You could look up, say, CMSes, get some basic info about each one (to make useful decision), and learn who its active committers were. The site closed, I know. Do you remember its name? Or people who were part of it?

I asked someone to write an article for me about "review sites for open source" -- think Yelp for Software -- and neither of us can remember its name. But if you have others that you think should be included (for positive or negative reasons), please let me know.

I'm thinking of paying for some cloud storage and I'd like to hear your recommendations and experiences with cloud storage providers. I'd like the best bang/buck and preferably something that works well with Linux (Void is my current distro). I had been using Keybase as they offer 250GB of space for free(?), though I recently learned they've been acquired by Zoom which...concerns me. Plus, I can't seem to get the filesystem mounted on Void for some reason =/.

Here are a few I'm considering:

Major Players

• Google One: $20 a year for 100GB

• Microsoft 365: $70 for 1TB of storage + Microsoft productivity suite (that I probably won't use all that much)

Out of these options, I think I'd prefer Microsoft at this point.

Smaller Players

• Cloudamo: $25 a year for 100GB. Bonus that it's built on open-source tech and looks pretty flexible.

• pCloud: I've been seeing this recommended in my current search for a provider. But... seeing as of this posting the website is down, I'm not filled with confidence.

• Wasabi: More of a DIY option, it'd be ~$72 a year for 1TB.

Cloudamo looks the most promising, here.

Complete DIY

• I have a 2TB drive that I guess I can expose to the Internet as a fileserver. Dunno what my ISPs policy on this is and I wouldn't be confident in its reliability.

Well, those are a few options. Got any more?

Recently a loved one of a friend has died and they would like to archive their entire timeline (no retweets), including media they posted.

I've looked around a little bit and the Twitter API only allows 3200 tweets to be exported. As this includes RTs, this goes back to about 2018, while the account was made in 2011, so it's missing about 90% of their tweets. Also, getting all the media isn't really possible.

Do any of you know a way to accomplish this? Or, can anyone direct me to scripts that crawl the page and save every non-RT tweet + potential media? I'm not very tech-oriented but I can at least run python scripts.

I should mention that I've so far checked out Allmytweets.net (returns RTs) and the Twitter archival project (or whatever it's called), which is a group of people that help in archiving accounts, but they haven't responded yet.

(I'd be surprised if this hasn't been asked before.)

A few questions that come to my mind are:

What are your computers' specs?

How are your computer parts/cabling organized? (Are they?)

What is the resolution of your monitor(s?)

What OS is it?

I'm not really knowledgeable when it comes to technology, so you can add you own questions as you please.

Edit: In hindsight, my knowledge of specs is even poorer that I thought it was and I can barely read the answers. Ah well "^~^

I know those are easy to find on children's education materials, but the keyword here is simple. Anything kiddie, requiring too many clicks or that takes 3 seconds is off the table.

I kinda need to brush up on my super basic reasoning. In part, because a grown man should know the time table by heart, and in part, because I wanna convince myself that I did not get brain damage after being hit by a car (there's really nothing indicating that, I'm just paranoid).

I'm looking for something simple that presents me with the multiplication table and or simple calculations to answer under a time frame. The requirement for iOS is that my computer is broken.

And it really can be super simple, even something I open from a mobile web browser or transfer to my Kindle.

Additionally: there is no need for if to be an app. A huge list of exercises (with answers) would be greatly helpful.

Thanks!

I think on most sites this discussion isn't even worth having, knowing the type of people it would attract. But I have faith that Tildes can maintain civil discourse on this.

For those unfamiliar, for threads on r/BPT that receive an influx of racists and trolls the mods have implemented a sort of soft-lock where only verified users are allowed to post. However, the verification process strikes me as toeing the line of what should be acceptable in an online community. Essentially it breaks down to this:

1. Are you black? Give us proof of the color of your skin and you'll be verified and flaired with your race.
2. Are you a "non-white POC"? You can be verified but will receive no flair.
3. Are you white? Talk to the mods to receive further instructions...

I understand the rationale, but subtly race-gating threads feels icky no matter the reason.

This is gonna be kinda of a personal mess.

My background is in film. In Bahia, Brazil.

I understand this is a very personal question with numerous factors to take in, some on which I'll absolutely not be able to convey.

I'm not looking for any definitive life advice because I know that's impossible. I just wanna hear perspectives from some smart people that might help me understand my situation. I've recently been through a (kind of a) life and death situation. I'd be dead or with severe neurological trauma without a helmet.

This made me rethink a lot of stuff about my goals and my life in general. I feel I can confide on Tildes, you people are usually caring and smart and awesome. I'm also a bit emotional, so please be gentle. Spending 24 hours on a hospital bed contemplating death and incapacitation kind does that too with you.

I won't change many details because fuck it, I don't thank there are a lot of people in the world wanting to dox me. And Google already knows everything about me anyway.

I have two very serious psychiatric diagnostics that impart my life in serious ways: bipolar disorder (type II, thankfully) and ADHD. I'm also suspected to be on the autism spectrum but I don't have the means to achieve this diagnostic. It would be useful anyway. These conditions seriously impact my ability to sustain a job for long periods and I have a hard time working with teams bigger than three (sometimes not even than).

I live for free in my mother's conformable apartment, while I she actually spends most of the time on another continent. It's a pretty good deal. But I wanted to be independent.

About two years ago I decided that work in film (my original major) would never provide me the financial independence I needed. Working in film means traveling a lot, infrequent hours, absurd exploration (its common to sleep 4 hours a day), and rampant drug use. I love film and do have a talent for it, but the environment is simply not conducive to my mental health.

