. For me this is a must!
Great control panel
It took a day or two to get used to it but then I ended up really liking the panel. You have a lot of control over your server: reboot, reinstall, even create and manage shell users, execute scripts and so forth.
So far great tech support
Cuntabo’s tech support was always either missing or extremely unhelpful. Everyone complained about that. Webdock brags about how awesome they are at that. They even have a live chat for that. And so far so awesome. So fast, so useful, so friendly. I am impressed. They brag about the Trustpilot reviews on their first page:
I am trying to tame my enthusiasm about this but so far the support was stellar. It feels more friendly and less companyish…
So let’s see…
So yeah, Webdock seems like a great choice. The irony is that they made everything so easy to understand and setup, but their “trial” pricing is a complete mess. I was totally confused….they give you some credits in Euros to test the service, and you cannot build a custom server unless this credit expires or you ask them to switch your account to a non-trial one….it is messy. But well…
How to move?
Let’s’ get technical now. If you have Yunohost and remote backups like say with Borg on Borgbase, then it is not that difficult to move. Mind you we have to move ALL of the websites and configs and users. Emails, domains, files….
Backups to the rescue!
Imagine this: I have an archive backup for EACH of our website.
They are encrypted and stored with a 3rd party. Even if Cuntabo was to entirely cut me off, I had them there. So no biggie!
Set up the new server!
When I bought the Webdock server I chose to have it installed with Debian 11. This is needed for Yunohost. Super fast! I did not have to manually install Debian and that’s awesome!
The SSH madness….
Now you have to login via SSH to the server and install Yunohost. Well….this was by far the hardest part! Not installing Yunohost, but log in via SSH, and SSH keys overall. I don’t know but I am confused by these keys. Webdock tries to make it super secure and enforces SSH keys by default, but anyway….you can disable that, however it took me more than an hour to connect to the server via SSH because this key, or that key, or both, are not recognized and all of that. This was painful, I hate this SSH keys. I HATE THEM!
So you have to open the terminal in Linux and do ssh user@server-ip to connect to your server. Then lose your mind for an hour because it asks you for the key, and keys and shit like that, and then you add your password and does not work and bullshit. This is a general issue, nothing to do with Webdock really, but once you manage to connect it is so so simple.
Install Yunohost
Install Yunohost with this command: curl https://install.yunohost.org | bash
Then follow the very simple instructions and let YNH deal with your SSH user. Once installed, it will tell you to visit your IP (in the browser) and setup your admin password.
Now YNH has created a new SSH user and that fucks things up again with your connection since you are trying to connect to the same IP but different user and keys….that also put me off for hours trying to figure it…. Your SSH user is now the YNH admin and the password you chose when you visited your IP via the browser and set it all up. Remember that!
Ok. YNH is installed!
Now install Borg Backups app from the YNH panel. Use the same repository from your Borgbase so it connects to it. Then add your public key from the Borg YNH settings to your Borgbase’s repository.
These SSH keys are nuts. You have to figure this shit out in order to connect!
After you do that you have to one by one grab the archives and restore. Here’s how I did it:
1. List the archives
In SSH do:
app=borg; BORG_PASSPHRASE="$(yunohost app setting $app passphrase)" BORG_RSH="ssh -i /root/.ssh/id_${app}_ed25519 -oStrictHostKeyChecking=yes " borg list "$(yunohost app setting $app repository)" | less
This will list all of your archives from your Borgbase. That if you don’t get a connection error because the repository does not recognize your SSH key….and you spend a few more hours using ChatGPT to figure it out. You may need to force Borgbase to “please take your SSH key!” to let you connect.
Pause here.
The only major issues for me were to connect. From my computer to the server, from the server to the backups, and so forth. All because of SSH keys. This took THE MOST time. If it wasn’t for this, would have been a ton easier.Also ChatGPT is really useful in these situations and helped me figure shit out.
Anyway.
To exit that list press q.
2. Download a backup
You should see a list of backup archives. Now copy the full name of any archive you want, and replace it in this example:
Replace the _auto_my_webapp-2023-09-24_17:367 with the backup you want to download. Paste that into your terminal. It should start to download your backup archive.
RESTORE THE YNH CONFIG FIRST!
I suggest you first download your server backup data. Maybe it is simply called Auto Borg. You want to first restore your YNH configs: users, data, settings, domains, etc.. So download that first. Then go to the YNH Backup panel and restore it as you would normally do.
Mind you, now your original users from your backup are the ones in charge, so your admin and password, and thus SSH users have again changed. They are your old ones, keep that in mind. You have to relogin via SSH and deal again with a cluster fuck of SSH keys.
But once this is done, it is easy peasy!
Also make sure you select your default domain as it was before. This is important to make sure your email works with your email client. Do it from the YNH panel. Easy.
3. Deal with the DNS!
Your new server has a new IP, of course. This is how I would do things: first download the backup of say Nextcloud. Then go to the YNH Diagnosis and check the domain for my nextcloud, say drive.tromsite.com and take the information from there and add to my DNS where my domain is registered.
So from here:
To here:
One by one. It is likely that you only have to change the IPv4 and IPv6 info.
It may take several minutes for the DNS to propagate, but by now the Nextcloud archive is probably downloaded from Borgbase. Head over the YNH backups panel and simply restore.
Download the archive from Borgbase -> Change the DNS values -> Restore!
That’s it!
Now the drive.tromsite.com domain is redirecting to our new server where we restored the Nextcloud installation. And that’s all it is!
One by one. Download and archive with that command, tweak the DNS in your domain registrar panel, then restore the archive via YNH.
How easy!
By far the most painful experience is to deal with the connections….those SSH keys….and the SSH users….because the rest, thanks to YNH, is so easy to do!
And how important it is to have backups via Borg to a remote location. It took me a few days to move all of our websites to Webdock, and that’s mainly (and repeating over 100 times), because of those SSH connections issues….
Now I am confident that even if Webdock decides to shut me down, I can move to a different hosting provider and I will get everything back in a few days time.
