I’ve had some form of dedicated server on and off for many years.

I get cheap ones (from Hetzner, OVH or OneProvider). They’re really useful. They have fast connections, powerful CPU’s and plenty of storage. And they’re no more difficult to maintain than a VPS.

What do I use mine for?

• Sharing big files. Especially big ones. I have a ‘cold storage’ folder on my S3-powered website for files that I’ve shared via email, Twitter, etc. down the years. I never delete those files. But I don’t want to pay the AWS storage/bandwidth fees for a 4GB .zip of football player images I once shared on a video game forum. My dedicated server can have those.
• Backups. I can’t backup my entire media library. But the essential files on my Mac are backed up to the server.
• Website hosting. VPS’s are very popular and capable these days. But you can’t beat a dedicated server. And once you start spending £30 on a VPS, you can get a lot more bang for your pound by getting dedicated hardware.
• Video transcoding. The main reason I have my server is to transcode full quality HD and 4K BluRays to more manageable sizes.
• VPN. I wouldn’t say I can ‘hide’ very well using the server as a VPN, as the IP address never changes and only I use it. But still, it gives me some protection.

I remember being so excited about the rise of tech. I was sure nerds would create a utopia – a fair, enlightened future built on logic and code. How naive I was.

My advice: never assume the new rulers will be better than the old ones – even if they’re ’your people’. Power always corrupts.

I recently dropped Dropbox to save myself £10/mo. I’ve replaced it with iCloud Drive, which I pay for already.

Mostly I used it so I can access my files on my iPhone too. But I’ve realised there’s only a few folders I need:

• Documents. For tickets, ID, or personal info.
• Screenshots. I occasionally screenshot info or as a reminder. So I need access on the go.
• Blog drafts. I like to write or refine posts on the train.

The other folders I have are temp ones for getting files from my phone to my Mac. For example audio notes, scanned documents, or TikTok videos I’ve downloaded. Hazel on the Mac then auto-moves them to their final destination on the file system.

When you review things on Plex your friends can now see them. I love this. I trust my friend’s opinion over a critic or even IMDB/RT/LB/etc.

Blog post. Video demo.

One of the consistently good sources for interesting websites or news is the Pinboard ‘popular bookmarks’ page.

I visit it everyday.

I’m 32. So hopefully death is still many decades away. But I still really need to document how I want my family to handle my digital legacy. Especially my websites. I don’t care if my personal files on my Mac disappear. But I’d like my websites to remain online for as long as possible after I die.

Right now I have three sites powered by Hugo and hosted on AWS. They should remain up for a decade or two as long as the $5/mo bill is paid. My biggest concern would be AWS introducing a new login or payment system that requires manually migrating to. A non-techy family member might struggle with that.

I also have my Micro.blog blog. As of today it doesn’t hate enough posts for me to be upset at the prospect of it disappearing. But if I did want to preserve it my main concern would be that Micro.blog could very easily be shut down. Luckily it’s all static pages and is Hugo again behind the scenes, so it shouldn’t be too tricky for a somewhat tech savvy friend/family member to get a copy of it all onto AWS.

My main concern are my Obsidian notes that get turnt into Learnt.me. In many ways that site is the most in-depth digital representation of who I am, so I’d like it to survive after I died. It’s turned into a website via Obsidian’s ‘Publish’ feature. But the site seems very JavaScript-y and not the easiest to have backups of. Luckily all the notes that the site are based on are just Markdown notes. And there’s also at least one other service that offers something like Obsidian Publish. But either way, worse case scenario all my notes could just be uploaded to an Apache web server and be browsed and viewed via the folder hierarchy. However I really like how Learnt.me looks and works. It would be a shame to lose that.

I’m not sure what the best solution is long term. I thought about having all the content hosted on NearlyFreeSpeech. It’s pay as you go, so I could deposit a bunch of money into it. But to be honest, as long as I can find a way for the AWS bill to be paid, that would be the easiest and most reliable route for long term hosting.

But either way, my digital ‘estate’ is in a much more stable long term state than it has been in the past. Sure, I have too many sites, which makes things more tricky. But at least none are powered by WordPress, which would make things very brittle and tough to keep up and running.

The Google Maps iOS app finally has a speedometer on it.

