I really dislike people recommending Signal in a post about free software since Signal has a pretty bad track record when it comes to allowing non official clients to connect to its network. So much for user freedom.
Most people haven't even heard of https://jami.net/discover/ ... and that's the problem with messengers - you have to educate your social network and coax them to use the same product or you will be forever stuck with Facebook Messenger / WhatApp, iMessage et al.
Indeed, I had never heard of it until this comment. If you want more people to notice it, someone just submitted it:
Any suggestions for Google Keep replacement? I really hate that all reminders end up in Google Calendar. I've already tried almost all Tasks apps from F-Droid, but each has some or other annoyance that prevents me from using it.
Omni Notes is the best Google Keep replacement I've found yet.
You're right though, it's surprising how hard it is to find a note taking app that's just simple and intuitive.
Do you really need to install UnifiedNLP to use location services? Doesn't the GPS radio work without google play services?
GPS does work, but sometimes it takes anywhere from a few seconds to a few minutes to lock onto your position. It doesn't bother me now, but at times it's useful to have faster location lock, in which case UnifiedNLP + a few location providers does the trick.
I wonder if somehow UnifiedNLP is providing the almanac?
GPS is a standalone system but it doesn't have a lot of spare bandwidth for the metadata so the alamanac you need frequently updated to use it takes quite a long time to receive over GPS itself whereas you can download it very fast over even a mediocre GSM signal.
Taking a few minutes, especially the first time you use it in a day for example, sounds like the time needed to receive the almanac. But I could be wrong.
Google Maps is fully compatible with MicroG, a free and open source replacement for the Google Play Services client. MicroG includes UnifiedNlp, which was discussed in the blog post. https://microg.org/ https://lineage.microg.org/ At the moment, I recommend the previous version of MicroG (0.2.6.13280) since the latest version (0.2.7.17455) may have compatibility issues. If you're using LineageOS for MicroG, builds on…
MicroG talks to Google servers and uses Google's infrastructure while breaking the terms of service (at least in case of FCM). Same goes with NewPipe - you're using YouTube without actually paying for bandwidth, storage costs or the video author. So you're not actually getting yourself rid of Google or tracking, you're just using their resources without paying the asking price. Use other alternatives instead.
> you're using YouTube without actually paying for bandwidth
NewPipe actually saves bandwidth when you listen to audio only. As I recall, it parses the HTML and doesn't download the wasteful video stream, if you want just the audio.
Google should thank NewPipe users for their responsible use of their free resource.
There's two Google apps I just can't live without: YouTube and Google Maps. There's simply no alternative to the amount of value these bring me. OSM is getting good but it's just not there yet. I'm working on this in my area. I'd suggest to anyone worried about Google tracking to use Privacy Guard built into LineageOS, which aims to make each and every request for sensitive permissions explicit. A big benefit of free…
> There's two Google apps I just can't live without: YouTube and Google Maps. There's simply no alternative to the amount of value these bring me.
Regarding YouTube, try using only their video widget, and not their recommendation engine.
There's two Google apps I just can't live without: YouTube and Google Maps. There's simply no alternative to the amount of value these bring me. OSM is getting good but it's just not there yet. I'm working on this in my area. I'd suggest to anyone worried about Google tracking to use Privacy Guard built into LineageOS, which aims to make each and every request for sensitive permissions explicit. A big benefit of free…
Google Maps replacement: https://wego.here.com/ (It's pretty decent and was owned and used by Nokia before some German automobile companies bought it. Includes traffic data and voice based navigation. And they were offering offline maps long before Google).
I use this. Got fed up with Google Maps (in navigation mode) constantly trying to get my attention for things unrelated to driving. "We've found a faster route!" it would say, as if saving five minutes on a five hour journey is the least bit useful. Either I take my eyes off the road, fumble for the button to say "ignore that option", then try to re-focus on what I was doing, or it just switches me across to the other route anyway. It would do this multiple times in the journey. The wego option just does navigation, no distractions or foolishness.
There's two Google apps I just can't live without: YouTube and Google Maps. There's simply no alternative to the amount of value these bring me. OSM is getting good but it's just not there yet. I'm working on this in my area. I'd suggest to anyone worried about Google tracking to use Privacy Guard built into LineageOS, which aims to make each and every request for sensitive permissions explicit. A big benefit of free…
Google Maps replacement: https://wego.here.com/ (It's pretty decent and was owned and used by Nokia before some German automobile companies bought it. Includes traffic data and voice based navigation. And they were offering offline maps long before Google).
I don't really understand how using tons of different services with probably much worse privacy and security teams and policies just for the sake of not using Google is improvement. It is actually much worse.
I really dislike people recommending Signal in a post about free software since Signal has a pretty bad track record when it comes to allowing non official clients to connect to its network. So much for user freedom.
can anybody here comment on the state of Wire? The last time I heard about them a while ago but they also seemed reasonably serious about security.