"In the five years since writing that, I’ve watched so many apps — most of the apps!! — mutate before my eyes. Sharp sparkles of AI now lodge them­selves in everything, a mist of invitation. [...]
Meanwhile, my little home-cooked apps each do the one thing they are sup­posed to do, sparkle-free. These apps are sub­stan­tially fin­ished the day I “launch” them, and, unlike modern com­mer­cial software, they are allowed to just: be fin­ished."

A directory of EU-made alternatives. From software and electronics to everyday products - all made in Europe, via Morgan - Cacahuètes

View, edit, and create GPX files online with advanced route planning capabilities and file processing tools, beautiful maps and detailed data visualizations.

A handy browser extension to view Mastodon profiles on your Mastodon instance.

“We were keeping our eye on 1984. When the year came and the prophecy didn't, thoughtful Americans sang softly in praise of themselves. The roots of liberal democracy had held. Wherever else the terror had happened, we, at least, had not been visited by Orwellian nightmares.

But we had forgotten that alongside Orwell's dark vision, there was another - slightly older, slightly less well known, equally chilling: Aldous Huxley's Brave New World. Contrary to common belief even among the educated, Huxley and Orwell did not prophesy the same thing. Orwell warns that we will be overcome by an externally imposed oppression. But in Huxley's vision, no Big Brother is required to deprive people of their autonomy, maturity and history. As he saw it, people will come to love their oppression, to adore the technologies that undo their capacities to think.

What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one. Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism. Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance. Orwell feared we would become a captive culture. Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture, preoccupied with some equivalent of the feelies, the orgy porgy, and the centrifugal bumblepuppy. As Huxley remarked in Brave New World Revisited, the civil libertarians and rationalists who are ever on the alert to oppose tyranny "failed to take into account man's almost infinite appetite for distractions." In 1984, Orwell added, people are controlled by inflicting pain. In Brave New World, they are controlled by inflicting pleasure. In short, Orwell feared that what we fear will ruin us. Huxley feared that what we desire will ruin us.

This book is about the possibility that Huxley, not Orwell, was right.”
― Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business

Having your bed hackable from anywhere is super scary! Again, an example on why you should not connect everything to the Internet

I am planning on learning more about rsync in the future, since I have never used it before. RsyncUI is a GUI for a normally command-line only utility tool.

As Google gives you the choice to opt out of cookie tracking, it silently starts collecting your online habits with fingerprinting.

Since my Kindle Paperwhite is not updated anymore and I want to leave Amazon as much as I can, I am going to try KOReader to read my ebooks from now on

I just did this tutorial to jailbreak my Kindle Paperwhite from 2015

Quick and easy way to download your entire Amazon library onto your computer from a backup that you can store in Calibre

This brings back so much memories from middle school when I was jailbreaking my iPod Touch and writing blogposts on my favorite Cydia tweaks. My first experience online, meeting awesome strangers along the way

Here’s an easy system for two humans to remotely authenticate to each other, so they can be sure that neither are digital impersonations. To mitigate that risk, I have developed this simple solution where you can setup a unique time-based one-time passcode (TOTP) between any pair of persons. This is how it works: Two people, Person A and Person B, sit in front of the same computer and open this page; They input their respective names (e.g. Alice and Bob) onto the same page, and click “Generate”; The page will generate two TOTP QR codes, one for Alice and one for Bob; ...

I am adding this tutorial to my list of things to do on my computer.

Cory Doctorow's talk at DEF CON 32 focuses on how hackers can take control of computing resources. He emphasizes the importance of making technology more accessible and less controlled by corporations. The message is clear: empower users to reclaim their digital rights.

The faster than your launcher launcher.