Tech
Several years ago I built a server to host a wiki based on the Federated Wiki app and I maintained it as my digital garden. The server was hosted on Digital Ocean and I made the the bad choice of choosing a 32-bit version of the operating system that meant I couldn’t update to the latest versions that required the 64-bit operating system. I intended to migrate but never found the time and yet had been paying a modest fee to keep that server online.
Now that it has been several years since I added anything to that wiki, I decided to take that server offline and I redirected the domain to another server that responds with a simple message. I suspect the origin of requests to that wiki will come from my own sites such as this one. I apologize for creating the dead links but at this time I decided the money spent keeping that server online is better spent on something new.
I’ve written before that I am using a new RSS app called Birchfeed because I really like its keyboard shortcuts in the web app. The developer continues adding new features, and today it added a fast way to clear out unread messages. It provides a visualization of the age of articles and an easy way to mark them as read.
We can’t have nice things in the United States because there will always be somebody who exploits them for their own gain. Spam has ruined email, phone calls (telemarketing) and now text messaging. The number of political text messages I am receiving is exhausting, so I have created a new mode on my Pixel 10 so that only messages and calls from my starred contacts come through.
For some reason the Spotify media controls that appear with Android’s notifications and lock screen have become more persistent and thus more annoying to me for the last few weeks. I went into the phone settings, searched for media, found an option for Pin media player and turned that off. I understand the media player there when I am playing music, but it was constantly appearing even when nothing is playing and I found that annoying.
Boosting Xfinity Internet Speed
TL/DR; If you are using an older WiFi access point you may need to enable a setting called NAT boost, NAT acceleration, hardware NAT, or flow offload to see performance at the highest range of what the hardware vendor says it supports.
It started with an email from Xfinity last Thursday saying it was time to upgrade our Xfinity TV equipment at no extra cost. I clicked through expecting a replacement for the cable set top box we have in the living room, but instead saw an offer to replace the Arris Surfboard cable modem we have used for many years with the Xfinity Wifi Gateway.
Several years ago I bought the Arris Surfboard rather than rent a cable modem from Xfinity, they were reasonably priced and paid off in less than two years of avoiding the monthly rental fee. I wasn’t terribly surprised with Xfinity telling me the cable modem should be upgraded given its age, and the fact that while we have had 1 Gbps service provisioned I was seeing on average 320 Mbps of Internet speed. Because Xfinity “upgraded” us to the 1 Gbps service for a lower price than the 400 Mbps I was paying previously I choose to avoid dealing with Xfinity given their terrible customer service.
Just watched Joanna Stern’s review of the iPhone Duo and based on what I saw, I would not buy it at this time. Not only is it too expensive, but too buggy.
I’ve been seeing an increase in advertising for services that promise to delete one’s data from data brokers. A business born from the fragility of the Internet and the plethora or services collecting data. Problem is, all of them are subscription services costing upwards to $20 per month for two people, which I find to be too expensive.
Recreated Atari 800XL
I saw this ad this morning for a re-creation of the Atari 800XL. The Atari 800XL is the first computer that I bought for myself and used while I was in college. Back when I was getting my computer science degree at Michigan Tech most of the programming I had to do was done on mainframes, so all I needed was a VT100 terminal emulator running on the 800XL to do a great deal of my school work from home.
I can’t remember how much I paid for the 800XL back then in 1986, so I don’t know whether this $219 pre-order price is higher or lower then what I paid then. I see the recreated model supports HDMI to connect to modern monitors and TVs.
I use Feedland to manage my RSS subscriptions and it’s where I start to review my feeds in the morning. I have feeds categorized and I like the visual format for how I see the feeds. One thing I have noticed, however, is that Feedland groups the updates by site rather than presenting all the updates in a true reverse chronological order, so keep up during the day I have been using River5.
Recently I learned about a new RSS sync service called Birchfeed. It’s intended to be an RSS sync host for apps like NetNewsWire that you might run on multiple devices, but there is also a web app for reviewing feeds. I have found that I really like the web app because of its keyboard shortcuts, so I find I am using it instead of River5. I go to the site and press “r” to refresh and “t” to triage through the updated feeds, pressing “j” to move to the next feed. Any article that I am interested in I press “o” to open and then press Opt+R to send to Readwise Reader. If I want to mark all feeds read I press Shift-a. The keyboard shortcuts make it fast and easy to review updates during the day.
Wired thinks the Alexa tablets could be a prelude to Amazon trying again to sell a phone. Given that Panos Panay led Microsoft’s efforts with the Microsoft Duo, I wonder whether Amazon would be willing for their phone to be a foldable at a price that seriously undercut the competition. What if Amazon called it a foldable tablet rather than a phone? Either way if foldables are really the future for smartphones their price needs to come down and more big competitors are needed to make that happen. An Amazon foldable priced at $799 would make a splash.