FOSS dev, self-hosting fan, Matrix, degoogling, small tech, indie tech, friendly tech for families and schools. Let's own our own identity & data.
I wish our children could grow up making their digital footprints in their own digital gardens. In the current system our children visit shopping malls run by the Big Tech companies whose business model is to find every way to maximise profit from their “users”.
This is my list of Open EdTech resources that I see as helpful toward my goals.
From: Google
“Your Google Account will soon be considered as inactive“
”... if you don't sign in soon”
“Is this a phishing scam?” was my first thought. But no, it's true! This officially confirms I am freed at last from Google's clutches on my data, on my digital life.
Hurray!
I once thought Google was my friend. The most convenient email, the most convenient search, a great phone, with a feeling of being quite open-source-y, not too locked-in. But of course their lock-in is immense, almost inescapable, just like all the other Big Tech silos. Once disillusionment set in, it was hard to leave that all behind. Took me five years.
Now, for months and months I haven't signed in to my gmail, to play store, to youtube, nothing.
And I feel great!
Want to know more?
This is my POSSE copy of announcements I posted to the Matrix Community Year In Review 2022, which was subsequently published on Nico's blog and on Matrix.org's blog.
One day in the late '80s or early '90s I heard on the radio an old recording from 1936, “mush along you huskies... at the end of the caribou trail,” from a crackly old 78 rpm record. Simple, quaint, nostalgic. I liked it and noted down the title on one of my many lists I used to keep.
I am publishing the Open Tech Will Save Us (OTWSU) talks on an Open Tech platform — namely on my own instance of PeerTube.
To view and listen to the talks, go to my OTWSU mirror channel. Find a list of recent editions at the end of this article.
To watch the next edition live, with the opportunity to ask questions, see the OTWSU home page for details.
The rest of this article explains the why, the what, the who and some technical details.
A design suggestion.
Most photo apps incorporate a thumbnail gallery view. There are two main layouts they use for this view: some tile the thumbnails so as to fill the space available, while others lay out the thumbnails on a square grid. This suggestion came while using the square grid layout.
We'll soon have smart electricity and gas meters. Let's monitor them locally through our home automation system, Home Assistant.
Who's been through this process, selecting a PV inverter & system best suited to cloud-free monitoring? Can you advise me if I should insist on a particular inverter, or connect an add-on box (EmonCMS or other)?
We're looking to install solar PV on our roof and maybe an air source heat pump too. I've collected plans, thoughts, questions on my own web site here:
https://blog.foad.me.uk/2022/11/24/solar-pv-heat-pump/ [1]
My particular passion is to be “cloud-free”. That's when I found you, the open energy monitor community. Hurray!
“All I Want for Christmas is...” a device working as a tool for me, not as an agent for its maker
We love a new tech gadget. What will it be? It's all about “smart” these days, but when they say “smart” they usually mean “we're still in control of it”.
Learn how you can have a freedom-respecting
