• 1 Post
  • 72 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
cake
Cake day: June 7th, 2023

help-circle

  • I’ll elaborate for him/her: mesh devices sold by untrusted companies with a profit model will almost surely be collecting your data.

    The problem is not “mesh”, it is the companies using a new, cool, buzzword to sell their spyware that is the problem.

    They are basically enhanced repeaters that don’t require a seperate network access point.

    If you get a device that is primarily marketed as basic hardware, like the Asus router, you are more likely to avoid the collection. Bonus points if you can flash FOSS software to it, also like Asus, so yiu know it is clean. Regardless, use a VPN for external communications.

    My home is small enough that mesh is unnecessary, but I’d buy another Asus device for mesh if it were necessary.













  • Thanks for enumerating the counter points. I’m immediately turned off by his vocal style, but I can look past that long enough to evaluate the content.

    I have two big issues with it:

    • His assertions lack references to supporting evidence
    • his political allegiance gives me pause

    I will check out his content more before I write him off.

    It appears the android client he used is Cheogram, which I use. It is forked from Conversations, and is excellent. JMP.CHAT maintains it, and pretty much supports all of the xmpp standards. Including gateways to phone PBX, SMS, and Matrix.

    They and sopranica offer fully compliant servers, including self hosting.






  • OsmAnd is a favorite of mine. If you live in one of the covered areas (North America for sure) OpenSuperMaps merges a US style address search and most street addresses into the maps.

    OsmAnd search goes by town, street, number while these maps work with “25 oak street Chicago Illinois”. Also, the open street maps rely on croud sharing for map details, so many areas have very little detail, while others put Google Maps to shame.

    For navigation, I like Magic Earth. It includes similar search ability and has Waze-like features. The only problem is a lack of critical mass of users to get good traffic and hazard warnings. You can be one more user to supply such info.