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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: June 12th, 2023

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  • I run e/OS on a FP5. I ran e/OS on a Essential PH-1 before and going back to a phone with Google installed just didn’t sit right with me. I did not feel like I could trust the device even after trying to toggle as much of the creepy spying off. As if there’s still someone probably looking over your shoulder because you configured something wrong.

    It is not perfect, but it is easy to use and full-featured. All regular apps feel great and battery life is good. I still use specific Google services (such as the calendar for work) but no specific Google apps. I guess Maps is the biggest challenge now but alternatives are good enough to get around with.

    You can run Android apps. Not sure about payed Android apps. I try to install FOSS apps through the integrated f-droid store if they’re available there. Installing app store apps sometimes fails because Google blocked the installer. I could install everything so far when needed (including banking apps and specific apps for the vacuum cleaner and such). Sometimes the Android app store apps don’t update for a while and I don’t notice.

    I don’t use Murena’s services but self-host Nextcloud. Based on the information they send I think they’re doing a great job for their size.

    I flashed the FP5 myself with a beta of e/OS when it was just out because the other phone was broken and (again) I did not feel right with the spying demon in my pocket with native Android. You could flash your device too.

    It’s comfortable on this side. If you have further specific questions, shoot.



  • I don’t think Xerox invented the computer mouse. It was first drawn out by Douglass Engelbart and presented to the public in the 1968 presentation “Augmenting the Human Intellect” (you can watch it on the present day, it was recorded).

    It was my understanding (which I did not verify) that this was picked up by Xerox and others and that windowing systems evolved from there on with Xerox leading towards Desktop Publishing.





  • Exactly. The Semantic Web is broader than Solid but Solid is great for personal apps.

    Say you buy a smartphone. The specifications of the smartphone likely belong elsewhere than in a Solid Personal Online Datastore, but they can be pulled in from semantic data on the product website. Your own proof of purchase is a great candidate for a Solid POD, as is the trace of any repairs made to it.

    These technologies are great to cross the barriers between applications. If we’d embrace this, it would be trivial to find the screen protector matching your exact smartphone because we’d have an identifier to discover its type and specifications. Heck, any product search would be easier if you could combine sources and compare with what you already have.

    The sharing tech exists. Building apps works also. Interpreting the information without building a dedicated interface seems lacking for laymen.


  • IPFS would replace Content Delivery Networks in present day.

    It would also allow you to host software and other content from your own network again without the constraints modern Internet Service Providers pose on you to limit your self-hosting capabilities.

    If applications are built for it, it could serve as live storage for your applications too.

    We ran ipf-search. In one of the experiments we could show that a distributed search index on ipfs-search, accessible through JavaScript is likely feasible with the necessary research. Parts of the index would automatically be hosted by clients who used the index thus creating a fairly resilient system.

    Too bad IPFS couldn’t get over the technical hurdles of limiting connection setup time. We could get a fast (ElasticSearch based) index running and hosted over common web technologies, but fetching content from IPFS directly was generally rather slow.



  • To be honest, I didn’t know by heart what we stated exactly. It says “Open source”. When we ask we may well say “like a GitHub handle”.

    For people without much experience it can all be a bit daunting. They’ll know about GitHub and it helps them identify what we’re hoping to see. By now I expect links to open source work in a CV due to the nature of our company but it’s not a requirement.

    It’s a balancing act in getting the right hints in a vacancy for people in the know and providing enough info for people who don’t know yet.

    GitHub wasn’t all that bad years ago and it’s easy seeing this find their way in HR forms and taking as long to be removed again. I certainly wouldn’t shun entering a CodeBerg/GitLab/selfhosted url in a form where I should enter a GitHub handle.




  • I write my notes in org-mode. It’s supported in many editors in a basic form, letting you add code snippets etc in an unobtrusive way. Using a well thought out format helps you in the long run.

    I use this in Emacs, through which it lets me refer to emails, execute code snippets, attach related files, fetch content on/from remote servers, send off the debug session as an html email, … Support will depend on your editor but even as raw text it works.

    I don’t use something specific to make non-code repeatable as you suggest here, but you could embed a test language in an org code block.

    The syntax is straight-forward and exports to multiple external formats exist (eg: html).