What’s wrong with https://lmstudio.ai or https://jan.ai for offline, private, FOSS use?

information in a way I’m uncomfortable with.

Huh, what’s that? Maybe I did this so long ago that I don’t remember before I started getting big into privacy.

Hmm, I wonder if Betterbird has solved that problem… I’ve actually only ever used webmail as I didn’t understand the benefit of a desktop platform—until these (increasingly) privacy-invasive times!

Fascinating, thanks. This is like the ad-focused counterpart to that one AI image generation-harming tool, Nightshade.

no mercy for surveillance capitalists!

There, all fixed now.

Right, so I’m wondering what client that is.

Thunderbird/Betterbird?

Huh, then I wonder if I may need to go older. Ironic. Well, I’m just using Bluetooth for now lol… I know, not the best…

I could not get that thing to transfer files… but I also see it’s had multiple updates this month, so maybe it’s resolved my issues…

Weird, I had no idea that there was such a sharp restriction on the Linux platform! Well, what about using scrcpy to access your phone on the computer?

Due to their security focus only very few messages can load from your phone

Source? I’ve never heard of nor experienced this. In my experience as a longtime Signal user, it’s Signal Desktop that sometimes misses messages while phones never do (unless you botch a transfer).

Who are you with now?

US Mobile is a self-proclaimed “supercarrier” which offers SIMs across all major networks (AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile), so you can change as you like according to your phone’s compatibility. However, the CEO (who is active on /r/usmobile) has been known to kick existing customer loyalty to the curb in favor of new members, and their customer service centers are in Pakistan, where he’s from.

These may or may not be good or bad things depending on your threat model, but one thing’s for sure: their price is unbeatable! Come to think of it, I have a referral link for anyone who may be interested, but that’s up to you. I actually dislike the CEO’s practices, but I’m already locked in for a year and didn’t know until later…

Your Android device doesn’t have a personal dictionary section in the Language & Input page? What phone do you have? Yeah, keeping it offline is probably fine, but I’m just surprised since this has been a thing for at least 7 Android versions now, as far as I know.

By the way, HeliBoard (an offline fork of the now-defunct OpenBoard) seems to have its own private, built-in personal dictionary; I migrated to that since finding out.

Ha, I just made !espanso@programming.dev recently!

Why do you use a separate Android app with all of those hostile permissions instead of the built-in personal dictionary and its shortcuts? I have thousands of shorthand lines in Android’s personal dictionary, like wdyl = what do you like (type the first part and the second part appears in the autocorrect pane for you to touch if you want).

Rethink is better than NetGuard.

Out of curiosity, what can N++ do that VSCodium can’t? That’s what I’ve been using and it’s been mostly fantastic.

Wow, thanks for sharing Scoop; I had no idea of this software, and dang, that is one huge games bucket… I’m gonna have to crawl through this sometime. I’ll check out XnView as well! I think I knew of that one earlier, but never actually looked into it and then forgot…

Update: Unfortunately, XnView can’t do anything like the interior cropping that I’m hoping to do. There is a “Suggestions” subforum in their forum, but I can’t even register; despite disabling uBlock Origin, I get met with the nonsensical error The solution you provided was incorrect as I see no CAPTCHA test, so I’m unable to pitch this as a suggestion. Alas…

Haha, thanks to you, I discovered that graphical ADOM is free (I thought it was paid). And MegaGlest is an unexpectedly awesome RTS!

I am, unfortunately, on Windows, mostly because of my inability to find adequate Linux replacements for key features in AutoHotkey and IrfanView. Believe me, I’ve been looking and trying to learn…

He may as well go without images, too, and use Lynx Browser, haha. I can’t even figure out how to install that one!

I’d never heard of it until now and am so far okay sticking with Windscribe.

Just don’t try to schedule a video for publication in LibreWolf; its time zone obfuscation will totally have it publish at an unexpected time unless you figure that out first!

They’ve helped me figure out some nested spreadsheet formulas that were pretty complicated to me.

What typically happens is that they mess up, but their malfunctioning code still has something in it that I hadn’t considered, which leads me in the right direction. They have their place in terms of helpfulness when you can’t or don’t want to wait for someone.

Tuta?

I just synced them in a triangle between my phone, laptop and desktop.

This is precisely my setup, haha! But I don’t even use my desktop often enough to merit a server…

Mail and calendar I’m still trying to figure out. VPN you don’t need as long as you use HTTPS everywhere.

password manager

KeePassXC + KeePassDX

documents

Collabora Office + LibreOffice

What are the pros and cons relative to proton?

Pros: free, open source, and 100% offline with no intermediary company. Your file security is entirely in your own hands.

Cons: you must devise your own cross-device sync system. I use Syncthing + Syncthing-Fork.

What are the mobile apps like?

Collabora is currently just bad lol. It’s best reserved for really simple edits, if not just for viewing, with all major changes made on a desktop/laptop computer. KeePassDX isn’t terrible but it can’t view all the fields that the KeePassXC desktop platform can, and getting it to take PIN instead of password for vault-unlocking is really convoluted (although you’d only have to do it once).

What assurances do you have they won’t go full proton in the future?

They’re all open-source so anyone dissatisfied with the direction that the maintainers go in can fork them at any time.

Or just keep using mobile data

That merely moves it to the carrier knowing, though, right?

It’s not open-source, though, right? That’s what led me to finally leave it… Incredibly powerful tool otherwise.

Wise concern. I never tried Beeper, either, despite becoming eligible from the waitlist.

It’s no massively strong recommendation of mine, but File Explorer has been decent. Talk about a name, though, haha.

Interesting, so the devices could be countries apart, hypothetically speaking? I had no idea if so.

Wait… I thought the whole premise of Syncthing is that the syncing devices need to be on the same Wi-Fi network. How do you configure it to not need this?