Here’s the recap:
1. Get a new VPS with Debian
2. Install Yunohost on it via SSH
3. Considering you have Borg backups, install the Borg app via YNH, and connect it to your Borgbase.
4. Via SSH grab the list of your Borgbase archives, then with another command select the one you want to download. First do so for your YNH config.
5. Restore your YNH data (configs, users, etc.)
6. Select your default domain and change the DNS for it.
7. Proceed to download a new archive and restore it via the YNH backup then change the DNS.
DONE!
The next big adventure is to move our TROM.tf services, some 2TB of files, to a new server. Probably with a different company to make sure we don’t put all of our eggs into one basket. I will make an article about that too.
I forgot to mention.
Webdock forced me to send them a photo of my passport, which is something most hosting companies force you to do nowadays, BUT Webdock went a step further asking me to open my webcam and take a selfie…. Very invasive. Very terrible. Fucked up even. Mind you, these things will add up and in the future we will get very entangled with companies and governments. More power to them! Terrible!
ZDay, also known as The Zeitgeist Day, is an annual event organized by The Zeitgeist Movement (TZM) for the past many years. For those unfamiliar, TZM started as the activism arm of The Venus Project back in 2008 I think.
Anyway, they were making these annual events where they would invite all sorts of people to give talks, mostly those active within the movement. Some talks were very interesting, some boring, a few very weird 🙂 . But overall I was always interested in this ZDay and I would watch it either live or the recordings. At least some of the interesting ones (in my view).
For the past few years I tried to get myself into these ZDay evens to present TROM. I was close to get to the Frankfurt one a few years back, but they had no more available spaces for my presentation. A few months ago I’ve red that there is a new ZDay coming in Prague, and it would be the last one because TZM wants to decentralize the movement. So, being the last one, combined with the fact that one of my best TROM friends lives in Prague,
I said that now is the time for me to invite myself to ZDay :). And make sure I go there!
I sent some 2-3 emails but got no reply. After a few weeks someone got back to me and told me that they are aware of TROM and they would like to have me there.
Exciting!
You see I always kept myself active with TROM, but I was never invited anywhere to present it. Maybe it is because before 2018 I was not willing to do these sort of things at all, and I would not put myself out there. But also because I am not on Facebook, Whatsapp, Telegram, Discord and all of these trade-based platforms where most activists hang out, so I did not make friends/contacts with any of them really. And I get the feeling that this is how you get into these events.
Anyway, excited to go. I had a month to prepare but I worked more than half of the month on a new big release of TROMjaro. So I had around 2 weeks left to come up with a presentation. We do so much at TROM that it is insane to try and present it all in 30-40 minutes, the time they would give me for my talk. So I had to come up with a more unique way of presenting it.
It was my first time using LibreOffice Presentation so it took a few days to get used to it, but then I LOVED it! You can easily animate stuff, create shapes, paste images, do it all!
My talk would be called: How to Grow a Saner Society. A Lifetime Adventure!
I wanted to keep it more positive and focused on our trade-free approach. I figured that the people who were familiar with TZM are already over-saturated with the “how bad this society is” and want to hear something new. Like what we can do about it.
I bought a wireless presentation remote controller and I practiced the presentation. I was quite happy with it. Sasha and Georgi were my test subjects and they seemed to love it. That was encouraging.
I bought the tickets to Prague – expensive as fuck – and put everything I needed into one small backpack. Let me say that I LOVE the fact that now I have a proper laptop, thanks to Roma and Gui mostly who donated enough money for the campaign to buy me a new laptop. It helps a fuck ton because I do a lot on the laptop and to be able to carry it with me was a must. It is thin, metal, powerful, lots of storage, but big enough so I do not even need an external screen to do my work most of the time.
See how happy I am because of this laptop? 🙂
All I need is my 18-buttons mouse and I am all set:
Now I can go. I have control over all of the TROM projects thanks to the laptop and my mouse 😉
The TROM Crew!
Roma was about to host me for the entire stay, and I decided to stay for 13 days or so. Aaron, who lives in Dresden (2h away from Prague with the bus/train) would join too. But also Vicky and Rafa from Spain who came to support me, us, everyone :). I was so happy that we had a part of the TROM Crew for the ZDay!
These people are so nice, and calm, and friendly. They are family! I don’t say it lightly.
We spent the next day together and it was relaxing. That’s the OK sign for when you dive! So you know 😉
Roma hosted me like I was a king or something. Everything was so neat at his place, and clean, and organized.
He even gave me his own big room and he slept on a mattress in the livingroom. You know I am not the best when it comes to go visit people and places. I would say I may be the worst. Even when I was a kid I never “slept over” to any of my friends’ places, because I feel uncomfortable. I get very easily bothered if I do not have my own kind of comfort. I struggle with the sleep (light burns me alive and I go to sleep early in the morning so if the room is not very dark the vampire in me will suffer a lot); I also struggle with eating….You know actually there are 3 essential things that put a huge toll on my life: eat, sleep, and shit. 🙂
I have a lot of digestive issues so I can only eat a few kinds of foods. Therefore I am always stressed about what I am going to eat. I need those specific foods! And because of that, the other side of the coin colon has to struggle to deliver. Ok. I’ll stop here, but these normal things are very abnormal for me and are stressful. Combine that with the fact that I struggle to fall asleep and keep myself asleep….and you get a clusterfuck of daily issues.
Is it clear now that I need my own comfort and control over my daily life?!
Ok. So basically Roma hosted me in a way that I felt at home. And this is quite an achievement I would say. His apartment was so nice I wouldn’t mind to sleep in the living-room on his NEW mattress that is better than my bed at home! But he insisted to give me his room.
I was happy and relaxed:
Thank you Roma, you are the best human I swear! 🙂
Ok. Time for ZDay!
We went to the venue and I thought we would see a bunch of people outside waiting. But it was no one. I was told that some 40 people reserved a seat weeks ago and that they were reserving more. That there are some 100 seats available and I think I’ve heard that they were all booked before the event.
