Kyle Piira @kyle@piira.org

NextDock 2 is a cool project being crowdfunded right now. Basically it is a laptop with no onboard CPU, memory, or disk but it can be connected to any device that offers HDMI out to be used as a monitor (Android Phone, Raspberry Pi, Chromecast, etc.).

If you've ever wanted a portable monitor with built in keyboard and a huge battery then you might wanna check this out.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/nexcomputer/nexdock-2

#nextdock #crowdfunding #technology #raspberrypi #convergence

I have to say that I am seriously impressed with the F-Droid Repomaker utility. It's well-designed and easy to use.

#foss #fdroid

https://f-droid.org/en/tutorials/create-repo/

I recently found out about "Participatory budgeting" which is a democratic way of creating a national budget. Basically, each year when you pay your tax bill you decide how much money you personally will allocate to various government programs. For example, if you pay $100 in taxes you could choose to spend $15 on Military, $30 on Social Security, $20 paying down the national debt, etc.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Participatory_budgeting

I wonder if it would be too harsh to require users to not use passwords seen on the Have I Been Pwned password database. I'm sure it would be pretty effective at making people add a few extra numbers to the end of their password.

#passwords #passwordsecurity #security #programming

Well today was my first time trying the Uber PWA instead of the full Android app. The map was a little laggy and only updated about one every 30 second, but other than that I found it a perfectly acceptable experience. For now, I think I'm going to continue using it.

#pwa

A Pithon

#jokes #programming

I've decided to switch over to FastMail since GSuite is raising their prices next month.

Their SMTP migration tool worked well for moving all of my emails, and I was able to import my Google Calendars/Contacts.

Everything is set up and seems to be working with my email client (Mailspring) and Kontact for CalDav/CardDav. I also got myself DAVx⁵ for my Android phone, which works nicely.

https://www.fastmail.com
https://getmailspring.com/
https://www.davx5.com/

#technology #email #fastmail

A lot of people fear fragmentation of online streaming services, but really isn't this the best we could hope for? It's like Cable TV but where you pay for channels individually and each channel has complete control over its own viewing experience on its own website with no middlemen except for ISPs.

Apparently Epic Games is planning on releasing an Android app store. Personally, I think this is great news and highlights the benefits of an open platform like Android.

Kinda funny that this is happening at the same time as Apple getting into hot water with the EU over not allowing other app stores on iOS.

#Android #EpicGames #gaming #technology

Spotify created a web page protesting Apple using the App Store to give its own apps an unfair advantage.

https://www.timetoplayfair.com/timeline/

#spotify #apple #technology #tech

Alright well I have given up trying to use Firefox on Android for PWA. It's just unusable. Out of the 3 PWAs I tried only one works correctly. I tried loading Google Maps but it just hangs and then crashes after a few seconds.

I'm going to keep using Firefox for mobile browsing but I'm reinstalling Chrome for PWAs.

#firefox #pwa #webdev

I've been trying to get progressive web apps to work on my phone. Have got to say Chrome is way ahead of Firefox in this department.

The Firefox PWA implementation is just full of bugs. For example, I'm trying to use the Google Maps PWA but it won't load unless I also open the full Google Maps website in Firefox at the same time. I was also trying to use the Uber PWA but it can't access location services even if I grant it the permission.

All of this works fine in the Chrome implementation.

So I upgraded to LineageOS 16 on my OnePlus 3. So far I am rather unimpressed. It's not LineageOS's fault but more stock Android. They replaced the old app switcher with this weird iPhone knock off UI. Also, there are now these useless system notifications which cannot be dismissed or disabled without root.

#Android #LinageOS #OnePlus

Apparently some company I've never heard of ("Verifications.io") had my email and other details and left them in a publicly available internet facing MongoDB instance.

Now almost a billion people have had their info leaked out onto the internet.

Great job guys.

#security #privacy #securitythroughobscurity

I've decided that I'm going to switch from Grammarly to LanguageTool as my full-time grammar checker.

Not only is LanguageTool open source, but it supports more of the software I use like LibreOffice and Firefox.

https://languagetool.org/

#opensource #foss

Visual bug in the Plasma screen brightness indicator.

#kde

The Southwest Airlines boarding system is very strange. They line you up so that every passenger is in order according to a number on your boarding pass. Then you board the plane and pick whatever seat you want.

Personally, I'm not sure how I feel about it. I think maybe it's more comforting to just have an assigned seat so I where I'll sit before boarding.

Gotta say I've been upgrading all of my Syncthing installs to v1.1.0 and it's a big improvement. Syncing happens way faster now.

Check out pacapt which is a wrapper for various Linux package managers (pacman, zypper, yum, etc) that allows you to use apt syntax.

https://github.com/icy/pacapt

This reddit comment is adorable. I love it.

#machinelearning #programming

https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/aycifx/giphy_opensources_their_celebrity_detection_deep/ei0zl7k/