Sea of Tranquility

I like talking about sci-fi, space, robotics, linux, anti-fascism and democratic socialism. 🇩🇪☮️

(SeaOfTranquility on libera.chat)

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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 14th, 2023

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  • Before the cruel events on October 7th and the insane devastation that followed, I didn’t realize how deeply messed up the western idea of foreign policy in the Middle East really is. Before October 7th, I knew about colonialism, I knew about the war on terror and its devastating consequences for countries in that region. I knew about things like the insane death toll in the Mediterranean Sea, where innocent people in need are just getting systematically crushed by the EU’s border apparatus and the right-wing idea of “securing borders” and “not letting the bad ones in”. I knew about it and understood it as inhumane right-wing or neoliberal ideas that align with the interests of those who can really profit from it. The oil industry, weapons manufacturers, etc… and the politicians who are in their pockets or benefit from spreading fear and hate.

    For me, these topics were always something that the progressive left and even many liberal or apolitical people can understand as senseless cruelty. Seeing the news coverage after October 7th and diving deeper into the details of that conflict, I was absolutely dumbfounded, that even some of the progressive news-outlets I follow are avoiding talking about Israels war crimes while repeating the propaganda of Zionist organizations or the Israeli state. My country has defended Israels actions in the international court, and there are quite a few people agreeing with that decision. Quite a few people that I would otherwise consider reasonable and knowledgeable. I have read newspapers that hold themselves to “high journalistic standards” who call peaceful student groups antisemitic and Nazi-aligned. Groups that were advocating for humanity, a ceasefire and a one-state-solution, and have now shut down any kind of public protest because of the hate that came their way.

    Not far from where I live, there was a concentration camp and less than a hundred years ago my country had a fascist tyrant as its leader and plenty of accomplices who helped him with his ethnic cleansing campaign. We are not that far removed from this fascism, from treating people with other ethnic backgrounds like something you can just exploit to drown out in the Mediterranean Sea. From supporting the idea of a pure religious ethnostate having the right to slaughter “uncivilized” people that are in the way. From being ignorant enough to whitewash those who fought against apartheid while jailing those who are opposing it now.




  • is the GCam app noticeably better than a stock camera app? What sorts of things would it do better?

    As I mentioned in my first comment: Sometimes, the picture quality is decent, but often times it’s lacking” when it comes to the ROM camera app. How well a camera does, depends on the app (which is supplied by the ROM) and the driver (usually supplied by the manufacturer). The quality can, therefore, vary from device to device. A few years ago I would’ve definitely said that GCam is a step above ROM camera apps, but in more and more cases, those have become almost comparable in quality. One aspect where GCam still actually makes a difference is long exposure modes (low light and night photography) as well as offering special modes like panorama or photo-sphere.

    The last I checked, the Pixels had excellent sensors but had some camera software issues that I believe were eventually resolved. I’m hoping that isn’t an issue if I’m just using a basic OS.

    From my experience, older oneplus devices (e.g. oneplus 7/oneplus 7 pro) and pixel devices (pixel 5 and upwards) have excellent community support, so you should be golden.


  • For me, the key aspects for selecting the right hardware are the camera and the comunity support. All the other capabillities you listed are available on any phone that has a relatively recent ROM available.

    Let’s start with the camera quality: If you want to use your phone without GSF or microG, you could use the camera app that comes with the ROM you flashed. Sometimes, the picture quallity is decent, but often times its lacking. Instead, I would recommend using a modded GCam App together with fake GSF. This way, you can use googles powerful camera app without sacrificing your privacy. So when I’m looking for hardware, I always check, if there is a modded GCam version available.

    Aside from that, I would check if there are recent stable versions of the ROM I want, available for the hardware. The last thing I would check is, how active and how big the modding community for that device is. If you can’t find a lot of support on XDA, it’s probably not the best hardware choice to begin with.

