Feuerfest

Subscriptions only make sense when the cost to the company providing the service is ongoing.

There. That's the only type of subscriptions I am willing to pay for. Probably for the rest of my life.
What? Companies will find ways? Sure they will. After all that's already happening. Watch Louis Rossmann's YouTube channel if you want to know what I mean.

But this will also mean that the list of companies whom I will never buy from and delete my accounts will only grow.
And I will probably save a lot of money in not buying any of their goods. Yai!

YouTube showed me a short. In it, a young girl of colour could be seen. She was devastated over some online comments that people don't like her, handcrafted, fantasy chalices. For the sake of this text I ask you to watch the video now. It's linked below.

Have you watched the video? Good.
What did you take away from it? Initially, I thought the following:

1. A girl is handcrafting fantasy goblets and chalices
2. She received negative comments and reviews because she is a person of colour and people didn't appreciate her work
3. Now, she is trying to make a living by selling them via her website

Do you agree with me? Good.

Lesson 1: Always look for the imprint

I always look for the imprint before buying something. I want to know who I'm buying from. More importantly: From where? All too often, low-quality products are presented and marketed as high-quality luxury items, because they can be sold at a much higher price.

The YouTube channel is https://www.youtube.com/@DungeonChalices. If you visit their channel's main page, you will see a link to https://www.dungeonchalice.com/products/dragon-chalices. When I click on it, I am immediately greeted with a call to action, urging me to buy NOW as there is a limited-time offer: 40% off and free shipping! Wow!

Surely we want to help that poor girl and buy the chalice for 35€, right?

Remember the first lesson: read the imprint.

But there isn't one listed. Strange. If we click on the company name at the bottom of each page, we are directed to an anonymous contact form. We can provide our contact details (name, email address and message), but we are not told who this email will be sent to. We still have no postal address, company name, or anything like that. Strange. Any legitimate company shouldn't have a problem telling us its legal form and where it is registered, should they?

Lesson 2: If there is no imprint, read the Whois data

Fortunately, there is another source of information that we can use. The Domain Name System's Whois data. When someone registers a domain, the company registering it on behalf of the customer must make certain details public. For example, they must provide a contact for administrative or legal issues. We can also see when the domain was first registered and extended.

Nowadays, you won't get the names directly, as Domain Registries typically offer privacy options as standard. In this case, they replace your name and address with details of a legal entity that they own. This is 100% legal, as long as you can be contacted. It doesn't matter whether this is done via proxy (for privacy reasons) or directly.

I used https://lookup.icann.org/en/lookup. And what did I learn from this? The domain dungeonchalice.com was registered on August 31st 2025 at 00:50:46 UTC.

Everything else is redacted, apart from a third-party service which can be used to get in contact with the domain owner. So nothing which answers our initial question.

Uhm, but wait.. Isn't it Monday 1st September 2025? Yep. Isn't it strange that the domain name was only registered a day or so ago? Yes, it is. From my experience in the eCommerce business - I designed parts of the online shop platform for one of Germany's biggest hosting companies - I can say that the domain name is usually registered long before any website or online marketing is done.

Why? As usually the company name is used as the domain name. Or the name of a product or brand. Even a trademark. This means it has to be known beforehand. As logos have to be designed, legal documents may need to include that name, etc.

And more importantly: Designing a website and getting approved by the various online payment providers like PayPal, ApplePay, AmazonPay, Klarna, etc. takes time too. If we look back at that website they offer payment via:

• American Express
• ApplePay
• GooglePay
• Klarna
• Maestro? (Well, they use the Maestro logo, but Maestro itself isn't conducting business anymore...)
• Mastercard
• Shop Pay
• Union Pay
• Visa

No Paypal? Strange. And when we go to checkout even these information don't match. In reality only American Express, Google Pay, Klarna, Mastercard, Shop Pay and Visa are listed.

