Arthur Schiwon 🌍🇪🇺 @blizzz@layer8.space

This is our regular shout-out / reminder to use an encrypted password manager!

We love KeePassXC! But any is better than none!

Create passwords that are impossible to remember because they are so strong and unique for every account.

https://www.keepassxc.org

Also store any of your secrets in there, not just passwords.

Use #Nextcloud or another sync tool to keep your password database connected to each of your systems.

#infosec #keepassxc #security #privacy

Say 👋 to Nextcloud Hub, a big change for Nextcloud!
🗄 Files - workspaces, file locking
🤖 Flow - automates boring tasks
📝 Built in office
📅 Calendar 2.0: Talk meetings, busy view
📩 Mail 1.0 recognizes itineraries
🗣 Talk brings replies
And much more!
https://nextcloud.com/blog/the-new-standard-in-on-premises-team-collaboration-nextcloud-hub/

Nextcloud Hub wächst über Datei-Sharing hinaus und enthält jetzt alle empfohlenen Apps, auch OnlyOffice zum Öffnen von Dokumenten.
Nextcloud Hub: Version 18 der Nextcloud wird zur ausgewachsenen Groupware
#Collaboration #Groupware #Nextcloud #Nextcloud18

Holly crap! We just saw presentation from @nextcloud on new version of #nextcloud. We're super excited and we'll be testing new release asap. Lots of new features! Thanks for awesome work!

#Nextcloud Calendar 2.0 is out. 😃
https://github.com/nextcloud/calendar/releases/tag/v2.0.0

This the result of a one year and a half work on an AngularJS app to VueJS (with common #Nextcloud components). Apart from the rewrite, there's a few things improved and even new features, but @nextcloud will probably post about them.

Mozilla just laid off 70 fantastic people. If you can help them - open positions, offering helpful conversations and references, anything else - please say so.

Use #MozillaLifeboat as an umbrella tag for easy finding. (It's already flowing on the birdsite.)

If you've been affected, I'm happy to chat directly. Also have some open positions (see rest of this thread). But doesn't have to be today - take time to recover if you can.

Most of all: thank you folks for making the web better.

So, SourceHut is not hosted in anyone's cloud. I own all of the hardware outright and colocate most of it in a local datacenter.

I just built a new server for git.sr.ht, and boy is she a beat. It cost me about $5.5K as a one-time upfront cost, and now I just pay for power, bandwidth, and space, which runs about $650/mo for *all* of my servers (10+).

Ran back of the napkin numbers with AWS's price estimator for a server of equivalent specs, and without even considering bandwidth usage it'd cost me almost TEN GRAND PER MONTH to host JUST that server alone on AWS.

AWS is how techbro startups pile up and BURN their investor money.

Ich bin ja echt selten auf Twitter und ich bin kein Fan aller Beteiligten, aber irgendwie ist das: WITZIG!

Dear IETF: Are you fucking kidding me?
To get an RFC .txt file I must allow Cloudflare and Google tracking?

Are you serious? This is wrong on all OSI layers!

#WhereIsMySurprisedFace #Brexit „Boris Johnson refuses to grant Scotland powers to hold independence vote“ https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2020/jan/14/boris-johnson-refuses-to-grant-scotland-powers-to-hold-independence-vote?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf

So, frische Lage:

- Iran vs USA (inkl. Feedback)
- Connewitz
- Windkraft-Misere
- #BNDG BND Gesetz
- Giffey ihr Mann
- #12062020 Olympia
- Twitterverbot für Behörden
- Feedback Finanztransaktionssteuer

https://plnk.to/lage

Dank allen, die uns bei der Tour besucht haben!

Beim zentralen IT-Dienstleister der TU Berlin (ZECM) sind diverse #Stellen mit unterschiedlichen Qualifikationen zu besetzen https://www.campusmanagement.tu-berlin.de/menue/ueber_uns/stellenangebote/ Einige auch bei mir in der Abteilung. Über neue Kolleg*innen würden wir uns sehr freuen!

Jugenddelinquenz erledigt sich meist von alleine. Studie veröffentlicht.

https://www.morgenpost.de/vermischtes/article228117627/Jugend-Kriminalitaet-erledigt-sich-oft-von-allein.html

#Servicetoot und #SaveTheDate Am 21. März 2020 ist #Indiebookday! Geht am 21.03.2020 in einen Buchladen Eurer Wahl und kauft Euch ein #Buch. Irgendeines, das Ihr sowieso gerade haben möchtet (oder das erste zur Teilnahme an der #Indiebookchallenge). Wichtig ist nur: Es sollte aus einem unabhängigen/kleinen/Indie-Verlag stammen. #indieauthor

So I was recently asked why I prefer to use free and open source software over more conventional and popular proprietary software and services.

