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Libb

@ Libb @jlai.lu

Posts
11
Comments
638
Joined
2 yr. ago

I'm currently testing https://piefed.social/u/Libb all my new participation will be posted there, at least for the time being.

A 50-something French dude that's old enough to think blogs are still cool, if not cooler than ever. Also, I like to write and to sketch.https://thefoolwithapen.com/

  • Firefox based European browser alternatives

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  • +1 for Waterfox

  • Thorium Reader, eReadyer software from France

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  • FYI, it's the software Parisians public libraries are suggesting for reading on a computer (FR, they also suggest Baobab for Chromebook users). I don't remember them mentioning Linux at all but Thorium works ok on my Mint install ;)

  • European Journalism

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  • True that.

  • European Journalism

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  • If you have a public library nearby they may have a selection of various newspaper (and not just in German, from various European countries) you can read for free that should help you decide which one(s) you would like to support. And if they don't have any, feel free to ask for help: many librarians are more than willing to help people to be better informed they may suggest some leads.

    I don't know many 'European' newspapers. Or magazines, for that matter. I would be curious to see what others may suggest!

    Many newspaper will have a 'Europe' section, though. But then the question becomes: what is a political Europe? Where is it?

    Beside the two caricatures of what Europe was supposed to be that have prevailed for the last 50 years or so—Europe is an excuse for bankers and politicians to screw their citizens more freely; Europe is nothing but a long past that we, its citizens of today, should all feel ashamed for. Both caricatures promoted and fueled with the enthusiastic support of our press, btw, the same press that just recently started realizing there could be more to being European. Beside those, what did it mean to be European say up until the second Russian invasion of Ukraine?

    Simple test anyone can do to understand the situation: ask anyone around you 'who is the President of the EU?' And see how many have no idea, how many will give you some name of a person, or maybe of one country, and how many will tell you that there is no such thing as a President of the EU. Americans may have elected the most despicable, illiterate, racist monkey ever in their history, but they still are Americans first and foremost. What are we?

    My apologies for that rant. Back to your question.

    I would really encourage you to read as many newspapers as you can, in as many languages as you can. You will slowly spot the newspapers/journalists that give you some real valuable EU content and so you will know which ones aren't worth your time/money.

    Do it at the public library if money is an issue (press is definitely not 'free as in free beer'). Or you can do it like I do with one of my neighbor: we both purchase a few newspapers/mags and we share them ;)

  • pCloud - Lifetime Cloud Storage (based on Switzerland)

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  • FYI, E2EE is sold as an add-on and only works within one specific folder.

  • Picking a European Public Cloud Provider

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  • What do you mean by public?

    When I had to pick one I hesitated between, the Swiss Infomaniak (Kdrive) and the German Filen.io. I went for Filen because it offers zero-knowledge end-to-end encryption, but the Infomaniak offer was real tempting and still is ;)

  • Ditch US Big Tech and choose better European tools! (Tuta post on Mastodon)

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  • You're right. I should have mentioned it, and mentioned even though I do my best to use Free/Libre software I don't refuse proprietary ones.

  • USB cables from EU

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  • Thx for the links, I will keep that in mind next time I need cables.

  • How are you doing with your communities?

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  • Imho, it's worth a least showcasing as a surprising decision and, imho, a questionable one too. Calmly discussing it in order to see what others think about it.

    I don't like that you were banned for mentioning another community. And I don't like that only because I'm being polite here ;)

  • How are you doing with your communities?

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  • Well, that's quite a knee-jerk reaction on their part, frankly stupid too: aren't we supposed to be a federated network instead of acting like a mini-reddit that wants to own everything? :/

  • How are you doing with your communities?

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  • I must say I was impressed too.

    I don't mind the two communities. Sure, it will be simpler to have a single one but I'm subscribed to both and that's ok.

  • Ditch US Big Tech and choose better European tools! (Tuta post on Mastodon)

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  • Yes! Someone recommending Vivaldi.

    It's a cool (chromium-based) browser with many cool features (they even offer a mastodon instance) that one can as easily decide to use or not use. And the company (from Norway) is owned by the devs themselves not by some huge corp or a venture capital fund ;)

  • How are you doing with your communities?