The AI data gold rush meets its match: Cloudflare – imlefthanded.com

‘noplace, a mashup of Twitter and Myspace for Gen Z, hits No. 1 on the App Store’

It very much is MySpace the app – even has a wall. I tried it very briefly. It’s ugly as sin, but at least it’s being bold. Though it is a bit young for me. I’m a big fan of the ‘currently’ section on profiles.

Pipes.digital is a great replacement for Yahoo Pipes. As a keen RSS user I used to love Pipes back in the day. It was good for getting rid of ads and unwanted content from feeds.

You get three pipes for free, or ten for $5/mo. A bit pricey. But hopefully this means it will be able to survive.

Dave Winer has been blogging since 1994. And extensively too. His output is remarkable. And the result of that is nearly everything that he references and talks about from the past has a blog post he can link to. You can see his thinking in real time and get a great deal of context.

And it makes me want to both blog more freely and frequently and also live life more publicly online. And I think that there’s good arguments to be made for writing publicly on a weblog, rather than in offline software.

I’ve used the journaling app Day One for years. It’s been around for a while and now that it’s owned by Automattic I expect it will continue to be around for many years.

But generally speaking, software is more brittle than the web. It often uses proprietary formats and is prone to abandonment. Whereas the web is more open, easier to back up and won’t go away any time soon. In 50 years time I’d be shocked if a HTML/CSS webpage can’t still be shown the average computer still. I doubt Day One will still be around.

And in my 20 years of writing and journaling I’ve used many different software. The end result of that is my writing is all over the place, in different formats and different apps.

So what if that whole time I just used something like WordPress instead? Today my thoughts would all be in one place, nicely tagged¹, easily searchable and with a URL that I could link to.

Then there’s the tricky subject of death. If I die today no one is accessing my journal. A journal that might be interesting to my family. But if my thoughts were on a blog they could see them easily.

Of course there’s privacy concerns with the web. WordPress does let you make posts private or hidden behind a password. But data breaches can happen and things can leak. So that is a downside.

But my whole point is that I want more of my thoughts and life to be public. If I’m honest I’m not one of those people who pours my heart out in my journal anyway.² So 90% of what I write I’d happily make public and that’s my aim.

With clowes.blog I’m attempting to live a bit more publicly. But it still doesn’t come close to what Dave Winer’s scripting.com does. For me to get there I need to share and write more frequently.

So I’m going to try it. I think future me will be glad I did.

I wrote several post bearish on AI today. But it is simply amazing at helping you remember the forgotten things rattling around at the back of your brain.

The first ever podcast I listened/watched was Diggnation, back in 2005 (nearly 20 years ago!)

If you were a tech geek it was the absolute best. I cannot tell you how excited I was each week to watch it.

Well, the two hosts – Alex Albrecht and Kevin Rose – have just done a kind of reunion show! 🥹

A few new posts on my tech blog today, mostly around AI.

• ‘Why AI can’t replace science’
• Companies are cooling on the cloud
• Figma’s pulls its AI tool after it got caught copying Apple’s Weather app
• Meta’s AI image labeling: ‘Made with AI’ becomes ‘AI Info’

If you’ve got an adblocker Rotten Tomatoes isn’t letting you in anymore. They’ve had this popup for a while. But there was always a button to ‘browse with ad blocker still on’. Not the case anymore it seems.

Playing Battlefield 1. Probably my favourite game of all time. The graphics, soundtrack and ‘feel’ of the game still remain spectacular, eight years on. I’ve written a bit about my love for it before.

After 20 years, my morning RSS ritual still feels like unwrapping digital gifts. From news to niche tech blogs, it’s my curated slice of the internet and I love it. ☕️📰

Glad Apple has created the Journal app. But I would recommend Day One over it. Its a mature product – with easy export options – that’s been around for many years. And now that it’s owned by Automattic I expect it will be around for years to come.

Check it out if you’ve found Journal a bit limiting.

These AI newsletters are essentially identical. I don’t know why I’ve remained subscribed to all three for so long. Their content is all exactly the same.

I’ve reached the point in my digital life where I’ve used enough ‘saving’ tools that I simply don’t know where to look for things anymore. Depending on the year I saved it it could be at any of these:

• Evernote
• Pinboard
• DEVONthink
• mymind
• Roam Research
• Obsidian