SHTFN

I switched to light mode and I haven't been happier

Thu, 18 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0000

I felt tired in the past few days. Much of it comes from the combination of work and parenting, sprinkled with the general depression of the outside world. But I also realized I am staring at various screens for most of the day. And all of those screens had one thing in common - dark mode.

My main personal workstation was set to dark mode by default. And so most of the apps followed suit. Which means that most of the web apps did too.

My two phones were both set to dark mode. The company issued iPhone and my own Pixel. So was my company notebook with Windows.

Everything was dark.

I have switched to dark mode years ago, because I have been told it is better. I don’t know why I have been told it was better. Apparently it was supposed to be less straining on the eyes. Which I learned now, is not true. I will say, that in the case of a smartphone dark mode helps with battery, especially with OLED screens, but even so, the benefit is minimal in this day and age.

Around a week ago, when it was too late to be up, my eyes were literally crying for help. I spend most of my time reading from screens. The moment I switched to white background and black text, my eyes sighed with relief.

I continued my reading routine and only slowly it dawned on me - light mode is better for me.

So I started to switch everything to light. Even kitty. Yes, a terminal works the same with a light theme. No issues there.

Since the switch, my eyes are less tired, my head aches less, and my experience with the various user interfaces is better. Somehow I perceive more contrast this way. Suddenly the bases table in Obsidian is more legible. Outlook on my work laptop is easier to navigate. Discord doesn’t look like the blackhole of the internet anymore.

Working in the dark is not a problem anymore. I do have ambient light around me, because I hated staring at a screen in pitch darkness since I was a child. My grandparents used to watch TV like that. Turn off all the lights in the living room, and the only source of light was the old TV screen, sucking my eyeballs out of their sockets from 2 meters away. Now, I switched the good old “night light” back on on all my devices. I adjusted the screens to proper white balance.

I don’t miss dark mode one bit anymore. It’s as if suddenly somebody unlocked the true look of the world around me. Not everything needs to be dark. My blog never used a dark theme. Somehow I understood, that reading black on white is the natural way. And if somebody needs dark mode, use your browser’s reading mode. All of them can switch to dark mode if you need to.

Hallucinated Results, Valid Ads

Thu, 21 May 2026 14:09:26 +0200

Google announced recently that the search results and the whole search experience will change. No more list of search results under a sea of ads and unwanted answers.

From now on, everybody will get unwanted chat-like answers to their search queries. Answers distilled from stolen content by a company which wants to usurp the web. I have no expectations of this move. Google’s quality in most of their products has been continually enshittified to the point, where I only use YouTube as the sole Google product. And the search experience has been the worst. Not now, not a year ago. Many years ago already.

Along with this change, Google also announced that, insert surprised Pikachu face, there will be also ads served alongside these new search “results”.

One does not have to be a stable genius to realize, that the “AI-fication” of the whole search experience from Google is nothing more than a complete and utter “AD-fication” of the results. Ads will now be part of a natural looking text which will serve the role of the search result. That means that whatever Google shows you as a “result” can all just be an ad. And the user won’t have any choice in this.

I am pretty sure, that as is the case with YouTube, the ad tech will work flawlessly all the time, while the actual product will be enshittified on permanent basis. Expect half-true if not outright false answers, propped by ads, greed, and grift.

Solution is simple. Stop using Google. There are tons of alternatives now. DuckDuckGo, Kagi, Brave Search. Choose one. All are better than Google and have been for some time.

Testing neovim again

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 12:01:09 +0200

I have been a happy Helix user for some time by now. However, I like to come back to Neovim from time to time, to see if I can change the configuration in such way that I won’t have random nightmares about managing its init.lua file. Call it tinkering, it is a fun thing to do and there is nothing to lose, since I already have a working solution anyway.

This time, I checked if all I need works without lazy.nvim and with the default plugin manager. As it turned out - it doesn’t. I spent several hours trying to get any rainbow csv plugin to work and render csv files properly in a rainbow format, but failed every time.

So I went back to lazy.nvim. It is something I am familiar with anyway and it has a far better documented use cases across the internet. I managed to squeeze everything into it, while maintaining a somewhat decent readability of the file. Still, I am no developer, I use these editors as my text processors, mainly for markdown. My whole note-taking process is tied to them (to Helix at this point) and so the configuration gets a bit nuanced when it comes to text processing.

So far, I have a feeling I managed to build my best Neovim configuration ever. It only threw three errors after the initial load, and I managed to fix them without creating new ones. I know people tend to say, that lua is great, but no. The toml config file for Helix is just so much simpler. Anyway, one has to sacrifice something to gain another thing.

