I replaced Microsoft Word with a self-hosted, open-source alternative No, not I, as I had replaced Microsoft Office many years ago. But nevertheless an interesting read and a good reminder that most folks don't really NEED Microsoft Word, with all the great alternatives around today. My go-to office suite is actually FreeOffice which has much the same going for it as ONLYoffice, which I also have installed. Apart from being open source, these alternative suites are also truly cross-platform and friendlier when it comes to adhering to open standard formats such as the Open Document Format. The network effect though is still super strong around the world, being fuelled by a powerful PR machine, which is now telling everyone they need to have AI built into their office suites. Actually, FreeOffice does have an option for that, as well as a dramatically lower once-off pro-plan cost, but do you need it inside your office suite? See

How-To Geek

I replaced Microsoft Word with a self-hosted, open-source alternative

It also includes a spreadsheet and presentation editor!

#technology #opensource #officesuites

Join The Newest Social Network And Party Like Its 1987 "Algorithms? Datamining? Brainrot? You don’t need those things to have a social network. As we knew back in the BBS days, long before anyone coined the phrase “social network”, all you need is a place for people to make text posts. [euklides] is providing just such a place, at cyberspace.online. It’s a great mix of old and new — the IRC inspired chatrooms, e-mail inspired DMs (“cybermail”) make it feel like the good old days, while a sprinkling of more modern concepts such as friends lists, a real-time feed, and even the late-lamented “poke” feature (from before Facebook took over the world) provide some welcome conveniences." Yep many are getting sick and tired of the big centralised social networks with their algorithms and data mining. There are actually countless alternatives around, and this is merely one of the latest to arrive on the scene. I have lost count of which social networks I'm actually on. I'm probably only active on around 8 or 9 on a daily basis, but we are spoilt for choice, and many are very welcoming and have a different sort of feel and niche they cater for. From

Hackaday

Join The The Newest Social Network And Party Like Its 1987

Algorithms? Datamining? Brainrot? You don’t need those things to have a social network. As we knew back in the BBS days, long before anyone c...

#technology #socialnetworks

Testing Whether Fast Charging Kills Smartphone Batteries, And Other Myths It will be a lot clearer if you watch the video in the linked article, as the article text does not really clearly summarise all the conclusions. See

Hackaday

Testing Whether Fast Charging Kills Smartphone Batteries, And Other Myths

With batteries being such an integral part of smartphones, it’s little wonder that extending the period between charging and battery replacem...

#technology #batteries

ODF 1.4 Release Marks 20 Years of OpenDocument Format “Microsoft's proprietary formats like .doc and .docx dominate the office productivity landscape. Most people and organisations rely on these formats for daily document work. This creates a predatory situation where vendor lock-in is the norm and compatibility issues are taken as an omen that moving away from Microsoft Office is a bad idea. OpenDocument Format (ODF) offers an open alternative. It is an ISO-standard XML-based format for text documents, spreadsheets, presentations, and graphics. ODF works across multiple office suites, including LibreOffice, Collabora Online, and Microsoft Office itself.” Open standards are critical to the future use and access to data. Open data also helps prevent vendors locking you into their service. Open standards also help lower the costs of services as it increases competition in the market. In summary, open standards protect users. Unfortunately, many organisations work actively against open standards as they stand in the way of their profits, and of course big organisations can lobby governments... As users, we all need to support open standards. We cannot take on the big organisations, but we can decide to prefer to use services based on open standards. And yes, believe it or not, besides the marketing PR, you do NOT NEED to use MS Office. There are perfectly good alternatives, with many being free of cost. If you do still use MS Office, at least choose to save everything in ODF format. See

It's FOSS

ODF 1.4 Release Marks 20 Years of OpenDocument Format

Accessibility and compatibility upgrades mark 20th anniversary of document standard at OASIS Open.

#technology #openstandards #ODF

Banning Phones in Schools Is Drastically Changing the Behaviour of Kids, Teachers Say “Gothamist spoke to students about their experience with the ban, and the number one takeaway didn’t have to do with anything to do with hot-button topics like social media addiction or cyberbullying. Instead, it was that kiboshing phones is forcing kids to actually talk to each other in meatspace again — and it’s making schools way noisier, for better or worse.” I'm going to say something that will be highly unpopular with employees, but I think banning phones in the workplace during working hours (not lunchtime) would also boost productivity and focus a lot! I can't but help noticing when I go to do my weekly groceries shopping at a certain supermarket, that in more than one aisle, a packer is busy on their phones with the boxes lying next to them. I doubt these are emergencies, and are more likely ongoing replies to someone on an instant messaging app. Apart from shelf packers though, even for management, they should not be conducting work communication over private messaging apps. E-mail can be read whenever one is at their desk, and the company has a record of the official correspondence then too. There seems to be this need to be in constant contact 24/7, but I have started to realise that I do not need to read every single notification coming in as it happens. I choose times when I'm taking a break, or before supper, etc when it does not break my concentration of what I'm doing. As I'm writing this post, I've heard my phone going ding about 5 times (one at least was from my spouse). If it's urgent though, they can phone me, but if I don't have boundaries in place, a phone threatens to just keep interrupting you. It's the same reason why my phone goes onto Do Not Disturb mode from 22:30 every night. See

Futurism

Banning Phones in Schools Is Drastically Changing the Behavior of Kids

Schools around the world are banning phones, and the results can be unexpected. For instance, schools are getting loud again.

