Novaling

Yep, I used Fedora Kinoite now! I originally used Fedora Silverblue, but that used GNOME + Wayland, and I dropped it cause spectacle couldn’t take screenshots in a Wayland based system. I switched to Kinoite because it uses Plasma instead. I don’t know if Wayland causes clipboard issues, as I never tested/got that far when trying to make Silverblue work. I just rebased cause I couldn’t get ShareX (the tool I used while on Windows) to work with WINE.

I use my clipboard tool with FF and have little to no issues there. The only thing I will note is, Textractor hooks the sentences a little weirdly. None of the hooks are perfect, the best one I can find that isn’t complete gibberish is a hook that simply copies the sentence twice. All the others repeat characters in a sentence like 50 times, so they’re unsalvageable. Not sure if it’s a browser hook thing, or a trying to force Windows apps in weird ways thing, but it’s not as smooth as a process compared to native Windows 😅

Huh? You can totally change the advanced settings (about:config) for Ironfox. I literally had to do that a few months ago to get a certain feature working for an extension I use cause some javascript and SCP settings were disabled for privacy/security.

Now, I completely understand why you wouldn’t want to spend hours tweaking settings and reading Mozilla’s source code forms to get stuff to work, so if that’s the reason for switching then I get it. But you can absolutely change the config settings, unlike vanilla Android Firefox which doesn’t enable about:config

I’m not gonna lie, I’m a little bit of an extensions hoarder, which is bad for fingerprinting 😣, but I seriously do use the extra ones.

Vital:

uBlock - obviously, some people even suggest to only use this extension and nothing else to reduce fingerprinting. Make sure to enable those filters! Also check out the advanced mode, eliminates the need for NoScript.

Not Vital But Really Good To Have:

LibRedirect - Never worry again about visiting the original social media site, you can immediately be redirected to a proxy version of the site that doesn’t stalk you. Great when I’m forced to click a Twitter, Reddit, Youtube, etc. link. Unfortunately, some proxy services are dead (Instagram, Tiktok, Invidious is always under threat, etc.)

Bitwarden - Password manager

Dark Reader - Nice, especially on fingerprint resisting browsers like Librewolf that don’t let your browser/sites see your system settings to automatically pick the dark mode of a website. Have singed my eyes a couple times.

For Language Learners (like me):

Yomitan - The GOAT of tools, a popup dictionary that can be used to instantly look up the definition of a word in your target language, and connects with Anki, a flashcard app. I use it for making vocabulary cards from Japanese media I consume. Literally all the other resources are meant to be paired with this.

Asbplayer - Lets you add subtitles to whatever media you’re streaming and makes the text selectable. Paired with Yomitan, you can easily make Anki flashcards from the TV/Movies/Videos you watch.

Lap Clipboard Inserter - By using a clipboard extension with Textractor, you can hook a game/visual novel and auto-copy all the game text to a webpage, which can be paired with Yomitan (you guessed it!) to look up words. You have to turn it on for individual pages, so don’t worry about it constantly stalking you.

Neat, But Random:

Mastodon Streetpass - Helps you figure out if a person is on Mastodon by looking for a custom link on their site. Collects a list of them and tells you the date that it found the account. Basically just browse as usual and it will passively collect a list.

Fucking RIP, someone on Lemmy recommended it to me and I thought it was open source. Should’ve known that Organic Maps would’ve also did traffic data if it was truly open source…

For now, I’ll still use it cause it’s better than being tracked by Waze/Google, but damn… Hope these new maps are good.

Edit: Downloaded Comaps from Fdroid yesterday but it wouldn’t download the maps, and I can’t get into the app. Gave all permissions, wifi was on (but also tried on data), and turned on compatibility mode on Graphene. Downloaded today from the Codeberg repo and it still has an error downloading the maps. Anyone else experiencing this?

This was the only one I could think of a good reason to track. I immediately thought of all the grandparents and tech illiterate people who’d probably implode if they had to pick .exe vs .deb vs .dmg/.app (I actually had to look up what MacOS uses…) vs etc. And don’t even try to have them guess intel vs amd.

Automatically guessing the operating system saves us tech people from having to figure out they downloaded a file for a completely different OS.

At first I was getting it for some proxy services and fediverse services, and didn’t think much of it cause I thought it was just some thing small projects used instead of cloudflare/google. But yeah now I’ve been seeing it on more “official” websites and I’m happy about it after I took time to read their github page.