With Neovim I get a better markdown support. That is the truth. I also get a full rainbow csv support, something I can only emulate with the correct theme in Helix.

I will test my current Neovim setup for a few weeks to see, if it can replace Helix or not. So far so good.

Descent Into Speed

Tue, 14 Apr 2026 11:58:26 +0200

Whenever there are multiple “big names” releasing albums on the same day, the anticipation, and hype levels of all metal communities spike. April started with an arguably slow release day, mainly due to the fact that it fell on Easter. I even completely skipped that and haven’t heard anything from that day. Yet. Last Friday was bound to be different. Several big names in metal, whether recent or long-running, released their new material.

To nobody’s surprise, Immolation are retaining the crown of the “most consistent death metal band ever”. Their newest album Descent is so Immolation coded, you cannot confuse the sound with any other band on this world. And it is still one of the best death metal sounds you can get. The wall of sound, which cannot be emulated, is still as captivating as it was in the 90s. Guitar work was always an intricate affair on all Immolation albums, and this one is one of their best. Every time a big name like this releases a new album, I approach with slight caution. Especially if it is being released on a big label. But Immolation have a history of not disappointing and, what is even more important, not selling out. And so, the intricate guitar work does not concern itself with modern trends in death metal, the riffs and song structures do not try to appease the masses. All you get is blast beats with dark rhythmic patterns and one of the best death growls in the business. Descent is probably an all time Immolation TOP 5 release. Rating: 3/5

And so my day was already great. Yet, I had some other big releases to go through and to spoil everything - it wasn’t as fun as Immolation.

Archspire made a name for themselves with blazingly fast version of tech death. Well, the fast part is mainly in the mouth of their vocalist, who is literally rapgrowling through the albums. Which is fine. But the niche they carved for themselves is a very narrow one. And it got old now. There is nothing new on the new album. Too Fast to Die is a rather dull affair with an edgy name that would resonate a lot with angsty teens who just discovered extreme metal. The sound is too crushed, too washed and too flat all at once. There is nothing that would bring back the danger in music like they promised towards the end of their previous album. The songs are easily predictable, they follow a strict template it seems, all while being over the top on everything. I wish I could like the new album, but I couldn’t even finish it. Gone are the days of amazing, mind-boggling fast techdeath. Too Fast to Die gets no rating.

Inferi where the other “big”, anticipated act to release a new album on the same day. And boy, is that another big pile of modern sound glued together with sheer will. I admit, I was never a fan of the band. But still, I at least acknowledged that they were potent musicians. Heaven Wept should be studied by physicists, because it has the power to bend time. It is not even 40 minutes long, but feels like eternity. There is a lot of happening, but you get nothing out of it. As I mentioned already, the musicianship is there, but the songwriting is missing. I tried to endure this, but my time and patience are limited, and I simply couldn’t. Four tracks in, I thought the album was going on for more than hour. It didn’t. It leads literally nowhere. Inferi’s Heaven Wept gets no rating.

To save me from typing too much¹ I will just admit that the rest of the new stuff I heard was not worth of any rating as well. One notable exception, and the second best album I heard on that day was In Death Throes by swedeath veterans Vomitory. It didn’t break any new grounds (unexpected I know), but it was an honest, solid death metal album with catchy riffage, tasteful solos and great overall performance. Basically a good album. So they get a 1/5. The rest gets nothing, because it was quite boring. Some examples: Warsenal - Endless Beginnings… was a sterile thrash/speed album. Skaphos - The Descent was an entirely low-energy black/death record, with unpleasant production. Paisaunt - Life and Other Horrors started actually quite good, but then got lost in itself and lost me midway. It should probably get a lot of mileage from fans who appreciate slightly punky atmospheric black metal.

I am content with the feeling that Immolation might have released one of the best albums of this year. This year shapes up to be a brilliant year for death metal again. For now, Descent is on the top and will stay there for some time.

I do love typing though. I learned how to type with ten fingers without looking at the keyboard and it is one of my favorite things to do on a computer. ↩︎

Cryptworm spreads the plague, Hellripper rips a bit, and Cruel Force found the speed again

Mon, 30 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Friday is my favorite day of the week, not only because it is the end of the work week, but mainly because new music is being released. And last Friday was a massive one. At least in terms of quantity.

People all around the metal universe have hyped different releases, and some did deliver, while some were just ok (or not for me at all). Since my listening time is limited, and my patience even more so, I tend to skip albums which don’t captivate me enough. Let’s call these “DNFs” and I won’t give them any score. I only mention this, because my scoring system is very practical for me, but very confusing for others. And I shall explain it, in some other post, some other time.

