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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: June 20th, 2023

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  • I used Squirrelmail briefly. It had a minor security bug which was easy to fix, but when I reported it to the devs, I couldn’t convince them that it was actually a bug. I decided that they weren’t paranoid enough to be working on that type of software, so I stopped using it.

    Currently I’m not self-hosting email but am using mxroute.com which has a FOSS mail client that seems ok. I can’t check right now what it is, but maybe later.

    Fastmail’s webmail is pretty good and they said something a while back about releasing it as FOSS but idk if that has happened.

    Right now I mostly use Thunderbird rather than webmail. It sucks in many ways but I’ve had too much going on to pursue alternatives.

    I think Google got it right early on when they realized that email clients should be backed by a serious search engine. The search features of a typical IMAP server aren’t enough and the one in Thunderbird is crap. So I think this is an area where FOSS clients could use some work, if it hasn’t already been done.












  • Nice I guess, it adds 4g to the older T-deck. I guess with a SIP client app you could use it as a voice phone. The processor is an ESP32-S3 which has wifi and BLE though the Lilygo article doesn’t mention either of those. I almost bought a used T-deck last year but figured it was another thing I didn’t have a real use for.

    I’d like to see a receive-only POCSAG pager built into a thing like this. I don’t know to what extent 1-way pager services still exist in the US, but the idea is that it’s a system that sends text messages in the SCA subcarrier of FM broadcast radio stations or sometimes other classes of transmitter. It has mostly been displaced now by cellular phones, but some people like doctors on call still use it, as it is supposed to be more reliable, plus the FM signal penetrates buildings better than cell signals do.

    For me though, the main idea is privacy. It is receive-only, so there is no always-on connection sending your location anywhere. People can send you a text and if you’re in the coverage area of the FM station, you receive it and can call the person back (in the old days, by finding a landline phone) or whatever. Some of the more expensive plans had regional or nationwide coverage, by broadcasting the message on a whole network of FM stations.

    POCSAG itself is a digital protocol for which many software implementations exist, and it doesn’t look too hard to write one. So the main challenge is having an RF receiver in the T-deck that gets a frequency where there is a pager service operating in your area.

    I don’t understand the attraction of small slow epaper displays. I’m fine with regular displays in a thing this size. I’d like to have a 13+ inch epaper tablet but no FOSS ones exist right now afaik.









  • solrize@lemmy.worldtoSelfhosted@lemmy.worldcalibre 8.0
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    19 days ago

    Thanks yeah I don’t have a kobo reader so was asking if there was a way to read paid-for kobo downloaded books that have drm, similar to how decss lets you watch DVDs that you bought. I don’t mind paying for books but don’t want a locked down reading device with it’s own crappy software and possible invasive phoning home.