All this needs is the political compass overlaid & this is perfect TBH

Everyone I met has heard of Jitsi—guess I should feel blessed about my circle. But that doesn’t mean we should not let these places know there are opportunities to keep that voice data on-premise (which also indirectly helps the privacy of employees). I have chosen jobs for things like this though.

— Edward Snowden

Similarly I learned to properly type (which means using your pinkies) with Dvorak back in 2007. I stuck with it since anything is a gain beyond QWERTY & _ on the home row helps with programming & config.

If you haven’t learned to touch type, you may as well use a layout that is gonna strain you less in the long run.

Very much. Especially if paying means not a subscription & it was never ad-support + inundated with malicious trackers. Too often the proprietary tools I am required to use are clearly tracking me & are by companies with horrible reputations, but this doesn’t have to always be the case.

LinkedIn is one of the platforms I felt I could reasonably delete since I got little to know value out of it (rather it was more of a drain)—& I didn’t have something like family connections to worry about.

Might be true, but is some real bullshit. There are protocols/programs that do work on multiple platform (including not web) with privacy settings turned up. Employers should consider if they want Google listening in on all of their business discussions before forcing its buggy platform on employees. I’ll wait for the one that cries that it has Google Calendar integration, when you don’t need Google for a calendar.

While you are setting up that server for Jitsi, realize its XMPP server can cover your text chat & presence needs too.

I am pretty sure no one at Google tests outside Blink & only gets around to it when there are bug reports

This is LinkedIn isn’t it? This exactly the trash you’d expect from tech bros choosing this as their social media platformboy choice. Reminder: Microsoft owns LinkedIn & you can delete your account today (since 90% of your messages & recruitement is spam/trash).

Mid-2000s Suzuki Forenza. I loved having a hatchback for getting additional storage while not sacrifing fuel efficiency. This part was good on paper, but I had issues with overheating + lack of power + alignment, but the real killer was constantly needing to replace the transmission selector switch—which got me ripped off for quite a while before I know what was wrong & mechanics absolutely took advantage of me if I didn’t say exactly what was wrong. This affected almost everyone that bought the vehicle. I stuck with it for like 4 years, & ditched it for a early-2010s Mitsubishi Lancer Ralliart Hatchback which was nicer in literally every way & had no issues with the vehicle. As a bonus I didn’t have to be yet another Subaru Outback driver meme.

I didn’t have it terribly long tho—I had to sell it to leave the US. I had to sell it to a dealer since I couldn’t find a buyer, & it was kinda rare to find them. Guys at the dealer ran out to gawk at it, one piped a “this is a nice car; why you think you had trouble selling”? “It’s not a Subaru”, I lamented. The rest of the men nodded their heads in agreement with that fake smile of knowing the truth. & now Mitsubishi no longer makes sedans/wagons.

But despite moving from something I loathed to loved & selling prematurely, I am not too sad since being outside the US, having a car is not a requirements where walking, public transport, & a motorbike (want a bicycle) cover my needs while being much cheaper & better for the environment.

Trying to meet users where they are over where you want them to be. For free software or creative commons endeavors, if a proprietary collaboration products (especially if exclusively) like Microsoft GitHub or Discord or Slack or Figma is

• locking issues behind their account + ToS
• ban projects that undermine capital interest (Yuzu, youtube-dl, third-party clients flagged as malicious, constantly breaking API to make building upon difficult)
• blocks a swatch of potential users for US sancations or a local regime
• happily hands off data to feds
• collects gobs of data to either sell and/or use to train AI models they will sell back to us
• Requires userStyles, userScript, filter lists to scrub the ads & social media features to have a worthwhile experience (kids call these “mods” on Discord for some reason)
• uses social media hook tactics to get you to spend more time on the platform
• have bloated clients that tear into your RAM

When there are free software alternatives that fit the bill (& crucially aren’t resource hogs hurting feasibility) or even non-profits running competing so you don’t need to pay, reach for these options. These projects might be less polished, but since they aren’t fighting to profit propped up by investors, this is to be expected? By getting curious users in the space they will report bugs & contribute upstream instead of building “mods” to correct the predatory option. If you have witnessed even one “enshittification” instance, you know this is inevitable so don’t waste your effort propping these up. Choose tools/services that align with your principles instead handwaving them as unimportant—or assuming users are too inept to learn something new. But also, there is a block of folks that are under respresented that already do know how to operate these platforms that are possibly disinfranchized or blocked that you haven’t even accounted for by choosing the corporate option.

I’ve used this for several years. I miss when it was trivial to get scrobbling support on anything. Weirdly despite how portable players now have access to Wi-Fi & Bluetooth tethering, nothing support scrobbling out of the box. Last.fm even used to give good recommendations before it went downhill. You can say there is now value in trying to help ListenBrainz make a new recommendation algorithm with open data, but less folks have been using such platforms in the wake of leaving their data in the hands of Spotify & YouTube.

I mean Matrix was intiated by Israeli intelligence so not unreasonable

One reason for moving to Nix was declarative config so at least that part of my system is a series of Nix files to build into a working setup.

…The rest… let’s just say “needs improvement” & I would like to set up a NAS.

Be wary of sunk cost fallacy. Sometimes you gotta bite the bullet & allow yourself to see it as some wasted money with the opportunity to start over with something with less lock-in or the boost in creativity of now having to work with new constraints.

The thing that grinds my gears

WARNING: I’m not actually a quotation tho my > character says that is what I am for in the specification & if you check my HTML markup I am a <blockquote> which also has a spec saying I must quote a source

Markdown-itis is ruining semantics on the web just ’cause it doesn’t support callouts like a proper lightweight markup syntax for documentation, technical writing, & blogging. It is the wrong tool for these mediums but users forgo caring about semantics for the familar not even understand their tools or their outputs.

Sony is still carrying the torch for flagships

Additionally LineageOS for microG which rolls the microG stuff into the ROM which saves a lot of work/frustration when trying to unGoogle a device. Any device that is officially supported by LineageOS will have builds which can’t be said for many other ROMs.

But not friendliest on IO. No headphone jack. No microSD. No dual SIM.

But you may not run them as root!