Anyway, I was expecting to see some people outside. One guy came to us and recognized that we were from TROM. That was nice. Likely our TROM “handprint” tshirts were a clue :).
We went inside and we saw a few people. The venue was very nice. I recognized some of the people. They were all very nice! We were in!
The venue was a lot smaller than I thought:
But very neat and well organized. They even had super tasty foods there:
I wish I could fucking eat some!
Mind you everything was free there, no one paid anything. These guys organized it all from their own money and donations. So kudos to them it was a super nice place.
They even had live translations with live-human-flesh-and-meat translators. They gave us individual headphones:
Am telling you they were very well organized. Well, almost.
The first hurdle was that they had a Widows laptop that was the main machine streaming the presentations to the projector, and my presentation was made in LibreOffice (LO). So it was not working…we had to install LO, then a font, then test a bit to make it work. I told them I will use LO weeks before the event, and I was told that “This should not be a problem. All of the computers will be running Linux to my knowledge.” – Well it was fine eventually. But I was a bit surprised.
I was also surprised that they did not have a remote controller for the presentation. Luckily I brought mine and everyone would eventually use it. Without one how are you going to present? Using the laptop arrow keys?…
But don’t get me wrong, these are small details. Everything else was great there. Super duper nice and organized.
At one point this guy approached me and he told me that he translated the TROM II documentary into Polish. He was “Jaro”, or “Jaromatrix”? That’s how I know him from the TROM Chats.
It was so cool to see someone in person who was part of our chats for some months now, if not longer. Such a nice guy! He wanted for us to talk more, but it was a bit too chaotic and busy for me, so we didn’t get to spend too much time together. Thank you man for coming and I hope to meet you again!
We had some interesting discussions before the event started:
I was very surprised to see Zach and Arjang. I was aware of their youtube channels because I added them to our TROM Curated Videos a few months ago. Zach is part of this Moneyless Society project, and Arjang has his own Beyond Capitalism channel. They did not present at ZDay because there was no more space, but we got to talk a bit. Interesting people!
Ok, and so it started!
There were not many people, but it was still exciting.
The issue with languages!
The entire presentation and the talks were in Czech. Only I did the talk in English. Most people in the audience did not understand Czech. So for the first 3 talks that were in Czech, we had to wear these headphones and listen to the live english translations:
And it was….well….not fun! It was really difficult to focus on the presentation and listen to them. It is difficult to do live translations let’s be honest. Plus the speakers had a few slides mostly with text, in Czech, so it was basically impossible for me or anyone I talked to, to understand the talks…. It is unfortunate that we do not speak a common language and have to struggle so much.
I appreciate very much the effort, honestly, however for us it was impossible to make sense of the presentations. I think one presentation was about a sort of credit-trade-system, and one about permaculture, but as I said it was impossible to get much out of them.
The problem with the recording.
30 people seeing my talk is very good, but it would be a shame not to record and share it with hundreds or thousands of people online. So having the recording of my talk was paramount for me.
We decided on the spot that perhaps it is a good idea for us to film too. Roma had a camera and a tripod and I am so happy that we took that decision!
You see, I asked beforehand the organizers if they would film and make the recordings available for us too. They said that of course they will. However when we were there they would stream with an ipad that was either in one corner or moving around, and Zach was also filming at times. But it didn’t look to me like they had that very organized. I later was told that the streaming was in Czech, even mine…so for those who wanted to watch the livestream (probably the vast majority of people) it was not watchable.
Look, I understand that the event was held in the Czech Republic, and some Czech people do not understand English, but I think it would have been good to stream it in English honestly. But anyway, the streaming quality was not great for later use anyway.
Zach also filmed but for one he did so more dynamically, and he would move around quite a bit. And so he will not capture my slides many times. Tthe way that I made my presentation was to rely on the slides, make it fun, animated, interesting, funny at times. Without the slides it does not make sense. Zach also filmed with a camera in RAW format, a format that I think it is proprietary (.braw). Some 150GB in size for less than an hour of footage. Plus because it is RAW you get a washed out video that needs color grading/editing. This made it nearly impossible for us to share these files and edit them. I can’t even play these files in Linux without their proprietary/licensed codec. To edit I had to install the trade-based Davinci Resolve video editor, the editor made by the same company that made the camera that Zach was using. And the recording from Zach was missing a few bits here and there.
Look, call me crazy but I think it is insane to make the digital media so enormous. 4k, 8k, raw and whatever K, in my mind they make no sense, unless you are BBC filming a nature documentary all around the world and presenting it on large screens in cinemas… I am not trying to be mean, and Zach if you read this post please be open minded and do not take it personally. We need to be mindful about the fact that the digital too has a real impact on resources: pollution, waste. You know you have to store large files on physical hardware, and transport, and download, and backup. Energy consumption, manufacturing, waste. Multiply with billions of times and you get a massive impact. Plus it is impractical, especially when these formats are locked-down.
Anyway. Zach was very patient and shared with us the files.
He also recorded the audio from a stage mic, separate form the one we were holding for the presentations. Because of that it recorded with a lot of echo. The audio was attached to the videos so it was again difficult to deal with them because you had to, well, extract the audio from those super massive-in-size videos.
Therefore we were left with Roma’s recording, with the mic from the camera itself. As you may imagine, a lot of echo and background noise. I really wanted to take my lavmic with me, but I was SURE they will record directly from the presentation mic itself….
I wanted to give you all of these details because the presentation that you will see has a bad audio…and we really tried to improve it but it is kinda impossible to make it sound well. I worked for the past weeks on this ZDay presentation and that’s only because I had to deal with the above issues. Else I would have made this article a lot sooner.
Basically we ended up with two presentations. One from Roma’s camera: video and audio. And one a mix between Roma’s and Zach’s footage and recordings. Whatever you like best….
