Everybody wants A change, nobody wants To change

Let me write about AI, tech, and the internet once again. Today, I chatted with some online friends. On the off chance that those online friends may see this, this is not a targeted attack or insult to any of them, but rather my observations and personal beliefs about my generations actions. 

With these online friends, we chatted about AI slop, videos, and images. I relayed my frustrations with how my parents consumed lots of AI media, A lot of them agree, as they are artists: and it turns out the general consensus is one that is not too rare and commonly heard: AI has its uses, and images and videos are not one of it. Eventually, the topic got to one of my most interested: complacency regarding AI use and tech monopolies. I recall hearing a couple of these friends express how tech monopolies are so ingrained within our lives, and how AI being shoved down our throats was a result of the disproportionate reach these tech giants have. I personally agree a lot. I value consumer choice a lot: I want the decision to use this or that. I voiced that people should be more aware of what they consume, buy, and use. But this is where I branch off in this discussion. 

While we discuss this issue, I notice a sort of helplessness within my friends’ words. Tech giants are massive, therefore we can’t avoid it, we can’t stop it. Here is where the title of this blog comes into play. As I recommend DuckDuckGo (because I love shilling for duckduckgo) I explain that DuckDuckGo allows you to turn off AI overviews and pushes significantly less Reddit than google search. This is where I faced pushback. A lot of people value the Reddit results, because of its convenience. Even after I told many about the OpenAI and Reddit partnership that sells user data to be trained, people couldn’t give up the convenience of it. I even explained that Reddit has not been good for years, because companies have long used bots to promote their products on Reddit, and Now do it with AI, but to them this was something not able to give up. 

This is where we end the online friend conversation, and into my own thoughts. A lot of young people are aware for a need to change, and even are the frontlines of advocating for change. But they don’t want to change. The idea of losing their convenience, their entertainment, their luxuries, is scary to them. And I really hate to be that nerd emoji guy once again: but we all hate windows and microsoft, but nobody wants to try alternatives. No one wants to try Linux, because Valorant or League of Legends won’t run on it. No one wants to delete TikTok or Instagram, because the content and media it provides is too entertaining. This is despite everyone unanimously agreeing that short form media fries your brain, your attention span or whatever. We see so many people talk about how evil social media is, how evil Meta and X is. But we don’t delete the apps, and stop using the apps. Why? Those same advocates who want change are waiting for someone else to do it for them. For now, they will just wait and reap the spoon fed convenient rewards while someone else makes the change. A part of me can’t blame people for being sucked into these things, whether AI, short form content, or even Starbucks. These are things socially engineered to be addictive and to become habits. But that excuses the old boomers who are blissfully unaware. What about the aware, but complacent in their learned helplessness? A corporation, company, is only as powerful as it’s consumers, its customers. If the consumers move, if they stop consuming, the corporations fail. It’s oversimplified, but this is what I truly believe in. I am a libertarian type of person, I know you may not agree with me; maybe you’re more of a socialist, but at least we can hold hands and stop consuming slop.  

I’m not a saint, and I know how this writing comes off as. I have used AI to do my homework before, and I have laughed at tung tung tung sahur or other slop before. I used to be a instagram doomscroller, with probably 2-3 hours on the app daily. And while I’m still not on any social media, I’m still on YouTube where I watch YouTube videos everyday, and embarrassingly so watch “Family guy funny moments” which are definitely content farms. And I still have an iPhone. Don’t make your life hell. You can’t degoogle everything or completely remove yourself from corporations we hate. But it’s the perfect time to be aware of what you use, how you use, and how you want to use. My recommendation to a random reader on where to start: deleting one of your social media apps for a day and seeing how it affects you. 

If you are someone who wants to talk about social media, how it has affected you personally or affected those you know, I genuinely would like to hear and I love hearing other perspectives about it. If you’d like to chat, send me a email at akiaki31725@proton.me.

How to make windows 11 look like “Aero”: customizing windows 11

A blog ago I ranted about frutiger aero. This blog I'm teaching you how to push windows 11 to it's Microslop limits, and how to make your windows 11 look like this. 

