594 private links
Over >1300 public domain movies, tracked in #wikidata and hosted by Commons, #internetarchive (and even YouTube), watchable from a bespoke interface.
https://wikis.world/@magnusmanske/111743082678277750
What a cool project! This could make public domain movies much more accessible for all kinds of users.
Learn more on the WikiFlix Help page.
[...] Reddit cut off public access to Pushshift this summer, so Redditmap.social can only use data generated early this year.
From the blog post "How Big is YouTube?" by Ethan Zuckerman.
It really is time to learn to use a more open platform, preferably a Fediverse-compatible one.
Utforska den biologiska mångfalden!
Här samlar och presenterar vi vår och andras kunskap om djur och natur. Vi arbetar på att beskriva de cirka 60 000 arterna som finns i Norden och Baltikum.
Presentationen på denna sajt är dock ganska torr. Många sidor saknar beskrivning. Länkar för all del till Wikipedia och andra sajter.
En mycket mer visuell presentation av "livets träd" är den på OneZoom.
En annan (sidindelad som Naturforskaren men med mer visuella element) är Tree of Life web project.
Solar Protocol is a web platform hosted across a network of solar-powered servers set up in different locations around the world. A solar-powered server is a computer that is powered by a solar panel and a small battery. Each server can only offer intermittent connectivity that is dependent on available sunshine, the length of day and local weather conditions. When connected as a network, the servers coordinate to serve a website from whichever of them is enjoying the most sunshine at the time.
Via Solarpunks.
Solarpunks were prescient when they asked (in 2012):
What would computing look like if it had to get its power from purely local and renewable sources? What is the potential of low-and-no-power computing and sensor networks?
Lemmy
- https://browse.feddit.de (search communities across all instances, seems to work better than the search built-in to Lemmy instances)
- https://join-lemmy.org/instances
- https://lemmyverse.net
Lemmy communities (think subreddits) are given in this format: !communityName@instanceName.
Since Lemmy is on the Fediverse, you can follow Lemmy communities (think subreddits) from Mastodon, just replace the ! by @, and you should find the account name.
Lemmy Android apps:
- https://join-lemmy.org/apps
- Jerboa, Android app made by Lemmy's developers [I could not figure out how to switch to another instance without logging in first]
- lemmur is listed on F-Droid, but on its Github page the app clearly states that it's no longer maintained.
Yes, please.
A beginner's guide to creating your own little corner of the internet.
I don't know who is behind it, but I can get behind most of what it says.
Det här var ju goda nyheter!
34 svenska myndigheter (inom ramen för eSam och dess projekt digital samarbetsplattform, dSam) har tagit tydlig ställning för e-tjänster med hög säkerhet, garanterad suveränitet, öppen källkod och öppna standarder.
Find a Fediverse server to sign up for, find one close to you!
A site that shows Fediverse servers status. Cool.
This unofficial guide to the Fediverse is also really good
https://fedi.tips
More good introductions to the Fediverse keep popping up:
American companies will never be able to resist the demands of American intelligence services. It doesn't matter if their servers are located in Virginia or Paris or on the damn moon.
Although the author does not mention alternatives, I think he makes a a strong case for self-hosted services (such as Nextcloud).
https://world.hey.com/dhh/american-data-spies-will-never-care-where-the-servers-are-371d4016
This looks quite exciting. I hope to get the time to test it.
There's of course Hypothes.is, which is an open standard, but this being built on Matrix makes it all new and shiny :-)
Amandine Le Pape (of Element.io) makes some excellent points:
Open APIs are a good first step, but we must eventually have open standard based interoperability.
An open standard is far more secure than open APIs and today’s siloed apps. An open standard can ensure end-to-end encryption (and much more) between competing apps - and be audited independently for the benefit of all.
The increasing prevalence of cookie permission banners is making browsing near intolerable. There is no fool-proof method to avoid seeing them, but here's the methods I've learnt about and my own recommendation.
- "Is there any way to block the cookie agreement popup using Firefox?", Quora question with a few informative answers.
- "Extension that blocks all those 'accept cookie' popups?", Reddit question with good answers.
- "How to stop irritating cookie popups", blog post by Gtarafdar showing how to do it using CSS (I'd consider this the hardcode, manual way).
I stopped using the "I don't care about cookies" (IDCAC) extension by Daniel Kladnik after I encountered a bug on a website that was caused by the cookie consent popup being hidden from view but causing scrolling to not work, and there was no way to report the bug except mailing the developer. The extension having been recently bought out by Avast certainly did not help convince me to not look for alternatives.
- IDCAC does not have any public repo and thus no public issue queue. But the source code is supposedly published under a libre license, but where is the code published?
- https://www.producthunt.com/posts/i-don-t-care-about-cookies-2
- IDCAC has been sold to Avast. This is probably bad news.
Other browser extensions with similar functionality:
- https://consentomatic.au.dk, Firefox add-on. Has public issue tracker on Github (also, 1.2k stars). This is what I switched to from IDCAC. But I was not at all happy with its performance - for most sites it did not hide/remove the cookie popup.
- I Still Don't Care about Cookies is a fork of the IDCAC project, but in contrast to IDCAC it is hosted on Github with a public issue tracker. This will be my choice going forward.
- https://github.com/CodyMcCodington/AutoCookieOptout, Firefox add-on
- https://ninja-cookie.com/, Firefox add-on (appears outdated)
- Cookie Block
- Never-Consent
Tangentially related:
- Degoogle - a huge list of alternatives to Google products. Privacy tips, tricks, and links. Via Mailfence, "How to degoogle your life".