Here I am on the stage:
I was not nervous really. People were asking me about that. It is because I know what I want to say and the things I was presenting are important and real. For me this is not a presentation, it is me talking to people about some really fucking important things! Why would I be nervous?
Ok here’s the Roma-based presentation:
And this is the Roma-Zach-based presentation:
I think the analogy with evolution works wonders. And it gives people a great visual of all that we are trying to say and achieve. It worked out a lot better than I expected. I thought about this analogy while we were recording for TROM II, but I didn’t include it in the documentary because it was a spontaneous thing and not so well thought as this presentation. In a way I think this presentation is a very well explanation of what we do at TROM. Maybe the best and shortest presentation about TROM.
It seems that many people really liked it. So that was super fantastic.
After my presentation there were a few video remote presentations. Basically pre-recorded videos that we would watch. I want to briefly mention this one about Humania. I’ve heard about this project a month before ZDay. Now, I cannot show you the presentation because where can I find it? But I was aware of them presenting this project before I went to Prague. Someone even sent me their slides. I looked over the project and I want to say a few things. For one I am quite sure that the people behind it are good people. One of them, Ziad, is someone I worked with on TROM for several years. I was so surprised to see him involved in this. Ziad helped me rebuild TROMsite and VideoNeat several times. We spent many nights working online on these projects. He was always so kind and very computer-smart. Anyway, I am happy to see him active because he kinda disappeared a few years ago. We haven’t talked since then.
Now, Humania….it is a project that wants to build a community, kinda like TVP. This is their “3D planning”:
They even had to start the presentation by saying that “No, it’s not The Venus Project…” 🙂 – well if you see their presentation then this is kinda the Venus Project…but should not matter. What matters is that I’ve heard about these projects hundreds of times for the past decade. And none survived. None went beyond some Google Docs and some 3D models. And I am not saying this in a mean way, I wish these people had the resources to do something, but I am FRUSTRATED at this approach overall.
TVP made people dream about new worlds, built almost like in parallel with this one. Dome houses, maglev transport, circle-shaped cities, automation, etc.. I am quite sure Fresco was not that naive to think that this is the future, and he said it a bunch of times actually. But people started to focus more and more on these technologies. And forgot the message: this monetary system (trade system more exactly) is the source of most problems. This is a long conversation to have and we made several TROMcasts about it, but in essence I now realize that people got the wrong message and they fantasize about building a new city to prove how a new society looks like. TVP itself jumped on this train for the past many years, to the point of sounding like a cult.
My frustration is with the fact that people focus too much on these fantasy lands that are at best some simplistic 3D models, while ignoring the real things and progress that we can do today. The volunteering, the open source, the organizations helping others, and so forth. We NEED to work with these in order to change something! TVP made people ignore these real and realistic approaches because they think that these approaches are patchworks.
Anyway watch our TROM II documentary to see what I’m talking about in terms of a realistic approach to maybe change this society.
So I was a bit concerned that after my presentation which was about real things, the Humania presentation will make people fantasize again about things that do not exist, nor will they ever exist in that manner.
We had a Q&A where people would kind of push this sort of mentality a bit and I answered a few questions. I would love to show you that, but only Zach recorded it and I do not have the mental resources to extract all of that from the .BRAW files….maybe I’ll do it one day, but I tried to explain these things in the Q&A. There weren’t many questions tho, and not a lot of engagement.
But after the Humania presentation I quite enjoyed the TZM Italy video presentation that was very down to earth, about sharing and communities that were real:
How they organize sharing events and stuff like that. They were a lot more in tune with TROM I would say than any other at the event.
Overall I really enjoyed it and except for the recording part, everything was really well put together.
After the event.
After the event was over we spent an hour or so at the same place and many people came to talk to me. They told me they knew about TROM and were impressed by how active we still are. It was a great feeling to meet such people. All of them were very nice, very chill, it was so cool to have important discussions with so many people. You see, I said that I was surprised to see so few people attending, but after the event was over I was so happy there weren’t more than 30 or so, because it would have been chaotic after the event. I enjoyed the after-event a lot more than the event itself, because I got to talk to these people. I talked so much that I could not even go pee haha. I was glued there.
Man….I don’t know how to put it in words, but I felt like I was part of something. Physically. These were people that I didn’t know, and yet they were very much aware of the things I was talking about for years now. We could click immediately.
This is Lenka:
She came because she got our TROM Newsletter about the event. She is from the Czech Republic and was living in Prague. She recently watched the TROM II documentary and got to know about TROM from one of her friends, Benji. Benji follows TROM from almost the beginning of it all, but he could not come unfortunately. We clicked with Lenka within minutes, as if she was our friend for years now. From discussions to jokes, from how kind she is to how down to earth she is.
We also met Ante, from Croatia.
His tshirt was saying “f*ck capitalism” and that made him a welcome friend in our group. haha. He was so nice, friendly, and I really enjoyed the conversations we had.
Cihan, Cliff, Kristina, and a bunch of others were such great people.
We went out to eat something after the event, and spent a few hours passionately talking to each other. I got to talk a lot with Cihan and Cliff (one of the main organizers of the event). We talked about this approach of building communities, or not building them. About TZM, activism, TROM, and more. Unfortunately there were a few people with who I did not talk much, and I thought we will the next day when we should have met again. But not all came for the next day meeting. It is unfortunate because I really wanted to talk to all of them.
I was so tired by midnight. So we headed home.
Next day, fun day.
We went to meet for one last time with everyone else. Zach also wanted to interview me for a film/documentary he is working on. He is traveling to many places and interviews “activists” or people who have something important to say I suppose. He understands, like we do, that this is a fucked up society, and why it is fucked up; and the guy is very active trying to make people aware of this, but he’s also aware of how many good people are in the world and how we could think about change. And he wants to put these people in the spotlight.
I had some more discussions with him and Arjang (the guy at the piano – he is good at that), but we had to say goodby. Both of these guys do their own thing and I am very happy to see that. Maybe we can collaborate in the future. Videos, projects, podcasts, discussions.