Cryptworm - - Infectious Pathological Waste (Death Metal) | Me Saco Un Ojo Records | BC

I have been always a big fan of these English cavemen. Death metal with a proper putrid stench, massive and groovy riffs, and gurgling vocals will always have a high chance of clicking with me. Cryptworm’s latest release dialed all they have done prior to the max. There is a bit of Demilich again (seems to be a common occurrence lately), but generally the album is somewhere between very filthy death metal bordering goregrind. It is crazy infectious (album title warned me about it) and provides enough entertainment for such genre. It is worth noting, that the band features members of Cryptic Shift and Rothadás, so instrumental prowess and death metal roots are strong here. This is definitely the winner of this release day, and it is not even close.
+++ Rating: 3/5 +++

Hellripper - Coronach (Black/Speed Metal) | Century Media Records | BC

Hellripper is one of those acts who seemingly can’t do no wrong. At least according to his fans. And I am one of them. Naturally, I was hyped for the new release, and boy, was I a bit depressed after I heard it for the first time. It is still Hellripper, no major sound change here, but it seems to lack the punch of black/speed I usually require from such bands. Coronach is not a bad or mid album, but it is probably his weakest. Songwriting shifted from “stupid” to “clever” (except “Blakk Satanik Fvkkstorm”), which gained a lot of new fans who previously didn’t like Hellripper for exactly the same reason I loved it. Being stupid and fun. And fast. There is still some speed left, but generally, the album feels a lot less emotional and much more calculated. Which shows that he grew as a musician. Unfortunately, he grew into a more sophisticated thrash musician, and while it is not bad, it is also not what I want. Coronach remains just ok.
+++ Rating: 1/5 +++

Growth - Under the Under (Progressive Metal) | Wild Thing Records | BC

Avant-Garde whatever is a tricky genre. I have been promised a Gorguts-like experience, but instead I received an uneven mixture of whatever. I know a lot of people are going to enjoy this, and praise it as the best thing since sliced bread. I tried to accept it with an open mind, but alas, I think my mind is just too narrow. It lacks the urgency and brutality of death metal, and it serves a diluted progressive angle. There is a ton of ideas, however they are all just loosely connected and often strike the “annoying” nerve with me. I tried, I couldn’t.
+++ Rating: DNF +++

Cruel Force - Haneda (Black/Speed/Thrash Metal) | Shadow Kingdom Records | BC

Now this is what I call speed obsession. Cruel Force are back with a vengeance. The album is fast and dumb (positive). It is also fun. Haneda does all the things right. Non-stop kick-drum attack, drums straight out of 80s, guitar solos that just ask for an air guitar session, barking vocals that fit the music perfectly. This is the blash album we all deserve.
+++ Rating: 2/5 +++

Foetorem - Incongruous Forms of Evergrowing Rot (Death/Doom Metal) | Everlasting Spew | BC

I was supposed to like this album! Something felt off. It lacked that disgust, that hedonistic vibe my favorite death/doom acts possess. Another album, that was promising, but in the end just ended up on the DNF pile.
+++ Rating: DNF +++

Barbaric Oath - Sword, Sorcery, Vengeance (Black/Death Metal) | Caligari Records | BC

War metal is 100% a hit or miss with me. 50% of the time it works all the time. Or something like that. Barbaric Oath works quite well. It is a more punk coded take on war metal and it works very well. Themes are centered more around epic sword swinging than nuclear holocaust, but in the end - war is war. This is a splendid short album that will see much rotation in the future.
+++ Rating: 2/5 +++

OTHER NOTABLE RELEASES I HEARD

Aggressive Perfector - Come Creeping Fiends (Thrash Metal) | Dying Victims Productions | BC

Great, fun thrash album with a subtle black metal hints. Nothing groundbreaking here, just good old fun!
+++ Rating: 1/5 +++

Melting Rot - Infatuation with Premeditation (Death Metal) | Hells Headbangers Records | BC

In theory I should have liked this more. It was kinda same-y and just noisy. Also, it never hurts me NOT to like a release by Hells Headbangers, that label can get fucked.
+++ Rating: DNF +++

Dionysiaque - La tourbe des rêves (Doom/Metal) | I, Voidhanger Records | BC

I really liked Dionysiaque’s previous album and was pleasantly surprised when I learned that there is a new one being released. The weirdo vocals with the old-school doom work very well. I admit, I have to spend more time with this album, but after the initial listen it is already good. For all fans of the weird and doomy.
+++ Rating: 1/5 +++

Protrusion - The Last Suppuration

Mon, 23 Mar 2026 11:13:34 +0100

I love it, when an album grows in front of me the more I listen to it. The Last Suppuration by Indiana death mongers Protrusion is slowly growing into one of my favourite death metal releases in the past years. Rotten throughout with filthy OSDM, the record delivers immense fun and diversity. Immediately, one would say it is again a Demilich clone. Any maybe it is correct, but definitely not in a cheap knock-off way. Usually, when such comparison pops up, it just means that the vocals are somewhat similar. The Last Suppuration delivers a less technical and more straightforward type of death metal. This doesn’t mean it lacks any finesse.

