misc

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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Running your own matrix-server

Matrix is an open standard and communication protocol for real-time communication. In short: something like Signal, Threema or WhatsApp. With one exception: while the former are centrally managed via a company Matrix Servers are federated: Everybody can run a Matrix server. Furthermore every server is able to communicate with any other matrix server. Like e-mail servers. Signal cannot (yet) talk the Threema and vice versa. Matrix has even been chosen by the german army to be there messenger of choice for obvious reasons: The army can run their own servers and is independent from others running servers for them (that...

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weather info from cli

I stumbled across a nice service: wttr.in It shows weather forecast in ASCII. In order to look up the weather forecast for a desired city type in: The source can be found at github: https://github.com/chubin/wttr.in

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Donations 2021

At the end of the year people usually tend to be generous and start donating. So am I 😉 Here is an overview about my donations: Organisation Explanation Amount Sterntaler e.V. children’s hospice in Mannheim 100 € Digital Courage e.V. Organization fighting for rights in a digital world 100 € Netzpolitik.org Journalists fighting for rights in a digital world 50 € NABU e.V. environment association 100 € Free Software Foundation Europe Supports FLOSS in Europe 100 € I am thankful for a prosperous year and even more thankful that I can support the organizations I care about.

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Data-Experiment “Made to measure”

This is a documentary about an art-project. The artists wanted to show how someones life could be reconstructed by only analyzing the data stored in the persons google-profile without ever meeting or talking to the person. Thrilling: https://www.ardmediathek.de/video/wdr-dok/made-to-measure-ein-datenexperiment/wdr-fernsehen/Y3JpZDovL3dkci5kZS9CZWl0cmFnLWYwZGQwNTgwLWMyNDUtNGIwZC1iNjE5LTljY2YwNDM5NmVhMQ/

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Fn-keys on Varmillo VA88M keyboard and Linux

Many Linux Distributions recognize the Varmillo Keyboard(s) as Apple Keyboard: apunkt@Sputnik:~$ lsusbBus 004 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0003 Linux Foundation 3.0 root hubBus 003 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hubBus 002 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0003 Linux Foundation 3.0 root hubBus 001 Device 006: ID 0a12:0001 Cambridge Silicon Radio, Ltd Bluetooth Dongle (HCI mode)Bus 001 Device 004: ID 048d:5702 Integrated Technology Express, Inc. ITE DeviceBus 001 Device 009: ID 05ac:024f Apple, Inc. Aluminium Keyboard (ANSI)Bus 001 Device 007: ID 0810:e501 Personal Communication Systems, Inc. SNES GamepadBus 001 Device 005: ID 1a7c:0191 Evoluent VerticalMouse 4Bus 001 Device 003: ID 05e3:0608...

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Europes future is open

Being a follower of the Open Source Business Alliance I am receiving their newsletter. The latest news about the OSBE conference in late 2020 caught my attention as the interview with Raphael Laguna de la Vera is absolutely eyeopening / mindblowing. It explains how we europeans can set standards for data protection and use it as USP (uniqe selling proposition) for our digital services. Its available only in german though…

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Critical Mass Boom Box

As a supporter of the local Critical Mass Movement I wanted to entertain my fellow cyclists with some music. In order to get some good volume and to support my DIY interest i build my own portable boom box. What It takes Everything can be bought second hand. The whole setup should not cost more than 50EUR (except mediaplayer). car battery (12V 45Ah, lasts round 10h in my case) 2 channel car amplifier with cinch input and stereo speaker output (Example Amp) 2 bookshelf speakers (4 Ohm in my case) a bluetooth audio receiver (12V powered) with 3,5 inch output...

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