We met with the few rest again and went to eat something. Unfortunately only a few were present this second day, because the rest had to leave. But overall lengthy, funny, interesting discussions that lasted for hours at this Indian restaurant that could have killed me if I were to touch any of their foods, even if only with my bare hands.
The less hectic and more calm parts of my journey were here. Aaron had to go home unfortunately, and I, Rafa, Vicky, Roma and Ante, went to Roma’s place for some chill time. We ordered some pizza and had lenghty and really interesting discussions.
I hope to meet Ante again because I really liked the guy. We exchanged contacts and I will for sure contact Ante at some point.
Vicky and Rafa had to leave the next day. These guys were the glue for all of us because they are kind and hug everyone.
Vicky is so funny with her “custom” English, she makes us all laugh so hard. She says “Fucking shit!” so many times, and with her Spanish accent it is hilarious.
One time we were talking about Rafa’s parents and I ask her “How do you get along with Rafa’s father?” and she said, in a cute and spanglish-voice “Oh I love your father!”. hahahah. She always mistakes the mine, yours, their, he, she. And that’s so funny. One time she showed us a butterfly, because she is studying about insects, and she said “This boterfly es dangeros.”. And I was like “Hmm….doesn’t look like it.”. “No, she is dangeros!” – she said, and she quickly pulls up the translation app on her phone to make sure she said it right, and while typing I see the translation “This butterfly is in danger of extinction.”. hahahah
She is so funny. And Rafa too. And so homie. Chill. Nice. Always lovely to meet them!
The next fun and awesome days.
I already feel nostalgia while writing about this, and that’s a good sign that I enjoyed it so much. The next days we met with Lenka, and we had such a nice time together.
We went to the Illusions museum.
And it was very confusing and fun.
I want to emphasize on how well we got along with Lenka because it was so surprising to feel so comfortable with someone that you just met. And the wonderful message I got from her friend Benji. It would be a great shame if we were not to meet again, Lenka, and I cannot accept not meeting you Benji. We have to!
Lenka took us to some nice places outside the city center, because she also hates these crowded places and she likes the nature more. I think the saner you are, the more you gravitate towards this, because crows usually means tourists and consumption. Also pollution, waste, concrete jungles.
We talked a lot lot, and we laughed a bunch 🙂
I spent my days relaxing and working on my laptop from the great comfort of Roma’s apartment. Unfortunately Roma had to work every day. That made me quite angry because this guy should not be forced to work on things that he does not want to work on. No one should! I fantasize about him being able to take his skills and come join TROM fully….and who knows maybe it can happen. This guy works so hard to take care of his parents, it is quite inspiring. And he had to come alone to Europe from Russia, and create a life for himself and manage a lot of things. He got his shit together believe me! Down to earth, organized, calm and sticking to his plans!
My friendship with Roma got really strong and real. We are not friends anymore, we are brothers. We have so many things in common. On top of our TROM-Discussions I can talk for hours with Roma about tech, because we are equally fascinated by it.
Let’s visit Aaron!
Believe it or not but I’ve never traveled with a train. And Aaron was 2h away with the train….2 plus 2 equals Dresden. Let’s take the train to Aaron!
I honestly very much enjoyed the train ride. It was quite nice inside and the ride is so smooth I never felt like I was going somewhere. In the car or the bus you can get sick pretty easily (at least I do) if you stay on your laptop, or talk to people and not pay attention to the road. Because it is too snakey….But with the train it’s so much nicer!
We stayed at Aaron’s nice place, in the attic basically. And I’ve said it so many times but Aaron is one of the most chill and nice dudes I know.
We would spend only 2 days in Dresden but it felt like 4 to me. Aaron took us around to visit the place. We went to a nice park and we played table tennis:
And saw some weird places…
I was surprised to see how in Germany people are very keen to share, to do open source projects, and so on. Look at this place:
Places like these should be everywhere. You would also see cardboard boxes with stuff all around the city, where people would put stuff for others to grab. I love this mentality. And the icing on the cake was when Aaron took us to this Hackerspace. These spaces are basically, from what I understand, meant to allow anyone to come there for free and work on their projects. Take a sit, connect to the internet, grab a drink, even cook some fucking food….all for free. They even had lots of tools to repair your devices:
I talked to one of the guys “in charge” of the place and he was so nice and down to earth. They were working on some software to help the refugees/ukrainians find a place to stay in Germany, and on other projects too. The guy never had a job and he was saying “If you take care of your mother, is that a job?”. I immediately loved it. They get it. We should not have “jobs” but focus on the things that we consider as important and not expect anything in return for that. Enjoy the things that we do. As simple as that! I talked to them about TROM too.
It was such a cozy place. I am grateful to Aaron for taking us there. I loved it. And there are hundreds, if not thousands of such spaces in the world. Here’s a map:
We even worked a bit to fix Aaron’s laptop. Glue, tools, space. No one asks you anything. Go do it!
You know there are so many people around the world that understand we should take care of each other and be good humans, and fuck this consumerism! That gives me some hope. We need to find them, tell them about TROM too, share the views, discuss, promote, and scream louder together.
The next day Aaron took us around some nice, more nature-oriented places. We had something good to eat, then we headed back to Prague.
I spent 2 more days with the awesome Roma and I really felt relaxed and unusually for me, at home.
I really enjoyed it. The ZDay was well organized and I met new wonderful people, my best friends came with me for the event and I made new friends there. I was treated so well by Roma that I cannot thank him enough. And we visited some very cool places too.
I hope that at least some people got curious about what we do at TROM, and who knows maybe join us, even invite me to other events to present it. If I have the money and means I will go. I am fearless 🙂 I go anywhere now haha.
BUT
I am however extremely happy to be back home. I was missing Sasha and she is still my wonderful-one. It is such a shame she could not come. Work, papers…bullshit. I hope if there is a next time we will go together. I hope Georgi can also come, and other TROM friends!
You know, I am happy to live in a very small town….