There are melodic solos intertwined with catchy mid-tempo riffs, harking back at the 90s old-school death metal. And since I already mentioned Demilich, I think that Protrusion sound more like Adramelech’s Psychostasia than anything else. There is pronounced bass work here, delivering the much-needed punch to the already exquisite sound. It never distracts, nor does it fight for space with the rest of the band, it just punches from the corner of the room right into your ear canals. The band operates with a reasonable “riffs to solos” ratio. Reasonable for me. I am a sucker for a good guitar solo. And Protrusion cater to my needs. “Accursed Skin” has one of the best guitar solos of this year on any death metal album. This trend continues throughout the whole album, the solos are there, they are solid foundations of the tracks, never an afterthought to just fill the space. They are all somewhat uniform, but that is to be expected from this kind of sound, which operates in a tightly defined borders of throwback 90s OSDM.

Vocally there is not much variation, but whatever Colin Foster, the main vocalist, is doing, is great. His deep gurgling growls are perfectly laid on top of the mix, providing an extra grimy layer to the already sick foundation. The Last Suppuration comes preloaded with an atmosphere of disgust and mystery. Sometimes there are faint synths at the very back, helping out to achieve this. The main mass of the album however centers around cleverly written riffs and nonstop groovy rhythms. I dedicated a good chunk of this review to solos, bass, and comparisons, but the truth is - the main sound of The Last Suppuration is great on its own as well. It is catchy and fast when it needs to be, and doomy-gloomy when the song calls for darker environment.

I don’t like to predict the future, but I am pretty confident that The Last Suppuration will end up on my end-year’s list. Despite its 51 minutes run time, it didn’t bore me once, and with each listen there are new soundscapes to be explored. Protrusion managed to record a filthy, yet clever album. One, I am sure, will become a classic in my personal rotation.

Personal rating: 3/5

+++ Released on: 2026-03-13 via Sevared Records. Bandcamp +++

Neurosis - An Undying Love for a Burning World

Fri, 20 Mar 2026 15:51:00 +0100

Release-wise, this day has been mediocre with three notable exceptions (on that later in a different post). But then the bombshell hit - A FUCKING NEW NEUROSIS ALBUM! AFTER TEN YEARS! WITH NEW VOCALIST OF COURSE.

Unannounced to the wide metal world, a true shadow release.

I am on my first spin only obviously (at the time of writing this), but it is great so far.

Here is the link to their Bandcamp.

On Hyprland

Fri, 20 Mar 2026 14:31:18 +0100

Hyprland is actually good

I recently switched from GNOME to Hyprland, and actually also deleted all GNOME related packages. It didn’t take long for me to realize it is exactly what I need from a DE on a Linux machine.

The config is easy to understand and the config file itself is pretty easy to maintain and come up with.

Anyone who is hesitant to switch should seriously read their wiki first. That’s how I came to think about using it and after reading it, started to play with the config.

Hyprland is quite mouse-friendly as well, which comes in handy at times. Although, I prefer a keyboard-centric workflow, the ability to do most of the stuff with your mouse as well is a nice addition to the overall polished feeling.

waybar, hypridle, hyprlock, wlogout, cliphist and all the other little things

It took me a while to figure out what other tools I require. Hyprland has a solid base with their hyprenvironment and home-grown tools.
Luckily, it is very easy to search for all the use cases and potential problems and find, install, and configure the correct tools.

Rice

I did almost no ricing. Yes, the window borders are purple. Yes, waybar was styled, but just a bit so it matches the overall themes. There is no transparency, no custom buttons and themes, nothing. I tried to keep it as simple as possible. When I look at some on the Hyprland setups I see on reddit, I ask myself if these people also work on it, or just stare at the nice menus, wallpapers, and transitions.
I don’t even have a wallpaper.

There are no next steps

At least none are planned. I finished my setup two weeks ago and haven’t touched it since. Everything works. I haven’t seen any issues with anything. This is literally the smoothest (and nerdiest) Linux experience I had so far.

Stabbing - Eon of Obscenity

Thu, 19 Mar 2026 10:56:24 +0100

I really am trying to get into this one, but it just feels flat a lot of times. Stabbing surely know how to deliver a solid performance, but the new album sounds a bit “out of breath”.
Maybe it is the endless chugging that is accompanying the record. Or the glitchy riffs, which work only 50% of the time.

