Yeay, Debian user here who also left Twitter/X for similar reasons. I was already on Mastodon and Bluesky but didn’t make a habit out of it. Leaving the bad platform entirely (and having my data archived and searchable) helped a lot.

Glad to hear they moved on!

any advice or suggestion, please do give

I haven’t build one so I can’t help as much… but I’d be honest from the start by comparing it, head-on, with alternatives (if I understood correctly) e.g. https://github.com/searxng/searxng and simultaneously, because it’s federated, make it interroperable with them.

Also a good moment to clarify that DRM sucks, but as a user, or even a consumer, you don’t have to be worry of them (at least technically) because it’s trivial to remove. For example you can use this super convenient script https://pypi.org/project/DeGourou/ to straight up download content that should in theory be “just” for you. The online public library I use, namely https://www.lirtuel.be/ does offer ePub and PDF so I was overjoy… only to realize they meant with DRM. As I had already registered and was honestly pissed at them for not disclosing it from the start I tried DeGourou and… it just worked and is very convenient (you just give it the .acsm then it downloads and remove the DRM, so you get a proper file after). So… yeah, obviously don’t buy any DRM content if you don’t have to but if somehow you must, it’s not that big a deal technically speaking.

PineNote (Pine 64) or reMarkable (Pro if you have budget, 2 or even 1 otherwise)

Both work on Linux proper, the reMarkable comes with Linux out of the box whereas PineNote comes with Android but one can install Linux on it.

They are mostly to sketch but it is also good to read. You can pretty much use whatever you want on them, including developing your own software. I don’t know if they have Calibre clients because whats I do is… just scp my ePubs or PDFs on there.

Here are my tinkering notes on both https://fabien.benetou.fr/Tools/Eink but feel free to ask any clarification.

PS: the Bookeen Diva also does not require any software, namely you can plug it on Linux, it gets detected as a filesystem and you can copy DRM-free content on it. It’s a totally different form factor (much smaller so IMHO not great for comics) and I don’t think there is the same open-source community as the other 2.

Also note that you can how your own self hosted alternative https://github.com/ddvk/rmfakecloud

I’d argue it’s a simple toggle, namely if you do not register to their cloud, you don’t have access to their features and that’s it. If you somehow “mess” registration up and still went through the steps, hard reset and voila, clean reMarkable.

Source : I had the one and now have the reMarkable 2 and Pro and I do not use their cloud.

Beside this service (which I’m not using), any other? I briefly looked for a list but couldn’t find one.

It’s a comment on cherrypicking, namely why is it “bad” for DeepSeek but OK for Outlook?

OSM (no “app”, just Web) at https://www.openstreetmap.org/

CityMapper

I’d be quite curious to know the number of people who see AI as a standalone product. My bet would be very very few. Consequently when Meta provides it as an additional service to what they already offer, via chatbots or generated images or suggestions within post, they shortcut pure players. When they provide that additional service for fee, they undercut them. So… I’m not saying Meta won’t see slightly less usage for their own AI services but actual products, e.g. WhatsApp, Instagram, etc then I doubt it. IMHO it’s a sensationalist title.

Also FWIW I’m using Debian (1993) so relatively speaking, it (2015) is quite new.

First time I hear of it

Hmmm… I wonder if literally the first words of my post could I have been a hint. /s

1. email, everybody has that, if they can’t use it, well up to them to offer an alternative but anyway with DeltaChat I can get notified instantly.
2. Web. Sure the app does provide some convenience but most banks do have a working website that do not need an app as usually SMS 2FA works.
3. Real taxis do have phone numbers… but they also have apps and most do not required Google Services AFAIK
4. OpenStreetMap and CityMapper and (I know I’m going to sound nuts) but actually road signs or asking people
5. No but same, plenty of apps on F-Droid that don’t require Google Services, otherwise… a .txt file? .ods spreadsheet with visual? Same on NextCloud so you can share with others even though nobody cares? (sorry)
6. PinePhone, PinePhone Pro, Purism Librem, and (ahem…) Apple iPhone if you want a compromise between privacy and still convenience?

First time I hear of it, always give the same kind of thoughts :

• damn, yet another distribution, is this really necessary?
• maybe I need it, probably not, how does it actually work?
• actually I should make my own distribution at some point, how hard can it be? What would I learn from doing it?

… then I move on to my day.

Node exporter, Prometheus and grafana

Otherwise much heavier but that’s also what I use.

send alerts via http request

On this specifically you might want to check ntfy as it’s quite easy to setup and can give you notifications on pretty much any device (including iOS) via your own infrastructure all the way down to basics e.g. SSE. That mean you can subscribe to a topic, e.g. servers per physical location, alert level, etc and only get the ones you need.

Why would Meta AI be in “panic mode” when they provide the “service” for free anyway?

OpenAI though, or Anthropic, and others who are “pure player” in AI and do charge for a service might be in a pinch … BUT even then it requires a lot of resources that the random computer user do not have (e.g. a GPU and a large disk), so that even in such case (sadly, as IMHO self-hosted open-source AI is much saner in most cases, cf my https://fabien.benetou.fr/Content/SelfHostingArtificialIntelligence live wiki page) the average consumer would still better pay for a model to run.

Indeed, professionals are expensive, and IMHO rightfully so. I’m only trying to highlight the fact that it’s unfair to imply it’s much cheaper when the quality isn’t on par.

Not a weird example. I have my self hosted video server (PeerTube) and I tinkered with transcription thanks to whisper.cpp locally. It “works” in the sense that most of it is acceptable. It still does mistake though. I provide all my content, including hosting, at my costs and to anyone in the World for free.

So… I definitely see the value. I’m only saying that it has downsides and quality-wise relative to professional, it’s still bad.

Don’t let them know about cp, we’re all doomed! DOOMED! /s

PS: sensationalist BS. Interesting as a philosophical concept for sure but here it’s just fear marketing by AI-bro for their VC-funded scam.