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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 28th, 2023

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  • I don’t know how the Play Store version does push notifications, but Molly, and I think the apk from their site, work just fine on degoogled phones without Google services.

    I don’t remember what name it has, but missing it breaks push notifications on most “normal” apps. Many FLOSS ones are coded to have their own methods that don’t transmit data to Google, and it appears at least some versions of Signal do too.

    My threat model doesn’t include state level actors taking an active interest in me, so for my purposes Signal would be secure enough, if only I got people to adopt even it.



  • If it doesn’t give her the ick and she likes the classic styles, used jewelry is the way to go. It’s already had the “walk out of store” depreciation and I think engravings on most rings are pretty easy to replace.

    As a more personal recommendation, when I ahem “outgrew” my own engagement ring and was too lazy/cheap to resize, I got a “temporary” replacement 10? years ago from here. It was supposed to be moissanite in titanium, did an XRF analysis and the band material was some sort of nickel-less maybe steel IIRC. No idea if the moissanite is genuine, but it’s held up way better than any CZ has, and the band has kept better than silver so props to that.




  • What all do you consider “synchronizing” to include? I mean, the calendars won’t, but using Etar+NextCloud for calendar, and Tuta for email, has worked fine for me. Of course it means that my calendar isn’t encrypted.

    I just tested sending an ICS event to both. The Tuta app offered to open it on Etar, and Etar offered the default calendar with dropdown for others, just like normal. (Strangely it didn’t even offer to open on Tuta’s own calendar, which is in the same app; maybe because I’ve added no calendars there?) Proton’s app (which may be out of date, the mail app isn’t on F-droid, either publicly or in an official repository, and I’m a lazy updater) wanted to open it on Proton Calendar only when I don’t even have it installed.

    Proton’s bridge OTOH worked really well for me for syncing to Thunderbird, probably works as well for Office too.




  • First thing you need to understand is that the smooth end-to-end encryption works only tuta-to-tuta or proton-to-proton, so in rare cases. Encryption at rest, which is what tuta-to-proton, gmail-to-tuta etc. can do, is something that a lot of other email providers do too.

    I’m currently in the process of moving from Proton to Tuta, because despite several years of promises, the Android client for Proton still doesn’t do non-google push notifications. Also because if you just need email with your own domain, Tuta is much more price-friendly. (The tier also includes unlimited calendars and event invites, which I haven’t tried.) If you also want VPN and encrypted storage, the balance tips.

    I don’t use the calendar from either, so can’t talk for their properties. I prefer seamless calendar integration for wrist gadget integration and such, so using NextCloud Calendar + DavX. For smooth integration with encryption, could also look into Etesync. I think you’ll be able to share an ics attachment from either of those through your normal calendar.

    Germany is a 14-eyes-country, but since I’m just privacy conscious and my threat model doesn’t include international-coordination-level actors (barely state level, am in the EU but not German, so eh, far enough), it doesn’t matter that much to me. Proton also has to obey court rulings.





  • Is there a tea like matcha that would be good to cold brew?

    Sencha or any other green tea can be cold brewed.

    I’d add to this that if you want cold brew green tea that tastes anything like matcha, stick to Japanese greens. Just general “green tea” is IME usually more Chinese in style and a different (though also delicious) beast altogether. Sencha is the quintessential Japanese green tea and most easily available, and IMHO makes a very nice cold brew in summer.

    Actually cold brewing might also be a good experiment for any possibly remaining mid-grade matcha you may have, since the method tends to reduce astringency and bitterness; just use it like a normal tea (larger amount) and don’t stir towards the end, let the tea powder “gunk” settle at the bottom. I have not tried this.





  • It comes down to how you define “soul”.

    Do I believe there’s a consciousness that transcends death or exists separately from our physical existence, no.

    But if you start talking of ship of Theseus/transponder incident/mind upload -type mental exercises, then yes, I believe “self” is an evolving pattern and a collection of experiences that could theoretically be replicated in another physical manifestation or even in a completely different medium. You could call that, too, “soul”.