 

 

 In this little guide, I'll sort the modifications into things that are easiest to do and safest, to stuff that that requires more work, and could be dangerous if you don't want to mess around too much. 

NOTE: All software/programs I've listed are trustworthy, and may flag antivirus because they mess with windows registry. However, always use your best judgement and make sure you download everything from official github wikis and run your own background checks. 

1. Retrobar

Retrobar is by far the safest and easiest modification. It replaces your taskbar, and covers all the main options except Win7. Retrobar will not break on you and is really easy to install and configure. 

My favorite settings are: Taskbar -> Windows Vista Aero, Advanced -> Allow blur behind transparent taskbar OFF

2. Openshell: Start Menu and Taskbar

Openshell gives you the start menu from windows 7. This can be customized heavily. 

 

3. Win11Debloater 

While not a customization mod, windows 11 debloater is heavily recommended because it gets rid of stupid stuff you likely don't want like Copilot. It's very trustworthy and simple, and heavily recommended for everyone. 

That's all for the "easy" and unbreakable mods. This next section is for slightly more effort but also pretty unbreakable and generally reliable. 

4.  Geckium: firefox mod to make it look like old chrome

 

Geckium is very easy to set up. But it's not a one click install button like the others are. Also, firefox recently released an update where you can revert the firefox icon to previous renditions. 

5. Windhawk 

Windhawk has a lot of community created mods that can be hit or miss. But usually, if you download ones made by the creator (who goes by m417z), the mods will probably work fine. Most of these mods I've listed are explorer.exe mods. 

- Windows 11 Taskbar styler - tons of taskbar changes, including Win7, Vista, XP, macOS. Probably the second best taskbar mod behind retrobar. 
- class context menu - file explorer changes
- classic explorer navigation bar - file explorer changes
- legacy file copy - changes your right click to not bring up the new windows 11 right click
- windows 7 command bar - file explorer changes 

Now for more difficult/Use at your own risk mods. I heavily recommend creating a restore point before continuing with these.

-  to create a restore point, press the windows button -> type in "Create a restore point" -> click "Create" -> then name it something like "before mods XX.XX.XXX"

1. secureUXtheme - lets you use themes
- aero10.1 seven theme - this is what really makes things change: changes explorer.exe, adds title bar buttons, background, etc.

2. OpenGlass

Gives the titlebar "glass" and also adds the borders back (check the "disable modern borders". Can be pretty finicky but looks nice.

3. 7tsp-gui - patches windows icons

I used "updated sevenifer by luximoz - icon pack" for my icons. Please note, 7tsp has some dependencies (.NET framework 3.5) that are required to be installed before you start patching. Also before you start patching, you should make a restore point. Sometimes, windows updates will "unpatch" the icon pack and you will need to repatch. 

Honorable mentions/other things to use

Winaerotweaker: good for a lot of general windows tweaking stuff, like fonts, etc. 

DWMBlurglass: similar to openglass, makes the titlebar very nice and transparent. Don't use DWMblurglass and openglass at the same time though. 

UltraUXthemepatcher: similar as secureuxtheme but seems to work better on some windows 11 versions. Freeware that is not open source. 

WORST CASE SCENARIO: HOW TO RESTORE BACK TO DEFAULT WITHOUT WIPING YOUR COMPUTER FOR A FRESH RESTART:

If you run into issues, especially when modifying dll files and using more risky methods, you can restore your windows to default without wiping your computer. This is not the same as a factory reset, and will not delete your files/programs, but will reset windows settings to defaults. 

Step 1: uninstall all modifications. 

- Turn off everything in windhawk

- uninstall secureUXtheme by going into Settings > installed apps > secureUXtheme > uninstall. (Reboot after) 

- go to 7tsp GUI and click “restore” then click “restore to before 7tsp was used” (should be the first option) reboot after. 

Step 2: Recovery

- go to windows settings (windows key + I)  > system > Recovery > fix problems using windows update > reinstall now. 