Of course, now I realize that computer science may also not be conducive to mental health issues at all. The thing is, really like. When I'm lisping, the real illogical world becames more bearable, and I feel in a wonderland of logic, reason, and calming predictabilidade. This doesn't happen as much with other languages such as Python. I also suck at it. So much that's not even funny. I'm addicted to Linux, Emacs, and the command line, but that's kinda it. I became a Vim/Emacs semi specialist. I don't see myself ever doing anything complex. It this my mind, really!

I've been trying to program for almost 3 years and, beside my super awesome machine, I have nothing to show for myself. I try focusing on using things like Java or Python but I always get sidetracked trying to do some cool shit on Emacs.

Sometimes I wonder if I should just assume that I won't be able to concentrate on anything else and just learn Emacs Lisp for real. It's frowned upon by a lot of people, but Emacs is a wonderful learning environment and at least I would be doing something. Maybe an interesting package that some people would like to use.

Right now my choice seems to be between failing to study things that make me miserable (like OOP), but have clear professional possibilities, or focusing on something I actually like that might make a better programmer in the future.

An important detail: I'm 38 years old and unemployed. My region is not very economically active in that area but I'm afraid to leave it because then I would lose my support network. And the mere notion of being with other people on a daily bases causes me panic attacks.

And, as a reminder, studying programming with bipolar disorder ADHD is hard as fuck. My ADHD is so severe that I constantly forget what I'm doing withing seconds. That's probably why I like Lisp, which is more regular than other languages and I can get things more easily from context.

On the other hand, I'm super charming (and not at all modest hahaha) and interesting at parties because my scattered interests make it possible to contribute meaningfully (and sometimes witty) to pretty much any conversation. My success with women is indirectly proportional to may financial troubles.

Anyway, I know I said this was not about advice, but I kinda lied: what's your advice? Should I keep trying on something I'm not really talented at just because I like it (and it may bring financial rewards in the future).

Or should I just give up and, try my hand at some shorts and even a novel? (I'm currently on a severe writer's block though, but I do have some talent for it).

Maybe I could work from home, be some kind of sysadmin (in which case, what would be the quickest and cheapest way to do so?). I absolutely don't wanna create huge complex products, but managing thinks remotely would be awesome.

I also love philosophy and logic, and, if became suddenly rich, that's what I'd do for the rest of my life. Oh, well.

I'm just curious how many people still use IRC (Internet Relay Chat) here. And if you use it, what do you use it for? Is there anything (server/channels, etc) that you would recommend to others?

I use it a bit, mostly for casual chatting on tildeverse.org servers, the SDF server, or on Freenode. On Freenode, I also use it when I need to interact with FOSS developers who use IRC as one of their main forms of support.

Hi,

I’m usually just overthinking my note-taking setup with plaintext markdown notes, but recently I had to create and share (as PDF) some rich text documents as well. What I’m looking for:

• Collaborative editing to some extent (ideally real-time like Google Docs..)

• Rich text formatting

• Export as PDF (or even Word if possible)

• Web & mobile app (iOS)

I’m aware of Microsoft 365 with Word online and Google Docs. I really can’t stand Word online, it feels so super slow one can barely use it. I also feel the same about the application for macOS. It’s just this gigantic thing I don’t need. I want some headings, basic formatting, lists etc.

And then there’s Google Docs. It just feels wrong. It’s a weird editor, especially on mobile, it’s in this format I can’t grab, it feels like the files are not under my control.

I’m also aware of some self-hosted solutions like ONLYOFFICE and probably some NextCloud addon/solution. But these are things I don’t want either since it’s usually a hassle to install them, keep them up to date and take care of the data.

I’m just hoping that I’m missing out on something else available except the Microsoft and Google solutions.

At some point I just thought I might stick to Markdown files and export them as PDFs or even Word documents, but I don’t know about any reliable online collaboration solution for markdown docs either.

I've had a Nexus 6P for the past 3 years. It's been a good run, and I've swapped the battery out once before (1 year ago) but it's time for a replacement. At this point, it's not charging properly, and turning off randomly.

What phones are you all using? Any you'd feel good about recommending? I'd be interested to hear thoughts on current smartphones, as it's not something I've looked into for a while.

Some things I liked about the Nexus 6P:

• Camera (12.3MP) was really good back when I first got it and still holds up (just shuts down when I take photos now)
• Larger form factor (not a dealbreaker though)
• Android
• Convenience of having photos uploaded to Google Photos automatically
• Battery life (in its prime) was actually decent

I'm in EU, and ideally I don't really want to spend more than 300 euros.
Thanks all, keen to hear people's thoughts...

Appreciate any kind of response/advice.

I limited the intake of high volume news and I'm currently taking a break from social media. I've been enjoying to occasionally visit blogs directly as my source of online reading. I tend to enjoy short essays, opinions, and honest observations. What blogs have you been following lately that you think are worth taking a look at?

P.s.
If it's your own, please shoot me a direct message: I'd love to check it out.

I was a supporter of Andrew Yang while he was running for president. His policies appealed to me a lot. One I supported because it made sense to me; personal data as a property right. I’ve thought about it more and I don’t see how a company like Google using my data negatively affects me. What are the negative repercussions I experience when a company uses my information like that? Are there alternatives that would protect my data more that are actually decent? I’d love to receive some explanation for this!

I recently came across a cool video on youtube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dxj8JwdQ7Lk&feature=youtu.be - The guy added a 4g connector to his rc plane and I think some extra batteries and managed to fly to the next island over.