I went at the beach the next day, and I was reflecting back at how big cities are not meant for humans. Both Prague and Dresden are too big….You want go meet your friends? 30-40 minutes with the public transport. Wanna go to a park/forest? You have to cross many streets and walk for quite a bit, or take again the public transport for half an hour. Cars, trams, buses, subways….many people, all busy. A huge rush. A lot of buildings, a lot of concrete. I was missing the quietness, the nature, the calmness, the fucking trees, the fucking sea. HELLO fucking NATURE!
And it is so expensive in big cities. I spent so much money. Here I never spend money when I go out. Here, when I go out, I go directly into he “out” where I want to go. The beach is 5 minutes away, the mountain is 10. Forest is 20. And that’s barely crossing any streets. And it is so empty and quiet when it is off season. I was missing that a lot. I got so tired in Prague because of so many people, all almost running somewhere. I do not think humans should live like this. Luckily Roma stays outside of Prague a bit. And it is calm there. Thank fuck! I am happy for him!
Maybe it’s just me but I could never live in a big city.
This was the first time I went somewhere to present TROM and I will not forget this experience for a long long time. But trust me when I say this, 70% of the success of this experience (for me) is because of how well Roma treated me. If I were to feel uncomfortable, and it doesn’t take much to make me very uncomfortable, then everything else would have been a painful experience. Thank you man!
This event inspired me to think about creating our own yearly event, like the Trade-Free Yearly Event where we invite many organizations and people from around the world to give speeches/lectures, even have some workshops to for example showcase TROMjaro and so on. Wild ideas for now….but making a 14 hours documentary in 2011 was also a wild idea. Even doing the TROM Meeting, or TROMjaro…. So maybe, maybe we will do this….
Stay tuned! Follow our work at https://www.tromsite.com/ because we are hellishly active!
Thank you again to everyone who organized this ZDay, overall I loved it! Any sort of criticism I said in this article is in fact not that important, and at the end of the day the overall experience matters and that was fantastic!
In Germany they came up with a plan: pay a monthly fee of about 50 Euros and have access to all of the public transport across Germany. Lately they proposed that if you are to “surrender” your driving license, you can get access to all of that for free. (source).
Now this, if properly managed and made even more accessible for everyone in Germany, can severely cut down the use of cars. Why would anyone want to buy a car, maintain, take care of, repair and so forth, if they have access to an affordable and good transportation system that is efficient? If people are to use a lot less cars, then we need a lot less roads. Thus you can transform the roads and parking spaces into green public spaces. Add bikes to the mix and you can create much better places for people to live.
Think about how much space cars take: And the fact that the more lanes we make, the more traffic there is: And the fact that most cars transport only 1-2 people. A massive waste of space… And of course, how polluting they are:
Did you know that most of the microplastics in the air is due to car tires? It is true.
So of course it makes total sense to ditch this outdated practice. Paris, Barcelona and other places are trying do to similar schemes. Some cities are restricting the access to cars in some areas.
This is one of those massive problems that we can easily fix even within this bullshit trade system. And the solution is simple: make the public transport very cheap (or free), and efficient. Plus restrict car access to many areas. The goal should be to make it trade-free, so that it will become a lot more efficient. No more tickets, no more ads in the buses or any of that crap. Because what many seem to not realize is that advertising is a massive drive of consumerism (of course, that’s its only purpose), and that in turn creates the destruction, waste, pollution and all of the crap we see.
Therefore the way forward is to aim for a trade-free transport system in different parts of the world. No currency, no data trading, no ads, no bullshit. And this will create a much better environment for people and nature.
Restoring nature… and a good life….
Doable now. Happening (little by little) now.
Healthcare
In USA the healthcare is private and thus trade-based for its citizens. Therefore USA has the most expensive healthcare systems in the world with a life expectancy of just 76. (source 1, 2) – In short the people in that tribe pay more because companies decide what’s the price of this drug, that surgery, and so forth. And their incentive is of course to charge more and more. In other tribes like Spain where the tribe members do not have to pay anything, the government is the one negotiating the prices with companies, and thus they are able to get a less expensive deal. And overall a much better organized healthcare system. The life expectancy is around 83-84 years, almost 10 years more than in the USA. (source 1, 2).
It is obvious that if you create a healthcare system that’s free (or trade-free if you can) then people live longer, healthier, and you spend a lot less resources on that.
Conclusion.
In both cases, the evidence is clear: if we make these services free (and aim to make them trade-free eventually) then we see a lot of positive outcomes. And as you can see it is not only doable, but happening. However we need to push for more of these, in more parts of the world, and inform people about trade as the origin of most problems.
Let’s stop dreaming about hyperloops, round cities, futuristic 3D nonsense. These are fantasies. We need to focus on realistic solutions that can have an enormous impact, while keeping an aim in sight: that of making this trade based society obsolete.
I am quite sure that what prevents me from going into a deep depression is my workaholism. I am always busy with things, some new, some old, some experimental. I always want to do new projects, write, create, enable. The fact that soon after I released TROM II, a 3 years work, I jumped into new adventures, says a lot. Many would fucking retire for a few years after working so much on a project, or drop dead.
I always do stuff. And that keeps me away from thinking about many truths. Some that really piss me off are these wannabe “activists” and “organizations” that bitch about this society and then have pompous motivational vomits about how we should do something, and help, and fight, and all that. Yet none, or almost none, of these motherfuckers that I know have ever helped TROM and the many projects that we have, even with a share or something.
We have so many tools that people can use, so many books, a new documentary, and more. I am always available for any podcasts, debate, presentation, wheteverthefuck. I am here screaming for more than a decade, but if I think how ignored TROM is, especially by these cunts :), then I could go into depression mode quite fast.
That’s the truth.
Better to keep myself busy with my TROM work, else I may realize how hypocritical many people are. I will always share whatever is important in regards to TROM, regardless of the source. And we do daily on tromnews.com and such. And I’ve helped other projects whenever I could.