 

This reinstalls windows using the latest windows update version. It will take 2-3 hours, maybe even longer. Wait for it to get to 100% then restart. Everything should be fixed and you should have stock windows 11 back. 

I hope this helped! All credits to original creators/communities, make sure to always double and triple check anything you install, make sure you are getting things from official sources. If you had an issue, or are more experienced and want to give me better recommendations, please email me at akiaki31725@proton.me

 

Troubleshooting + issues I ran into:

Windows defender false positive: 

Detected: Trojan: Win32/Bearfoos.B!ml

Detected: Trojan: Win32/Bearfoos.A!ml

These are both are known false positives that have to do with windows security's machine learning (the !ml tag in the end). It almost certainly has to do with 7tsp's patching icons. If you don't want to deal with any of this, I'd highly just recommend not patching icons with 7tsp. You can do it yourself manually for icons you want patched. 

Winaerotweaker flagged as malware:  

https://winaero.com/defender-flags-winaero-tweaker-1-64-2-as-a-trojan/

Minecraft launcher / Microsoft store bugging (can't log in): 

Likely due to a combination of win11debloater and 7tsp. Avoid 7tsp if you have had this issue.  

my home servers: whats in it?

This summer, I created my own home server(s). 

I got into self-hosting due to a friend I met through the indieweb (hello kliaagu) mentioning it once. My first server was a raspberry pi 4 and an ssd enclosure plugged into it. It was rough, but it's a server! Raspberry pi's are great to use if you have them laying around, otherwise it's not worth the current cost. This model is a pi 4 with 4 gbs of ram, my uncle gave it to me a long time ago. I installed ubuntu server on it and ran mainly jellyfin. The ssd in the m.2 enclosure is a 1 tb ssd nvme. With how the prices of nvme ssd's right now, it felt like a waste to use it like this, but fortunately I checked the drive on crystal disk info when I removed it, and there were no flaws, it still said it was at 100%. 

 

I then upgraded came from a secondhand computer I had laying around. The motherboard is an hp elitedesk sff (small form factor) which means the motherboard came from a small desktop pcs. These guys are perfect because they are built to be power efficient. The CPU is a i7 4th gen, which is miles more powerful than the pi. I put in 32 gb ddr3, two 2 tb hdd, and it runs on a 256 gb sata ssd. 

 

By the way, I was completely new to linux before my pi server, it was over there where I learned how to use debian based unix in the command line with ubuntu server. During my time in taiwan, I brought a thinkpad laptop I had that I installed Kubuntu on. I was having a lot of fun ssh'ing into my pi server and playing around with light docker containers. But now with a way more powerful server, I set up Proxmox and laid out my server like this.

Proxmox
+-- vm100(ubuntu server lts)
|    +-- docker
|    |    +-- ngnix proxy manager (forward 443, dns-01 challenge because isp blocks port 80 lol)
|    |    +-- Jellyfin 
|    |    +-- plex (amp)
|    |    +-- authentik
|    |    +-- crowdsec
|    |    +-- Nextcloud    
|    |    +-- dashy
|    |    +-- immich
|    |    +-- portainer
|    |    +-- cadvisor

|    |    +-- borgbackup
|    +-- crafty controller (minecraft server)
|    +-- notes
|    +-- glances 
+-- vm1000(lxc tailscale)
+-- vm101(debian12)(off)
+-- vm102(windows11)(off) 

I really should use more lxc, but I don't have a need for them right now, besides tailscale, because I only have 1 primary vm which I do everything through. Heres a breakdown of all my services and what they do:

Services:

  

Jellyfin! One of the best services you can self-host. Downloading my own media like movies, tv shows, anime and streaming it from my own hardware. No need to pay annoying streaming subscription fees. Note: all media I have on my server is acquired legally without tormenting (hehe).

 

Plexamp is my spotify replacement. I use both plex and jellyfin because Plex is for music, mainly because plex has a mobile app. Plex has been going downhill-ish which is why I stray away from hosting media there. But plexamp has been great so far. If I eventually replace plexamp, it's because I've been using mp3 players to listen to music instead. 