I love stuff like this. Do you guys know any other current electronics that can be modded like this? Sadly it seems like most new consumer electronics come with their own small walled garden and often enough stuff just stops working once the seller goes bankrupt.

Other things that come to mind are:
Raspberry Pi
Arduino
ESP
But do you guys know whole systems that are moddable like this?
The Ryze Tello is a programmable drone, which is pretty cool as well.
I also saw some people modding 3d printers to laser cutters

First post on Tildes (though I've commented some before). I'm a mod on one of the "beta" sites, and have been for almost four years now.

I don't follow any of the other sites really, and certainly not Meta, so the whole Monica scandal kinda happened without me noticing. After the fallout (or amidst, I guess), Shog9 and several other community managers that I liked were fired, with seemingly no notice or cause.

Then after that, there seemed to be a push to create a "mod council" to create standards for behavior and for removal and reinstatement of moderators.

But the whole thing has seemed so needless, everything could have been cleared up with a few heartfelt announcements (and/or apologies), and the executive team at SE has just been so damn opaque about everything.

Then, to top things off for me personally, the community leaders were explicit in stating that the votes for members of the mod council would not be treated as binding, so what's the point? They can just be a rubber stamp at that point if they're not freely elected. The new moderator rules are "abide by the council-approved rules and whatever the community managers say." The new moderator rules also say "moderators will be removed and reinstated per the council-approved procedure for doing so, except when SE doesn't want to use that policy."

The mod council vote was non-binding, and then SE is making it a point to clearly state that the rules approved by the council don't matter.

It's this last bit that is coming as too much of an insult for me. I've told my fellow moderators that I'm not planning on signing the agreement. I don't understand why there has to be such an adversarial relationship here when I'm volunteering my time.

I don't want to leave, but everything is just rubbing me the wrong way. Please someone help me understand how I'm wrong. I just can't understand the way things have been publicly announced.

EDIT: This is now solved thanks to @Amarok! Solution is here. Changing the refresh rate from 60 Hz to 120 Hz fixed it.

My husband and I recently upgraded our TV to a Samsung Q70, and I have started experiencing an odd issue, visible in this video here.

The Issue

There's a horizontal section across the entire bottom of the screen that seems to be refreshing later than the rest of the TV. The game is running on a PC hooked up to the TV via HDMI, and the TV is running on game mode. This issue did not happen on our last TV (a 10-year-old Visio that I don't remember the model number of).

The Oddness

• It doesn't happen on the desktop or in video inputs.

We've been watching YouTube and Hulu through a Shield TV that we also have hooked up, and this issue isn't present in any of those, nor is it visible when I'm using desktop applications on the TV through the PC.

• It only happens in certain games.

The video is from Trackmania 2: Lagoon, where it is always present. Meanwhile, it is not present at all in Trackmania (2020). Likewise, I've been playing 428 Shibuya Scramble where it shows up in the exact same way in the exact same area, but it does not exist in Distance or Rogue Legacy, for example.

• It does not respond to v-sync.

I've tried toggling v-sync on and off, both through the game itself and forcing it through my video card. Neither alleviated the issue. The display looked the same whether or not v-sync was turned on or off.

I'm looking for any guidance anyone can give me, especially if this is a hardware issue with the TV itself, since I'm still in the return window.

Inspired by this post, I was wondering what RSS feeds you all subscribe to and how you read them.

Here are mine:
http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/topNews
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/feeds/rss/headlines
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/feeds/rss/world
http://feeds.nature.com/nature/rss/current

I'm just started using Newsboat, a CLI RSS reader, to read in a few feeds (Reuters was one of them :( ) and it's pretty refreshing to get a text-based newsfeed with no distraction. Though, the feeds I'm subscribed to only give me a brief blurb of the news...

Every now and then I come across a limited-run podcast that wrapped up ages ago and I want to add it to my feed. I don't want to manually click through the old episodes one by one, I want to subscribe to it as if it were being published in realtime. Are there any tools that can help me with this?

I think what I'm looking for is some sort of app that republishes an existing RSS feed with a date offset based on whatever recent date you subscribe to it. Even better would be something that lets me specify my own custom drip rate so I can binge through large catalogs at my own pace.

I've been thinking about coding something like this but I don't want to reinvent the wheel if an existing solution is already out there.

I’m looking for a device that can track runs, whether it’s a watch or small device, which just exports raw GPS data via USB. I don’t want it to have Bluetooth, and it’s not enough to be able to disable it, I would just like it to not have any wireless radios whatsoever. Have you guys ever seen anything like this? I feel like it doesn’t exist on the market.

I have recently noticed an uptick in phishing emails and SMSs, getting me to click on some malicious link and this has been troubling me.
I am fairly good about what I click and so far I haven't clicked anything malicious (I think). However, this has motivated me to up my online security.

All my computers run Linux and I use an Android phone.

For browsing I use Firefox, with NoScript (and uBlock) and use containers for separating personal/shopping sites, etc.
I also have host file blocking on my computers and phone (using AdAway).

I do have a pi-hole setup at home as well.

I also have 2FA setup on all my banking accounts, email accounts etc.
However all my banking account 2FA is still just using SMS. Which I think is now easily circumvented.
Email accounts do use Authenticator apps (like Authy and Google Authenticator).

I also use a password manager (this one), which works well for me, but is only available on my computer and not from my phone. I am split between having my password manager available on my phone tho, since it is always on me and could be stolen or have something malicious installed on. What do you guys think? I am wary of services like LastPass, is that valid?