Last time I told myself to listen to this more, because I felt that there is room to grow with this album, but it seems there is none for me.

Bridget Lynch’s vocals are a standout performance though. Deep gurgles, manic choke-like passages and perfect shrieks would elevate any other brutal death metal records.

As it stands now, Eon of Obscenity will remain at 1/5.

+++ Released on: 2026-01-30 via Century Media Records. Bandcamp +++

Influencer Hell

Sun, 15 Mar 2026 23:02:05 +0100

This article from Petapixel mentions that influencers in Dubai are simply not allowed to post pictures¹ of the destruction caused by Iranian missiles and drones, because it can cause panic.

Weird, I thought the people who live there can experience it first-hand, so what panic would they create?

Ah. Investors and potential interest panic.

The whole place there is built on fake sense of success and real sense of slave labour. Both UAE and Qatar are totalitarian regimes, that only exist to cater those who are willing to pay for their freedom. The rest either doesn’t belong there or can’t get out.

To me, everybody who willingly moves there is a morally corrupt person, no matter how they spin their story. They enjoy comforts created for them by a class unable to have any say in this. Let them now rot in their dreamland and enjoy the well-earned comforts of a religious-totalitarian paradise.

at least the selfies are fire, right? ↩︎

Immich Devs Need to Slow Down

Fri, 19 Dec 2025 23:01:06 +0100

I try not to complain too much. Most of the time, I hide my complaints behind sarcastic comments and voice them in the offline world.

But Immich dev team made me lose it.

Generally I don’t like to update stuff on my server too often¹. The less you tinker with stuff, the less chance something breaks. Updates are tinkering. I do them every month. Once a month.

Unless there is some severe need.

Immich has a bad habit of telling you immediately when your server or app versions are outdated. If it works, I don’t care!

But they also release these new versions too fast. Yesterday - a new one.

Today - again?! Please stop it. Get your release management in order. You have an amazing product, but the release cycles are frustrating.

That’s all.

I also disable auto updates on my phone, but I still get the notification about them (so I don’t forget to update). ↩︎

Wrap Your Year in Data

Fri, 05 Dec 2025 23:00:13 +0100

We’re in December, which means that the ~~Christmas~~ Wrapped season is upon us. People are sharing their “year reports” everywhere and it isn’t just from Spotify.

Spotify’s year-end report is especially concerning, because not only does it remind you how they are not paying the artists you love, but it is also comically bad. The cut-off for data is in autumn, ignoring one full month of the year and probably even more.

Spotify is not the only one now in the business of using your personal data for fancy displays of all the activity they managed to capture. Apple Music does the same. I have seen Discord sending notifications about a similar thing, although it didn’t work for me, because I apparently set my privacy settings correctly and they were unable to process it. This was the case for many of my Discord friends. At least we can say that Discord respects (or pretends to respect) user choice.

I understand why people like these kinds of things. It provides you with a short and convenient way to look at a bit of your life in the past year. What most people don’t realize is that to achieve this, the service must be collecting absurdly huge amounts of data about you. And it shows you only a smidge of them. I guess, once the steaming, hot pile of feces is wrapped in a shiny cover with all the bells and whistles of modern web design, most people throw all their worries about privacy out of the window. If they even had any to begin with.

Which to me is even scarier. People don’t care about their privacy. About their lives being analyzed, dissected, and presented not just to them, but to any other entity willing to pay enough.

I hope the “Wrapped” virus won’t spread to other services. I was already disappointed by Discord doing something similar. What is next? Your year in ChatGPT conversations? Your spreadsheet look-back in Excel?

I do, however, use one service which I specifically ask to do this - last.fm. But they do it by analyzing what you willingly scrobble to their platform. And give you the results only after the whole year is over. Like any sane person should.

So remember, the nicer the presentation and the weirder the facts about your usage get, the more the service knows about you. Imagine all the nice dashboards and graphs they produce for their other clients, who pay for the user data.

Musikcube

Thu, 30 Oct 2025 22:59:16 +0100

In the past three or four months, I’ve been trying out multiple local music players. Since I am still using macOS, there were some music players that were only for macOS.

However, there is only one I keep coming back to – Musikube.

It’s simple enough, yet not too simple to lack features. It plays everything from my collection, displays it as a library, and has strong search/filter functionality. The last one is a must, since I’m nearing 1TB for my library size.

Oh! It also has built-in last.fm scrobbling!

The controls are super easy to remember; often its TUI tells you right away which key to press for each function or view. I wish I could edit the width of some columns in the play queue view, but that’s a minor complaint. Musikube is coming with me on my journey to get away from big tech.

