iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Tobias Arweiler @icebearlabs.com · 13/06/2026

I've been gone for a long time. Some reasons: - Bsky felt empty compared to X, but I didnt wanna go back - I felt most indie hackers are building for indie hackers and felt that as disingenious - I wasn't motivated to work on my own stuff, burned out Now I'm building first, doing social second

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Tobias Arweiler @icebearlabs.com · 30/07/2025

Check out N8N for this kind of work as well. More flexibility and not only Google models at hand.

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Tobias Arweiler @icebearlabs.com · 28/07/2025

Thank you to anyone who has listened to @codeandconquer.fm in the past ♥️ Right now I'm not actively recording new episodes, but this is still a great milestone.

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Tobias Arweiler @icebearlabs.com · 12/06/2025

When you have a development issue that is so complex and rare that you start watching youtube videos that are just text and code, you know you're in the deep end.

Tobias Arweiler @icebearlabs.com · 20/04/2025

Uptime would be okay I think. Synthetic sounds a little „too far off“, it’s not clear what that means, just by the name.

Tobias Arweiler @icebearlabs.com · 15/04/2025

I'd advise against working on the way. Get your mind fresh, come back stronger. Best ideas come when we let our brain rest from the daily craziness.

Tobias Arweiler @icebearlabs.com · 15/04/2025

What happens if people reach the limit of the $100 plan? I'd probably add a pseudo tier like "Enterprise" with a "Contact us" button, just to be able to catch larger companies who might be interested. Keep the door open, so to say.

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Tobias Arweiler @icebearlabs.com · 14/04/2025

It's incredible how many people have no idea how designing a system for security works. Blog posts detailling how to expose ports to the internet (without any restrictions). Installations that expose 3000 ports to the wide web. Be safe out there. Any idiot can write blog posts.

Tobias Arweiler @icebearlabs.com · 13/04/2025

Traded another 12-15 hours of my work for a Squarespace subscription. I was tried of paying that money, when I'm perfectly capable of building my own website. So here's to a new and clean icebearlabs.com :D

icebearlabs.com

Ice Bear Labs

Freelance software development and consulting services

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Tobias Arweiler @icebearlabs.com · 11/04/2025

Is the thing your doing absolutely necessary? No? Is it enjoyable? Also no? You should probably not do it anymore.

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Tobias Arweiler @icebearlabs.com · 07/04/2025

Would love to do a big road trip through the US. We absolutely adore the countryside, the landscapes, the big cities. But we will never even consider it under the current government.

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Tobias Arweiler @icebearlabs.com · 05/04/2025

Probably just spam / sending this to 10000 people to make some money. Would still not click the link or doc and push it into spam folder.

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Tobias Arweiler @icebearlabs.com · 04/04/2025

Happened to Nextjs as well… kinda wished they would rename it and release it under a different name and versioning. And then just do v2 in maintenance mode.

Tobias Arweiler @icebearlabs.com · 04/04/2025

Great talk that goes into detail on why this is the absolute and only correct statement. youtu.be/d-7o9xYp7eE?... Do not talk to the police without your lawyer. Ever.

youtu.be

Don't Talk to the Police

YouTube video by Regent University School of Law

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Tobias Arweiler @icebearlabs.com · 31/03/2025

At least it’s a great blueprint for other projects afterwards 😅 Aaaand probably some learnings about what not to do.

Tobias Arweiler @icebearlabs.com · 30/03/2025

When you wanted a really tiny app to help keep your plants alive 🪴 Now you have a Turborepo with frontend, backend, database and MinIO fileserver, getting proxied through a built-in nginx and deployed via Docker Compose 🤯 Thanks to @coolify.io at least I don't need to worry about hosting.

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Tobias Arweiler @icebearlabs.com · 27/03/2025

X, Threads, Facebook, TikTok and Snapchat. Oh, I guess I don't need to two limitation ^^

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Tobias Arweiler @icebearlabs.com · 24/03/2025

Funnily enough your podcast episode with me is the perfect guide to what I should probably do ^^

Tobias Arweiler @icebearlabs.com · 24/03/2025

It should be fixed now, probably still propagating. I can see it again after flushing my DNS records on my Mac.

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Tobias Arweiler @icebearlabs.com · 24/03/2025

Anyone experiencing the @codeandconquer.fm page not loading right now, we're moving to @cloudflare.social so it might be done for a while, until new DNS settings take a hold. Getting rid of anything Vercel to cancel the subscription.

