What are the coolest (privacy respecting) apps you have?

I'm not sure, because I don't really know, what Find My can do (I think it's an Apple app, right?) What you can do with KDE Connect is make your phone ring to locate it. You can't access the phones location. I hope that was remotely helpful.

Sadly not as AFAIK you need to be connected to the same network as the device (at least on iOS)

You can make your phone ring, but connect works over wifi, you have to be on the same LAN for the connection between devices to work.

All of them. You can even connect between multiple computers.

In my case Linux. But as far as I know there is a Windows App as well. Though I can't tell you if it's any good. Maybe there is something for MacOS, too, but I'm not sure.

I haven't used those so I don't think so. But it lets you add music from local networks, and you can add streams from a URL (even supports youtube links, which is a way to watch youtube without ads without pihole or a third party app).

I haven't used VLC on my phone. I prefer MPV on both desktop and mobile (it's the media player used in JMP), and it works with the jellyfin app just fine!

Jellyfin app (at least for Android) can play in external video players.

OpenStreetMap is amazing. I always use the maps when I want to know details about some place. Much more detailed than Google Maps.

ETA: Especially when you want to go somewhere on foot or by bike, because Google Maps kinda sucks at showing footpaths etc.

It fully depends on the area. My city has only a few hardcore mappers, but that's all it takes to make it really detailed.

I don’t know about general maps but any footpaths or off-road stuff is really good there and better than on Google or Apple Maps.

Better UI and UX, but a few less features.

I still find it invaluable, for easy encryption of whole thumbdrives.

I just replaced the gplay link with the fdroid. On github it says ;

No limitations. Track as many habits as you wish. Loop imposes no artificial limits on how many habits you can have. All features are available to all users. There are no in-app purchases.

That's pretty rad I think :)

Looks like it's on GitHub and F-Droid, so probably not!

Check out StreetComplete. It shows you missing osm data close to you so you can add that information directly. Very good way to get highly detailed information into OSM, like accessibility for stairs (handrail, ramps, etc.) or opening hours for shops (including updating older data)

Thank you for adding links, I didn't think to. You pretty much have it spot-on, but also: no ads!

I never really saw the need for Termux, but now that I selfhost at home and on a VPS, i couldn't go without it!

Also, I just recently started switching as much as I can to a self-hosted ntfy instance from pushover. I'm really loving it so far!

I sponsored it on github because I see myself using it a lot. Plus, the dev deserves it. The documentation alone is great, let alone the software itself.

Hey man, thanks for mentioning Aves and Etar, I'm now gonna try them out and use them as I work to degoogle!!

FlorisBoard for several months now. It has no text prediction

The good news is that feature is currently in development. There's a beta build on GitHub that has it sort of implemented. There's some details on the FlorisBoard matrix channel on getting it.

M.A.L.P., for when I’m playing music on the house system

Do you mind explaining your setup a bit more? I've currently got a few Sonos speakers but I don't like being locked into their system and have always been interested in a more open setup.

I've seen Snapchat and I know of MPD (but don't fully understand it, to be honest) but it seems there isn't much information about these types of setups.

I'd say it's closest to Obsidian but not quite

Logseq is very similar to Obsidian, I made the switch earlier this year. If you’re a fan of how Notion does things but you’re more interested in privacy check out AnyType. I haven’t played with it too much yet but I dig it.

Prices seem high

They talk about their prices better here: https://blog.kagi.com/update-kagi-search-pricing. Including:

Q. What is your cost per search? A. Currently it is 1.25 cents per search. But search indexes are about to become several times more expensive and we now have the AI integration cost. We will try to keep the cost at 1.5 cents per search or below by rethinking our partnering strategy and investing more into our infrastructure.

“Boosting” and blocking domains: basically permanent filters.

I mean, yes and no; it's not quite a filter as it can tweak the ranking not just outright put something at the top or remove it.

“Lenses” - Similar to SearXNG’s different tabs, but more like a profile style system.

These are actually super cool because they put things like the old "site:reddit.com" trick on steroids and https://help.kagi.com/kagi/features/code.html is like site:stackoverflow.com on steroids.

Bangs are the same as in SearXNG, and I think you can do the same, or similar, thing in Firefox.

You definitely can do this in plenty of things; I don't think it's all that compelling really, but it's a nice feature none the less, and it's arguably easier to sync "bangs" than it is to sync these shortcuts between browsers and different software; but yeah, not a big motivator for me.

Custom CSS is cool and all but you can get that with a browser add-on (like Stylus).

Similar comment about the syncing of this; but yeah, this also wasn't a big motivator for me.

Their “Comprehensive result filtering” seems that same as every other browser

True, but I think it's there 1 for completeness, and 2 because the count of ads and trackers as a criteria is pretty unique to them. It's also quite a bit more user facing, and easier to work with than say, getting the same options from Google search.

“Widgets” - Seems like Google’s quick answers, user created ones are cool I guess.