#technology #health #education #boundaries

This OpenWrt-Based Router Has Swappable Wi-Fi Modules for Future Upgrades “Their Turris router project started as an internal research effort focused on understanding network threats that has now evolved into offering commercial products with rock-solid security and convenient features. Now, they have launched the Turris Omnia NG, the next generation of their security-focused router line. Like its predecessors, the router is manufactured in the Czech Republic.” Yes, part of the news is the swappable Wi-Fi hardware modules, but also very interesting is that the router comes with an open source operating system based on OpenWrt. I really like that! That means that you can do a lot more with it than just being a basic, cripple proprietary router. It can work as a NAS, VPN gateway, run LXC containers or even full Linux distributions like Ubuntu or Debian on virtual machines, or a self-hosted cloud server running Nextcloud. Try doing that on a commercial Asus or T-Link router! See

It's FOSS

This OpenWrt-Based Router Has Swappable Wi-Fi Modules for Future Upgrades

The Turris Omnia NG promises lifetime updates and a modular design for a real long-term use.

#technology #opensource #routers #openwrt

Scientists Say They’ve Figured Out How to Transcribe Your Thoughts From an MRI Scan “They’re calling the technique “mind captioning,” and it may represent an effective way for transcribing what someone’s thinking, with impressively comprehensive and accurate results.” It is certainly not reading of specific thoughts, but nonetheless statistically the results are way above just random guesses, with some sounding impressive. And yes, it seems AI does the number crunching to arrive at suggestions. As with any technology, there can be good and bad applications for it. The usual culprits will try to exploit the bad side, but think of the good for those with seriously impaired communication capabilities (stroke, aphasia, and other medical difficulties). Right now, of course this is not possible yet to use without an MRI machine, but it is quite promising so far, and possibly better ways to scan will be found. See

Futurism

Scientists Say They've Figured Out How to Transcribe Your Thoughts From an MRI Scan

The team showed that the brain scan analyzing technique could generate accurate descriptions of a video someone was watching.

#technology #health

Why self-hosting matters now more than ever in the age of cloud "A little over a week ago, a DNS update conflict brought down AWS, crippling hundreds of apps and services worldwide. Along with many of Amazon’s own platforms, Netflix, Spotify, Google Drive, Zoom, and many others were affected by the failure. At ground level, online shops went silent. One Reddit user lamented that they had missed out on thousands of dollars in profit because their trading platform couldn’t execute a trade, while another unlucky person’s bed stopped functioning." And just this morning there we suffered a Teraco outage for an hour and a half that affected Internet services too. All my self-hosted services in the house continued to work so I could watch movies, read my RSS news feeds, update my notes management, etc. The linked article goes on to show many other advantages too of self-hosting. That said though, you do at least want to have two hard drives so that there is a rsync backing up daily to the second drive. Just because self-hosting may save you money, does not mean you should skimp on the essentials. You have to take accountability for your data if you self-host. See

XDA

Why self-hosting matters now more than ever in the age of cloud

Break free from reliance on the cloud and build digital independence.

#technology #selfhosting

AFFiNE is an excellent open-source knowledge management tool “AFFiNE is an open-source productivity app with a workspace that blends structured note-taking with visual thinking. It’s a bit like Notion, Obsidian, Miro, and NotebookLM combined, but in a minimalist package. There are paid tiers that give you access to more of its AI features and cloud storage (it is a local-first app, though). But you don’t need to subscribe for the everyday management features.” There is a good write-up about this product in the linked article below. I've always preferred flat markdown files as I can see them and access them with any Markdown editor, but I did install AFFiNE a while ago on my Linux desktop. I really liked what it can do in terms of creativity and ideas collaboration. I don't think, though, that it will replace my notes app as I like to have my notes on hand where ever I am. With AFFiNE you do need to use its app for the creation and viewing. That said it does install on macOS, iOS, Android, Windows, Linux, and can work through a web browser too. Looking again at that list, and the fact that you can self-host it, I may have to give this another try as it seems with all that, I probably can sync everything across all my devices. For example, in my desktop AFFiNE app there is an option to sync it with the AFFiNE cloud, which includes a link to your own self-hosted instance. It does also support Markdown formatting, as well as export to/import from markdown files. I tested the import of a Markdown document I'd done a while ago in Obsidian Notes, and it imported perfectly, complete with to-do lists, code blocks, tables, etc. The mobile app though does not appear to export/import Markdown documents itself. Plain documents can be created and edited in AFFiNE's Page mode, but you can also switch to the Edgeless Canvas mode where all the whiteboarding, graphics, etc magic happens. Currently, I'm using Joplin for all my markdown notes, and syncing to a self-hosted Joplin server app. Although Joplin is doing everything I want with markdown notes, it does not store the notes in plain markdown files (like Obsidian Notes does). So, in truth, as fat as file formats go AFFiNE won't be much different from Joplin Notes, and if the browser access can actually view and edit notes directly on the self-hosted AFFiNE instance, that would actually be a big plus over Joplin Notes for me. I'm going to rethink my Joplin vs AFFiNE decision, I think. See

XDA

I built a second brain with AFFiNE, and it's the best thing I've ever done for my productivity

An upgrade to my digital life

#technology #brainstorming #knowledgemanagement #opensource

Lock Company Sues Man Who Picked Its Lock, Gets Horribly Humiliated This is often the typical; reaction of an organisation when someone shows their product or service has some serious defect or flaw. The problem is, then we all get to hear about it, and are less than impressed with their attitude. Rather than acknowledging something and fixing it, let's attack the messenger. How does this help the many other consumers who use the product or service? I'd never heard of the lock company Proven industries, but now I do know all about them after they sued Trevor McNally. It is worth remembering that no software or hardware is foolproof, just ask Microsoft, Cisco, Oracle, and every other big IT company. As the judge said in this preliminary hearing, someone can say something as long as it is not false (my note: or a politician). See

Futurism

Lock Company Sues Man Who Picked Its Lock, Gets Horribly Humiliated

The company charged him with eight separate offenses, including copyright infringement and "defamation by implication"

#technology #security #legal