I especially love it since I don’t have to cry over failing 30 “click the sidewalk” captchas in a row for daring to use a VPN + uBlock + Librewolf to look at a single page of search results. I can sit on my ass for 5 sec and breeze through, assured that I’m not a robot 🥹

The banking app thing is unfortunate, but then I kinda realized that I don’t really need them anyway. I have all the features I need in browser, and text notifications set up for when I spend money.

The wallet not working REALLY sucks, but if I look on the bright side that’s one less thing Google knows about me and my spending.

Yeah, there’s that concern, especially with how students and professionals rn are being snatched away in America.

I still use fingerprint but I totally understand why people turn it off entirely. Just noting for those who might want it on.

If you know you’re about to be in a shady place, you can do a quick restart or lockdown mode on both Android and iPhone. So you still get to use biometrics, but turn it off when you know you might be in some shit soon.

People have said Mullvad and I’d agree with them despite never having used it. Only thing it lacks is port forwarding, but if you don’t plan to torrent much that won’t matter.

I use Proton, it works great and has port forwarding. A board member has created controversy (praised Trump), but the company is non-profit so there’s that.

Just tried it out yesterday and today, and thought it was pretty good! Compared the routes it showed me with Waze (GM data) and it showed similar/exact routes.

For others who are curious, the only issues I noticed were:

1. Has a stroke when trying to navigate to my house, seems to think there isn’t an exact road next to it, meanwhile organic maps shows and navigates to it perfectly fine. Seems to struggle with the exact location of a place, especially in a group of buildings.
2. While navigating, if you tap the directions to see ahead, a bar comes up and shows you. However, when you try to dismiss this panel, it goes blank and stays on the screen.

Other than that, seems great, has all the features Organic Maps does and more. Likely to be my permanent navigator app.

Gonna be real, Firefox with some settings changed + uBlock/Librewolf + uBlock is Brave, and even better honestly. Brave has whitelisted some trackers on sites, and they also will break a site while not giving you a chance to find the one tracker breaking the site, forcing you to turn the entire shield off, defeating the purpose. Meanwhile, uBlock with advanced settings on will allow you to still block anything unnecessary to letting the site do basic functions.

Organic Maps is fantastic except for one crucial thing. Traffic info. That is literally the only thing stopping me from using it instead of GM or Waze. I need traffic info, I don’t want to be late to stuff because I didn’t know an accident happened, or a road got flooded, or there’s just high volume traffic, etc.

I’m not sure how they would implement it and keep everything relatively privacy friendly (well it’s FOSS so at the very least they aren’t selling our data ❤️), but I need it.

I was in high school when it first popped off so about 50-60% of teens (especially girls) were addicted/using it. I’ve never liked Instagram, Snapchat, Tiktok, or similar social media sites at all, so when it first came out I thought people were saying BeReal as in “B-reel”, as if it was some sort of site where you had to make an accompanying video to another one a friend made or some shit.

But BeReal is still known, has 10M+ downloads on Google Play, in the top 100 for social apps at 89th.

Ah… I have uBlock on and the site didn’t work without allowing some filters, despite javascript being on.

LibRedirect + Libreddit instances is fantastic.

Honestly, Reddit is one of the few services that can be redirected easily now. Invidious, Freetube, NewPipe, etc. is constantly being nuked by Youtube, and while Twitter redirects are still alive, they were dead for a short period, ProxiTok never works, nor does Proxigram instances…

Felt that. I definitely miss having a kana flick keyboard on my phone, I prefer it to qwerty conversion. I especially needed a good keyboard cause I was using FOSS apps to do my Wanikani reviews on my phone (Smouldering Durtles).

If someone does make something good, I’ll try to notify you, or make a notice in the Japanese learning communities on Lemmy 😉

Not OP lol

Looked it up, and it’s not truly OSS, but you can actually look at and modify the source code by executing the game as a zip instead.

Oh cool didn’t realize it was OSS (not free obvs)

Anyone got a FOSS keyboard that doesn’t suck AND can type in Japanese? I was using Gboard with wifi off for almost a year, but switched recently to Fctix + Anthy (didn’t even know Fctix had Android keyboards!) but the typing kinda sucks (click suggestion and doesn’t add a space after the word, accidentally slide on space so I start typing within a word) and it doesn’t do autocorrect.

Mozc is so old it literally doesn’t work on newer Android versions.

I checked Floris and Heliboard, and neither support it 🙁