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  • We've reached 413 members in !journaling@sh.itjust.works. We also have more participation going on in the Weekly Threads I recently initiated (Issue 6 is ready to go out, tomorrow). If it is still on the timid side, I still find it very promising and encouraging ;)

    Today more then ever, I think people should give journaling a chance. When things are getting stressful, this can help a lot. Be it to take a few steps back and consider things more calmly, or even just to put down emotions and feelings and try to deal with them. I hope our little community can encourage a few persons to start doing so.

  • EU-US rift triggers call for made-in-Europe tech

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  • yes. SO much so!

    Here in Paris, we still have the choice to go to real nice places (less and less so, mind you or at absurdly fancy prices). I noticed how many restaurants have been replaced or have turned themselves into, well, not restaurants. I mean, not just in those touristic spots where, well, they open to do business with one time customers. I'm talking even in those places where actual Parisians do live and where they want to go eat/have a drink.

    There has been a huge shift I don't know how it happened but I can see the result: many now sell microwaved and over-processed industrial junk food as if it was something real cooking. The same with bakeries btw, which is so effing sad. Many are now nothing more than selling points for bread/pastries that is industrially processed and delivered to their door ready to be heated if not already to be sold. That's shit.

    At the corner of our street, we have that bakery where the owner and his apprentices are still doing every single thing they sell by hand. They work hard, they struggle and, yeah, they're more expensive than the many non-bakeries everywhere but they're so fucking tasty and they're not machines. The guys is doing fine but many like him are not, and they're forced to close. And then it's too often one of those 'bread selling points' (I refuse to call those a bakery) that is replacing them.

  • EU-US rift triggers call for made-in-Europe tech

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  • Indeed. But for the last 30 or 40 years anyone trying to raise awareness about that was disqualified in one way or another. It was as painful as when people tried to discuss the necessity of, you know, not delegate EU defense to the USA.

    Now, the damage has been done and it's deep. It will be much more difficult and so, so much more costly to try to get out of that situation... without any assurance we will succeed.

  • EU-US rift triggers call for made-in-Europe tech

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  • You want to create a European tech alternative? Start enforcing digital antitrust. Not fines, break-ups and forced sales of local branches. If the US can do it to Tiktok the EU can do it to Meta, Amazon, Google and the like.

    100%.

    Thx for saying it. And that's so much not limited to tech...

    Everyday, I look at our French 'exception culturelle' with some kind of respect. It's a law that make it so small bookshops have not been destroyed by Amazon (Amazon is forced to sell books at the exact same price as your local shop) and which, among many other things, make it so it's mandatory to have 30% or so of local/French content in main media. That's a great law and because it's a great law, I wonder for how much longer it will hold against the US endless appetite and against the voracity of many here in the EU too that are more than willing to fill their pockets in the process of killing and burying local cultural productions.

  • EU-US rift triggers call for made-in-Europe tech

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  • Maybe because we've hopped on US for absolutely everything else? Defense, culture, education, societal values (and priorities/focuses). Even for food (posting that from France, surrounded by fast-foods ;)).

  • Is Qwant still good privacy wise?

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  • They sell ads and they work with MS (Bing). But they're EU (French) and I hope more respectful of our privacy because of GDPR.

    It's my fallback engine but my main search engine is Kagi, even though it's US and paid-for (no-free tier, beside free trial).

    I know saying good things about a paid product is frowned upon around here but I certainly won't lie, or change what I think in order to please some random self-proclaimed vigilante. Imho, Kagi works very well and, as long as you can afford it, is worth every single cent.

    It's ad-free, tracking and seo-crap free too. Comes with some nifty features (to further filter and control the type of results you see, for example). I also love their 'small web' search that focuses, well, on small websites by default. That's so cool. Plus, it gives excellent results that must be among the most useful I've ever gotten... like in the 90s and 00s when Google used to be disruptive and useful to its users, not to advertisers ;)

  • “A Post Mortem on the Gino Case”: “Committing fraud is, right now, a viable career strategy that can propel you at the top of the academic world.”

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  • Glad I’m not in academia.

    That makes two of us. This is so depressing and it also feels like the situation is hopeless and things will only get worse :/