So I wanted to start a thread to discuss what do you guys do to stay safe online?
I am also considering getting a pair of Yubikey (one backup), are there any caveats/pitfalls I need to be aware of with Yubikey?

I am mulling over starting a side business that would involve selling physical products. I would like to set up a web store for this, but want to keep the amount of web development I have to do to a minimum. I would also not like to invade my customers' and potential customers' privacy. Can anyone recommend a way to approach this? I'm a software developer, but don't do much web development and don't really want to do development for this project beyond just getting the site up and running. What options exist for setting up a simple web store?

I've done a search and see things like Shopify. I've heard of them and get the impression they're reputable, but other items in my search seemed kind of scammy. Are there things I should look out for in this space?

Hi, hope this is the right place for this question. I'd like to learn Autodesk Fusion 360, but all of my devices are running either Ubuntu or ChromeOS. I've tried to get F360 running on my ubuntu desktop with both Wine and Lutris but I haven't had success. There is also a web application for F360 but it is feature limited.

It seems like the only way to get this program running is to use a virtual machine, but I don't have much experience in this area. Do I need to buy a windows license and set up my own VM or is there a service where I can rent time on a preconfigured VM somewhere?

Thanks for reading, hope to hear your suggestions.

I'm looking for a ~24" 1080p monitor -- nothing flashy, purely for TV and movies.

Right now I have a crappy Dell TN. I don't mind it, but the viewing angles aren't great.

I just started looking tonight. A lot of posts are saying that VA is ideal, IPS has light leaks, and TN has the typical viewing angle issues.

The main things I am concerned about are:

• I'm close to this monitor (VESA mounted where you'd have a second monitor)
• Color reproduction is important -- same with decent contrast
• I often watch stuff in a dark room

I don't really care about specific models (regional availability), but I'm hoping to find out which panel is ideal. Does anybody have any experience with a VA panel?

Back in the day I was a hardcore Google Reader (RIP) user, and following that I continued to use https://feedly.com/ for many years, but eventually I found myself falling behind on all my feeds and stopped checking it.

Recently, I signed for Inoreader and I've started reading more blogs again. It also has the nice feature of letting you subscribe to email newsletters too, which is quite nice since I find them annoying to deal with in my email inbox but convenient in the feed reader.

I'm wondering what blogs and newsletters folks on Tildes subscribe to.

Here are a few of my favorites:

Blogs:

• bellingcat: Independent investigative journalism often based on online "open source intelligence." e.g. The Boogaloo Movement is Not What You Think
• BLDGBLOG: Geoff Manaugh's blog about everything related to the space we inhabit, both built and natural. e.g. Underground Cathedrals of Radiation and Zones of Irreversible Strain
• Flowing Data: Nathan Yau's blog about data visualization. e.g. Racial Divide
• Idle Words: The blog of Maciej Cegłowski, creator of the Pinboard bookmarking service. Covers tech and lots of unrelated topics. e.g. Superintelligence: The Idea that Eats Smart People

Newsletters:

• BIG by Matt Stoller: A newsletter about economics and in particular the economics of monopolies and disruptive startups. e.g. The Slow Death of Hollywood
• Data is Plural: A weekly newsletter of fun/weird datasets.
• Normcore Tech: Vicki Boykis' newsletter about tech and tech-related things. e.g. The Reign of Big Recsys
• Uses This: Brief interviews with all sorts of creators about what tools they use to do what they do.

This is just a slice. I can share my entire list if people are interested. But I'm curious about what feeds others enjoy, on anything from film and furniture to "movie-set" urbanism. What are you reading?

I recently switched operating systems on my phone and lost some of the automated workflows I had during the transition. While I've rebuilt some of it, but it sometimes feels like I'm missing something or that I could do more, I just don't know what exactly. I'd like to hear from others here and see if they can inspire me to implement what works for them. I'm using an android phone with automate and here's the workflows that I got:

• When plugging in the phone, set it to do not disturb and enable Bluetooth. This is for when I go to sleep so that I don't get woken up by notifications and I can listen to podcasts on my headband.
• If at work (Based on cell towers, not GPS) set phone to vibrate, when leaving it set it to ring. I actually lost this one but haven't rebuilt it since I've not been to the office in a while.
• Learn location. For a set time, grabs the cell towers around and stores them in a JSON file.

What kind of automation have you implemented on your phone?

First, some context. The latest from the US justice department saying that they will be focusing on finding "ANTIFA leaders" is incredibly troubling for anyone involved in leftist groups. I foresee a lot of good activists, regardless of how far left they actually are, arrested on trumped up charges in order to squash opposition.

Organizing is essential to resist fascism. This is made more difficult by the pandemic, as in person meetings bring a huge, almost unacceptable risk. As such, many orgs have been turning to platforms like Slack instead. Trouble is, Slack logs are not encrypted and I am certain that as a business based in the US Slack will not put up a fight to keep user data safe if the feds come calling.

I'd like to collect a decent list of alternatives. Important factors include encryption, ownership, open source status, ease of use, federation, scalability, hosting, cross platform, and anything else you can think of.

Input wanted for an article.

Let's say that your company is considering the purchase of an expensive new application to help in the company's software development. The demo looks great, and the feature list makes it sound perfect for your needs. So your Management arranges for a proof of concept license to find out if the software is worth the hefty investment. The boss comes to you to ask you to be in charge of the PoC project.

I'm aiming to write an article to help developers, devops, and testers determine if a given vendor's application meets the company's needs. The only assumption I'm making is that the software is expensive; if it's cheap, the easy answer is, "Buy a copy for a small team and see what they think." And I'm thinking in terms of development software rather than enterprise tools (e.g. cloud-based backup) though I suspect many of the practices are similar.