 

Immich is google images replacement. The UI looks just like google images. 

Nextcloud is same as Immich, but for general files. Like google drive! 

Crafty is my minecraft server dashboard.  

 

Security and reverse proxy:

The only services I have revealed to the public are Jellyfin, Nextcloud, and immich. I run them through Ngnix proxy manager which was trivially easy to use and setup. I only port forward 443 on my router, because my ISP doesn't allow port 80 to be revealed unless you call them up. Because of this, I can't use standard http-01 challenge to get a ssl certificate with let's encrypt. Instead, I use dns-01 which is perfectly fine for me. 

My security is: crowdsec for ip-banning and monitoring bots that port scan, http probe, and potentially brute force attacks. Authentik which lets me set up multi factor authentication: password, one time password. And after that, a login page to nextcloud. Authentik mainly protects nextcloud and immich. After that, I use fail2ban for login bans. It's redundant to have both fail2ban and crowdsec but I'm just lazy and don't feel like removing fail2ban yet.  

 

 

Dashboard and monitoring:

I eventually want to have prometheus and grafana for really nice charts and dashboard monitoring. But something that I don't like is the UI for self-hosted apps is always kinda ugly. I'm not talking about minimalist, creator didn't feel like investing time in GUI ugly. I'm talking about vibe coded claude UI ugly. As of right now I have use dashy as my main dashboard because it has custom CSS, and of course I had to hop on it. 

 

Ignore the errors right now I got lazy and didn't feel like fixing it haha. And the ip is a tailscale ip so you can't do much with it. I also have uptime kuma, which my pi is running and constantly pinging my main server, and if anything goes down, I get a notification on my phone on either discord or an app called ntfy.  

 

Just yesterday, I also added qbittorent and komga (self-hosted ebook reader)! And while a bit silly, my favorite part of this project is the fact I got to learn how to really use the linux terminal. Terminals always have that "hacking into the mainframe" idea stuck to it. What makes it great though, is 1. I am able to control a computer from hundreds of miles away, because text is very easy to send over the internet vs GUI, 2. You are controlling a computer the old fashion way, 3. It looks cool :3

 

Why I hate frutiger aero

The title is a lie. I love frutiger aero. One look at my neocities and personal website design philosophy will instantly prove it. But I hate what it's become post-2020; frutiger aero has become bastardized by a wrong form of nostalgia and a tiktok-isque community. Terms like "the future we were promised" and short form clips of a collage of frutiger aero images set me off. 

The other day, I was hate-watching this youtube video called "Frutiger Aero: How a Cruel Lie Stole Our Future." I've seen it and heard it all before: the video starts with praising the mixture of beautiful glossy design elements, with nature, and technology. It's a "throwback to a time where we were optimistic, and hopeful about new technology!" But alas, this was a lie, because now we have superflat design and awful new tech because of evil evil tech engineers at Microsoft! 

What makes me so irrationally mad at these slop videos that all parrot the same opinion is that I almost agree. I hate Microsoft and windows 11 with a burning passion, and I love frutiger aero in design principle so much I want to make my room, my computer, my electronics, all of it frutiger aero. What makes me so mad is the defeatist and hopeless attitudes that come from mass psychosis social media users. The same people who love frutiger aero so much that they are mass liking and scrolling on tiktotk, buying temu/tiktok shop (made by some child in china) products that are "frutiger aero themed" are the same ones who virtue signal about the environmentalism motifs in frutiger aero. The irony being, being on tiktok itself, buying slop things you did not need, is arguably one of the worst things you can do for the environment and is the opposite of the frutiger aero essence. 

People on tiktok and instagram reels are most tied down by their desires. The frutiger aero tiktok fanbase thrive off of little slop trinkets instead of playing around with operating systems on their computers. Have you met any of these people who treat frutiger aero as an "aesthetic" who actually have tried reinstalling windows xp, vista, or 7? Or even downloading linux desktop environments (like my favorite, KDE), following a tutorial on how to turn it skeuomorphic? Or even try window managers like enlightenment e16 or even window maker? 

