I now think that apps as an idea could disappear at some point. Users will simply tell Siri or another tool what they want their smartphone or computer to do, and then it will be developed ad hoc.

There may be some backend services, such as Yahoo Pipes, that you can or should use, but the concept of an app that you download from the store will probably disappear.

But that depends on whether these AIs can crack the tough nuts. At the moment, they tend to build things they have seen. But first, you can combine all kinds of things from parts, and second, the AI can then hire people to make the missing puzzle pieces.

Finally, I got myself a good photo camera.

Some evenings ago I went out to play with it.

Not sure yet if I like the black and white.

So I installed an app and went out to find some geocaches.

Out of four attempted, I found just one. And I did not give up after 5 minutes. For one, riddles had to be solved and that took about an hour just for the riddles (and the walking involved).

Main challenges included:

• Plants blocking access, for example raspberry thorns or nettles.
• Lack of experience, aka “What am I even looking for?”
• Outdated information - these caches are sometimes a decade old. The one I found, too, but what about those I did not find?
• GPS accuracy - 2m radius of accurracy is 4 pi square meters of area to search. This sounds like not much but I would feel more confident to have just centimeters to search. Maybe iPhone GPS is just like that, or maybe there weren’t enough visible satellites around when I tried.

Benefits:

• My Apple health step count skyrocketed for the day.
• I saw some interesting locations up close which I would ordinarily just pass by without a thought.

Here are some uncommented pictures from that day.

I believe geocaching might be better suited for fall or winter, when some of the plants aren’t there.

And perhaps when fewer people are around to watch me climb into weird places..

I just added a humans.txt file.

I just created three browser games in three minutes.

A Doodle Jump like, an R-Type like and a 3d space shooter.

Click here to play them:

• Game 1: Doodle Jump
• Game 2: R-Type Like
• Game 3: 3D Space Shooter

Each was just one prompt with Claude 3.7. No corrections or retry.

And only the first one is playable on mobile, the others need a keyboard.

Edit: Playing with LLMs to create these games reminded me of something Steve Jobs said.

LLMs refuse do do certain things, but they can be modified to be ~100% obedient and uncensored. This (jailbreaking) process is called ablation and there is a cool article on how it works.

If you use ollama then you can easily try “abliterated” models, just search for them here.

Now why are they called “abliterated” and not “ablated” models? Simply: abliteration = ablation + obliteration.

When I have to wait for something I sometimes use AI to create images. This is one of them.

It is fun, but it is very difficult to get precise results.

I installed Pi-hole, the adblocking DNS server, on my Synology NAS machine, and since it wasn’t as straightforward as I had hoped, here’s a mini guide that I want to share.

Step 1: Install Container Manager

Go to your synology console (for me it’s at http://synology.local:5000 in my home network) and install the app “Container Manager”. It allows us to run Docker containers on the NAS.

If you are asked anywhere if it should run as root, say yes.

Step 2: Create two folders

Go to File Station and create those two folders:

/docker/pihole/etc-pihole
/docker/pihole/etc-dnsmasq.d

Step 3: Run Pi-hole in a Docker container

Open Container Manager and create a new project. I have used this YAML-configuration.

services:
  pihole:
    image: pihole/pihole:latest
    network_mode: host
    container_name: PiHole
    restart: unless-stopped
    mem_limit: 1g
    cpu_shares: 90
    environment:
      - PIHOLE_UID=1024
      - PIHOLE_GID=101
      - TZ=Europe/Berlin
      - FTLCONF_webserver_api_password=<SET_YOUR_OWN_PASSWORD_HERE>
      - FTLCONF_webserver_port=8080
      - IPv6=False
      - DNSMASQ_LISTENING=all
      - DNSMASQ_USER=root
    volumes:
      - /volume1/docker/pihole/pihole:/etc/pihole
      - /volume1/docker/pihole/dnsmasq.d:/etc/dnsmasq.d

And then run it.

For me this worked, but it could be that your UID and GID are different. Here’s how I found out what mine are:

Optional Step: Find UID and GID

I connected with ssh into the nas, in my case the command was:

ssh admin@synology.local

and then I just ran

id

And then just adjust the values accordingly.

Final words

By configuring your home router or access point to assign DHCP leases with your Pi-hole DNS server as the primary resolver, any device that requests an IP address (computers, phones, etc.) will automatically begin using your Pi-hole DNS service.

Taken on a sunday in February.

Found this TikTok clone today: wikitok.vercel.app.

What a fun idea. While scrolling Instagram and TikTok is rumored to make us more stupid, this could actually make us more intelligent.