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💲A 30 Euro Phone, More OSINT Tools, and Affordable Solar Power

I'm curious so you will be too

David Nichols

Aug 7, 2023

Hey friends!

Welcome to this week’s edition of The Land of Random.

Have you been keeping up with all the LK99 drama on Twitter - I mean X?

Maybe it’s real, maybe it’s not - but room temperature semiconductors are ALL THE RAGE.

There are so many WILD stories to discover, whether it’s Russian Anime Catgirls claiming to reproduce the effect or lost cold war Russian secrets.

Crazy stuff.

There’s also this wild ecom store called Magda Butrym that has live video of how different outfits look on their product pages. DEFINITELY a new experience in the ecom space. I expect to see more copies of this . . .

We’ve been enjoying our garden the last few weeks - the kids now eat all the ripe cherry tomatoes when they go outside to play.

My daughter actually eats them, but my son just spits them out . . .

OH - and there’s only 2 weeks to go until our son is born!

Speaking of which . . . I need to write another link invasion to have ready to share. Writing a full newsletter that weekend will be impossible.

Let’s hop in shall we?

💲A 30 Euro Open Source Phone

Want to build your own phone and go all DIY?

The Paxo telephone has been designed as a “open-source, low-cost, do-it-yourself model”

At the moment it’s a project still in development, but I see no reason that if you wanted - you could start trying to build it yourself.

Compared to other DIY mobile phones, this one actually looks/feels usable.

For example - The Kiteboard isn’t available for sale. The Kickstarter failed, and there hasn’t been any recent updates.

Other devices - like the Ringo DIY moible phone - are very cyberdecky looking and would get you a ton of looks in public.

At the moment - Gabriel has designed 8 apps for the Paxos_8 - with phone, messages, contacts, calculator, and more!

Super clean UI/UX - like the Light Phone.

Give it a matter of time, and I wouldn’t be surprised if a small hacker community emerges to create new OS’s with features like MP3 playback, or other apps!

Go check out the project at the link! I’m excited to see what emerges.

Paxo Phone

📲More Osint Tools

Eyyyyy, it’s time for some more exploration tools/resources.

For those of you hearing OSINT for the first time - this word means “Open Source Intelligence” but really all it means is “internet research tools".”

Articles

This article has a really interesting method for how to research sources for a particular niche or topic. It definitely gave me some insight on how to find more interesting websites when I discover a internet user with an interesting post history. Read it and learn.

Dive Dive Dive into posts about web scraping, growth hacking, and more on Trickster.dev - the articles are SO TECHNICAL but really interesting. Read them and learn.

Do you want to start a new digital identity, anon? Here’s a good guide to get started.

Tools

Ever wanted to send someone a ONE TERABYTE FILE??? Now you can with transfer.zip - It’s a pretty nifty tool to save to your bookmarks.

Create browser automations to scrape the web for you. Enough said.

Metaphor is a “from scratch” AI search engine. It’s actually pretty fun! It’s honestly one of those tools I probably should keep to myself because it’s so useful but here ya go. It’s gonna surface research you didn’t know existed.

Scrappppeeeeee the dataaaaaaaa with Webpecker.

☀️Affordable Solar Power

Someone (I can’t remember who) mentioned that Project Solar is a very affordable solar panel solution for homes.

So. I decided to check it out - because I very much like the idea of having solar power.

How much does it cost??

The main barrier is COST - I don’t want to pay an arm and a leg for solar power.

When I think of how much it costs to install solar power - what comes to mind is a $25-40K price tag.

Nope. Nu-uh. Not for me.

I often avoid the solar power website out of the fear of being annoyed by sales calls / emails.

Project Solar positions itself with a lot of “we’re not like the other guys” depositioning.

We don’t have sales people . . . You can install it yourself . . . We have flat pricing.

That kind of marketing.

SO - I decided to go through their pricing calculator.

It’s still expensive in my opinion - but certainly cheaper than what I expected.

Installation wasn’t available here in Columbia, so I only got the pricing for DIY.

16K for solar power! At first glance, that doesn’t sound so bad.

They even have the “get started for $100 today” feature.

BUTTT - let’s remember that this is for DIY installation.

I’d be willing to tackle the “let’s bolt these to the roof” portion, but the installation / tying it into the grid would be the part I’d rather not do with an instruction manual.

I’m willing to tackle most things, but messing up my home’s electricity / burning down my home is not on my list.

I’ll be foregoing Solar until the installation costs make sense in my book OR I become best friends with an electrician.

Well - I hope this has been a fun little adventure. Go check out Project Solar at the link!

Project Solar

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Our World of Pixels

Draw pixel art . . . . or explore the works of others. There are SO MANY drawings - some of them are quite good, and others are quite terrifying. You gotta explore, at the very least.

World of Pixels

Trailerly

When you’re desperately looking for a new movie to watch, try finding something new TIKTOK STYLE. It’s quite an interesting experience . . . it shows you new trailers until you find something you want to watch!

Trailerly