I haven’t used it but the Bangle.js 2 looks almost perfect for a cheap, open/hackable GPS smartwatch. I’m always surprised I don’t hear more about it. Leads me to believe it’s not as good as it seems, but very interested to hear if anyone has real life experience of it.

Currently I just stick with my Garmin. I’d prefer something more open but it’s good at what it does and pretty durable.

Reminded me of this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qdVziDruzyk

European here. Germans just think their beer is the best in the world and if you’re not doing it like them, you’re not doing it right.

Don’t get me wrong, the standards Germans apply to their beer production means that it’s rare to get a terrible beer there, but IMO it’s also not that innovative and the range of styles is fairly limited. There is a ton of choice in the US both in terms of breweries and styles. The variation means you get more duds but also more excellent beers.

I suspect the large majority of people who use the Fediverse don’t want to be publicly trackable in this way. It would be fine for me if the people who did stayed on Facebook. To me, it’s not a goal that 100% (or any %) of Facebook users move to the Fediverse. What is important is just that the Fediverse has a critical mass of activity that it doesn’t completely die.

Also, maybe it’s just me (I’d be interested to hear what others think) but I think trying to track down old school or college friends is really something people only want to do for a few years. By the time I hit my mid 20s I didn’t really care anymore. There are people from school I sometimes think about and wonder where they are now, but ultimately, if I never tracked them down and they never tracked me down in the years since, the connection was clearly not that important.

Shouldn’t that be a “oh well, sucks. but a sale is a sale” problem?

“A sale is a sale” works fine when both sides to the transaction are well-informed and acting for themselves. When you are selling assets for someone else’s benefit, you generally have extra obligations to them, because otherwise you don’t really have an incentive to achieve a good price. So courts do generally have some oversight over sale of the assets of a bankrupt estate, to ensure that the trustee is not short-changing creditors just to get the job done quickly.

A complicating factor here is that the Sandy Hook families (who as far as I know are the large majority of the creditors) also supported the sale.

I’m well aware, I just meant that it costs a lot more than other phones of similar quality. Not saying there aren’t good reasons for that.

I don’t think I need more power. The charging and headphone ports don’t work (so need to use wireless charging) and battery life is quite poor. I don’t feel like the phone is too slow or anything so I imagine the FP5 would be plenty of power.

Anyone know how well the Fairphone 5 compares against the Samsung Galaxy S10? I know the specs are pretty public but I don’t follow this stuff that closely so find it difficult to draw comparisons between different chips etc.

My S10 is on its last legs so I think a bit about what I will buy to replace it. I really like the idea of the Fairphone but of course you pay a lot (relatively speaking) for the ethics. One of the worries is that the phone will become unusable in a few years anyway, either because parts are unavailable or because software has become too heavy. The other option I am leaving towards is a second hand Pixel.

I use a lot of free and open source software, and some of the stuff I use a lot I support with donations. Python, Mozilla, FairEmail are examples of software I have donated to. Wikipedia also.

Honestly… I can understand being disappointed with the decision to remove it. But it blows my mind just how worked up people get over it.

This is the publicly owned and funded NHS, not a business.

Coffee, particularly espresso.

I tend to use floating or fullscreen for general browsing but often you have to type something while frequently referring back to something else - for example when programming I will be looking at the documentation. Or maybe debugging something on the command line while looking at your code to see what’s going on. In those circumstances tilling is perfect.

As in, things are being delayed? By how long (ie, when were these features supposed to be released)?

Q4 2023 isn’t far away (how the hell) so it will be interesting to see if they actually release by then. Have been happily using FairEmail for a long time but might check out Thunderbird when it is released.

This page mentions syncing support in TB 114 for desktop but I don’t think it’s there as of 115?

It’s possible there’s a regional or generational gap there. If you’re pushing 110 you probably haven’t worked in 40 years. You could even argue that the ones literally working themselves to death are the very ones paying for the older generation’s happy carefree lifestyle.

The man with the gun to his head doesn’t have much of a choice if he wants to live. You, though, have a choice between criticising and defending the man with the gun, and you’re choosing to defend him.

Proton and Tutanota are the most privacy-focused ones, offering zero-access encryption. The flipside is that they are a bit more expensive and less easy to use with third party email clients.

There are a number of alternatives like mailbox.org, Posteo and Fastmail which are cheaper, and less private than the above two but arguably still better for privacy than Gmail (in that their whole business model isn’t built off capturing and monetising your data).

Personally I use mailbox.org and have no complaints. I use it with third party clients like Thunderbird for desktop and FairEmail for Android so can’t speak to how good their web UI is.

I also strongly recommend getting your own domain name to use with your email. It means if you ever want to switch providers in future you won’t need to change your email address.

It helps if you can treat it as a hobby. My partner’s hobby is music, which is a perfectly sensible thing to do in one’s spare time. I always feel a bit weird when people ask me what I do in my own spare time and my answer is basically fixing my shit, then pushing it just hard enough that it breaks again.

To your question, the unfortunate reality is that those of us who care about privacy and software freedom are a small minority. Why overhaul your business model to suit us when they can continue to milk every other consumer out there who frankly doesn’t give a shit?

Phones are, of course, the worst of all for this. People do great work developing FOSS solutions but it is an uphill struggle and I worry that the hill is getting steeper.

They have since announced that it will be capped at 0.1% of a bank’s assets: https://edition.cnn.com/2023/08/09/business/italy-bank-windfall-tax-change/index.html

Nobody’s sending you to jail for using WhatsApp.