It’s always a race between hare and tortoise: If you just won’t like to get tracked when streaming, you always have to keep pace with the streaming services’ changes – especially when using tools like Pi-hole or NextDNS. In my case, Paramount+ stopped working by the end of October.
Apart from the discussion whether Paramount+ is still a streaming service that should be supported since getting acquired by Skydance Media or not, the connection between David Ellison, son of Oracle’s MAGA-supporting Larry Ellison, shouldn’t be the primary focus here. As for me, I like the service and many shows running there – but I’d also like to watch those without getting tracked in such enormous ways Paramount+ does it for the time being.
Indeed I am quite strict with my block lists since I stopped having a Pi-hole and turned to use NextDNS instead. I have very, very few exceptions and the combination of many blocklists – including HaGeZi’s Multi PRO++list – lead to Paramount+ stopping to work after the initial app start on my Apple TV. It took some time to review the blocked assets and some research in the web to combine all those to match the new (?) pattern.
The list with the allowed exceptions above seems to work for now and enables the service to bypass the starting screen and leads to the profile selection, therefore enabling the streaming experience once again. This is the status quo and may change in the near future once again – also further narrowing the sum of exceptions could also be another option for the future!
It’s the same old story – sooner or later, one service after another succumbs to AI. This time it's LinkedIn, acquired by Microsoft back in 2016, which has announced that user data will be used for AI-based training from November 3rd onwards. Fortunately, there are still a few hours left to voice your disagreement with this move.
There was an opportunity to create something great. A chance to sweep up the debris left behind by the demise of Twitter. It was an opportunity to restart a decentralized network based on the AT protocol. Federated. Nearly two years ago, I shared my thoughts on Bluesky, asking if it was worth a visit. Yes, there was hope. Now, however, it seems that freedom of speech, venture capital and decentralization don't quite get along!
In today's fast-paced world, we often take things for granted. As always, we only realize how important something is when it is no longer available. A major AWS outage in the US-EAST-1 region shows how dependent we still are on specific service providers and highlights the need to pursue decentralization even more.
Years later, in late 2025, Bret Easton Ellis's statement that would become the title of this post was proven to be correct. When it comes to our dreams, our brain often produces memories and events that we can hardly grasp when we wake up.
Changing the way we travel depends on decent public transport. Here in Germany, it’s hard to give up the car, but in a city like London, this would be quite easy.
It has been announced for quite some time and after more than two years, the initial stable version of Debian 13 „Trixie“ has been released today. The impatient ones among us (including me) will surely and instantly search an upgrade path for their Debian 12 „Bookworm“-installations. Here it is!
Recently, I moved my Mastodon server to a new instance. While the original creation date of the previous one was very special to me, I searched for a way to permanently change the date I joined Mastodon to match this special date. After finding the relevant fields in the PostgreSQL database it turned out to be quite easy!
Using your data on any device is standard these days. Controlling where this data is stored is another story – in terms of Joplin, you can use many platforms to synchronize your data: One of them is Joplin Server which is quite easy to deploy – so let's look at that kind of implementation!
There are always things that motivate us – or visibly help us to motivate ourselves. Apple has solved this perfectly with the rings and challenges on the Apple Watch and so there is another challenge today.