Aside: Note that this project is beyond "Decide if we need such a thing." In this scenario, everyone agrees that purchasing a tool is a good idea, and they agree on the baseline requirements. The issue is whether this is the right software for the job.

So, how do you go about it? I'm sure that it's more than "Get a copy and poke at it randomly." How did (or would) you go about designing a PoC project? If you've been involved in such a project in the past (particularly if the purchase wasn't ideal), what advice could someone have given you to help you make a better choice? I want to create a useful guide that applies to any "enterprise-class" purchase.

For example: Do you recommend that the PoC period be based on time (N months) or workload (N transactions)? How do you decide who should be on the PoC team? What's involved in putting together a comprehensive list of requirements (e.g. integrates with OurFavoredDatabase, meets performance goals of X), creating a test suite that exercises what the software dev product does, and evaluating the results? ...and what am I not thinking of, that I should?

TL;DR: How long should a graphics card last? What can I do to make them last longer?

This is perhaps an odd question to ask, but I've been a console gamer for most of my life and have only been all-in on PC gaming for maybe 1-2 years and I think I may be missing something.

So there has been about three times when I have spent money on a half-decent graphics card, and each time they have failed me. The first one was a genuine hardware failure, probably a memory failure judging from the artifacting. The second one failed for reasons I have been unable to figure out. It didn't appear to be overheating, but I was getting driver errors that suggested it were; reinstalling from scratch did nothing to fix it.

The last, most current one is the one that bugs me the most. I'm getting the same problems; driver crashes just like overheating, except this one has better temperature monitoring and I can see that isn't happening.

I previously thought that the reason why my graphics cards would always crap out on me was because those were cheaper cards from less reputable manufacturers, but this last one is really bugging me because it's relatively high end and from a reputable manufacturer - it's a Gigabyte Radeon RX 5700, complete with the giant AMD reference cooler. I'm getting it RMAed, but since I didn't keep the receipt I am still going to have to pay to fix it even though it should theoretically be under warranty.

I've done a ton of searching to find out how I can possibly solve this myself, but I am frankly astounded by how little information the drivers give out on Windows. I'm seeing that the device is being reported as unavailable but nothing whatsoever as to why.

To make matters worse, it seems like this isn't actually common for other people. Most people seem to be replacing their graphics card because they are obsolete, not because they physically fail.

So basically what I am asking is, how long is a graphics card actually supposed to last for? Do I just have astonishingly bad luck?

The cheap bluetooth sleep-mask with built-in headphones I ordered off Amazon stopped working (big surprise) and I'm in the market for something similar but of good quality. Requirements:

• Wireless
• Comfortable to wear while I'm lying on my side

It doesn't have to be part of a sleep mask, and it doesn't even need to have great audio quality. I use it more for audiobooks and white noise than music. I just want something that's going to work with no issues and last for a while.

I recently got the Galaxy Fold and I am genuinely fascinated by it. A folding screen phone is just wild to me. It's a crazy concept and every time I pick up the Fold, I feel like I'm touching the future.

It got me thinking about how technology is so ubiquitous nowadays that we take so much for granted. The fact that we have high speed Internet access from anywhere on earth was totally unthinkable 20 years ago, yet today it is a reality.

So when is the last time you were truly impressed by a technology or technological breakthrough?

In a pursuit of a more privacy-oriented mobile computing I've installed LineageOS ROM on my phone and decided to try living without Google Play Services, which usually provide aGPS (cell tower geopositioning), push notifications and lots of other frameworks like Google Maps that apps use as libraries.

My phone has 4 primary uses:

• Communicator - mostly Telegram, WhatsApp and Slack. Email of-course.
• Navigator - GPS and Maps are an irreplaceable tool if you're living in a modern metropolis
• Internet browser - obviously
• Music Player - music on the go

So let's see how you're supposed to tackle each of the uses, while using as much FOSS as possible.

0. System functionality - both push notifications and aGPS can be solved by microG - fake Google Play Services library. Not sure how it implements push, but aGPS is checked against Mozilla's geolocation database.
1. Communications - Telegram is available on F-Droid (OSS app store), but everything else is not. The solution here is to use Aurora (Play Store front-end to rip APKs) and install them manually. Push notifications might be broken even with microG (WhatsApp is missing notifications for me, sometimes). AOSP email is fine, K9-mail is ugly but works somewhat better.
2. Maps and navigation: OpenStreetMap is the obvious choice here and OsmAnd delivers the frontend. It has enough metadata for businesses to get you around, but compared to Google Maps it's can be sometimes lacking and/or out-of-date. Navigation itself is decent, but it's missing timetables for public transportation compared to GMaps, which can be a problem, especially if trains are cancelled or delayed. Overall it's very usable, almost feature complete, but I've found myself falling back to Google Maps in my browser when it comes to using public transport.
3. Internet browser - Firefox, with uBlock Origin installed (yes, it works on Android) it's really good.
4. Music Player - there are tons of music players available on F-Droid, you can pick whichever suits your needs. Here I actually stepped away from the FOSS and bought myself a PowerAMP license on developer's website. One of the rare moments where paid Android software is available outside of Play Store.

Now that the primary use cases are solved, let's try some other useful apps:

• E-banking? Broken without Google Play, app refuses to even start properly.
• Bike sharing? Taxi app? Public transport app? Broken without Google Maps libraries for the obvious reason. You might or might not be able to use the browser version, depending on the app.
• Reddit Relay/any app that requires the license? Okay you've ripped the APK with Aurora, but you can't buy the license to remove the ads.
• Ebook reader? Nothing good on F-Droid, have to rip something off Aurora.

