Several things have happened since last time I wrote on the sixth of May, most of them irrelevant to this blog. Suffice to say is that I'm reminded why I didn't take this 100DaysToOffload challenge until I realized it didn't have to be 100 consecutive days.

Generally there are way too many things that tries to get my attention, or worse, start background processes that causes me expenses if I don't pay attention. One particularly annoying one is free trials where one has to sign up using credit cards or Apple Pay.

I can easily realize why companies try this. Recurring revenue is fantastic after all, it is just that I cannot subscribe to every

• newspaper that I ever follow a link to
• and every useful app or website that I use from time to time
  

and while I might sign up for a free month's subscription and put a task with a due date in my system to disable it after 29 days I don’t care anymore. My attention is better spent elsewhere. Also, and this is worse: in many cases it seems like a dark pattern.

This means many newspapers and apps that I would happily have paid to read/use once in a while doesn't get anything since I also block ads.

The latest ones to miss out include Duolingo, a rather nice language learning app that I play again now that my kids are old enough to like it. Knowing that they'll probably be bored or have forgotten it in a month I don't want to subscribe and also, as mentioned above, 7 days free seems like a dark pattern to me at this point.

If they had tokens however I would have bought, both to support them and because I wanted some of the perks (most notably the test to check my current skills so I wouldn't have to ho through all the basics yet again).

No however they get nothing, same as almost every newspaper (I have two subscriptions and I also send some money to the Guardian about half the times I read anything there it seems, since they are the only one that I read that accepts that).

Edit: ran this text through Grammarly. They too miss out on any payment as the hassle of having to deal with more subscriptions just isn't worth it for me.

This is just an idea and I haven't thought to closely about it yet, but what if we made a browser similar to Opera Mini? I.e. a proxy server on the backend would download the pages, render them and ship a snapshot of the DOM to the actual browser, only with all the links rewritten to point to itself?

Alternatively this could even work without a separate browser instance but the ux would be harder.

Obviously this could create a lot of privacy issues but it is not completely clear cut that it couldn't be better for some people:

• running ad and tracking scripts on my actual devices also comes with privacy problems.
• the server could be open source and the business model could be to sell access to pre-configured, hosted proxies.

I guess this might primarly be useful for myself. Posting it here I might actually remember it.

So here are some ideas after this years VAT and customs reform:

• https://www.electrokit.com/produkt-kategori/robot/mekanik/ (Based in Sweden)

• https://sunneleker.no/butikk/bygg-og-konstruksjon/fischertechnik-byggesett

• https://no.frederiksen.eu/nettbutikk/teknologi-og-forskningslaere/elektronikk-og-programmering/elektronikkomponenter

• https://no.frederiksen.eu/nettbutikk/teknologi-og-forskningslaere/elektronikk-og-programmering/microbit

• https://no.frederiksen.eu/nettbutikk/teknologi-og-forskningslaere/modellbyggesett/fischertechnik-byggesett