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Tobias Arweiler @icebearlabs.com · 23/03/2025

Had just become a freelancer so binding a house to my name didn’t feel that great. Man am I regretting that decision.

Tobias Arweiler @icebearlabs.com · 22/03/2025

My biggest regret in life is not buying my mothers house when she sold it in 2021 when we had like 1.5% interest rates…

Tobias Arweiler @icebearlabs.com · 19/03/2025

Time is an infuriating resource. You are given an indefinite amount. You HAVE to spend it and you can only spend the same amount all the time. You cannot save it. And you never know when yours runs out. 86400 seconds today. Spend them wisely.

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Tobias Arweiler @icebearlabs.com · 15/03/2025

The truth is, it's 90% development and 90% marketing, making it 180% you have to give over all.

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Tobias Arweiler @icebearlabs.com · 15/03/2025

Your running code is always compiled JavaScript

I’ve already announced pausing the podcast for a while. I’m not feeling that one right now. Also since February I’m only doing 4 days of freelance work per week, which starts helping a little now.

Eh combination of multiple factors. Fulltime freelance project, while still trying to get our own company set up and started, the podcast, the fucking world right now, not enough time for sports and healthy eating ^^ Basically need to dial back from too many topics.

Approach it from a different angle to the same results, going away from personal, you-angle to a "we made it as a team" questions And then going back and asking "What did I personally contribute to that? What were my strengths that helped?"

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Maybe you can use questions from positive psychology to remember better? Stuff like: - When did you learn something really vital in a project? - Did you ever have a moment of insight, where you changed as a developer? - What was a great "crushing it" moment for you and your team?

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That's gonna be a nice peak in the analytics graph :D Hopefully in the revenue chart as well

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Honestly I'm burnout burnout burnout right now xD

"audio > video" That surprises me. Everyone and their mom is telling every podcaster on the planet that they NEED TO BE ON YOUTUBE TO BE RELEVANT

As somebody with 13+ years of this stuff. I've still never needed the stuff that is asked in those interviews. Somehow I still made my way through 3 fulltime jobs at companies and 2 of my own enterprises^^

It's not really a good format for the podcast yeah. But I'm pausing the podcast currently anyway. What I might do is talk in an episode about WHY I'm pausing and my feelings towards it right now.

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Think I should do a fun project or something I'm passionately about, but without putting monetary pressure on it, to reignite some of the flame and have some fun again. It always gets hard when the fun is lost somewhere on the way.

I also feel like, I'm just severly burned out by all topics that are on my desk right now. So not really about indie hacking, but my freelance work, some ongoing support projects, finding new work, dealing with boring work AND the podcast on top.. Not really feeling it right now ^^

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It's my go to standard for paragraph text and such! I don't have the best eyesight and can appreciate its easy readability myself ^^

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I think a lot of people don't dare to do this, but it's pretty hard to detect. Even when they request a call of a former boss or colleague, you can provide your friends telephone number xD The system wants to fuck us, we can abuse the system as well.

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I've done ten years of work in companies I didn't enjoy much. It's soul destroying. I know the job market is hard for everyone right now - I'm also looking for contract work starting April - but I wouldn't accept ANY role at this point that made me feel bad before even starting.

I was thinking how to phrase it, I think this is a great way to say it. If you're authentic and they don't like you that way, the work with them will suck. Masking yourself for years, just to fit in, is not healthy.

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Check out Atkins Hyperlegible. Can be paired with a lot of stuff and is - as expected by a font that wants to be that - very readable.

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Lol just make something up. People are lying about stuff like this all the time. Doesn't really matter when actually doing the job later, so just lie to get in the door.

Tobias Arweiler @icebearlabs.com · 03/03/2025

Yep. Usually I do my apps so there is no admin account really or if there is the password is set through env variables that never get exposed anywhere.

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Most people have left already again. And I feel like everyone except me being successful (at least that's the feeling you get when you look at socials too much) made me really depressed. I'm considering doing a special podcast episode on all of that to explain better.

Tobias Arweiler @icebearlabs.com · 03/03/2025

Just so anyone still interested in @codeandconquer.fm has heard anything from me. I’m considering pausing the podcast. Leaving Twitter hit my motivation engaging with the community pretty hard. Still hacking but more with just me and my partner. Will see how it continues..

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Tobias Arweiler @icebearlabs.com · 26/02/2025

Embedded examples, quirky tone. Not much fluff around the actual content.