Has Signal usage collapsed? It seems so.

For daily communications I use either iMessage or WhatsApp. I have other options installed in my phone, like the p2p Keet app and the totally off-grid Meshtastic app, but those are barely used. 

Now that WhatsApp is going to show adverts I guess I might see some friends hate it and switch to Signal like they did last time WhatsApp was in the news in a negative way. 

The problem I guess is that too many people use WA daily and don't care about meta data leaking (loss of privacy) and don't care about seeing adverts either. 

They will keep on using WhatsApp anyways. 😥 

To test if anyone who installed Signal is ever opening it, I posted a "status" (yes, Signal has those too).

This is a screenshot from my "add story" screen in Signal. The point is to show "216 kijkers (viewers)"

As you can see here, I have 216 'viewers' on Signal. That's only 10% of the total amount of contacts I have on WA. 

So, after almost 24 hours and potentially 214 viewers, I got exactly one viewer. 

My current analysis is that Signal is almost dead. 

Hopefully this will change permanently after ads are shown too often in WA. We will see. 

TIL Perplexity can also find cars based on license plates

I strolled past an interesting looking van today. Me and my buddy Peter wondered if we could find what brand, model and year the car would be from. 

My guess would be a Hanemag or Unimog car from the '80. Kentekencheck.nl came up blank. 

But Lo And Behold. Perplexity was able to identity the car as a recent Russian car made by Uaz. 

That is one more use case were I won't be needing special websites or Kagi or another search engine for. 

Is self-hosting a decentralized blog possible?

I recently wrote a blog post on the perils of finding good hosting solutions for my blogs. My private blog janromme.com, as well as Seriousaboutech are both hosted on Blogger.com.  The downside of Blogger is that it injects advertisements unto my pages. Also, I can’t really access my blog files. It’s all accessible only through a web portal. So I am currently in the market for a good and cheap hosting solution. 

This got me thinking. What if we are all are doing hosting wrong? 

Hosting made sense when most people didn’t own their own always-on, always-connected devices. What if instead of looking up to big companies to do the hosting for us, or falling behind on our dev-ops skills in trying to self-host on a VPS, we should instead use easy to use self-hosting apps on our smartphone and laptop? The limitations of a smartphone or a laptop as a hosting device are (among other things): 

• Limited battery
• Bandwidth restricted
• Spotty 5G or Wi-Fi coverage 
• No self-owned IP4/IP6 address
• Behind a NAT 
• Limited access to your own device (iOS App Store restrictions come to mind).

All of these limitations can be overcome if we think not of one smartphone or one laptop as the single hosting device, but instead of a pool or swarm of these devices, scattered all over the globe. A recent hosting solution that already uses this principle exists today: it’s called NOSTR, short for “Notes and Other Stuff Transmitted by Relays”.  Every file, audio, video, Markdown text or whatever, is cryptographically signed by the user who posts it. This means it can’t be tempered with, and it can be identified on several different relays that host the file. 

The downside of the current system is that it relies on kind persons who get a warm and fussy feeling form playing dev-ops on a rented VPS or home server. This is not a sustainable business model. 

What if each of the readers of my blog posts or viewers of the video files that I share, would automatically become a hoster, let’s say for 3 months after viewing? This automatic hosting means my mother (she’s close to 80, bless her hart) can do it too. It should be seamless to set up and forget. A build in bonus is that a popular blog post will automatically be hosted by more and more relays, in the same way that a popular torrent file is automatically seeded by more users as well. 

Almost all the pieces exist today:

• Automatic seeding/hosting/relaying of a downloaded file exists in the torrent sphere: Webtorrent.io shows how hosting inside the browser works by using WASM, WebRTC and JavaScript. And hundreds of nostr relays are in operation today. You can push your data to all the free relays by using a tool like blastr. 
• Punching through a NAT or circumventing the problem of not having a static IP4/IP6 address has several working solutions today: Holepunch, IROH, libp2p and WireGuard come to mind.
• Finding a blob on Nostr and showing it as a webpage is done by for example Njump.me, Blogstack and NoteStack.
• Even a NOSTR-relay-on-WASM exists already called snort worker relay.