App Trap

Thu, 09 Oct 2025 22:58:29 +0100

Why does everything need to be an app?

Apps, specifically mobile apps, can be a double-edged sword. They provide a more streamlined and (often) optimized environment for the user. Unfortunately, they are also at the mercy of the two biggest mobile app distributors - Apple and Google.

A lot of the apps we have on our phones don’t even need to be apps. Sports results, e-shops, or weather apps work perfectly fine in any mobile browser. No need to install them as apps and provide them with all your data. And there are many more. Obviously, there are also apps which are best kept as apps. Music and video players, maps or image editors work best as apps.

I always try to use the web version of any service if possible. It should be in the service’s best interest to provide a working web version to the users, unless they are willing to become victims of app distributors’ decisions about whether to continue distributing them.

And both the biggest app distributors would rather side with their business interests than with the user’s interests. User < shareholder.

The recent examples are the take-downs of the ICE tracking apps in the US. Apple removed ICEBlock, the app that allowed users to report sightings of the ICE SS agents. Google removed a similar app just one day later. And yesterday Apple banned another app, which just archived videos of ICE abuses.

I am not going to write about Apple and Google being spineless capitalist whores to an authoritarian government. Plenty of articles have been written about that already.

What surprises me the most is that these apps didn’t have any web versions available. Apple or Google can’t ban a web page. If you put all your eggs in Google’s and Apple’s basket, don’t act surprised that you end up without the eggs sooner or later. I don’t know if it is just the creators’ naivety or inexperience, but if I were to create any kind of app or service that fights against the current regime, I would make sure it is not dependent on infrastructure provided by that government’s biggest sponsors.

Make more web apps. Then you don’t have to deal with bullshit like this and cry over the internet that your eggs got smashed by the notorious eggs smashers.

News Are Bad for Me

Tue, 07 Oct 2025 22:57:34 +0100

How I stopped reading the news

Everytime I plan something, I usually don’t follow through. I never planned to stop reading the news. Yet here I am - newsless.

I had several news sources in my RSS feed. Few days ago I realized I keep hitting the “Mark all as read” button all the time on these. I got bored with news. It’s too depressing. It’s too negative. It’s biased. It’s unnecessary.

I am not advocating for ignorance. I am just talking about news fatigue. The state, when there is simply too much information attacking my brain and I can’t cope with it.

All the news sources have been removed from my feed now. As well as the relevant subscriptions. How do I still get informed about important stuff? I don’t really know. I still find out about stuff. I do glance quickly through Kagi News these days. This gives me headlines and some bullet points.

But what about context? You can’t get that from headlines only, Bobo!

True. I just don’t want any context most of the time these days. If something is interesting to me, I will dig deeper into it. I decided that current affairs are not what steers my life from now on. I don’t care what stupid, fascist thing Trump did in the US. I don’t care how much money did Fico and his friends stole in Slovakia again. I don’t need to know every sentence Babiš told to the Czech president these days. It doesn’t help me in any way.

The realization that a constant news cycle is not needed is liberating. I hope, this will also help me with my unhealthy addiction to Reddit and my phone in general.

Baby steps. But important steps.

On Spotify

Fri, 03 Oct 2025 22:55:23 +0100

My RSS reader is usually chock-full of articles about AI bubbles, whatever the US government did this time and environmental issues. My own fault, I know.

But more often, I also see articles about music streaming. Ditching them, switching them, praising them and shitting on them. Recently I read a blog post on Quailblog about pulling their music from Spotify.

One thing that stood out to me, was the fact, that they are not getting any stream revenue from Spotify, even when Spotify themselves are showing them, that they have more than the required amount of annual streams.

Every month, Spotify sends us our “Your month on Spotify!” showing how many people streamed our music. Ok that’s neat. Sure; but then I realized that so far, in every month of 2025, streams of our music on Spotify by these “active listeners” has been “ineligible” for revenue - with no explanation of why.

This is just the best capitalistic new-tech invention of all time! Set up some rules with questionable oversight, hidden behind a blackbox algorithm, controlled by a questionable company. Trust us! Everybody else is using our service, there is no need for you to be alerted!

People often tell me, that Spotify helped them discover new music. That might be true, if your primary music discovery prior Spotify was the fucking radio. But nowadays Spotify is even worse than your local radio station. Full with AI music, playlists generated not by the things you want to hear, but by labels paying to be included. Artists not being paid, service quality being entshittified every year. Once you become a music enjoyer it is time to leave Spotify.

