Before writing a line of app code, I’m validating demand. And I’ll put my money where my mouth is: the landing page and the waitlist both run on a Debian box in my living room.

This isn’t trying to replace your monitoring server; it’s the mobile, unified, privacy-first front-end I keep wishing those had.

Hello, fellow human! Do you too enjoy the sweet sensations of smell and taste?

Neither, the former is only on iOS / various other Apple bits, the latter is awful in terms of privacy (arguably more so than Whatsapp)

I mainly use Matrix (Element on desktop, FluffyChat on Android, Fractal on mobile Linux) and email (Thunderbird), but I also have Halloy (IRC) installed to. As for any proprietary messaging services I use, it’s mainly WeChat for messaging Chinese friends.

edit: I also have Signal, but pretty much no one in my circle uses it, as everybody who was bothered to switch to Signal went all the way and joined Matrix in my experience.

Woah, good thing I uninstalled WhatsApp ages ago

Perhaps other bridges in Helsinki are far more impressive aesthetically? Finland is a really neat place. That being said, this is still a very lovely bridge

I think the best option is definitely the KeePass clients: KeePassXC (desktop), KeePassDX (Android), KeePassium(iOS), and Secrets (mobile Linux, yay!). You’ll need to set up Syncthing (super easy on Linux and Android, but more difficult on iOS), but if you use iOS (where there is no free Syncthing app), you might instead go for Bitwarden (which can be self-hosted using Vaultwarden too!)

I think KeePass is an awesome option to switch to. You can use Syncthing to sync between devices (so you don’t have to self-host, it can be between your phone and laptop, but of course you can set it up on an always on device in your home), you have clients for a wide range of devices (KeePassXC on desktop, KeePassDX on Android, KeePassium on iOS, and even Secrets for mobile Linux! I don’t think most other password managers have mobile Linux clients!)

The password database is just a single file that can be easily synced and backed up, and the master password is the same between devices (you don’t need a separate one). Biometrics (at least on KeePassDX and KeePassium) are also supported if you prefer convenience

Off topic: That’s a lot of history memes in your backlog posted in quick succession.

Just a small point, double negatives can get pretty confusing. Even in English, you often have double negatives becoming a negative rather than a positive, e.g. “I didn’t go nowhere” or “You don’t know nothing”. Changing which part of the phrase you emphasise can also change that, for instance, if you said “I didn’t go nowhere” it implies that you did in fact go somewhere (double negative becomes a positive when stressing the second negative). This gets all the more confusing when you bring in other languages, since they all handle double negatives differently!

Generally, there are a lot of used options out there (particularly from businesses upgrading their hardware), just like laptops. Even when shopping for new ones, I can find lots of cheap options (though they aren’t very good value usually, but they are enough to serve as a basic media box)

Raspberry Pis have unfortunately gotten very expensive, yes, but those are SBCs, not mini PCs?

I think somebody would need to be super out of touch to say that travelling to the Bahamas is super cheap and easy. Not a Trump-level out-of-touchness (he’s waffling on about the extermination of civilisation in Iran, conquering of NATO allies, and is diverting funds from science and healthcare towards making the white house the gold house), but close to it.

Outside, it usually sits around 65-70% humidity, over 80% during the summer. Hong Kong is like that unfortunately. Dunno about the room my printer sits in though, I don’t have a hydrometer in there, but I imagine it’s a little bit lower (maybe 60%? 70% in warmer months?). I don’t dry my PLA though and I’ve mostly had good printing experiences.

Or a mini PC! (little guy that can be a bit smaller + cheaper too, you will need to get a keyboard and/or mouse for it though)

Well, that would depend on what’s in the other 3D “layers” of the 4D world. Like how 3D worlds can be thought of as layers of 2D ones. If you moved to another 3D “layer” that had no oxygen, food, water, etc., you would quickly die. If you moved quick enough you would also probably die, but the same could be said about the three spatial dimensions we’re used to. Also, if there was a fourth spatial dimension, it must be “compact” enough that we can’t detect it with our current technology, and I have a hunch (!!! no evidence for this, please search for some if you want good facts!!!) it would be bad for us to move through it.

I have been looking primarily at Framework and System76 options but am open to other suggestion if people have them.

The Framework 12 is the cheapest out of the bunch, and it recently got a chip bump to the Core 300 series (so better battery life, which is nice!). If you are alright with the awful screen (which is like 60 to 70% sRGB, the reds will look orange), the rest of the laptop seems awesome (reasonable performance, good battery life, repairable, colourful, 2-in-1, fingerprint reader that supports Linux).

The next step up would be the Framework 13 Pro and the System76 Lemur Pro, both of which are new Panther Lake laptops with excellent graphics performance and battery life. The FW13 Pro uses LPCAMM2 memory while System76 has 32GB soldered (though, both have replaceable SSD). The Framework will also have their bits of an upgradeable mainboard, modular ports, DIY edition to build yourself, etc. The FW can ship with no OS (for the DIY kit), Fedora (for kit FW12), or Ubuntu (for kit FW13 Pro), while System76 ships their devices with either Pop!OS or Ubuntu. You can install any OS you would like on either machine by yourself.