What just triggered me is this video by TVP
. Ok made, but the message of: “We should change the world by getting involved. You can do something even from behind the computer!” Is so hypocritical coming from an organization that will NEVER share anything from anyone else. They will NEVER help those people who are active and fight.
TVP has some online reach so hey go ahead share TROM II, or TROM.tf, or other orgs from our Trade Free Directory! They won’t! They never did. I worked with them for years. They just talk. Bullshitters. Many bullshitters out there.
Just bashing the billionaires and big corporations, is shortsighted.
People think that Musk, Bezos, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and so on are now the “evil” that we should stand against and defeat. In truth these entities are no different from most humans living on this planet and most companies. It is just that some are bigger players, some are smaller.
When Bezos launched his small business in the early 1990 he was praised for making books available for more people. But look at where he is now with Amazon.com.
We are all forced to be scammers, liars, fake, corrupted. Do you think there is any difference between Musk and Bezos buying other companies to gain influence or to shut down the competitors, and smaller companies temporarily lowering the prices or bribing the local politicians to gain more of the same? There isn’t. The practice is 100% the same.
“Regulating” Facebook, Amazon, Google and the like it’s like plastic recycling. You give the false impression that it works, and you continue to do this, while more plastic is being wasted than ever before, and more billionaires and corrupted people are being created than ever before.
Unless we calm down and dedicate some time to understand that these problems (corporations, climate change, corruption, influence, billionaires, etc.) are HUMANS, and human behavior comes from the ENVIRONMENT, and the environment is that of TRADING, unless we understand that, nothing will ever change. Period.
You can chop the heads of Musk and Bezos, you can destroy Google, Amazon and Facebook, and then realize that absolutely nothing has changed. New billionaires and new monopolistic corporations will evolve out of the same trade-environment.
What can we do?
Provide humans with at least their basic needs as trade-free.
Humans NEED to have access to a decent life, without having to trade anything in return for this. We need calm, relaxed, and educated humans, in order to do anything more than that. There are no plants growing out of a soil that has no nutrients, moisture, and such conditions.
We need to make people understand that life is not about consuming more shit, but about enjoying the nature, discover, learn, explore. We need to make companies and billionaires obsolete. Because what Google and the like fear the most is not the competition (because they can buy that), but becoming irrelevant. When people do not see any value in what they “sell”, in what they “do”.
If only there was a documentary explaining all of these in great detail….
Did you ever realize that the most popular browser in the entire world, is made and controlled by an ad company? And the most popular search engine….Same goes for the most popular “social networks”. And mobile operating system….
Insane….
And now Google, who has the power to change the internet for the worse, is trying to do something that I had anticipated many years ago. You see, we think that we fooled these companies by using adblockers, or some interfaces like invidious and the like, but the truth is that we could do that because they allowed us to. As soon as these will threaten their existence they can throw massive amounts of money at it and make it difficult if not impossible to bypass these.
Example: since Google owns the search, the mobile operating system, maps, the most popular video platform and so on, AND they own the most popular browser in the world, they are trying to introduce some technical things into the browser and some of their websites to block the adblockers and more.
Basically if you visit Youtube.com via Chrome, then Youtube first asks Chrome about you. Like…are you using an adblocker? If Chrome says yes, then Youtube can refuse you. Therefore you cannot visit Youtube.com unless you do what Youtube says you should do. In this case deactivating your adblocker.
Users like visiting websites that are expensive to create and maintain, but they often want or need to do it without paying directly. These websites fund themselves with ads, but the advertisers can only afford to pay for humans to see the ads, rather than robots. This creates a need for human users to prove to websites that they’re human, sometimes through tasks like challenges or logins.
And this is their first point in their explanation. Of course they will fight for this. It will get harder and harder, if not impossible to block ads and trackers.
This is easily predictable when you understand that the main goal of humans on this planet is to trade. This for that. An evolution that results in big companies doing this sort of shit, even when they have more than enough.
I have been screaming about this for more than a decade. But most people do not listen. Do not want to talk about this. They make it look complicated (ad-based economics, surveillance capitalism, blah blah blah). In truth it is the same practice and incentive for Google as it is for the guy who owns a small grocery store. Stop thinking that this is an issue with big companies and billionaires. It is not. We are all, or most of us, scammers, charlatans, tricksters. On small or big levels.
What can we do about it?
First understand it. Understand why these things happen, because if you do not at best you can make some politicians approve some laws to try and stop these big players. And this does not work. We made a big book and a huge documentary all about this.
We need to understand where the problem originates (trade) and inform people about it, but also try to use alternative platforms and software, so we don’t depend on this motherfuckers.
We need 200 people to support TROM forever. And they only have to give us 2 cups of coffee a month. See this – https://www.tromsite.com/donate/ Listen, for more than a decade we have created a lot of materials and tools. On the Donate page you can scroll through a summary of that. There is 1 human working full time for TROM (me, Tio), and we have 2 servers plus some 5TB of online backups. Unfortunately the servers and TIo need money to survive.
The goal is to find only 200 people who can donate 5 Euros a month. This is a very reasonable goal and it will make TROM fully sustainable, forever.
Think about it: everyone will contribute equally and a very small amount. And I also won’t get rich. I want to keep TROM humble, real, genuine, and to make sure that those who support it are many and do the least amount of effort.
I have a dream….and my dream, if I were to keep it realistic and down to Earth, is to (for now) achieve the “200 or TROM” goal. Because if I achieve that, then I can continue to create new things for the project, and to reach more people. In time maybe something bigger will spark. But….if I cannot achieve this, I am going to fade away, little by little, forced to trade myself in this society and TROM will become irrelevant, and in a few years time hard to maintain. I have seen many similar organizations fading away and it is very sad to me.
The truth is that the only reason TROM is alive is because I had the motivation and financial support to continue. But for the past years the financial support has dropped so much that I can barely pay for the servers and I have no means to support myself other than doing some webdesign work for others. And that too is no more than 200 Euros a month.