Basically you have to be prepared to use your mobile browser a lot. And for some of the sites, do it in a "desktop mode" with tiny text, since the mobile version will just nag you to download the app, that might be broken.

The takeaway is simple - you give up A LOT of convenience just to cut off Google analytics (which you still might get with apps like Slack). It's certainly usable, don't get me wrong, but I still feel kind of stupid fumbling with OsmAnd when I'm out with my friends and trying to look something up. I'll probably end up going back to the stock ROM, or just installing the Google Apps. For me it was an experiment and I think I've got a general feel on how much information and use I'm actually getting out of GApps.

So Tildes, have you tried degoogling your phone? How did it go? Are you still using it?

Over the last week or so, I have been noticing that the majority of my searches in DuckDuckGo have been completely failing. For example, I was searching for a specific Firefox extension api and it only brings up a list of Firefox extension. If I put the exact same query into Google, the second result is exactly what I wanted. Before this last week, I have being using DDG almost exclusively, but know I am need to add the Google bang before nearly every query. Am I the only person that is having this experience? I really prefer using DDG to Google, but I can't if the results stay this way.

Where do you all waste away most of your time on the internet? I hate to sound like a hipster, but I've come to avoid and/or dislike most main stream content aggregators. Reddit, Twitter, Facebook, etc. are all platforms I no longer participate in because of privacy and quality reasons. I like Tildes and all, but the community is small (and I like it this way) and that means the content isn't always fresh. So where else do you all hang out?

I moved into a new apartment and was surprised to see that all my rooms have CAT 5 Ethernet ports in the wall. However, cue my disappoint when I try to naively plug my router and machine in two separate ports to find that the ports don't actually work. After searching various forums, I found that I have to:

1. Locate the panel where all the ethernet ports connect
2. Wire them to an ethernet switch.

I found the panel but all the wires look like this:

https://i.imgur.com/Qzm72g0.jpg

I'm not sure what I need to do from here to plugging into my network switch. Any guides or advice would be extremely helpful. I don't need every port connected to the switch, only one or two. None of these look labelled so I might have a difficult time isolating which cable runs where.

And about the network switch... Any qualms about using an old router that has the AP turned off?

I'm running out of time to finish the spend requirements on a credit card promotion. I was planning on buying a VR headset, but I realized there was something that would actually be much more useful; a new router.

The market for consumer routers has been really strange; We are on the sixth generation, yet it's super common for consumer routers to be two or three generations behind, especially the less expensive ones. So much of the stuff on the market only goes up to 802.11n, and half of the time the firmware they include is halfway broken or is missing important features.

So I'm looking for a router that is relatively future-proof. I want Wifi 6. I want something that won't be interrupted by the microwave. Open source firmware would be excellent, but not a requirement. I don't need mesh networking; my house is not that big. I do want it to be relatively inexpensive; I'd consider $300 to be a hard limit unless someone has a persuasive arguement to justify the cost.

I would also prefer to avoid Netgear. I have no idea how they stay in business with the mountains of problems I have had with their products and their horrible support. The last time I owned a Netgear product, I was forced to give them my email address to download the driver and they illegally added it to their marketing mailing list without my permission. I don't do business with people who betray me.

Hi all -- I have had a Moto G5+ for the last two years, and have been largely happy with it. However, it's recently developed some serious issues w/ charging -- it tends to not ever get past ~45%, and the battery indicator seems to be ... disconnected from how long the phone actually lasts. I have attempted cleaning out the charging port (there was a lot of caked-in dust), changing the charging cable and port, to no avail. It works ok-ish for the moment, but I have largely been limiting it to emergency usage and I suspect it's on it's way out.

So, I find myself in the market for a new phone. In the past I have typically gone with whatever the cheapest reasonable Android phone has been (hence, the G5+ which I really do like quite a bit besides the poor camera). I am not a heavy phone user, and I really don't care about having the latest and greatest, my priorities are:

• long battery life (my Moto G5 lasts two days fully charged)
• cheap (say 200-300$, the SE on this thread is probably the upper bound of what I'd want to spend)
• reasonably performant
• preferably reasonable privacy protections (probably a pipe-dream)

The Moto G series have checked all boxes (apart from privacy) in the past, but I am considering whether I can take this opportunity to rid myself of another Google device in my life. I was thinking potentially going for a refurbished iPhone, but I really have no idea what to be looking for there. I haven't used an Apple device since my iPod (iTunes on Windows PTSD is real, and I don't even want to think about Linux support), and I am more than a bit hesitant to tie myself into their ecosystem, but it's hard to deny their superiority from a privacy standpoint.

I had also considered a Librem 5 at one point, and would be willing to spend a bit more for something so privacy oriented. But the 6-month order window, and other things I read about Purisms' roll-out have left me a bit wary there.

Any thoughts?

Thanks!

Grandma is understimulated in assisted living, and while Mom is looking into ways to either bunk with her, or drag her back to our place, I'm exploring other options. Her apartment does have wireless internet, so we could set up some sort of telepresence or video calling device, but even something as simple as a Relay or a KC2 isn't great, because it loses power, and needs to be explained to her.

I'm thinking that we might have better luck with a Tablet or a PC solution, and I do have a Kindle Fire (5th Gen?) and an off brand Windows 10 tablet around, and I am open to a Pi Project or speciality devices, but it has to be simple enough to plug and play, and the dream would be if it could start a video chat without the receiver having to pick up, or at least as simple as a nurse being able to come in and start a call. Any suggestions?

