MY SUBSCRIPTIONS, APRIL 2024

Ciao!
This post is bors, like sometimes happens, from an inspiring one I find over the internet. The examination of the monthly /yearly expences for on-line subscriptions is a recurring topic in the blogosphere, but this time it was Andrea’s post to ignite my will to examine those.

Without using any fancy app, but with pen, paper and calcutor here’s the list of my fixed expences at the moment. I did not track donations (like the one I make yearly to Mozilla Foundation, Thunderbird and a couple of others which are given as it happens – like Onyx of SyncTwoFolders) which happens mostly randomly.

ServiceMonthly costYearly costfor single usernotes
Spotify17,99€215,88€2,99€family plan up to 6 users
Amazon Prime49,90
Apple One Premium34,95419,4€5,82€family plan up to 6 users
Netflix17,99215,88€4,50€up to 4 users
1password73,02 $6,09€up to 5 users
Manuel Moreale1$12$supporting Manuel’s work for a better web
Stories of Apple2€unpredictable, since the author is a honest person, it puts a pause on this when I cannot deliver new contentsupporting Stories of Apple in all its declinations.
Hosting183€183€Supporthost has been my hosting provider in the last 3 years. I doubt I’ll leave them anytime soon. I am way too happy with them.
3x Domini38€yearly

And you? Have you ever made such analysis?
Let me know in the comments.

BLOCKIN’ BOTS

Following Ethan Marcotte‘s post on the blocking the many “artificial intelligence”bots on my sites I’ve adopted this two strategies. I’m using WordPress as my CMS.

Edit my robots.txt file like this:

User-agent: *
Disallow: /wp-admin/
Allow: /wp-admin/admin-ajax.php


User-agent: *
Disallow:

User-agent: AdsBot-Google
User-agent: Amazonbot
User-agent: anthropic-ai
User-agent: Applebot
User-agent: AwarioRssBot
User-agent: AwarioSmartBot
User-agent: Bytespider
User-agent: CCBot
User-agent: ChatGPT-User
User-agent: ClaudeBot
User-agent: Claude-Web
User-agent: cohere-ai
User-agent: DataForSeoBot
User-agent: FacebookBot
User-agent: Google-Extended
User-agent: GoogleOther
User-agent: GPTBot
User-agent: ImagesiftBot
User-agent: magpie-crawler
User-agent: Meltwater
User-agent: omgili
User-agent: omgilibot
User-agent: peer39_crawler
User-agent: peer39_crawler/1.0
User-agent: PerplexityBot
User-agent: Seekr
User-agent: YouBot
Disallow: /

Sitemap: https://mywebsite.domanin/sitemap.xml

Edit the .htaccess file like this, as shown by him.

<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine on
RewriteBase /

# block “AI” bots
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} (AdsBot-Google|Amazonbot|anthropic-ai|Applebot|AwarioRssBot|AwarioSmartBot|Bytespider|CCBot|ChatGPT|ChatGPT-User|Claude-Web|ClaudeBot|cohere-ai|DataForSeoBot|Diffbot|FacebookBot|FacebookBot|Google-Extended|GPTBot|ImagesiftBot|magpie-crawler|omgili|Omgilibot|peer39_crawler|PerplexityBot|YouBot) [NC]
RewriteRule ^ – [F]
</IfModule>

In all honesty I can’t tell if this works at all, no one is assuring me that under a $GenericBot won’t be hidden another one of these ‘nasty‘ bots, or one in incognito mode. If you have any other evidence, I’ll all ears…

SUGGESTED READS FOR APRIL 15, 2024

… AND WE’RE AT HOME NOW!

After my announcement on the old WordPress.com hosted blog, I am moving all my English content over this domain.

There’s some content to translate, a maybe a thing or two to iron out. But I’m sure it’ll be worth the effort.

Also, I’ve started a micro-blog experiment over https://scribbles.page/nicola … if you want you’ll find some bits also there.

See you soon!