Also see https://xcancel.com/IntCyberDigest/status/2063573474598166734#m

I just started my de-googling journey recently, and so the mechanics of notifications were still unclear to me, and I found this video super helpful.

It explains how most mobile messaging apps (including privacy-focused ones like Signal) rely on Google and Apple's centralized servers to deliver push notifications, which exposes vast amounts of user metadata.

Here's the YT link, for people who prefer it: https://youtu.be/c3ennD3wKn0

I've been working on degoogling. i got a fairphone 6 with e/os. its been a great push in the right direction because many google services i previously relied on such as google home dont work.

no worries, ive always wanted to get better with Home Assistant. but devices dont generally advertise if theyre compatable with home assistant. so i got the matter controller for home assistant, great. just arrived yesterday, and tried to add a matter bulb to test it out.

home assistant says i need to be on official android with the home assistant companion app downloaded from the play store, not the fdroid version

🤕

I Installed a Graphene-Based OS on Non-Pixel Phones… Here’s the Catch

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-RjGjqBAAgQ

"I was watching youtube(Invidious) and notied RestlessOS . Have you heard of this and are there people actually tried this on non-pixel phone?

"RestlessOS is an unofficial, unaffiliated fork of GrapheneOS packaged as a Generic System Image (GSI) for Project Treble devices. It is not endorsed by, sponsored by, or in any way connected to the GrapheneOS project or its developers."

https://github.com/cawilliamson/treble_restlessos

I'm very hesitant to give money to Google pixel so I'm going to experiment on this one."

I started in March this year, and so far these have been my changes:

• Google Drive -> Filen.io
• Google Photos -> EntePhotos
• Google Gmail -> Proton (not 100% yet)
• Google Translator -> Offline Translator and Mozhi
• Google Maps -> CoMaps/OpenStreetMap
• Google PlayStore -> AuroraStore / F-Droid
• Google Search -> DuckDuckGo
• Youtube -> Before PipePipe but now Morphe Youtube

And anothers changes outside of google:

• ChatGpt -> Duck.ai
• Spotify -> ArchiveTune
• Chess.com -> LiChess
• Netflix -> Jellyfin
• GitHub -> Codeberg
• Reddit -> Morphe Reddit and Lemmy
• Twitter -> Mastodon and Bsky
• I also stopped using Instagram and TikTok

its difficult to start, but the satisfaction afterwards is very good

cross-posted from: https://programming.dev/post/51407459

Check what can you use and at what rate of token per seconds would it be... It has examples of many models and quantization levels. Huge resource!

I feel like it's really hard to be optimistic about the state of the internet. While some more technologically and politically conscious users might make different choices, 99% of the people will just keep using Google and following along whatever changes they make.

I'm glad to announce v0.4.5 release!

Syncspirit is continuous peer-to-peer realtime syncrhonization tool. It implements BEP protocol and provides seamless interoperability with existing syncthing nodes and clients.

https://raw.githubusercontent.com/basiliscos/syncspirit/refs/heads/master/docs/fltk-overview.gif

You can download ready-to-use binaries for Linux x86_64 (AppImage), Windows 32 bit (WindowsXP is supported), Windows 64 bit and Mac OS X (Apple silicon).

Notable changes:

• [core] monitor local filesystem changes in realtime and propagate updates across the cluster (inotify/ReadDirectoryChangesW/kqueue)
• [core] allow arbitrary subfolder rescan
• [core] do not accept files with non-valid utf8 filenames
• [ci/cd] use https://sourcecraft.dev/ infrastructure for building
• [core] bugfixes

Syncspirt source code uses GPLv3 license.

Any feedback is welcome!

WBR, basiliscos.

https://github.com/jely2002/youtube-dl-gui

When invideous craps out I use this. Its nice... I use a appimage. It is so stupid easy

Cross posted from https://sh.itjust.works/post/60909221

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/47412200

When Google was founded in 1998 it solved a big problem: spammy and chaotic web. Does this sound familiar? Because it's happening again. The World-Wide-Web is still a place for everyone, but if it doesn't have good SEO nobody will find it. AI webs and images are surrounding the internet.

How is Google handling that? By deleting blue links and replacing them with AI agents. How are other search engines handling that? By creating blacklists and scanning websites using AI detectors. That will never work.

Well, I have an idea...

[ ? ] Basic concept

Basically, imagine Wikidata (a big database of lots of things filled with data, similar to Wikipedia), but not for objects, but for websites. Websites would have their own pages with information about them - what kind of website it is, whether it has ads, a short description, when it was created/who founded it, how big it is, etc. It would be all open-source and managed by the community.