I've been organizing my personal collection of ebooks (epubs & pdfs) lately so I've been thinking of possible "best practices" to employ and wanted to open a discussion on it.

There are sources for free ebooks online which are trustworthy such as https://archive.org/index.php and https://www.gutenberg.org/ which provide DRM-Free copies in multiple formats.

These are great but a few of my ebooks are from less trusted sources so handling the security aspects should be considered as well. (Example: An interesting PDF from Hacker News or Reddit)

General:
For general organization and management, Calibre (https://calibre-ebook.com/) has been very useful so far. You can use Calibre to handle converting, meta-data, reading, and organization of your library.

Security:
From what I can research the epub and pdf formats can be both vulnerable to malicious but the potential is much higher for pdf. As you then might expect, pdf exploits are more common.

A few precautions you can take include using your browsers pdf viewer versus a standalone alternative, using an up to date and secure pdf reading with JavaScript disabled, or relying on a cloud service such as google drive that allows online viewing.

An offline e-reader is another easy solution as the malicious code would require a much more specific attack vector.

Reading:
https://us.norton.com/internetsecurity-emerging-threats-is-it-safe-to-download-free-ebooks-online.html
https://www.baldurbjarnason.com/notes/epub-javascript-security/

Recently, I've been posting here about all sorts of theatre that's available for streaming during the pandemic lockdown. Sounds like fun! But when I actually try to watch some of it... I'm having technical problems.

My Lenovo Yoga tablet won't cast from Chrome. At all. The option just doesn't exist in the Chrome browser on the tablet. The only way to cast anything is to open an app - but the videos I want to watch are on a webpage. In Chrome. Which doesn't have a casting option. Not helpful!

So I go to my desktop computer. It can cast from Chrome to Chromecast. But the result is video only, because "casting tab audio is not supported on this device." I tried Googling that error message, but I ended up getting flummoxed. The Google Help pages don't even mention this error, and other tech blogs are too complex for me to understand.

The Chromecast works fine. It accepts input (with sound) from other sources. It's just webpages (like YouTube.com and Vimeo.com) I'm having trouble with. I managed to watch one video last week, but I had to resort to installing the YouTube app to make it work. But not all the videos are on YouTube.

Any ideas?

I've been using Textra for years, but there's some new protocol whose name I don't remember that Textra isn't compatible with. This results in some messages (primarily from other LG phones to my LG phone) going only to the LG Messaging app and not Textra, which is annoying. Any recommendations?

Every so often I'll fill out a survey of some sort that asks how tech-savvy I am, and one of the options will be something like early adopter or tech enthusiast: "I'm the first of my friends to have the latest gadgets and they come to me for recommendations/advice." I've finally accepted that I can't delude myself into thinking that still applies to me.

I don't like Android or iOS so my phone is ancient (I've had longstanding issues with both permissions and UI). I still use an mp3 player daily (lots of my favorite music isn't on streaming sites). I'm running Windows 7 and 8 on my two computers (until I take the plunge and switch over to Linux; Windows 10 can eat a fat one). I find that most consumer tech for at least the past decade does stuff I like but I either can't find new products that don't remove some functionality that's perfect for my use-case scenarios or privacy concerns make me shy away.

Most recent update is here.

The Tildes community has been amazing and patient with me as a new and uninformed Linux user, and I'm greatly appreciative of that. I return to you today with yet another request.

Hardware

System76 Oryx Pro
Distro: Pop!_OS 19.10

Issue #1 (mission critical)

Brother MFC-L2750DW

I have a Brother printer/scanner for which I have installed the drivers using the .deb file provided on the Brother site. It's connected via USB. Printing works fine; scanning does not. My husband and I both need the ability to scan for our jobs, so this issue is pretty important to us.

I am using the program Document Scanner (I believe it's one of the GNOME default programs?). When I open the program it says "Searching for Scanners" and then recognizes my scanner, giving the model number and says it's "Ready to Scan". Whenever I attempt to scan, however, whether from the ADF or the flatbed, it says "Unable to connect to scanner". I am not sure how to proceed, and any guidance on this would be greatly appreciated!

Issue #2 (optional)

Hyperkin Duke Wired Xbox Controller

This is an optional issue and not at all one that needs to be solved by any means. A while back my husband got me this because it's my absolute favorite controller of all time (I know, scoff all you want!). It worked fine in Windows, but now that I've shifted over to Linux it has been sitting and gathering dust.

When I plug it in the controller rumbles briefly (which it also did on Windows), but other than that does nothing. No input is accepted. If it's easy to get this up and running in Linux, I'd love to be able to use it, but if it's not that's totally fine. I have another controller I can use, and again, none of this is essential to my work. I just figured since I was asking for help I'd throw this in here too.

If you need any additional information or need me to try any specific things, let me know!

My OG Pixel died last night and while I'm waiting for tech support to get back with me on how I can still use MFA to do my job, I figured I would ask you all how I should proceed with getting a new device. My first impulse is to get a Referb Pixel 2 on Amazon for $99, as I liked my original Pixel, I like having the latest Android version and I like only paying $99 for an older flagship phone. Additionally, I was considering a Pixel 3a as it would presumably last a bit longer and has had good reviews but is three times as much and hasn't devalued nearly as much when used, which is good and bad.

I'm open to anything that's relatively stock Android and still updated, and am curious about iOS, Kaios or other options. Landlines are a hard pass.

