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you people seem cool so i try to avoid too much nerd/code/tech talk but here we go anyway. 🤓
one of the most useful skills i have acquired as a coder is the ability to steal things from the internet. there is so much stuff on the web that you ostensibly are supposed to pay for, but with a little coding know-how you can scrape the relevant data, download it to your computer, keep it forever and never pay a dime for it. Or maybe pay for it once but be able to cancel your ongoing subscription to it.
I have used this skill to steal / borrow / archive:
- workout videos from a paid yoga app
- cocktail recipes
- food recipes
- music
- library books
- instructional materials
- graphical source material for making art
Depending on what you’re doing, this can require more or less technical skill, but likely less than you expect. this is also a thing that chatgpt is very good at walking you through, if you ask it for help. it feels especially rewarding to learn a new skill in service of saving yourself money, too.
Even if the content in question is free, it’s nice to know you’ll have it for eternity even if a provider goes out of business, and it enables you to search/organize/manage the content however you like (with no ads, paywalls, etc).
it’s a useful exercise in digital literacy that demystifies a little bit of the technical world that surrounds us, and it always gives me a thrilling little frisson of “civil disobedience” or at least naughtiness.
Related Recs
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been on neocities experimenting a little and
1) it's so fun seeing other people's sites???? they're so creative and cool and inspire me a ton
2) it's such a fun way to spend 3 hours uninterrupted just Making something. looking up yt tutorials and kicking that index.html file. cus sometimes u just need to make stuff man
3) it's a kickass long term project to occupy ur freetime, teaches u a useful skill, and allows u to showcase ur work especially if ur a creative?
4) it's free???? to some extent at least -if ur using a free host (like neocities) and don't need a ton of memory space
overall lovely thing to get engrossed in. would recommend :)
Feb 5, 2025
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let’s face it
social media is dead.
create your own corners of the internet!
to code is to world build.
i coded and designed my own blog two years ago (it’s linked if you want to take a look at it)
it’s full of my thoughts, music, art, literally everything i love.
i lowkey abandoned it (school was beating my ass but we move)
i’m coming back to it because doesn’t require that i adhere to algorithms or trends.
it’s authentic. it’s feels true to me. it feels like home
even if u don’t code, start off with pinterest, are.na, substack
i feel like the internet can be used to connect us maybe just not in traditional ways like social media.
Nov 5, 2024
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i still use them :) i felt so changed when i learned about them in 8th grade. “-” when i wanted to omit something from the results? blew my mind. google has been going steadily downhill yeah but like i think if people knew how to use these techniques and they still taught decent tech literacy in schools, they wouldn’t turn to more unreliable and unethical things like chatgpt as much. (google is by no means an ethical company to me, don't get it twisted).
Aug 30, 2024
Top Recs from @heumann
so first of all, if you didnt know, you can press and hold on stuff in a photo on your phone and create "stickers" you can send in imessage.
but i just discovered you can press and hold on a "live photo" and get an animated sticker
i am going to be so annoying in chats with this feature
(I don't think pi.fyi supports gifs/animations so visit link to see example)
May 5, 2024
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i still read hyperbole as “hyper-bowl”
Mar 18, 2024
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even tho i very specifically asked her not to do that
Mar 13, 2025