If anyone knows of a project that is (close to) achieving a combination of these goals, please let me know 😊.

If you want to comment on this blog post, you can do so via nostr here, or on Hacker News. 

Introducing Pretty Print HTML for PHP 8.4

There are attempts to make HTML code more readable for the human eye, like this recently announced software: 

Introducing Pretty Print HTML for PHP 8.4

I'm delight to announce the first release of my opinionated HTML Pretty Printer for new versions of PHP. Grab the code from Packagist Contribute on GitLab There are several prettifiers on Packagist, but I think mine is the only one which works with the new Dom\HTMLDocument class.

This made me think: why bother making you code more human readable? Why not instead build into the browsers "View Source" window one ore more options to "prettify" or "make more readable" the original source code? This way, we don't need to fix millions of broken pages. And also we can view the source code without much hassle. 😊 

Your thoughts please? 

Year 125 – 1985: Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs by Harold Abelson and Gerald Jay Sussman, with Julie Sussman | 150 Years in the Stacks

I came across this wonderful quote:

A computer language is not just a way of getting a computer to perform operations but rather … it is a novel formal medium for expressing ideas about methodology. Thus, programs must be written for people to read, and only incidentally for machines to execute.

The source turned out to be this document from 1985. 

VERT.sh: The file converter you'll love.

https://vert.sh

All image and audio processing is done on your device. 

Videos are converted on their lightning-fast servers. 

My personal take on "AI 2027" predictions

The Zvi, an AI-focussed newsletter that drops into my RSS regularly, is currently busy discussing the "AI 2027" report that claims that in 2027 AI will be super-intelligent and maybe able to do both security and software development work.

This, to me, sounds like the perfect misunderstanding. And I foresee dark clouds on our horizon. Why? I don't believe AI will be "stealing" any jobs, and believe that it can is harmful for 3 groups:

Imagine that you are a kid who's considering what to study. Would you go into a 4/5 year education in software development? Or would you invest similar time in a Security study? 

Or, looking at this from another angle: would you, as a manager, dare to propose that your company budget some resources for hiring and training new developers and IT security personnel? 

And thirdly, imagine that you are working on an IT Security or Development team. Now your middle and upper management is reading papers that claim that your job can be automated in the next 24 months or less. Do you think those managers are going to stick their necks out and try to keep you happy? Or try to hire new colleagues, thinking they would soon have to be fired again? 

What I think is going to happen is this:  Kids are no longer choosing to study IT Security or Development. Companies are more hesitant to hire developers or security personal. LLM's will continue to be search-engines-on-steroids, useful but needing human oversight, and not much more else. And people in jobs that will soon™️ be replaces by AI, will be undervalued, easily dismissed and probably made very angry as more managers will dare say things like "Can't ChatGPT do this?" Or "What did Perplexity say about that issue?" and everybody will be more grumpy and less happy. 

I am sorry, but this is what I expect most people will have to endure in the forseable future. In the longer term, we will all get used to using LLMs are valuable addittions to our search or even research options. But, just like the Internet (yes, we wrote it with a capital back then) didn't steal all our jobs, neither will AIs. 

 

A new up- and download icon in iPadOS 18.4

Last night I updated my devices to iOS and iPadOS 18.4. 

This morning I used cobalt.tools to download an interesting video about the oldest known trousers in existence (don't ask). 

Anyway, as safari was slurping up the 500mb of this video, I noticed a new icon in the top-right corner of my iPad screen. 

This icon stayed visible all while my download was active. 

Then, it stayed visible as my upload was active. I uploaded this file to a folder on my iCloud. 