A few years ago I was an avid Google user. I was deeply embedded in the Google ecosystem and used their products everywhere. I used Gmail for email, Google Calendar and Contacts for PIM, YouTube for entertainment, Google Newsstand for news, Android for mobile, and Chrome as my web browser.

I would upload all of my family photos to Google Photos and all of my personal documents to Google Drive (which were all in Google Docs format). I used Google Domains to register my domain names for websites where I would keep track of my users using Google Analytics and monetize them using Google AdSense.

I used Google Hangouts (one of Google’s previous messaging plays) to communicate with friends and family and Google Wallet (with debit card) to buy things online and in-store.

My home is covered with Google Homes (1 in my office, 1 in my bedroom, 1 in the main living area) which I would use to play music on my Google Play Music subscription and podcasts from Google Podcasts.

I have easily invested thousands of dollars into my Google account to buy movies, TV shows, apps, and Google hardware devices. This was truly the Google life.

Then one day, I received an email from Google that changed everything.

“Your account has been suspended”

Just the thing you want to wake up to in the morning. An email from Google saying that your account has been suspended due to a perceived Terms of Use violation. No prior warning. No appeals process. No number to call. Trying to sign in to your Google account yields an error and all of your connected devices are signed out. All of your Google data, your photos, emails, contacts, calendars, purchased movies and TV shows. All gone.

I nearly had a heart attack, until I saw that the Google account that had been suspended was in fact not my main personal Google account, but a throwaway Gmail account that I created years prior for a project. I hadn’t touched the other account since creation and forgot it existed. Apparently my personal Gmail was listed as the recovery address for the throwaway account and that’s why I received the termination email.

Although I was able to breathe a sigh of relief this time, the email was wake up call. I was forced to critically reevaluate my dependence on a single company for all the tech products and services in my life.

I found myself to be a frog in a heating pot of water and I made the decision that I was going to jump out.

Leaving Google

Today there are plenty of lists on the internet providing alternatives to Google services such as this and this. Although the “DeGoogle” movement was still in its infancy when I was making the move.

The first Google service I decided to drop was Gmail, the heart of my online identity. I migrated to Fastmail with my own domain in case I needed to move again (hint: glad I did, now I self host my email). Fastmail also provided calendar and contacts solutions so that took care of leaving Google Calendar and Contacts.

Here are some other alternatives that I moved to:

Gmail → Fastmail → Self-hosted (via Cloudron)
Google Contacts → Fastmail → Nextcloud Contacts
Google Calendar → Fastmail → Nextcloud Calendar
Google Search → Bing → DuckDuckGo
Google Maps → Bing Maps → OpenStreetMaps and OsmAnd
Google Analytics → Matomo Analytics
Google Drive → Nextcloud Files
Google Photos → Nextcloud Files/Gallery
Google Docs → Collabora Office (Nextcloud integration) and LibreOffice
Google Play Music → Spotify / Plex → Spotify / Jellyfin
Google Play Movies/TV → Plex → Jellyfin
Google Play Audiobooks/Books → Audible/Kindle
Google Play Store (apps) → F-Droid / Aurora Store
Google Android → Lineage OS → Ubuntu Touch on PinePhone (coming soon?)
Google’s Android Apps → Simple Mobile Tools
Google Chrome → Mozilla Firefox
Google Domains → Hover
Google Hangouts → Matrix and Nextcloud Talk
Google Allo → Signal
Google Podcasts → PocketCasts → AntennaPod
Google Newsstand → RSS
Google Wallet → PayPal and Cash App

Migrating away from Google was not a fast or easy process. It took years to get where I am now and there are still several Google services that I depend on: YouTube and Google Home.

Eventually, my Google Home’s will grow old and become unsupported at which point hopefully the Mycroft devices have matured and become available for purchase. YouTube may never be replaced (although I do hope for projects like PeerTube to succeed) but I find the compromise of using only one or two Google services to be acceptable.

At this point losing my Google account due to a mistake in their machine learning would largely be inconsequential and my focus has shifted to leaving Amazon which I use for most of my shopping and cloud services.

The reason that I moved to mostly FOSS applications is that it seems to be the only software ecosystem where everything works seamlessly together and I don’t have to cede control to any single company. Alternatively I could have simply split my service usage up evenly across Google, Microsoft, Amazon, and Apple but I don’t feel that they would have worked as nicely together.

Overall I’m very happy with the open source ecosystem. I use Ubuntu with KDE on all of my computers and Android (no GApps) on my mobile phone. I’ve ordered the PinePhone “Brave Heart” and hope to one day be able to use it or one of its successors as a daily driver with Ubuntu Touch or Plasma Mobile.

I don’t want to give the impression that I exclusively use open source software either, I do use a number of proprietary apps including: Sublime Text, Typora, and Cloudron.

https://www.kylepiira.com/2020/01/09/why-i-quit-google/