There are companies, and there are mindless consumers. Companies love mindless consumers. Those who will just buy buy buy and use use use without a second thought. In capitalism, you get the option to choose your product. When I don't like the product, I don't buy it. Or I pirate it. Or I buy secondhand. The problem in the west, is that everyone is so rich, they throw their money and attention around like its nothing. And I don't want to hear the "You live in society, yet you participate in it" getback comic people always bring up. Tiktok is a luxury, starbucks is a luxury, temu is a luxury. You don't need any of these things in society. 

Corporations are only as strong as people make it. Corporations sell products, and since they clearly don't want to listen to us, then why not stop using... their product? If 10% of windows users just felt like leaving because their product fucking sucks, microsoft would have a full blown meltdown. You hate google? Try duckduckgo or brave. You like frutiger aero? Try any linux distro with KDE in a VM and give ricing a shot. 

I guess a better title would be "why I hate the frutiger aero community." I remember checking out the frutiger aero archive forums. And once again, I see the same problems. People all have the same 2 opinions. People talk about how awful the present day is, how much better the past was. Folks see frutiger aero as a sort of political/cultural movement, while what it really should be is a consumer movement. Quit throwing around phrases like "the future we were promised," because there is no divine intervention, if you want frutiger aero, make it yourself. You don't ACTUALLY trust microsoft to do it for you, do you? 

Begun sophomore year of college, considering transferring colleges

I just moved into my college. I'm starting my second year now, and I don't... believe I'm in the right place. I've been considering transferring since last year, in the middle of the first semester at this college. A wise man once said, "if you start thinking about transferring, then you're not satisfied with your current college, and you should probably transfer." My "I hate my uni" phase has long ended, but I still don't like this place very much. I attend a 4 year state school for Engineering. The main reasons I don't like it are: I don't fit in with the people/school culture here, it's not that good for my major, and I don't feel like I'm getting value for my money.  

So why did I pick this college? Unfortunately, the reason I picked this one is because I naively cared about the "college town" and "social life" this university "had." For any upcoming american college students that may read this blog: I learned quickly that when college students say "social life" they're talking about parties. And when they say "college town" they're talking about frat houses and bars. I don't care if people like partying and drinking, I enjoy both too. But a lot of students at this school center their entire social lives around partying. That's not really "social life". 

Regretfully, I fell for another college marketing traps: "prestige" and "selective-ness". My college has a low acceptance rate, and as a high school senior then I guess I thought "hard to get into = good". That's just not true for colleges. I got into another state school which has twice the acceptance rate but has one of the best programs for electrical engineering, and they gave me a scholarship. 

So where am I going now? I'm going to apply transfer to a couple state schools. One being the aforementioned school with a good electrical engineering program, and another one that is in my city and would allow me to live at home, basically cutting all the cost needed for dorming (I'll call it school B). My mom hates school B. She thinks it's "downgrading." I've been trying to explain to her that, it's not a "prestigious" school but it provides pretty good value for the price, and I'll be able to work real jobs for experience during the year. I'll be a commuter, so yeah "social life" will be nonexistent. But tbh, I don't think I'll see a difference, because my social awkwardness has been skyrocketing, and I've struggled to make friends for years. 

On better note, I got an internship for this fall! It starts next week, and I'll get paid 19-20 an hour. I'm planning on working 15 hours a week. 

Back from taiwan: beauty in taiwan mundane

I came back from taiwan 2 days ago, here's my obligatory return afterthoughts blog

Taiwan was fast this year... I was there for 5 weeks, and it passed in the blink of an eye. I think I did a lot on this trip. A lot of things I wouldn't traditionally do, like cafe hopping with a laptop and work on schoolwork/website/server. It was really mundane, but I really tried to enjoy every last bit of it. I wanted to enjoy the mundane little things and simple personality taiwan has. I don't actually like visiting very crowded and popular places like Ximending in Taiwan. My mom and sister actually went to Japan together for 4 days for a vacation while me and my dad stayed in taiwan. My sister is a part of the Jirai Kei subculture so she was happy to go and spend money lol. She's also my biggest influence for fashion since we have similar varying fashion tastes. She bought me some subcul clothing too! 