Now, both the up and downloading of the video file are complete, and the icon is still visible. Maybe this is a safety feature? Like the GPS 'arrow' that stays visible for some minutes after the location services where used to signal the user that one on my apps asked for my location? 

I found this list of 71 new features that are part of iOS/iPadOS 18.4 but this one isn't on the list. Maybe they missed something, or am I misunderstanding this icon? Please let me know your thoughts 😅 

Addendum: some more Kagi kungfu revealed that this icon means something completely different than what I guesses at: "this icon is an icon indicator that the iPad is on the process of syncing and finalizing the software update."

Kagi search and Orion Browser



Like Manton, I'm a happy Kagi user too. And like him, this gives me the right to talk about the stuff I don't like about them 😂 

I'm enjoying Kagi instead of Google, but it's still not quite right. For a paid search engine, there should be no clutter. If the query is an actual question with an answer, give me a ChatGPT-style UI, free of distractions. If the query is to find a web page, give me 10 blue links and nothing else.

Last month I decided to give their browser Orion a try on my phone, tablet and Laptop. One of the boons of it should be support for Chrome and Firefox (but not Safari) extensions like UBlock Origin, Privacy Badger and Consent-o-Matic. The lack of Safari extensions meant I wasn't able to use MapSwitch, which forces Google Maps links to be opened with Apple Maps. 

But even with these plugins installed, the EFF Cover Your Tracks test shows that the standard out of the box Safari browser gives me more privacy then Orion with these extensions. 😥. 

I also found the UX hard to get used to. I guess I'll check Orion out again a year or two from now. For now, I'm back to Safari. 

Please hesitate to call. 

Greetings,

Jan

Modern Font Stacks

Maybe you've noticed that a lot of websites these days will not just show you text, but they will do so in a fancy font. 

That font is probably not on your device, but needs to be downloaded from Google (or another "free" provider of font hosting). So even without installing any cookies, Google now knows you're visiting that website. Spyware galore. 

Anyways, why do we need these hosted fonts? Why not use the ones that are on any modern device already?

Maybe because we don't really know what we already have. 

This website, 
https://modernfontstacks.com/#font-stacks, helps to change that. It just shows you the fonts that a user probably already has, and it shows these fonts in an appealing way too 😊 

Happy writing ✌️ 

DeepSeek R1: A major update to Perplexity

From the Perplexity team:

the new DeepSeek R1 model is now available across every Perplexity platform. You can experience the latest breakthrough in AI by turning on Pro Search with R1 on web, mobile, or MacOS. I highly recommend you try it out today — the experience is truly remarkable.

I have yet to try it out in a meaningful way, but everyone I read is optimistic. This model is hosted in the EU or US and not censored. 

The free plan gives you 5 pro queries per day. 

Have fun 🤩 

AI in 2025

The "arms race" for who will build the best AI is still dominating the news in the new years 2025. 

An interesting article I read discussed, among other things, the new Google Gemini:

A nice example of that is Google's Gemini with Deep Research (accessible to everyone who subscribes to Gemini), which is really a specialized research agent. I gave it a topic like "research a comparison of ways of funding startup companies, from the perspective of founders, for high growth ventures." And the agentic system came up with a plan, read through 173(!) websites and compiled a report for me with the answer a few minutes later.

The result was a 17 page paper with 118 references! But is it any good? I have taught the introductory entrepreneurship class at Wharton for over a decade, published on the topic, started companies myself, and even wrote a book on entrepreneurship, and I think this is pretty solid. I didn't spot any obvious errors, but you can read it yourself if you would like here. The biggest issue is not accuracy, but that the agent is limited to public non-paywalled websites, and not scholarly or premium publications. It also is a bit shallow and does not make strong arguments in the face of conflicting evidence. So not as good as the best humans, but better than a lot of reports that I see.

Still, this is a genuinely disruptive example of an agent with real value. Researching and report writing is a major task of many jobs.