It could be positive ("I'm so glad I convinced Management to let us set up for working remotely" or "I'm so happy we tested for a ridiculous setting on scalability testing") or negative ("If you had let me set up the server to [whatever] we would not be in this pickle").

For the past few years I haven't had any speakers connected to my PC due to a lack of space in my room and on my desk. For the most part I have been using a pair of headphones which are great, but they aren't the most comfortable thing when I just want to watch YouTube on my second monitor and keep my ears available for my significant other.

So now I am looking for alternatives to desktop speakers. Right now I am either thinking of:

• Bone Conduction Headphones

• Bose Soundwear

I think the bone conduction headphones would give me a ton of options to use while I am biking and sitting at my desk. The Bose on the other hand have excellent sound quality. A small, discrete speaker bar may also fit my needs if there are any good ones that can be recommended. Any thoughts? Have I missed an audio product that may fit my needs that you could recommend?

due to the looming pandemic forcing everyone to stay inside, I've recently decided to get back into video games. I did a fresh install of windows 10 the other day, and tried to play a few games with my controller. I found that whenever I press the right trigger on my controller, my computer's audio cuts out system-wide immediately and does not come back on until I restart.

The controller is a wired Afterglow for Xbox 360 PL-3702.

Windows 10, version 1903.

I see two audio devices under Sound, Video and Game Controllers in Device Manager: a AMD High Definition Audio Device and a Realtek Audio device.

I've tried updating drivers for my controller and audio controllers.

I've reproduced the issue and collected logs of it following the steps here. If you know how to read these I'd be happy to send you the trace.

Now, I've tried to look at the trace of this in both Windows Performance Analyzer and Windows Media eXperience Analyzer to try and get a better sense of what's causing this. I see a pretty clear event where a bunch of stuff shows up in the visualizer, but I don't know what any of the stack traces that show up mean. This did not occur on my previous install of Windows on the same computer so I suspect it's related to something with some new Windows "gaming" feature I didn't have before.

I'm really at a loss as to where to go from here. It's both perfectly clear and completely mystifying. Any ideas?

Solved!

Thanks to @pseudolobster's post here, I was able to resolve the issue by creating a new user account on the computer. I'm leaving the post up for posterity, in case anyone else is ever searching up this same issue in the future.

My husband is starting to transition to work from home. He is using his personal computer and just yesterday set up a VPN, Microsoft Teams, and Windows' built-in remote desktop so that he can access his work computer. Everything worked smoothly and he was able to finish out his workday from home just fine.

Primary Issue

This morning, upon booting his computer, he cannot access his Start Menu. It is on screen, and it appears clickable, but nothing comes up. Likewise, the search bar in his task bar is present on boot, but upon clicking the start menu for the first time it disappears and does not return. Other basic Windows functionality seems to be broken. Alt-tabbing does not work to switch between windows. System tray icons are present, but right clicking them and selecting an option does nothing. We cannot open taskbar settings or network settings this way, for example.

This might be indicative of a larger breakdown. Even by command line, I can't get to the Windows 10 settings or Windows Update. It seems like all of the "new Windows"-style interfaces won't start (though the old ones, like the Control Panel, do).

We can still open up apps by clicking on the links in his taskbar, and those seem to work fine. I can also get to the run command with Win+R.

He is running Windows 10, and as far as I know, it's fully up-to-date (I can't open Windows Update to check).

Additional Information

In attempting to diagnose this issue, I've come across several others that are potentially related. I don't know if these are relevant and they're not a primary concern at the moment, but I'm including them here in case they help contextualize what's going on.

There seems to be a runaway process that slowly eats up more and more memory over time, as well as a chunk of CPU. Sometimes it's called "Service Host: Windows Push Notifications User Service_#####" and sometimes it's called "Service Host: WpnUserService_#####" with the numbers changing each boot.

Also, in attempting to restart the computer, it sometimes (but not always) pauses with a notification about programs still running, with one of them being "Task Host Window" with the message Task Host is stopping background tasks. (\Microsoft\Windows\Plug and Play\Device Install Reboot Required) Finally, immediately before restarting, it shows an error message from "svchost.exe" which reads The system detected an overrun of a stack-based buffer in this application. This overrun could potentially allow a malicious user to gain control of this application.

Is this potentially a malware/intrusion issue?

Attempted Solutions

I have tried, to no success:

• Rebooting the computer, both via a restart in Windows as well as by holding down the power button
• Signing out and back in to his user account on the computer
• Running sfc /scannow
• Running DISM.exe /Online /Cleanup-image /Restorehealth

Request for Help

I know we have a lot of techy people here, but I also know you are all probably busy with everything that's going on. Nevertheless, if anyone has any guidance or help they could give on this issue, I'd greatly appreciate it.

Also, it's been a while since I've used Windows, but IIRC there's a way of just resetting the whole thing and starting fresh? That's not ideal, but if that's the course of action I need to take, just let me know. Ultimately I just want this to work, by whatever method, so that my husband can be at home and reduce his exposure.

I'm using OBS Studio to create some video tutorials. Nothing complicated, just me talking and demonstrating the steps on my screen.

I essentially just need to slice up these recordings into clips, delete portions of the recordings where I mess up or there are long pauses, and export it all as one video.

I've used Premier in the past but I no longer have it. While I am pretty capable of learning how to use software, I would prefer something that doesn't have a huge learning curve.

I need something that runs on either Windows or Linux and is free. Not "free trial" free, but actually free. Open source would be a plus but not a requirement.

Feel free to recommend your favorite free video editor even if it doesn't meet all of my requirements, as maybe it will help someone else in the future.