[ * ] Features

Sounds weird, right? Why would someone do it? Well because of the advantages:

• You can filter your search in hundreds of ways! One example: you want to find something on a small forums, that are ad-free and founded more than four years ago for no AI garbage. On google? Impossible. In this idea you would just type it into the search. Super useful. Do you know any other search engines where you can do this? I don't.
• What about the history of websites? Normal search engines only work with how the pages look at the moment. But that's not always efficient. With a database of website history, a search engine can find out that a website has been changed (all its content) four times in a month. That's not how normal websites look, is it?
• Another thing is SEO. SEO requires experts and a lot of money. In this system, you just enter data into a database - anyone can do it!

[ @ ] Image search

These days, some AI images are that that realistic, that is impossible to tell if the image is AI or not. So we have to do it differently, not by checking when the image is already taken, but by when the image is being taken - insert cryptic metadata into the photo. And I'm not talking about that garbage EXIF metadata that can be overwritten, but about C2PA.

It's still not mainstream, but it's groundbreaking. It’s also the only way to make sure that the photo was taken by a human.

[ # ] Potential Challenges

As every project in it early stage, it have potential challenges. But they are not impossible to solve, they only require some effort. The database can be filled it can be full of spam from random people, from bots from anyone. To solve this problem, we would need to implement a system similar to the one used by Wikipedia.

Another thing, MONEY. I don't have any idea, how much it can cost, but it will be not for free.

The internet is changing rapidly. It would hard to keep the database fresh, hm? Well, bots can help a lot, by checking important info (if website is only or not and countless other details).

[ / ] Final though

I am releasing this here, because I want someone to make it real. I'm not planning to do it myself, I don't havr enough skills to do it. I just want to make search fun again.

If Wikipedia could build the world’s biggest encyclopedia from scratch, it's possible to build the world’s biggest web directory.

Anyone knows what android system webview & private compute services are?

Can anyone tell this meme is true or false? I don't have Gspy so I cannot test this

Is there a privacy difference between using a YouTube front-end like NewPipe, LibreTube, or GrayJay vs using a browser like Brave or Firefox with ad blockers like uBlock Origin, SponsorBlock, and DeArrow?

had anyone else noticed YouTube front end apps/sites unable to get updated lists of videos or any lists at all? I haven't checked all the symptoms to be able to guess the root cause.

i assume YouTube itself hasn't gone down. are they blocking front ends again, maybe in a new way?

Do you think these devices will continue to function?

Will the handheld market need to degoogle and adopt Linux as the OS?

Would it be smart to even consider purchasing any of them right now with the chance of them not functioning as expected in the near future?

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/47107360

Google is making its Search more centred around AI, turning it into a conversation.

Besides being a worse experience, the websites from which it sources its information are losing all traffic and recognition.

Recommend a list of alternatives:

• Kagi - Paid but better experience than Google
• Ecosia - Similar experience while supporting a good cause
• Qwant - Increasingly unique results and building a EU-first index
• DuckDuckGo - Privacy-focused search, but quality of results may vary

More options: https://purchasewithpurpose.io/category/search-engine/

Archive.Today starting to use Google's QR-based reCaptcha

#recaptcha #degoogle #datahoarder

The site has a few variant domains, unsure why, and archive.md, the one I'd been using, threw the QR reCaptcha just now, as per the attached image, while archive.today directly threw the good ol' "try to verify a dozen times" version.

The recaptcha may appear even when the user is not using a VPN if it grows suspicious, meaning the site may soon be inaccessible without bending to Google.

Well, what maps do you recommend over Apple or Google?

I have just recently de-googled my phone with GrapheneOS.

I want something that is going to be real-time and respect privacy.

I just found out this ROM a few months ago, they don't advertise it too much, most of the talk happens on their Telegram channels.

They provide some features from Graphene that could interest DeGooglers. Like sandboxed Play Services, even tho, very important to note, they don't advertise it as a "degoogled" or "privacy-focused" ROM, but they provide these features (some imported from Graphene):

• Storage, contacts and files scopes: trick apps so they think they have access to all files or contacts, but you chose what files and contacts apps can see.
• Option to disable sensors by default: something I learned just a few weeks ago, sensors are a allowed permission by default for all Android apps, they block it and notify you if any app try to access the sensors.
• Ask for network access before installing any app, instead of granting it automatically.
• Graphene servers for assisted GPS instead of Google servers.
• Built in integrity fix and tricky store: you don't need root to get integrity fix (one level), but you need a keybox to get other levels. I personally achieve two levels (BASIC and DEVICE) with any random public keybox.
• Spoofing features: spoof device model for games and hide apps list.
• PowerHub with many interface customization.

There are few devices officially supported (14 I guess, mostly Xiaomi), but you could build it for your device if you know how to do it and possibly bring more attention to it. All their sources are on GitHub.