Anyway there is no way to achieve this in mere hours. There has to be an existing business beforehand which is used to process the payments. Usually this name shows up on our credit card statement or bank records. Alas I'm not going to buy something. Most likely that company name won't help me neither or it's just the name of some other, unrelated third-party, processing the payments for the dropshipper.

Are you still of the opinion that a poor black girl is selling her handcrafted goblets here? - Yeah.. 

Lesson 3: Use the reverse image search to find better deals

At this point I was pretty sure we deal with a dropshipper who is just very good on the online marketing and story telling part of his/her business. It didn't get better when I noticed that right click was blocked. Yeah, good that Firefox also supports Shift+Right-click to open the context menu. Then I copy&pasted the image address for the "Ashfang" chalice into the google image reverse search.

This URL: https://dungeonchalice.com/cdn/shop/files/Screenshot_2025-08-31_010624.png?v=1756595436&width=823

Belonging to this image:

Leads us directly to this shop: https://www.alikiki.net/collections/dragon-goblets

And look! It's our Goblet! Just for half what the other shop would charge us.

In fact the pictures are that identical that I assume the dropshipper just used their product pictures instead of creating some of his/her own.

And to be 100% fair: I even doubt that "alikiki" is the original manufacturer as there are several listings on Amazon selling the same goblet.

Lesson 4: A quick Amazon search usually does the job too

This is kind of a shortcut. Reason is: If there is a product that is selling well there are always people who are in for the quick cash. Hence every good selling item on the internet is most likely also listed on Amazon. A short search usually leads to good results and often provides us with cheaper alternatives.

Just like in this case, when I simply search for: d&d chalice

These are just the first three results. The interesting thing is that: The first two goblets are from the shop we found earlier. The third, however, is also sold by the dropshipper, but is from a different manufacturer.

This comes as no surprise, as dropshippers usually target best-selling items.

So, what can we learn from this?

Firstly: Dropshippers should go f**k themselves.

Secondly, never buy something on impulse for emotional reasons just because you saw a stupid YouTube video.

You will be overcharged considerably.

For a few months now, I've been regularly coming back to this point where I ask myself whether I want to continue using Bludit. The latest version dates from August 2024, and there are issues with IT security-related bugs open and unresolved on GitHub.

Sure, Bludit is open source. Anyone can fork it. But Jürgen Greuter (alias: Tante) wrote back in 2013: "Host your own is cynical". In this text, he discusses why not everyone can set up and operate software "just like that" when a service is discontinued or its business model changes fundamentally.

And in this sense, I would like to note: "Fork your own is cynical"

I want to blog. I want to write down and publish my thoughts. I don't want to programme PHP or deal with problems in dozens of different browser versions. In some cases, I would also have to acquire a lot of knowledge (again) first. And the time spent for maintaining the fork? No, thank you.

I just want to be a user. Period.

And well, as can be read in the Bludit forum, the only developer (Diego) is not working on Bludit until further notice. There are apparently only minimal adjustments. Too bad. Also because security-related bugs are obviously not included.

But just as I simply want to be a user, I can understand that Diego also has a life and needs to pay his bills.

So I did a little research and came across the blogging software Kirby. Also a FlatFile CMS. You do have to buy a licence for Kirby, but at 99€ for three years, it's more than fair. And the source code is available on GitHub. So if I want to, I can dig through the code myself and see what's going on or whether there's already an issue for my problem.

What's more, the software has been on the market for over 10 years and is used by several well-known magazines and projects (e.g. OBS and Katapult Magazine). That also speaks for its reliability.

Well, I think I'll spend a weekend or so with the trial version and see how Kirby feels. The demo was nice, anyway, and didn't leave me wanting anything.

HomeOffice was big during the Covid-19 pandemic. And it still is. Especially in industries where the place of performance can differ from the company's headquarters without having to fear a loss of productivity.

