There was a time when it was much easier to listen to every episode of a podcast for two reasons. The first of these is that they were new so it wouldn’t take too long to burn through one hundred episodes. The second reason is that podcasts were half an hour long so you could listen to two or three during a one or one and a half hour walk.
For months I have been hosting Immich, Photoprism and AudioBookShelf and the experiment has been a success. It has been stable and reliable so far and I did not detect anyone accessing my server without permission.
I had these services as Exposed Host via the Swisscom router DMZ setting. it was easy to setup and run with no issues for the duration of the experiment. I closed the DMZ because no one but me was accessing these services after five to six months but me.
Threads, in theory is a social network but in practice it is a popularity contest driven by algorithms. Normal people are competing against influencers to be seen. You are more likely to find a troll than someone interested in what you have to write, or what you think.
More often than not you will see posts with 21,000 followers, a thousand comments, and several thousand likes. When a post does get 5000 views you will get very little conversation.
Two days ago Strava came out with their “Quick edit” feature that is actually nothing new. They claim that it will simplify renaming activities to get more likes but that’s not what the “simple edit” is about. It’s about renaming activities to train AI.
Some apps will call a run Morges Run, or Nyon Cycle or Gruyère walk but Strava, until now has called runs “morning, afternoon, evening or other. Finding old runs, with strava is very hard, if you want to find by location, distance or sport.
I love to recycle but recently on Saturday I have been hiking or climbing so I couldn’t go to the recycling centre. The result is that I often accumulate recycling for several weeks. One day I finally have a saturday morning free, and that isn’t a public holiday, and I take things to recycle.
My other reason for not going to the recycling centre much is that the road to and from the recycling is narrow.
Some people will see that it’s running, and that they are still recovering and think “I’m not running in that. I did and my “short run” project was changed to a full run. I had planned to run two to three kilometres but ran five instead. The Apple watch wasn’t happy, not with the running, but with the rain. It got a false tap and paused itself for 300 or more meters.
Today it’s raining, which may imply that I will not go out for a walk, or a run, and definitely not a bike ride. It also implies that I am wearing the Apple watch for no reason today. My step count will be low, as will my calories burned count, and finally my exercise minutes. On a day like today I could keep it off, for peace of mind. I really wish Apple Fitness behaved like Strava, rather than a silo.
For less than a week I have been using Threads heavily. In that time I have commented on plenty of posts without senseing any hostility or unpleasantness so I thought that Threads may be troll free. I realise that this is not the case after posting that I would not get the new iPhone SE coming out in 2025 if it had a price hike. In my eyes this is a reasonable statement.
For several days I have replaced Facebook with Threads and the experience has been good. I have found that the community, so far, is ordinary, rather than geeky, and friendly rather than trolling or flamey.
I have been posting and commenting for a few days now and although four or five comments got me to block individuals the rest of interactions have been good. I feel I should elaborate about blocking.
It’s easy to say “You get awful recommendations because of the content you watch on Youtube”. I could say that very easily, but I don’t accept that premise because I took a Bachelor of Arts in Media Studies and I learned to think about deeper topics. I thought about media ownership, control and the theme of power without responsibility. It’s a book about the Press and Broadcasting in Britain but the concepts apply globally.