The reason why we as consumers get held to ransom by Big Tech is because they are the one's who create walled gardens of their apps to ensure it is very difficult to leave their service and to maintain any communication with your friends or family who stay behind. They count on that sticky network effect to hold you in place.

The world was not always like this, as we see with e-mail where any app can e-mail any other app. Neither was messaging as it was also once open.

So what we need is a protocol to be broadly supported that will connect anyone to any other app supporting that open protocol, but which allows end-to-end encryption. We need apps to support it, just like Hubzilla which built in a number of plugins to allow it to communicate with Diaspora, XMPP, Fediverse, etc all from one place.

What do we do about Big Tech like Facebook, Twitter, Google, Microsoft? Well either they must be mandated by law to build in this protocol support, or we as consumers must start voting with our choices and not make use of services that are walled gardens. Our future lies in an open interoperable Internet offering privacy. The future cannot be walled gardens separating us all.

From the link below the key columns are the License (how open is it for anyone to use without cost?) and End-To-End Encryption (can I use it privately?). From these requirements we can see that the following protocols could be suitable to consider: * Bitmessage (Desktop P2) * Briar (P2) but Android only * Echo * Jami (Desktop and Mobile P2P) * Matrix (Desktop and Mobile Federated Client-Server) * Ricochet (Desktop P2P) * Signal (Centralised Desktop and Mobile) * SIMPLE (more phones with SIP?) * Tox (Desktop and Mobile P2P) * XMPP (Desktop and Mobile Decentralized Client-Server)

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_instant_messaging_protocols

#technology #instantmessengers #interoprability #bigtech #privacy

I must say I have messed up my Grub twice on Manjaro Linux and have learnt to just take a deep breath, go grab some coffee, and get on with figuring out the repair. I've never lost any data and both times it was my own stupidity, and usually related to writing a Grub change to /dev/sda where actually my boot drive is /dev/sdb and that is where my Grub is supposed to write to.

So if you still panic (or have never had a Grub issue and don't know what panic is) then this is a good guide to read through and keep for that future event.

See https://www.addictivetips.com/ubuntu-linux-tips/ubuntu-grub-repair-guide/

#technology #linux #tips #opensource #grub

Google Chrome 88 (and newer) has made hardware accelerated video decoding available on Linux, but it's not enabled by default. Google Chrome is not the only Chromium-based web browser to support hardware acceleration on Linux though. This article explains how to enable hardware-accelerated video decoding in Google Chrome, Brave, Vivaldi and Opera web browsers running on Debian, Ubuntu, Pop!_OS or Linux Mint (Xorg only).

Using hardware-accelerated video decode in your web browser should result in using less CPU usage (and thus, less battery draining) when playing online videos.

See https://www.linuxuprising.com/2021/01/how-to-enable-hardware-accelerated.html

#technology #linux #browsers #tips

The PyGTK3 application sits in the tray, waiting for you to type, and as soon as you start typing it mutes your microphone. The Hushboard microphone icon displayed as a tray/appindicator changes depending on your microphone state: enabled or muted. The tray also allows you to pause Hushboard and quit the application.

I'm going to try this out as my mechanical keyboard is especially loud when typing. It's working fine on Manjaro Linux for me and I see there is a Snap install too.

See https://www.linuxuprising.com/2021/01/hushboard-mutes-your-microphone-while.html

#technology #linux #opensource #audio #mute

Naïve Bayes is a classification technique that serves as the basis for implementing several classifier modeling algorithms. Naïve Bayes-based classifiers are considered some of the simplest, fastest, and easiest-to-use machine learning techniques, yet are still effective for real-world applications.

Naïve Bayes is based on Bayes' theorem, formulated by 18th-century statistician Thomas Bayes. This theorem assesses the probability that an event will occur based on conditions related to the event. For example, an individual with Parkinson's disease typically has voice variations; hence such symptoms are considered related to the prediction of a Parkinson's diagnosis. The original Bayes' theorem provides a method to determine the probability of a target event, and the Naïve variant extends and simplifies this method.

This code and project will be of interest to any Python (or even other) programmers wanting to go to the next level in terms of building machine learning predictability into their applications.

See https://opensource.com/article/21/1/machine-learning-python

#technology #machinelearning #python #programming #predictions

Debuggers are essential for locating bugs in programs. There is a plethora of robust Linux debuggers that make it easy to find weak points in your applications. MakeTechEasier outlines some of these applications in the link below. Try some of these tools to get a feel of how debugging works in Linux.

BASH Debugger or bashdb is a simple, but useful, Linux debugger. You can use it for analyzing your bash scripts during execution and can be pretty useful if you start to do more complex bash scripts.

See https://www.maketecheasier.com/best-linux-debuggers/

#technology #linux #programming #debugging

I still have my router although its resting now in a cupboard. As Lifehacker put it way back in 2006, it was the perfect way to turn your $60 router into a $600 router, which likely meant it was potentially costing Cisco money to have a device this good on the market.

The article below delves a lot into what happened with the outsourcing of code (3rd part sources are often a contentious issue for later resharing code as open source) and how especially in the early years proprietary companies thought they could just use anything and then lock it down and sell it. Some sloppy outsourcing work resulted in a treasure chest being opened. So true though that with the Tomato OS that I loaded on mine it was giving me $600 performance back then. I always felt crippled when I moved to newer routers and was really missing a lot of the functionality from Tomato OS.

See https://www.vice.com/en/article/qjpnpb/the-famous-router-hackers-actually-loved

#technology #hardware #opensource #linux

From less than 10% of output in 2020, electric motor production at Tremery will double to about 180,000 in 2021, and is planned to reach 900,000 a year - or more than half the plant's peak pre-pandemic output - by 2025.

The shift is testament to a car industry in flux. Demand for diesel cars has slumped since a 2015 pollution scandal, while tough new EU regulations, which fine carmakers for exceeding emissions limits, are pushing them to make more electric models.

See https://www.timeslive.co.za/motoring/news/2021-01-25-death-of-diesel-looms-as-car-makers-accelerate-to-electric-future/

#environment #EV #france #diesel

This is pretty puzzling as we know Signal is reputed to be secure (apart from having to provide a phone number to register) and although Telegram's default settings allow access to metadata and even message content ultimately, both have been banned because they have been proven before not to release any user data.

But why was WhatsApp not banned in Iran, and neither in Russia previously either? This is what is really puzzling many people? It would be pure unfounded conjecture to speculate whether WhatsApp provides metadata about who contacts whom, locations, etc to authorities as we've not seen evidence of this yet as far as I know. We do not know this but all the same, the question does need to be asked.

If you are in Iran I'd recommend though that you install XMPP, or P2P apps such as ManyVerse or similar anyway as centralised apps are just too easy to monitor or disable.

See https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/1/26/iran-blocks-signal-messaging-app-after-whatsapp-exodus

#technology #privacy #rights #instantmessengers #iran