I am not going to preach about how to consume music. People switch over to Tidal or Qobuz (if available in their country!). People switch to owning their own music library (my case). The best way to support artists you love is to buy their music, merch, support them by going to their gigs.¹

Obviously it makes no sense to support artist like Taylor Swift or Metallica, they have no trouble surviving, I was talking about smaller, better artists. ↩︎

Six Months Later

Sat, 27 Sep 2025 22:54:25 +0100

Roughly six months ago, somewhere around the middle of March, I decided to give up alcohol. Completely. I didn’t have to, but I did it anyway. It came as a surprise to myself, especially because I come from an environment where drinking alcohol is a normal, even celebrated thing.

Out of nowhere, the thought of not drinking came to my mind. I thought about being sober a lot in March, when I was literally fighting against my brain and coming up with arguments why it is good. Nowadays I know why it is good. There are literally zero downsides to sobriety. Alcohol is unnecessary in my life and has no added value.

I survived big family occasions without drinking now. What is more important, I survived the questions and the remarks about me not drinking. It pissed me off at first. But I realised, people maybe don’t mean it in bad faith. They are just subconsciously justifying their drinking. Maybe. I also learned not to care about it anymore.

Nowadays, when faced with such questions, I just shrug them away. It’s really nobody’s business. I quit, because I felt my alcohol (especially beer) consumption was getting out of control, and I have a family and a life to care about. I wasn’t pushed by anyone, I didn’t find any new meaning in life.

Six months later, I rarely think about that. Along with cutting out beer, I cut sugar consumption too. Especially processed sugar. Doing this made me realise, how much stuff I do because I feel pressured by the society to do so. It’s not the time to list all the things, it’s just something to think about for the future.

I am happier and especially my sleep has improved a lot. During the week I rely only on tap water, coffee in the morning and green tea if I feel like it later. I even cut the non-alcoholic beers to a minimum. Every other weekend or so. I am still not missing anything. But I do like the thought that I remember what my son tells me when he is falling asleep and I don’t have four beers in me while my mind is turned off.

Obliterating Our Freedom

Thu, 07 Aug 2025 22:52:35 +0100

Lately, I made a promise to myself to follow politics less. It is a game in which I am always a sore loser, and I honestly don’t like that. Politics and politicians are like junkies, getting addicted to power the moment they sense it, and they never let go.

However, I can’t escape the abhorrent stupidity they spread around. So naturally, some news reach me. Mostly about how no politician seems to understand technology, but would like to rule it.

Chat Control is again on the menu in Brussels, a law so bad, it makes the politicians in Eastern Europe look good. An act of tyranny so brazen, it makes me wonder where are the people. The proposed law would make an end to end-to-end encryption, not just for your messages in Signal or Whatsapp, but for your mails, for the encryption used in other protocols too. Because once you break the encryption for one, what is stopping the politicians to break other or even worse, what is stopping the actual bad actors to break all of it?

But no politician ever thought about it for longer than few minutes, because frankly, most of them don’t have the mental capacity for such things. They were elected based on empty promises by a handful of people, and think they know better. A story as old as politics itself.

Encryption must not be touched by anyone, it is one of the few guarantees of personal freedom in the ever-connected online world. Now, don’t you start thinking that I am some grumpy libertarian spewing nonsense messages about personal freedom. I am not. Libertarianism is a failed concept with so many loop-holes it literally defeats its own purpose most of the time.

Saying “we are doing this to protect the children” or “the law enforcement agencies need this to combat crime” is basically saying “we have no idea how to solve these problems without limiting the freedom of you all, but it’s a sacrifice we are willing to make”. And as the political standard goes, this obviously won’t apply to them, because if there is somebody with things to hide besides actual criminals, it’s politicians. And the Venn diagram for these two groups is often just a circle.

What bothers me the most, that even political parties, which are vocal supporters of democratic processes and personal freedoms in their own countries are just giving up one of the most important rights of their voters. It’s like in EU if you criticise any proposal made by the “democratic” parties you are labeled anti-EU. The fractions there work like a sheep factories, regurgitating whatever nonsense the bigger countries need to peddle to satisfy their leader.

I like the EU, I support it and I think it is the best thing that happened to Europe as a whole, to Slovakia my home country and to Czechia my now-home country. But I understand why more and more people are fed up with it. And now a lot of people like me, who are pro-EU, are getting fed up with it, which is the worst outcome for EU itself, and the best outcome for foreign saboteurs.

Please stop this nonsense and start protecting your people again!

Search for the Right RSS Client

Wed, 30 Apr 2025 22:50:24 +0100

RSS/Atom remains one of my favourite pieces of technology. A simple solution to a huge problem - how to follow news and articles without getting overloaded?