If you need a dGPU, you need to look at the Framework 16 and the various large System76 devices (they have a lot of them!). You’ll sacrifice battery life for both of them in comparison to their Panther Lake siblings, but the dGPU could be important for your workflow.

Due to the memory crisis, you might want to opt out of purchasing an SSD with the laptop and get an aftermarket one for cheaper.

I believe Fedora requires disclosure on the use of LLMs in contributions, and that fully generated submissions are not allowed, so slightly better than Debian in this respect (https://docs.fedoraproject.org/council/policy/ai-contribution-policy/)

Linux Mint is always a nice option, but I can’t find an LLM policy for them, but given that they are removing snaps and other Ubuntu bits that nobody likes by default, I would imagine they are more resistant on LLM contributions. They don’t have a policy set in place for this though.

Arch Linux (and derivatives, I currently use EndeavourOS but many like CachyOS too!) are awesome too if you are alright with rolling release. Again, no LLM policy I can find (I didn’t look very hard though, I have better things to do), but I imagine they would be more resistant to it.

Poisonous: harms you if you touch or eat it

Venomous: harms you by injecting a toxin (through biting, stinging, etc.)

I know there’s a few poisonous butterflies (e.g. the Monarch butterfly), and I can find a few other insects listed on Wikipedia (and I’m sure there are others not on there too)

I’m not sure I could deal with the lower specs

To be honest, I think the only one that matters is the cameras, primarily the lack of a zoom lens. The performance is excellent unless you want to do things like Switch or PC emulation (in that case, the OP13 is a no brainer, why are you even considering the Pixel). I also just think the modularity and repairable aspect of it is so awesome!

PostmarketOS is tempting for the future, but it looks like it would need a bit more work until we get there.

And you’ll be keeping the phone for a long while, so something that also supports pmOS (like the Fairphone) could make it useful once it is no longer receiving Android updates!

Here’s my take: AI in the hands of somebody who is able to resolve bugs, able to understand the codebase, etc., can get tedious tasks done quicker. Computers love tedious tasks, even when it comes to machine learning bits. Computers do best with repetition and patterns. However, AI cannot replace the skill of a developer. Place it in the hands of an idiot (i.e. a “vibe coder”), and all you get is duplicate bug reports, broken code, and lots of stress for project maintainers. AI is a tool like any other, just as a hammer will never replace a builder, even if it’s the fanciest hammer in the world with billions invested in its design. Hammers can make work be done faster (not all work, sometimes you need a saw!), but put it in the hands of an idiot (a “vibe builder”, whatever the hell that would mean), somebody is going to get hurt.

This ignores the legal questions of AI, which are still important. If cars were given to the masses during the Middle Ages, a lot of people would get hurt since there hasn’t been enough time for traffic laws, regulations, etc. to develop. In the modern day, of course, cars can make commute faster, and there is rules in place to ensure safety on the road. Walking, cycling, public transit, planes, ferries, etc. still have their place though, and more often than not they are the preferred option.

If you do want to run AI, please run it locally! Don’t support big tech companies by paying their exorbitant subscription fees, and don’t feed them your codebase!

I don’t personally use AI, since it doesn’t fit my needs and I find it more annoying than anything to get it to do what I want.

LLMs are not “never useful”, but what they are good at is limited, and if you don’t have the developer experience and try to “vibe code”, only bad things will happen.

And of course, you also have mobile Linux, which is slowly becoming more usable over time! postmarketOS is the one I’ve tried, but there is also Mobian, Ubuntu Touch, and SailfishOS. I personally like pmOS since it aims to stay close to the mainline kernel, meaning you can install any Flatpak app onto the device (it might not always scale well, but it does open a lot of cool options!)

As for the comparison between custom ROMs, you mainly have LineageOS and derivatives like e/OS, iodeOS, and CalyxOS, as well as GrapheneOS which is doing its own thing with Pixels (and future Motorola devices)

Base LineageOS is pretty much stock Android without Google services by default (though you can install microG). e/OS focuses more on the degoogling side of things, and they tie in Murena cloud services + their own iOS-like launcher too. iodeOS is another more privacy-focused spin of Lineage, and they have additional controls on content blocking (advertisements, trackers, that sort of thing), and you can optionally enable parental controls too. CalyxOS is a security-focused Lineage spin, though not to the extent of GrapheneOS. They only recently came back from the dead, but they seem like another good option too!

GrapheneOS is an uber secure version of Android, there’s a table online for all the security features that Graphene has over the others, look at those and see if any of them are important to you. They also have a neat feature where apps requiring Google services can be sandboxed and kept separate from the system!