- The Ultimate List of Alternatives to Google Products by Matomo.
- εxodus, a web-based reporter than shows which trackers and permissions Android applications use.
- Degoogle subreddit
- Free and open source front-ends and alternatives to popular services, a list by FSM
- Open source alternatives to business tools
- https://oppetmoln.se
- also see my link on switching.software
RSS-Bridge
RSS-Bridge is a PHP project capable of generating RSS/Atom feeds for a multitude of sources. You self-host it on your own webserver or run it in stand-alone CLI mode.
Supports a long list of content sources (aka bridges).
- List of public RSS Bridge instances
RSSHub
RSSHub (over 17k stars on Github, wow!). It even has a browser extension and a mobile app. Docs.
Via reddit
"Kill the Newsletter!"
Kill the Newsletter!, by Leandro Facchinetti. Converts email newsletters into Atom feeds.
You can use the hosted service kindly offered by its creator, or self-host it yourself.
Via reddit.
FiveFilters
Web service that lets you create RSS feeds for any web sites that don't support it natively, among other useful content-related services. Offers a free tier, no account necessary. Paying customers also get access to the code and the ability to self-host the service (FiveFilters provide Puppet scripts).
FiveFilters maintains an open-source repo with site-specific content extraction rules that is widely used.
PolitePol
PolitePol is a web service where you can create RSS feed for any page on the internet using
interactive XPath selection. Create either XML or JSON feeds.
Service is not FOSS; pricing appears to depend on number of feeds. Unless you sign up the service is quite hobbled (feed lifetime 14 days, and feed never updates).
Feed43
Web service that lets you create RSS feeds for any web sites that don't support it natively. Offers a free plan, with or without first registering an account, but the code behind the service is proprietary.
RSS Box
RSS Box by Stefan Sundin, supports:
- Twitter (but Nitter may be better, also see this excellent guide by FiveFilters)
- Youtube (YT actually offers RSS feed per channel, also consider Invidious)
- Vimeo
- Instagram (another option is Bibliogram)
- Periscope
- SoundCloud
- Mixcloud
- Twitch
- Speedrun
- Dailymotion
- Imgur
- SVT Play
Feed me up, Scotty!
Feed me up, Scotty!, by Vincent Tunru. Hat-tip to Marie Dubremetz.
Notifier
Notifier, by Kirill Maltsev.
Can generate RSS feeds from emails and Telegram channels.
Offers up to 100 notifications per month for free. For 4 €/month you could receive up to 20,000 notifications.
Via kickscondor.
switching.software, a list of easy-to-use alternatives to well-known software
https://switching.software
Ethical, easy-to-use and privacy-conscious alternatives to well-known software
The source code for its website is published on codeberg (meaning you can suggest changes, etc.).
privacyguides.org
https://www.privacyguides.org lots of categories
The website itself is built from a public Github repo
Via https://mastodon.neat.computer/users/privacyguides/statuses/113002199475214098
yuuire, a list of open source and privacy-friendly apps
https://guide.yuuire.com/recommendations/software/foss-alternatives
Website's source code on github
F-Droid recommended apps by divestos.org
Another nice initiative by Aral Balkan of Small Technology Foundation.
Trying to apply the idea of POSSE (Publish on your Own Site, Syndicate Elsewhere) to my own posting. Here I'll summarise my results.
Automatically tweet public links I add to Shaarli (this would be a very convenient solution). But did not work because Twitter now requires you to jump through hoops to get access to the Twitter API from within your own Twitter account! Most egregiously, there is no way to complete their application procedure without handing over and verifying your phone number. Not doing that, Twitter can forget about it.
I still liked the idea of using Shaarli as my canonical source, so to speak, so let's look into Shaarli -> Mastodon instead. Alright, that's awesome and works great (well, unfortunately my Mastodon instance does not render Markdown, but that's not shaarli2mastodon's fault - I'll just have to avoid using Markdown in Shaarli notes posted to Mastodon).
With Shaarli -> Mastodon working, let's explore whether Lond's Mastodon <-> Twitter cross-poster can tweet our toots.
And yes, indeed, that worked right away. All I had to do was authorize the app on both my Mastodon and Twitter accounts. It needs lot of permissions, but hey, at least its source code is public, and it's even possible to self-host it.
That's positively awesome! I can now select to post any Shaarli note to Mastodon, and doing so will automatically
cross-post the same to Twitter too. Well done, POSSE!
- micro.blog is perhaps a nice alternative to self-hosting, and allows cross-posting to Twitter, Mastodon, et al.
- github.com/AmauryCarrade/MastodonToTwitter is another software project, but may be broken (last commit over a year ago, with an open issue that looks worrying)
- https://github.com/renatolond/mastodon-twitter-poster
- https://github.com/bitkeks/mastodon-to-twitter
- https://github.com/yogthos/mastodon-bot
- https://p.xuv.be/how-to-transition-from-twitter-to-mastodon
- https://tantek.com/2023/296/t1/posse-syndicate-link-reply
- https://tantek.com/2024/173/t1/years-posse-microformats-adoption
Seems there is a new kid on the block: moa.
Fraidycat is a desktop app or browser extension for Firefox or Chrome. You can use it to follow people (hundreds) on whatever platform they choose - Twitter, a blog, YouTube, Instagram or even on a public TiddlyWiki.
So it's like a feed reader, and if you use your browser sync functionality, it will sync between your devices. Really worth trying out this concept, especially if you don't want to setup your own web-based feed reader. The built-in (and increasing) support for many non-RSS sources is also nice.