Just a stranger trying things.

  • 3 Posts
  • 89 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
Cake day: July 16th, 2023
  • The HobbyisttoOpen Source@lemmy.ml•The major Organic Maps June update
    79•3 days ago

    My number one gripe with organic maps is how fragile the search is. If you don’t write it exactly right, you get no or irrelevant results. Also, it seems to have no clue of what is popular and what people expect when they search for something. I’m not talking about personalized results but for example the following: searching for “Eiffel”, leads me to minor roads, restaurants and all kinds of results unrelated to the Eiffel tower. This is what is troubling me the most.

  • The HobbyisttoPrivacy@lemmy.ml•Why do so many people still hate GrapheneOS?
    8•21 days ago

    It’s unfortunate the grapheneos community has a bad reputation, but I think the fact that Daniel stepped down and that the project is very committed and ticking all my personal boxes (and more) really keeps me devoted. I wish there were more options of phones, but I have no issue personally with it requiring google pixels as they have convinced me with what seems like rational and well supported arguments. I do wonder if as someone else mentioned, it may be interesting to have a GOS-light for other phones, just to give them a chance to get into GOS and try it out before getting a dedicated phone. It feels like a high barrier to entry, and a limited version may still be better than anything else available to those people? Just a thought.

  • The HobbyisttoOpen Source@lemmy.ml•Is there any closed source android app that you wish had a good open source alternative?
    9•22 days ago

    I’m sorry, I don’t have any specific suggestions for you, but I am wondering: is there no open source app you yourself wish existed because you would need it?

    Working on an open source app because some else (and not you) needs it, is not a good way of staying engaged and caring about the solution. Being the user and target of a project yourself is usually a much netter way of caring and proposing something tailored to at least one individual, maybe more.

    Of course, if you are looking for a programming exercise, go for it, but then you don’t need ideas, you can reimplement something which already exists, perhaps which you like, but in your own way. But if you want to have an impact in the open source, it starts by needing something which you don’t really find anywhere and taking matter in your own hands to fix it :) this is not meant to disincentivize you, quite the opposite! I hope you stay attentive to your digital ecosystem to see which holes can be plugged :)

    I maintain a private list of ideas I just think of as I go about my day, of things I would like to write/create for myself and while I won’t be going through with all of them, I hope to be able to pick up one or several of them whenever I have time. I can through some ideas here, not as a hint that you should do it (I’ll probably do them myself regardless), but just to inspire you, maybe:

    • I am subscribed to a teachable program which has no app and the program is just static information. I want to pull it all and represent it to me offline, not requiring internet to manage my progress. It is also intended to help me archive what I paid for and not depend on the goodwill of teachables to allow me to continue access the resource.
    • an RSS feed manager which uses embeddings to automatically organise the content by topic rather than by source.
    • an anki plugin to highlight content in the browser based on words from anki that I have and have not learned, to improve my language learning and reading ability.

    I have a few more, but this should give you some hints, I hope! Good luck!

  • The HobbyisttoPrivacy@lemmy.ml•Pixel 8A and Grapheneos
    2•1 month ago

    Congratulations on your first steps in GrapheneOS!

    In order to best help you and give relevant suggestions, we need more information of who you are trying to be private from.

    If your threat model is particularly sophisticated, it may be recommended that you do not use a sim card, or at least never when your phone is at home. Instead, exclusively rely on WiFi. It may also involve desoldering your microphone and camera and only make calls using an earpiece.

    These are not recommendations, but simply examples of how far one can go with respect to their threat model. If you would rather want to avoid “regular” spying by google, Facebook and the likes, you may be better off selecting a private DNS (for example Mullvad’s extended DNS which comes with social media filtering https://mullvad.net/en/help/dns-over-https-and-dns-over-tls ). You would need to make sure you do not install Google services (nor microg) and especially no google apps.

    Much more can be said, but we would need specific information about your case to provide better guidance.

    EDIT: I do not want to give the impression that GrapheneOS does not make a good job in improving your situation already. They do! But to do more you would need to justify it with your threat model, that’s what I’m getting at.

  • The HobbyisttoLinux@lemmy.ml•Any way to autologin with LUKS encrypted boot drive?
    5•2 months ago

    There is a way to place the secret file (corresponding to the password) on a dedicated USB stick and have a script attempt to Mount it at boot to unlock the partition. If the USB stick is not found, it will revert to the password prompt. Perhaps this is the best of both?

    Make sure not to leave the USB stick plugged in, but rather only take it and and plug it in to boot then safely store it once booted, otherwise you are probably defeating the purpose of having an encrypted partition to begin with.

    I’ll add a link to read more about it shortly.

    Edit: here is one example to set it up (including to auto-decrypt ZFS) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7xOLxCwdi-I

  • The HobbyisttoPrivacy@lemmy.ml•Signal Names
    10•2 months ago

    I was wondering, does anyone know whether usernames are single use? As they can be created and disposed of at will, it feels like a loophole for phishing if someone else can claim a “no longer in use” username? I’m talking about someone using someone else’s previous username.

  • The HobbyisttoLinux@lemmy.ml•What do you use Waydroid for?
    54•2 months ago

    Well yes, but also no.

    Whenever you search for a solution to your problem, it stems from the realization that something is a problem. But sometimes, you have a thing which has been done for a longtime, it was a problem with no solution and you’ve had to accept that. How would you determine one day that things can be done differently and better without constantly reevaluating everything? It’s not realistic.

    In my view, it is a perfectly reasonable question to ask “what problem does waydroid solve?” To figure out if you have that issue and you didn’t know of this solution.

    Sorry, just my 2 cents.