RSS certainly already hit its prime maybe 10 years ago and gradually fell out of the mainstream view after Google discontinued their Google Reader RSS feed application, and when Facebook and Twitter replaced news for most people. I admit, I too stopped using RSS for some time, seeing as I could just get all the stuff from algorithms which were presented to me at that time.

I came back. Algorithms are nice in theory and definitely useful in some cases, however in the hands of greedy capitalists they just turn into a money printing machine. By feeding the users whatever keeps them scrolling. Without any thought about the impact. RSS is the opposite of this approach. It requires the user to think. To think what to follow. I have to curate my RSS collection. I also treat it as a collection, a library of useful sites I enjoy reading.

This is why I need an RSS feed reader in my life. And to find a good one means work.

For the past few years I have been using FreshRSS. A self-hosted solution based on PHP that was both simple and complicated at the same time. But it worked for my needs. Until it didn’t. I started to see more and more feed errors and I just simply couldn’t look at them anymore. I didn’t mind its kinda clunky user interface or general slowness, RSS is not a fast-paced world, its main advantage is that you have time, nothing gets lost in an never-ending stream of new content if you login an hour later. But the random errors started to get distracting. FreshRSS is still a solid product and I would recommend to anyone who is willing to put time into maintaining it for them. I just don’t have that time.

I started my search for a new tool. And immediately asked myself - “Does it need to be self-hosted or is local just fine?”.

Generally I check my feeds on two devices only - my Mac and my Pixel. Local client would mean a painful maintenance of the reader feeds library on two devices. Nothing terrible, but nothing great either. But since I am using a Pixel now, there simply isn’t any “good enough” reader that wouldn’t irk me in some way. Most of the FOSS RSS readers have questionable design choices. Either they look like they have been styled by the most anti-social backend engineer on the team or they just waste precious space.

I used to use NetNewsWire on both, the Mac and the iPhone (when I used it). It was good enough, synced over iCloud and the Mac version seemed to be very stable, but would suffer sometimes from random drags.

Self-hosted option was the clear answer so I started looking for another one. I immediately pre-selected three candidates and tried them out: Miniflux, CommaFeed and Fusion.

Fusion got eliminated right away. However I tried to import my existing feeds list, it just either didn’t accept it, or it didn’t create the categories for the feeds.

CommaFeed simply works. It is fast, looks great both on mobile and desktop, the list of articles (I always opt for the most compact list as possible) is nicely structured and easy to navigate through.

Miniflux worked like a charm from the beginning and its minimalistic UI is cute. It is sometimes a bit confusing and not easy to read, but once I got used to the UI, I started to appreciate it. I’ve setup an instance on Pikapods about a week ago and since then haven’t seen any issues with my RSS consumption. Miniflux seems to just work, I don’t have to dedicate any time to figuring out any issues or settings and Pikapods is actually a nice platform for such instances (btw they also offer all the other RSS readers I mentioned).

Mullvad Does Ads Right

Thu, 24 Oct 2024 22:49:28 +0100

Seen at: https://mullvad.net/en/blog/2024/10/24/advertising-that-targets-everyone

Mullvad, one of the best VPN providers out there, knows how to do advertisement right. No trackers, no annoying banners, just old-school public ads in the wild.

Great use of powerful slogans, easy to read and with bright colours, this is one of the best ad campaigns by a tech company in recent years.

Meta Suspends User that Tracks Celebrity Private Jets

Tue, 22 Oct 2024 22:45:55 +0100

Source

Neowin reports that Meta suspended accounts of people who follow the private jets of society’s “celebrities”.
Clearly it’s more important to prevent the public from seeing the abuse of our environment by the wealthy, than to prevent Russian propaganda spreading through its products.
It’s probably even more important than policing harmful content aimed towards kids on Instagram.

Social media is the true cancer of today’s society and no amount of “you just don’t use it right” or “it helps me find stuff” arguments is going to change my mind.

From BBC: The weird history of the barcode

Mon, 21 Oct 2024 22:43:38 +0100

Source

Few people think twice about the barcodes on their shopping, but in the 75 years since they were first dreamed up, they have helped save lives, gone into space and stoked fears of the Antichrist.

Lasers. That’s what supermarket staff need, insisted Paul McEnroe. Scanners in the checkout and little pistol-shaped laser guns, too. Point, shoot, sell!

Fascinating history of the barcode, a thing so small and so ubiquitous most of us don’t even think about.

Amazing Article About John Wheeler

Mon, 21 Oct 2024 22:35:18 +0100

Source

Nobody can be anybody without somebodies around.

One of my favourite quotes. John Wheeler was a fascinating person and the linked article is worthy of a read.