• Proprietary
• Based on Chromium
• Requires an account to use

Instant nope from me!

And Putinism. It was, after all, the TLD for the Soviet Union.

I prefer WikiLess, tbh. Also, Metastem uses .su, which was the TLD for the Soviet Union.

Yeah, I think they go into discovery mode until they find a previously-paired device when you turn them on.

I’ll double-check the manual.

Use ADB to remove Google and Samsung bloatware and tracking. Ask around for help.

You should be able to use Heimdall to unlock the bootloader, but there isn’t currently a build of LineageOS or DivestOS for this phone, so unfortunately you cannot yet flash a custom ROM (AFAIK). However, rooting should work if you need this (although it can hurt your security a bit).

I’d recommend removing Google Play Services and replacing it with microG, although this may be complicated.

The best solution, however, is probably to exchange the phone for a more versatile model, such as a Google Pixel or a Fairphone.

I thought it still worked, though.

There are two main alternatives, AFAIK:

• PeerTube is a federated video sharing platform, which is based on WebTorrent and ActivityPub. There aren’t too many creators there yet, but here’s a list of the channels I follow: https://lt27.de/jAyUHD

• A YouTube frontend will provide YouTube videos with no ads or tracking. Here are a few that I like:

  • Invidious | (Website)
  • Piped | (GitHub)
  • CloudTube | (sourcehut)
  • LightTube | (GitHub)
  • LiteTube

• There are also apps:

  • Android:
    • NewPipe
    • SkyTube
    • LibreTube
  • iOS, macOS, tvOS:
    • Yattee
  • Windows, Mac, Linux:
    • FreeTube

It might also be good to have a bot that links to Imgin or Rimgo, which are privacy-respecting frontends for Imgur.

I don’t like Brave as a company. Brendan Eich is an arsehole, Brave Browser has had (minor, but numerous) controversies, their crypto stuff is off-putting, and now they’re sticking their new AI into everything.

Same here. I’ll go and live in a hut in Greenland before I go back to Google.

It will be. However, I would prefer to keep the VPN on.

Definitely not. Never mind “out of the frying pan, into the fire”; for me, this is “out of the lake, into the fire”.

Using Yandex would involve giving my personal data to Russia. The possibility of my data falling into the wrong hands is the main reason I am looking for a private search engine; I’m certainly not then about to just walk up to the wrong hands and say “here you go”. Not to mention the censorship.

Besides, I’ve blacklisted the .ru, .su, and .рф, .москва, and .yandex TLDs in NextDNS.

We want search engines. GPT-3.5 has a knowledge cutoff in 2021, so I only really use it for software recommendations and text/code formatting.

There’s an English version out there, but some essential features are paid, such as enabling moderate safesearch or adding Mojeek as an engine.

The engine occasionally throws up a “Sorry, we’ve detected unusual traffic from your IP address” and then I have to type in my query again after solving the captcha. They’re also based in France, which is bringing in anti-encryption laws and suchlike, so (unless I’m an idiot, which is not unlikely) the risk of something compromising Qwant is rising a bit.

On top of that, it’s the only privacy-respecting search engine not to achieve an A grade on ToS;DR.

I don’t like Brave as a company. Brendan Eich is an arsehole, Brave Browser has had (minor, but numerous) controversies, their crypto stuff is off-putting, and now they’re sticking their new AI into everything.

It stopped returning results. I tried other instances: same problems. However, I think the issue may have been fixed.

I am currently on an iPhone, and I’m not really in a position to self-host (although I did try to set up a FreedomBox the other day).

Depends on the device. I have my custom desktop rices here: https://sopuli.xyz/post/1516215

Personally, I really like Cinnamon. However, it doesn’t support Wayland, and the laptops I have that aren’t powerful enough to handle Wayland are also not powerful enough to handle Cinnamon.

Go for 2FAS. It’s FOSS and quite similar to Raivo. It’s also now the 2FA client recommended by Techlore.

Either the PineTime, or buy one that you can flash AsteroidOS onto.

True.

Oh, nice! That’s perfect!

Kiwix is a pretty good tool. The only real disadvantage (as far as I know) is that edits to the pages often take a long time to come through after they’re made on Wikipedia (or whichever wiki you’re looking at); sometimes weeks or months.

Time for Gemini?

Of course! I keep forgetting about Fairphone!

Services I Use:

• LibreX (search engine)
• CloudTube (YouTube proxy)
• PeerTube (federated YouTube alternative)
• Tutanota (mail & calendar)
• Organic Maps (maps app based around OpenStreetMap)
• Cryptee (encrypted notes)
• Matrix (chat)
• LibreOffice + Collabora Office (office suite)
• Kiwix (offline Wikipedia & other wikis)
• NetNewsWire (RSS reader, for news)

Arms of the Fediverse I Use Regularly:

• Mastodon
• Pixelfed
• Lemmy
• PeerTube
• WordPress

Dormant Arms of the Fediverse:

• Friendica
• Kbin
• Funkwhale
• WriteFreely

I have installed Linux on all four of my laptops, and I’m hoping to migrate from my iPhone to a Pixel with DivestOS as soon as I move out of my parents’ house (I’m currently 17), or sooner if possible.

I have also swapped many web apps for desktop apps, and my music collection has been based around CDs and DRM-free files since it started in 2016. In addition, I still use DVDs, VHS tapes, and (to a lesser extent) good old-fashioned Torrents for my films and TV shows.

If the internet becomes altogether too bad, there’s always Gemini. Making web apps is trickier, but entirely feasible.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gemini_(protocol)

https://gemini.circumlunar.space/

I think there was also a federated social media site on Gemini, which could interact with Mastodon, but I can’t find it.

I was about to recommend Yattee, but then I reread the post and noticed that OP has already tried it.

I’m afraid a PWA might be the only way to go. uYou, Cercube, and Yattee are the only apps that aren’t crammed full of ads, tracking and in-app purchases.

AFAIK the app is still maintained. I could put a feature request in on the forums.

If you want a streaming service, you could try HyperPipe. It’s an alternative frontend to YT Music. There’s also BeatBump, but it doesn’t really work.

If you wanted to go local (which I recommend), have you tried foobar2000? It’s proprietary, but I trust it and it does its job very well. No ads, no data collection at all, and it plays just about every audio format you’ll normally come across (apart from MIDI files). You can also customise it with skins, sync over FTP, and play internet radio streams.

The trouble was that I could restore; except the only copy of the backup was on the disk itself, and hadn’t actually been uploaded to Filen.

Exactly!

He’s at @torvalds@social.kernel.org.