This new donation approach will be the only one I will try. I am sick and tired of asking for support, so I put all of the eggs into that basket. And I will push this until I either manage to find 200 humans who are willing to give 2 cups of coffee a month to support the so many projects that we are doing, or I will fail while trying.
You know for the past 3 years I worked on the TROM II documentary. A new project basically. So I wonder what new projects I will do in the future. I started to write a book about The Internet and I think it is a unique overview of this complex subject. I then thought what if instead I would start a new video series and pick apart such complex subjects…. I then talked to Roma and Roko and others about it….what if we collaborate and make something cool together? I do not lack ideas or motivation, I lack money. And for that matter, not a lot. I need the bare minimum to have a life and nothing more.
Ok folks, let’s see how this goes. 200 people is not a crazy number. There are hundreds, if not thousands who enjoy the TROM content or use our services, daily.
Let’s see how many of them can and are willing to help.
I bought a Dell Inspiron 7620 2-in-1 (mouthful) some 6-7 months ago. Took me many months to choose a laptop and this one was the best for me. It is a 16` 16:10 with a powerful CPU and a good GPU. The screen is amazing, the keyboard is very good, and the chassis is aluminum.
In these months I had to fix the touchpad because it was not working anymore, and that was a massive issue, but the worst is that the battery capacity dropped to 83% capacity in only a few months time. Luckily the battery is big, 87W, but this rapid drop was unexpected.
You see, this laptop is really thin. Almost as thin as a USB A port. Couple that with a powerful processor and video card, plus just 1 fan, and an aluminum body and you get a hot pancake.
When I stress the laptop a bit it is so hot you can barely touch it. 80-90C. And I had to render the TROM II documentary on this laptop. Got crazy hot, for many weeks on end.
Therefore, I highly suspect that the battery capacity dropped because of the heat. I cannot see any other reason.
But now is July and I am in Spain. Thus, it is hot as fuck. This is tomorrow: So hot it is difficult to keep my own body cool, let alone this laptop.
So I decided to buy a laptop fan. This sort: But the fan was barely creating any sort of air flow. I ordered two more…All under 20 Euros because I don’t feel in the mood to spend more than that on a fan for the laptop….considering it has one inside-the-fucking-chassis!
After two weeks of use the temperature of the laptop would not go above 80-85C when I’d stress the laptop. So a 5-10C cooler. But I was not happy!
I said let’s try something else. Let’s order a fucking fan….you know a normal one. But a small one. And cheap as fuck. I spent too much time looking for one, but I eventually bought this one for 7 Euros: Plus a metal laptop stand for around 10 Euros: And guess what? With that setup my laptop is always cool. Even when I stress it it will stay at around 60-65C max. That’s a massive improvement! And I have to say that I never thought I’d be excited about a fucking fan. But this one, for 7 Euros….is my favorite fan ever. Why?
First the way it is designed. You can put this fan in many different ways. You can put it sideways, upside down, or flat on the table. You can even hang it on the wall…
And so it allows me to position it anyway I want. Like directly bellow the laptop: Or behind it: So it is extremely handy.
Best part? It has a rechargeable battery inside so you can use it for 1-3 hours on the battery alone. This is useful because now it is so hot I take it with me when I move with my laptop. Like put it in bed to blow air on the laptop while I hold it on my lap. It has 5 speeds and it is more powerful than you may think 😀. Plus it has a USB C connector so it is easy to find a replaceable cable when you need one.
Actually I was so impressed that I ordered one more, to blow air on my USB C dongle that is metal and I noticed it got extremely hot. I use one single dongle to connect my laptop to the charger, external monitor, projector, mouse, speakers, LAN, and more. I love it because I can plug/unplug with ease. But because it was getting so hot my LAN connection will drop several times a day.
Now that I got that cool fan, there is no drop anymore 😀.
Conclusion.
These special laptop fans are bullshit. At least those under 20. I tried several and they were very inefficient. And no, is not because they try to keep them silent and thus less powerful….the small fan that I got is also very quiet….but at least it works! Also, fuck you people who design such thin laptops and do not care much about the heat dispersal. Why the fuck you put a fan inside if it is so inefficient anyway? I guess they have to sell these laptops based on looks….I see….
Anyway, if your laptop gets hot, invest some 20 Euros and buy yourself a metal stand for it plus a mini fan. You can always repurpose that fan. And you can get a nice laptop stand.
The situation with the trade-free instances like Invidious, Nitter, and Teddit.
As some of you already know, these pieces of software act as an interface for the big ad-platforms like Youtube, Twitter and Reddit. They remove the ads, trackers and all of the bullshit, and let you see the content. Now YouTube is banning the IPs of the servers that use Invidious, Twitter has cut the public access to their website and thus no way to make Nitter work, and Reddit has limited their API and thus more and more Teddit/Libreddit instances will die.
This is a cat and mouse game, and the cat has huge resources. We cannot host Invidious on our TROM.tf because we cannot afford to change our IP every 2 weeks. Our Nitter does not work, and Teddit may die soon. Although the developers are working to circumvent these issues and make these instances work again, this is a concerning situation overall.
The solution?
For Youtube: use FreeTube. It runs locally and it is the perfect Youtube trade-free interface. It is a lot less likely for Youtube to shut this one down. Alternatively look more into Peertube. Unfortunately all of the video content is on Youtube….
For Teddit: use the Reddit’s RSS to subscribe to subreddits. Alternatively look into Lemmy. But again, most of the content is on Reddit…
For Nitter: Forget about Twitter and move to the fediverse where there are millions of people already.
Facebook, Threads, TikTok, and the like, are ad-platforms that cannot be “fixed” by any interface. Their content is also not worthy of anything.
Be brave and slowly ditch these ad-networks.
We are working on a book about The Internet and there we will detail all of these. Unfortunately the financial support that TROM gets is so low that we may not even create that book or any other book. That too can be changed if people would support this project monthly, like a coffee worth of support – https://www.tromsite.com/donate/
