Hands-on Workshop: Smartphone Privacy

On Wednesday April 5th 2023 from 4:30pm to 6pm i will be conducting a workshop at the public library of the City of Mannheim (Zentralbibliothek im Stadthaus N1) regarding the privacy of android smartphones: Using an Android smartphone as an example, Arvid would like to show you how you can prevent trackers and malware from accessing your phone.  The free App-Store F-Droid as well as the trackerblocking with the software Blokada play an important role.  The appointment will take place on site and you are welcome to bring your smartphone and make the settings on the spot.

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Run your own mailserver with mailcow

somehow running your own mailserver never appeared possible for me. First of all, the whole mailserver, webinterface and antispam construction seemed to be too much hassle for me to set up on my own. Secondly the reputation for e-mails sent from an own hosted mailserver used to be pretty bad. I have heard that other mailservers wouldn’t accept these e-mails because, for certain reasons, they where classified as spam. DKIM and DMARC flags where missing. At the Hacking in Parallel Conference in Berlin smart people recommended me the one-stop-shop-solution MailCow: a dockerized e-mail server with everything you that is necessary...

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touchpad gestures on Linux to control browser

if you ever have used the touchpad gestures on macOS (e.g. swipe to the left for going backwards in your browser) you might have found it quite convenient. Under Linux the software touchegg and the interface touche nearly does the same. It is possible to connect swipe commands with 3 or 4 fingers to keyboard shortcuts. In my case I connected the shortcut “alt+arrow left” to go backwards in Brave with the “3 finger swipe left”-gesture in touche. Et voila: I can now browse back without leaving the touchpad in my laptop. Another nice gesture: Zoom in with 2 finger...

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Tutorial about smartphone privacy

Library Mannheim – Wednesday, 19. Oktober 2022, 5pm to 6:30pm (17:00 – 18:30 Uhr) Surveillance capitalism is omnipresent. Facebook, Google and others collect data that tell us who we are, what our habits are, what we want and dream of. This intimate knowledge about us only serves to sell us more products and let us consume more than we need and our environment can bear. Arvid Ortwig wants to show ways to tame the smartphone without sacrificing comfort. Speaker Info: Arvid Ortwig has been an IT professional for over 20 years and works as an IT manager in a medium-sized...

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Application Launcher “ULauncher”

If you are familiar with MacOS you probably have come across the “Spotlight” search or even its more powerful siblings Alfred or Raycast. All of them provide search-functionality and launch applications through a little searchbar that pops up once you press a shortcut. Usually Ctrl+Space oder Command+Space. The tool “Ulauncher” is similar to Raycast with the option to launch applications, search for files, open websites with shortcuts or even extend its functionality with extensions. For example search bitwarden for passwords, paste text-snippets (I am prefering Autokey though) start VMs or a Remmina-Session. I can highly recommend that app and hope...

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Saving the world with FLOSS

On Friday the 24th of June another member of the CCCMA and me are giving a talk about using Free/Libre Open Source Software (FLOSS) in our daily lives. We will talk about the benefits of FLOSS as well as give practical tips to use privacy enabled apps on your computers as well as mobile devices. Check out the slides: Thanks to all who joined !

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Shutdown Octoprint after finished print

The plugin AutomaticShutdown (https://plugins.octoprint.org/plugins/automaticshutdown/) is great if you want to turn off your Printer after your print is finished. In my case I have the Octopi, the printer and a LED-lamp attached to a Fritz!Dect 200 remote controlled powersocket and configured it to turn itself off when the powerconsumption sinks below 12 Watts for 5 Minutes. So if the print is finished the autoshutdown-plugin shuts down the OctoPi. The socket detects the lower powerconsumption and shuts off itself off after the specified time… Save some energy here…

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