609 private links
Short film by Spencer Sharp & Prince Ea, first prize winner of the Film4Climate from 2016.
Worth watching, always good to be reminded about our shared responsibility towards nature.
- https://www.connect4climate.org/article/film4climate-competition-winners-announced
- https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/press-release/2016/11/14/winners-in-the-film4climate-global-video-contest-honored-in-morocco
Via Alan Ralph.
- 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
These videos were produced for the National Science Foundation by the California Institute of Technology in the 1950's.
Via 3quarksdaily.
Veusz is a scientific plotting and graphing program with a graphical user interface, designed to produce publication-ready 2D and 3D plots. In addition it can be used as a module in Python for plotting. Veusz is multiplatform, running on Windows, Linux/Unix and macOS.
It supports vector and bitmap output, including PDF, Postscript, SVG and EMF.
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.
RSS Anything
Transform any old website with a list of links into an RSS Feed.
Uses Diffbot's Extract API to transform lists of links on websites into an RSS feed.
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.
Echo (RSS cross poster)
Echo is a node script that you can self-host to post new items from an RSS feed to services such as Mastodon.
The author also offers a hosted version at https://echofeed.app.
Rowing is slowly becoming the new watersport of choice for Cairenes looking to escape the hustle and bustle of Egypt’s chaotic capital.
CairoScene.
Pretty neat. Also
the band gap in ordinary water is about 7 eV
Good to know!
Where to find e-books
- Standard Ebooks, a curated collection of free and libre ebooks. Via reddit.
- Project Gutenberg, a large collection of free ebooks.
- Litteraturbanken, svenska klassiker. Via egen länknot.
- Z-Lib ,
z-lib.orgdomain seized, access via TOR or "personal domains" instead. - Library Genesis
- Anna's Archive, an open-source search engine for shadow libraries like Sci-Hub, Libgen, and Z-Library that aims to catalog all books in existence. Via TorrentFreak.
- The Internet Archive books collection. Very varying quality, some only for lending (via libraries), not download.
- Open Library, an open, editable library catalog by the Internet Archive. I'm not sure how it relates to IA's book collection.
- OpenStax, a growing collection of chemistry/physics/math textbooks made available under open licenses.
- World Bank's open knowledge repository, over 34000 publications.
- BookFinder, a search engine for new, used, and out-of-print books.
- AbeBooks, another search engine for used and out-of-print books.
- Helda Open Books, monographs from different disciplines written/edited by University of Helsinki faculty.
- OAPEN, Online library of open access academic books, operated by the National Library in The Hague.
- DOAB (Directory of Open Access Books), community-driven, operated by OAPEN.
- Bookshop.org. Via LitHub.
- A list of all the free ePUB, PDF and MOBI eBooks published on Planet eBook - primarily European classics.
Managing your ebook collection
- Calibre, the software for managing all aspects of your ebook library. Created by Kovid Goyal, maintained by hundreds of contributors. Project repo.
- For a full-fledged web interface to your Calibre library, look no further than Calibre-web. Just like Calibre's built-in server, Calibre-web also supports OPDS, which makes it easy to integrate with mobile apps such as Librera Reader.
- COPS, a Calibre PHP OPDS server. A less-powerful alternative to Calibre-web, in my opinion. But it served me well for some time before I discovered Calibre-web.
Tools for finding e-books
Reading e-books
Recently discovered Thorium Reader. Works very nicely on the Linux desktop and connects to our Calibre-Web OPDS server. My Ansible role.
Foliate is another nice desktop ebook reader. My Ansible role.
For reading on Android I use Librera Reader.
More links
- A not entirely bad guide to Calibre (desktop only) by MakeTechEasier.
- Library Athena, books from Project Gutenberg neatly displayed for reading in the browser.
- https://reddit.com/r/technology/comments/ynipok/pirated_ebook_site_zlibrary_vanishessending
- https://tenforward.social/@jeffcutsinger/113084913783829362
Any reversible physical process is an energy storage technology.
An interesting take from Technology Connections.
In this one, he reminds us that simple management of heat in our homes can amount to a simple and immediately available method to distribute energy use from the hours of peak demand.
Crooked Timber says: "energy storage is a solvable problem [...] concerns about the variability of wind and solar power will come to nothing in the end".
