Richard’s Blog, Blogging Since 1996
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The Hypothetical Attention Pyramid Scheme
Reading Time: 2 minutes I loved the idea of Substack as a replacement for a few minutes, or maybe a few hours. I loved the notion of a writing community for people to share ideas, and written words. I lost passion when I saw that it was an attention pyramid scheme. ## What is the…
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The Longevity of a Mac
Reading Time: 3 minutes I have a 2016 Mac Book Pro that I still use daily despite it being old, and vintage by the time Autumn comes. The reasons for which I kept my mac for so long are that it’s about budget. I don’t want to spend 1600 CHF to get a mediocre computer…
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The Pleasure of Looking for New Routes
Reading Time: 3 minutes For several years I explored every route that was walkable from my village. In the process I found loops that took up to four hours to complete. When there was no traffic they were all pleasant, whether it was wet, dry, hot, cold or windy. As cars and driving re-emerged plenty…
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The Five and Six AM Club
Reading Time: 3 minutes One winter I woke seven or eight days in a row at 2am to be at work and ready to work for 0400. It was very hard to do, and since then I prefer not to have to wake up too early. Yesterday I woke at 0600, naturally, but also because…
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Walking to La Grotte aux Fées and Bisons
Reading Time: 2 minutes It’s good to browse Komoot because sometimes you find nice hikes to enjoy. Today I drove towards Vallorbe and specifically Juraparc. Juraparc is a park with bisons, wolves, alpacas, goats and bears. I saw the goats, the alpacas, the bison and deer. I didn’t look for the bears and wolves. The…
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Exploring with Komoot and Meetup
Reading Time: 2 minutes It’s easy to find a group, and to do the same thing, again, and again, and again. Each year you do the same things in the same order, at the same time. It becomes routine. You get used to that routine. You don’t deviate. That’s where Komoot and Meetup come in.…
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Google News, News Sites and Paywalls
Reading Time: 2 minutes In the mid to lake 90s and the early two thousands we could browse from news site to news site. I would visit the Guardian, the Independent, Le Temps, Tribune de Genève, New York Times and more. I would also look at the RTS, BBC News and other sites to check…
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CloudNeo Environmental Impact
Reading Time: 2 minutes Last year I tried Cloudneo shoes. I paid a monthly fee to use shoes that were made from beans that were processed into ‘environmentally friendly recyclable shoes’. In reality this is a con. According to an [RTS article](https://www.rts.ch/info/economie/2024/grand-format/les-chaussures-pas-si-vertes-de-on-running-et-roger-federer-28536538.html) the shoes are made from natural products, that are treated in a manner…
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Of Glossy Mags and Social Media
Reading Time: 3 minutes Many years ago I liked to get mags. I would look at the choice of mags every time I was in a magazine shop. I would even buy some every so often. Eventually I stopped I stopped, not because my desire to get mags was gone, but because the return on…
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Apple and Meta Fight About Privacy And the EU Weighs In
Reading Time: 4 minutes A few days ago we saw that talks between Apple and Meta had amounted to nothing. There was talk about including Meta’s AI efforts into Apple Intelligence, unti Apple said “Forget it” or somethign to that effect. I skimmed the headlines but don’t remember the details. This is significant. The reason…