If you work with your head more then with your hands I guess your job is in some danger in the next 3-7 years. 

Read the whole article here: Prophecies of the Flood. 

How to disable Microsoft365 payments for AI but continue paying for Windows.

I ran into this interesting "Toot" on Mastodon from @timixretroplays@digipres.club today, about Microsoft raising the subscription for Microsoft 365 with about 50% to recuperate some of the costs of their LLM/AI adventures.

There is a way to only pay for windows and not pay for the AI stuff, but it's hidden away under the "Turn off recurring billing" feature. 

I am not very active on Mastodon, but thanks to OpenVibe I am still able to follow Nostr, Mastodon, Bluesky and now Threads (but I don't use that). 

I am noticing the most of the interesting stuff that I find is either on Nostr or Mastodon. Bluesky seems to be more political, which I don't really care about.  I know this is a feature of who I follow and not just the platforms as a whole, but still…

Anyway, I hope this saves you all some money, as, no doubt, 2025 is going to be another expensive year. 

Is Apple ready to deprecate Music.app?

There used to be a time when you could use iTunes to upload your own music collection, and have it ready to play on all your Apple devices, whether the music was purchased through the iTunes Store or not.  Back then, you could also use iTunes to rip a music CD and save the music files in AAC or MP3 format. Nowaday's it's still possible to import your own music in the Music.app on your Mac, but somehow these songs are no-longer synced between devices. So you have to do this on every Mac separately, and also your other iDevices (iWatch, iPhone and iPad) don't see anything of this music at all. 

I weep for it becoming increasingly hard to buy and own your own music. 

All subscriptions for streaming music services are around $10-$20. If you want to listen to new music often, then this is a great deal. If, however, you are like me and want to listen to the same 1000 or so songs often, then this is a horrible deal. Better to buy these songs outright and just pay for them once. 

I bought my first iPhone (model 4) in 2010, and from that moment onwards I started buying music in the iTunes Store that came installed on the phone. That means that I've now had 14 years to buy music at Apple's. I have 4.33 GB of songs downloaded on my iPhone right now, so that is about 866 songs (assuming 5 MB per song), or 5,15 songs bought per month over a 14 year period. If we assume every song was priced at $1,29 (the most expensive price option), then I would have payed $6,64 per month over this 14 year period. That's quite cheaper than the $10,99 per month that Apple is now charging for their unlimited music streaming service. And this is precisely the reason why Apple is doing all it can to undermine the buying and playing of songs on their iDevices.

I don't know of any official statements to the effect that they want to stop the buying and owning of music, but the UX in the Music.app makes this very clear:

• As mentioned above, the Music.app no longer syncs your own imported songs.
• Since a few iOS versions back now, the playlists that you make on one iDevice no longer sync with the other iDevices. More specifically I see all my playlists on my Mac, most of my playlists on my iPhone, none of my playlists on my iPad and most of my playlists on my iWatch (I assume the iWatch sees what the iPhone sees?). 
• To make matters worse, 1/4 off all the UX real estate in the iPhone Music.app is now dedicated to advertisements to push you to the subscription model.
• And, just today, I found out that a song I once "bought" is no longer playing on my devices. The song in question is "Diamond Heart - Single" by Alan Walker and Sophia Somajo. I don't know if is simply a strange bug or that these artists have received their royalty payments from Apple years ago and now have found a way to deprecate music that I payed for from my devices?  

I remember finding on Hacker News some years ago an article by the BBC about the deprecated Microsoft book service. It was called "The e-books stopped working".  I remember bemoaning the fact that a book can "stop working" back then. I always assumed that the Roman Empire fell because of the increase in complexity making it harder and harder to do the simple and sensible thing to do. Is this how all empires fall?

I don't know, but for now I am gloomy on the prospect of us ever having a simple and affordable way to buy, play and own our own music. Maybe this is the reason why I usually buy my books in the dead-tree version and only my pulp holiday reading in ebook format.