Moving rocks up and down former mine shafts could be a workable energy storage system.
The Materials Project's mission is to accelerate the the discovery of new technological materials through advanced scientific computing and innovative design tools.
To use Materials Project's API, pymatgen may be easiest.
I am not aware of a similar API wrapper for R.
Taylor Sparks has produced a number of videos related to the Materials Project, such as Materials Project API example using pymatgen and Materials data repositories.
I recently got a copy of my "digital covid certificate". (You can get yours at covidbevis.se).
The certificate contains a rather dense-looking QR code, so naturally I was curious as to what data it contained.
With the help of Binary Eye, I could see that whatever the QR code encoded was not stored in clear-text.
Searching the web, I encountered this blog post by Austrian hacker Tobias Girstmair.
He has written a Python script that deconstructs the QR code into its data fields.
I installed it and used it to read out the values from a JPG screenshot of my QR code (I have randomised or hidden some data to protect privacy):
$ git clone https://git.gir.st/greenpass.git/
$ cd greenpass
$ python3.8 -m venv venv,
$ source venv/bin/activate
$ pip3 install flynn base45 PyPDF2 pyzbar Pillow
$ sudo apt install libzbar0
$ python3 greenpass.py myqrcode-screenshot.jpg
QR Code Issuer : SE
QR Code Expiry : 2021-09-29 15:00:00
QR Code Generated : 2021-07-01 15:00:00
Vaccination Group
Unique Certificate Identifier: UVCI : URN:UVCI:01:SE:EHM/V10050020P8X
Country of Vaccination : SE
Dose Number : 1
ISO8601 complete date: Date of Vaccination : 2021-06-01
Certificate Issuer : Swedish eHealth Agency
Marketing Authorization Holder : ORG-100030215
vaccine medicinal product : EU/1/20/1528
Total Series of Doses : 2
disease or agent targeted : 840539006
vaccine or prophylaxis : J07BX03
Date of birth : 1982-02-01
Surname(s), forename(s)
Surname : <>
Forename : <>
Standardised surname : <>
Standardised forename : <>
Schema version : 1.3.0The script worked when supplying a screenshot, but threw an error when I tried supplying the HC1 hash itself. In any case, I congratulate Tobias on a very nice piece of investigative work, allowing citizens all over the EU to inspect the data they share when using their COVID vaccination certificate.
The SI system
- A comprehensive (SI) units package for LaTeX, by Joseph Wright. I cannot recommend this package enough for all scientific or technical documents. CTAN.
Code examples
- Semiconductor pn-junction diagram in TikZ, by Erwann Fourmond (2016)
- Schematic TEM in TikZ, by Eric Jensen (2012)
- Oxidation of iron surface under a blob of water in TikZ, by Jason Waskiewicz (2010)
- Designing a business card in LaTeX, by Olivier Peters. Github repo.
Templates
- LaTeX packages for CVs, resumés
- PhD thesis template for Cambridge university Engineering dept. Supports LaTeX, XeLaTeX and LuaLaTeX.
Integration with R
The ability to integrate any kind of R output into our LaTeX document is very useful, and the technology has reached a high degree of sophistication with knitr and tikzDevice (on the R side) and TikZ/PGF (on the LaTeX side).
- TikZDevice, an R package for producing graphics output as PGF/TikZ code for use in TeX documents. In other words, we start in R, generate an image, and export it to a TikZ picture. tikzDevice was developed around 2009 (here's an early demo) in concert with pgfSweave (this was before knitr entered the scene).
- dvir, offers the inverse approach to tikzDevice: we start in R, generate a TikZ picture, convert that to DVI, then import (and integrate) the result back into R. dvir is less popular than tikzDevice, and is currently not listed on CRAN (in fact, it clashes with an existing completely unrelated package named
dvir), but appears to have solid technical underpinnings, with LuaTeX support and LaTeX math support.
Integration with Inkscape
- SVG2TikZ, formally known as Inkscape2TikZ, is an Inkscape extension for exporting SVG paths as TikZ/PGF code.
Integration with Microsoft PowerPoint
- IguanaTeX is a PowerPoint add-in which allows you to insert LaTeX equations into your PowerPoint presentation.