My sister asked me why I didn't go with them, well the main reason was that I was in class and school, but then something in the back of my head also caught my attention. I don't think I would have gone because the golden route of Tokyo (shinjuku, shibuya, akihabara), Osaka, Kyoto don't really interest me, it won't really feel like Japan. Similar to how Times Square is not NYC, Ximending is not Taiwan, and Paris is not France. 

This ties back into how I expressed feeling more enjoyment in the mundane things; like going to a local breakfast store run by kind elderly taiwanese at 6 am who will serve you the best 蛋餅 (egg pancake), 蔥油餅 (green onion pancake) 蘿蔔糕 (radish cake) and soy milk for great prices. Walking around my local area before the sun rises too high and it gets too hot to walk around. By the way, I personally believe Taiwanese breakfast should start being spread around the world. I love taiwanese breakfast, you have many options and many of them are bread-y with egg, meat, and plenty of good flavors. I like the taiwan that is not trying very hard to be something else. Taiwan has an identity problem: a country that was native, Chinese, Japanese, and then Chinese again. When going to the Financial district, you can see a lot of western influence, while going to Taichung, you see Japanese influence. Sometimes, I feel like Taiwan is trying to hard to be Japan, or trying too hard to be China. Taiwan is far too rude to be Japan, and Taiwan doesn't slap LEDs on our deteriorating buildings and call ourselves Cyberpunk to be china. And that's good, because there is a perfect imperfection in Taiwan. Yes, the ugly buildings and ton of power lines, make taiwan seem very frozen in time. Like it is still the 90s. And that's all great.  

 

 

 

 

A month in taiwan, petty pet peeves

 I've been in taiwan for nearly a month now, which is crazy to think about how fast time went. The classes I'm taking are very easy. For the most part, I spend most my time with my family like it's a normal family getaway. When I was way younger I would return to taiwan and stay there for way longer. This place is a second home to me, it's really different from the city I live in america because I live in a more rural area in Taiwan. But it only takes a 15 minute bus ride and I am in the main bustling city of Taipei! 

Now... some of my pet peeves...

First of all, goodness the heat. I can never get used to it. Since my mom was a teacher we came back during summer break during the american school year, which is the months of June, July, and August. Also known as the hottest months of all time. Taiwan heat is especially awful. Daily temperatures of 90-100 F (33 to 36 C) and 70-90 % humidity. Your sweat will stick to you. Now, I can wear long pants in taiwan, but when I was 5 years old I threw tantrums a lot. Thinking about it now I feel very bad for my mom. Because of the heat and where we live, there are a lot of bugs too. Certain bugs I don't care much about, but roaches I can't stand. Thank god for AC nowadays tho! A lot of places blow strong AC. 

And then, old people can be very rude. This is very common for asian countries, particularly those with any sort of Chinese Confucian influence that old people can be quite the assholes! In my experience, all the old people who just chill at home or going on walks in your local area are super friendly and will say good morning and chat, especially if they recognize you. But the moment you get on public transport and the main city, it's like completely different group of old people. Pushing, shoving, staring. 

Anyways I don't have internet at home (My parent's don't pay for it because they don't need it), so I've been enjoying going to cafes and libraries, getting free wifi and torrenting anime and music in Taipei. I've been torrenting anime to add to my server database, and selfhost a media server using Jellyfin. As I write this, I'm sitting in a Louisa Coffee and coding. By the way, I've been experiencing with Linux a lot. On this laptop, I'm using KDE Plasma on Linux Mint (weird combo, I know.) Linux is great! On my thinkpad T490s, everything runs incredibly, and the terminal, which I used to be really scared of, is now my best friend. The terminal is just super powerful. Anything from converting videos, downloading videos, moving files (moving 30 gb folders in an instant), sorting files, accessing my server from 7000 miles away, even updating my website on neocities, it's just really easy to do on the terminal. And most importantly, the terminal looks really really cool!