Not sure what you mean by custom ones, haven't seen anything about that; but it's definitely in the feature parity category.

Don't forget things like redirects (change your lemmy UI?) and their own index, which includes things like wayback machine results -- particularly relevant with CNET deleting old content to boost their Google ranking.

Their generated summaries are also pretty cool, e.g. from the CNET article:

• CNET has been deleting thousands of old articles from its site in recent weeks in an effort to improve its search engine rankings on Google.
• CNET confirmed it removes old content to appear more "fresh, relevant and worthy of being placed higher than our competitors" according to an internal memo.
• However, experts say Google does not encourage deleting old content simply because of its age and that older content can still provide value to users.
• The perception that "the Internet is forever" and content placed online will always remain accessible has proven untrue over time.
• Link rot threatens old web content as links go dead and content disappears from original locations.
• Copyright trolls have pressured sites to remove old images rather than risk expensive lawsuits over fair use.
• Large portions of the historical web record are missing or inaccessible now due to link rot and deliberate content removal.
• Archives like the Wayback Machine help preserve some content but can't capture everything.
• Sites focused on SEO are driven to extremes like mass content deletion to rise above noisy search results.
• Archivists play an important role in preserving digital history by making copies of content before it disappears.

Additionally, it seems that they don’t have seem to have any external audits ... (correct me if I’m wrong).

They don't, but they do have a clearly worded privacy policy https://kagi.com/privacy.

or releasing of code (correct me if I’m wrong).

The search engine itself, no; but their browser extensions are open source: https://github.com/kagisearch/browser_extensions

This actually looks very cool, so many new backup solutions to try after this thread. 🥲

I've tried a lot of different backup solutions... I'd be curious where you're leaning, but I'd say this one is likely going to be your winner for ease of use, privacy, and cross-platform functionality.

I used DDG for like 2 years. Almost every single search I had to search in both DDG and then in Google since the results from DDG were terrible. I recently switched to Kagi and have only had to try to find something in Google twice, and neither time Google was able to find what I needed either. You're not just paying for no ads, you're paying for actual search engine results, whereas the other companies, you are the product.

The only things I've cared about using Kagi are the ability to completely block domains, lenses, bangs, and actual search results that get me what I need. The rest is just a bonus.

I use duckduckgo /Searxng /Startpage pls dont shame on me but these are wholesome apps that makes me never look at google again Thanks for the recommendation of Kagi otherwise!

👋👁️🫦👁️👋

Love it. I wrote some custom scripts to basically combine it with anything I wanted an extra layer of security on and didn't want to manually go through and use a program like Veracrypt

The commands are also humorous and easy to remember. When you close a Tomb file for example it says something along the lines of "Your bones can now rest in peace".

Was a genuine challenge. I ended up purchasing a copy for my whole family so everyone can use it.

pretty easy. Takes like 15 minutes to get it running

Change your settings.yml to have this

enabled_plugins:
  - 'Hostname replace'  # see hostname_replace configuration below

And then define the rules like this:

hostname_replace:
#   My redirects
  '(.*\.)?reddit\.com$': 'old.reddit.com'
#   My filters
  'slant\.co': false
  'dailymail\.co\.uk': false

Thanks to you i started using this one. Imo Invidious Instances work better than the Piped ones, and this apps is like a game changer to me. Really like it

Oooh, I've never seen this, it looks amazing!

I was using F-stop previously for the map feature and the ability to add descriptions to the photos (I love having notes on the photos but hate being locked into a specific app like Google Photos).

Aves has a much nicer UI and can edit the geotag information, too. Glad I found this.

PikaBackup is more of a Time Machine style backup system. Not just for Gnome, it simply is made with the GTK.

Ultimately, I went with a Sony DualSense for my latest gaming controller. It has low latency when wired and the buttons are not clacky. Solid construction. I also have an 8BitDo Pro 2, which has one thing I especially like -- hardware turbo buttons. The rest of the controller is merely OK, and IMO not worth the extremely high praise it otherwise receives. Serviceable controller.

I've taken the extraordinary step of walking a few feet to my phone, and it looks like it's just called "Audio Spectrum Analyzer".

One thing you pick up on quickly is that speech is mostly undertones, and the actual information carrying part is subtle variation in the higher parts of the sound. Singing is noticeably different, and manner of speech is also very visible.

Never used syncthing so I'm not sure. Resilio is running a modified bittorrent protocol. It's always been fast and easy for me so I've never had the motivation to look into anything else.

I sometimes use this one called InviZible Pro on F-Droid. Have you ever used that? In addition to whole system TOR, it also has Purple I2P and DNSCrypt. Was wondering why one would use one over the other regarding whole system TOR? Just curious.

https://github.com/Gedsh/InviZible

I have two jobs. This is something I can do to make mad money for myself and I've made 3500 dollars this far. I don't know what na an MMO is.

You could probably do these surveys while working some jobs that pay more than McDonald's.

Think it was a one time payment of 10 or 15 usd for a software license. Personally think its kinda worth it