Ernie Smith

@[email protected]
6K Followers
632 Following
18.6K Posts

Editor of Tedium, an offbeat newsletter that’s been rocking since 2015. I complain on the internet a lot, and I accidentally made a search engine.

Support what I do here: https://ko-fi.com/tedium

Interests: #writing #news #history #technology #retrotech #weird #geoworks #freelance

Tediumhttps://tedium.co/
&udm=14https://udm14.com
Portfoliohttps://erniesmith.net/
Verified Journalisthttps://www.verifiedjournalist.org/people/@[email protected]
Ernie Smith14h ago
Tedium1d ago

One &udm After Another: Google made everyone mad again, so another wave of people just learned about &udm=14. Maybe we should all take the hint.

https://feed.tedium.co/link/15204/17351430/google-ai-udm14-reflection

What The Big Tech Escape Hatch Should Look Like

Google made everyone mad again, so another wave of people just learned about &udm=14. Maybe we should all take the hint.

Tedium: The Dull Side of the Internet.
Ernie Smith16h ago
Ernie Smith1d ago

Given the recent chatter about Google sucking once again (and the fact that &udm=14 still gets recommended a lot) I wanted to think bigger-picture about what we can do about it.

My thought: Think smaller.

https://tedium.co/2026/05/30/google-ai-udm14-reflection/

new @tedium

What The Big Tech Escape Hatch Should Look Like

Google made everyone mad again, so another wave of people just learned about &udm=14. Maybe we should all take the hint.

Tedium: The Dull Side of the Internet.
Ernie Smith1d ago

Given the recent chatter about Google sucking once again (and the fact that &udm=14 still gets recommended a lot) I wanted to think bigger-picture about what we can do about it.

My thought: Think smaller.

https://tedium.co/2026/05/30/google-ai-udm14-reflection/

new @tedium

What The Big Tech Escape Hatch Should Look Like

Google made everyone mad again, so another wave of people just learned about &udm=14. Maybe we should all take the hint.

Tedium: The Dull Side of the Internet.
Ernie Smith2d ago

RE: https://writing.exchange/@ernie/116655612586421223

Office drone Dell laptops go for around $150 in some cases, that may be the ticket

Ernie Smith3d ago

Tech challenge for supernerds: What’s the least expensive computer you could buy relatively easily on the used market that could reliably power an eGPU over Thunderbolt 3?

A few that potentially come to mind:

- Thinkpad T480
- 2018 i3 Mac Mini
- 21.5 inch iMac
- HP Spectre x360

Show threadErnie Smith6d ago

It is now set up as a full Markdown-files-and-everything static site. As I promise on the About page, there’s nothing stopping me from writing in it again someday.

https://midrange.tedium.co/about/

About MidRange

About the MidRange newsletter experiment

MidRange Newsletter
Show threadErnie Smith6d ago

MidRange had a messy history. It started as a Revue site—I intended it as a feeder into Tedium—but when Revue shut down, I had to move it to Craft under a kind of duress.

Problem was, it was the one part of the Tedium empire that wasn’t static, so getting it off of Craft was important.

Ernie Smith6d ago

Over the holiday weekend, I redid MidRange as an Astro site. It’s now completely static, a necessary step for cleaning up my CMS stuff.

https://midrange.tedium.co

MidRange Newsletter

Hot Takes In 30 Minutes or Less

MidRange Newsletter
Ernie SmithMay 21

RE: https://writing.exchange/@ernie/116613248146841705

And to be clear: *I* personally don’t think this. But hey, it’s Plex’s business.

Show threadErnie SmithMay 21

“Those people, rather than paying more than the price of the mini PC they use to host their Plex libraries, are most assuredly going with an alternative like Jellyfin.”

https://tedium.co/2026/05/21/plex-price-increase-self-hosting/

The Tension Plex’s Huge Price Increase Exposes

Plex sends a message to the self-hosting community with a massive upcharge targeted at the very people who hate monthly fees.

Tedium: The Dull Side of the Internet.