Ironically, these sectors were subject to numerous "return to office" (RTO) initiatives from companies that had previously praised themselves for enabling all their employees to work from home full-time. Admittedly, many of these RTO strategies were actually disguised job cuts. As, for example, not everyone who moved out of high-cost of living (HCOL) areas can or is willing to move back.

Naturally "thought-leaders" and other people voice opinions on why work-from-home is bad. Despite science showing the opposite pretty obvious. But recently I encountered the first argument I can understand and support completely.

It is about the training of apprentices.

The trainer said: "Normally, we would send the apprentices to various teams for six months. This allows them to learn about networks, databases and system administration for Linux and/or Windows. Some teams had to be visited as part of the training; for others, the apprentice could choose according to their own preference and desired area of specialisation. Nowadays, however, we are having problems finding teams where enough people are present each day to actually train our trainees. Training remotely is possible (§ 28 (2) BBiG (Vocational Training Act) in German law allows remote training "to a reasonable extent", not 100%), but it isn't nearly as effective. This is especially the case since many people in IT choose to isolate themselves and don't communicate proactively enough. Hence, opportunities are lost. For example, there are fewer opportunities to provide ad hoc support for complex maintenance work on failed mission-critical systems. If you are in the office, you can recognise these situations even without access rights to monitoring and can ask to sit nearby and observe or support. But remotely? Not always."

For me, this is the first genuinely compelling argument against working from home full-time.

A microwave can definitely be useful in the kitchen. I don't doubt that. Even if it does nothing more than an oven, it does it faster. However, you can't prepare all dishes with a microwave. For those, you still need an oven. I don't currently own a microwave and gave mine away years ago. I realised that the microwave was causing me to develop unhealthy eating habits. That's why I started cooking. My sister once gave me a wok pan for my birthday. It's by far my favourite kitchen appliance since.

Huh? You don't know what I'm talking about?

Then feel free to read this wonderful analogy written by Colin Cornaby:

In the Future All Food Will Be Cooked in a Microwave, and if You Can’t Deal With That Then You Need to Get Out of the Kitchen

Ein älterer Artikel aus 2023 den ich ursprünglich auf meine Homepage stellen wollte, nun aber hier veröffentliche.

Im Rahmen der Spotify-Preiserhöhungen las ich einen Artikel eines Analysten, in dem es hieß, dass 2024 das Jahr der Abo-Preiserhöhungen werden wird. Es wird aber auch das Jahr des Schrumpfens für die meisten Anbieter sein. Kurz gesagt: "Wer den Preis nicht nachvollziehbar erhöht, verliert."
U.a. wegen der allgemeinen Inflation, aber auch, weil viele Abos seit den Pandemiejahren einfach noch mitlaufen und zu wenig kosten, sodass sich die Kunden nicht aktiv mit einer Kündigung auseinandersetzen.

Und dann schickt mir Google eine E-Mail. Mein Abo für eine Datingseite steigt von 60€ jährlich auf 85€ jährlich. Das Abo läuft über den Play Store per Google Pay.
Eine saftige Preiserhöhung von 42%. Wow.

Für mich würde das ab dem 1. März 2024 gelten, da stünde eine Erneuerung an.

Neue Features oder Funktionen? Nein.
Eine vorherige Nachricht/Mail/Blogpost mit schlüssiger Argumentation für den Preisanstieg? Nein.
Wenigstens eine Vorankündigung ohne Begründung? Nein.
Ist das Abo essenziell für mich? *lach* Nein.
Ist es mir das also wert? Nein.

Ich habe...  hatte das Abo noch aus Coronazeiten, da sonstiges Dating damals ja ausfiel.
Habe ich meinen Account also gelöscht, da man ohne Abo niemanden anschreiben kann? Ja.

Der Analyst hat das also schon ganz gut analysiert.
Ob er das Löschen von Accounts aber auch in das Schrumpfen der Benutzerbasis miteinbezogen hat, entzieht sich meiner Kenntnis.