Integration with git
- gitinfo2-latexmk, small tool that integrates latexmk and gitinfo2.
Integration with Zotero
- Better BibTeX, a Zotero extension that makes Zotero effective for LaTeX users.
Integration with the web
- TeX commands available in MathJax, a comprehensive list of all commands available in MathJax v2.7.1, by Carol Burns and edited by MathJax creator Davide Cervone. MathJax v2.7 is still widely used, but has technically been superseded by v3. MathJax.
- KaTeX, developed by Khan Academy. Known to be faster than MathJax, but supporting a smaller subset of TeX/LaTeX functions. Differences between the projects appear to be shrinking, though.
Cloud-based LaTeX
Other packages
- Beamer, package for producing presentations and slides. Github.
- FiXme, collaborative annotation tool for LaTeX. Github.
Tips and tricks
Hos NixTelefon kan du spärra ditt telefonnr mot försäljning, markadsföring och insamling. Spärren görs via telefon, men är helt automatiserad.
Hos Nix Adressat kan du spärra din adress från direktreklam (post). Spärren görs online, inloggning med mobilt BankID.
Oklart om postkodlotteriets utskick upphör när man registrerat sin adress hos Nix Adressat. De har i varje fall en egen spärrfunktion.
Spärra obehörig adressändring hos Skatteverket.
Spärra möjligheten att anmäla deklarationsombud på papper hos Skatteverket.
Via Cornucopia, Cornucopia igen.
"People You May Know", an FT Film (18 min) written by James Graham on the challenges presented by big data and algorithms, is released today in collaboration with Sonia Friedman Productions and supported by Luminate.
This short film appears to be the continuation of a paper titled "The Data Delusion: Protecting Individual Data is Not Enough When the Harm is Collective" edited by Stanford's Cyber Policy Center (the report's author is the managing director of Luminate), which has an adjoining Q&A session.
I think the film is worth watching, but one should keep in mind who the producer is.
Luminate was funded in 2018 by the Omidyar Group, which is owned by Pierre Morad Omidyar, who founded eBay which in turn bought PayPal. So not exactly a video by the people for the people...
Despite the notion in the film and the paper, I think the call for collective action does not negate the validity of individual action. Feeling like you should do something about this whole data privacy nightmare?
Well, you can! Switch from Chrome to Firefox. Switch from WhatsApp to Signal (or even better, Matrix). Don't let the Facebook newsfeed be your window unto the world; use your own RSS feedreader instead. Be the change you want to see!
Via kottke.org
When considering automation apps for Android, Tasker immediately comes to mind. And although it has name recognition, it's source code is proprietary and the app requires the Google Play store on the device (beyond a 7-day trial version).
So, what FOSS automation apps are there out there?
- Easer by Rui Zhao. Source on Github (449 stars, 1295 commits), F-Droid. Note that there is also a beta version of this app.
- Automation by Jens Schröder. Source on developer's Gitea instance (88 commits), F-Droid.
Other non-free automation apps for Android (not recommended)
- Tasker
- Automate by LlamaLab
- AutomateIt
- MacroDroid
- RuleBot by KF Software House (Hong Kong)
Two wheels
Cargo bikes
- Xtracycle, extra sturdy electric bikes with longer-than-normal rear wheelbase to carry two children or lots of cargo.
- Convercycle, a bike that transforms to cargo bike, via Core77
- En informativ presentation av nätverket "Cykla med lastcykel"
Lastcykelguiden, en märkesoberoende guide till lastcyklar och lastkärror.
Peppe Hämeenniemis presentation om lastcyklar (PDF) från Cykelfrämjandets cykelträff aug 2022.
Three wheels or more
- Electric tricycle that leans into corners, a concept from BMW (not produced yet). Cargo area between the two rear wheels, and the front is able to tilt in curves. Chain-based drive mechanism that looks complicated.
Per Alström är professor i ekologi och genetik och har i sin forskning kartlagt hela sju nya fågelarter.
There's an app that can identify bird species from their song or even by photo:
Merlin. Developed by Cornell Lab of Ornithology, and covers birds across most of the world. Thanks to Helen Fields for the tip.
Big downside - the app won't start until you provide an email address. It appears it won't continue working past five days unless the email address is confirmed. Why are you being snoopy, Cornell? Not nice.