    When it comes to software, there are a lot of privacy-friendly replacements to choose from, but here is my setup:

    EDIT: GCam and FUTO are not Open Source, but they are free and don’t collect or require any user data


  • As a lemmy client, I would add Eternity (APGL-3.0).

    For latex documents I would highly recommend Overleaf (APGL-3.0). You can selfhost it on an old PC or raspberry pi and have crossplatform access on all your devices

    A better alternative to F-Droid would be Neo Store (GPL-3.0) which has a more modern design and is less broken in general.

    For apps that are only available as github releases (e.g. hypeBard) I would recommend obtainium (GPL-3.0) which automates the update process.

    My personal preference for calculator apps is NCalcLibre (GPL-3.0) which has a slightly different set of features than your suggestion but has a more structured UI imo.

    Text Tools Pro (Apache-2.0) is another awesome tool that can improve your typing experience dramatically.

    If you have a degoogled device you might want to install FMD (GPL-3.0) in case you lose it.

    For rooted devices, I would also add BCR (GPL-3.0) + BCR-GUI (GPL-3.0) to keep a record of important calls.

    Another app that is especially useful on rooted devices is AdAway (GPL-3.0) which is a system-wide ad blocker that doesn’t require any resources.


  • Maybe not exactly what you are looking for, but you could use a website archiving solution to store one of those online man-page collections. I know it sounds like overkill, but it’s actually easy to setup and can be used for all kinds of other things as well. For instance, I have a local docker container running SOSSE for C++ and Python references and for all kind of libraries and APIs I use for software development. This way I have everything I need on my laptop and can work anywhere, even if there is no network connection.







  • Nextcloud AIO is just a link (just the local IP+port) to the maintenance interface of my NC installation. The officially supported docker image of Nextcloud (link here) has a built-in maintenance interface which allows you to update the installation and all dependencies.

    Because Nextcloud is more complicated to maintain (especially when you have a lot of apps installed), I have split all that functionality across multiple smaller services. Baikal, WebDAV, Vaultwarden and Freshrss are technically not needed if I use Nextcloud apps, but all of those services are easily configurable as docker containers and if one of them fails, none of the others are affected. If I use Nextcloud for everything and treat it as a monolithic service, I would lose all functionality if the service fails. Because of that, I only use Nextcloud’s core functionality, which is syncing files across devices and automatically uploading all the pictures I take with my phone. For everything else, I have a dedicated service that is easier to set up and maintain.






  • I’m going to sound cynical here so if you don’t want to be confronted with negative content, please skip this one…

    spoiler

    Did I just read an ad for “Mike’s Hard Lemonade co.” and Brand Studio Inc.? The “experiment” they made is not scientific and it doesn’t have to exist to begin with. The point about happiness and media consumption was already researched seriously (which is also mentioned in this article).

    So why does this article have to have a bright yellow background and spinning lemonades on the side and mentions a specific brand multiple times? Is it relevant to the “Good News Effect” or media consumption patterns? No… it’s an ad that uses scientific work and the topic of happiness to boost a brand’s public perception. Again… maybe it’s just me… but having a discussion about happiness and media consumption should not be based on a Mike’s Hard ad campaign imo.


  • I’ve heard that a lot of people have trouble with updating and maintaining nextcloud but I personally never had those issues and my instance is running for over 5 years now. I would agree with other people here that something like docker makes everything easier. I personally followed this guide with a custom dockerfile that looks something like this. Once you have a functional docker image and a docker-compose file, updating your instance is as easy as typing:

    docker compose stop
    docker compose rm -f
    docker compose build --pull
    docker compose up -d
    

    If you chose to go down that route as well, you might want to change the config files in your docker image since some of the values might not suit your instance. I, for example, have added the following to the PHP config:

    RUN sed -i "s/\(opcache\.interned_strings_buffer*=*\).*/\148/" /usr/local/etc/php/conf.d/opcache-recommended.ini
    RUN sed -i "s/\(opcache\.memory_consumption*=*\).*/\1256/" /usr/local/etc/php/conf.d/opcache-recommended.ini