The biggest problem with self-hosting a mail server is reliably being able to send email and have it be delivered to the recipient. Something I have been thinking about setting up is self-hosting a dovecot server so that all of my emails that I receive are on my system, but using another provider for sending email. I don't send that many emails, so there is not much privacy loss in regards to a third-party being able to see my sent emails, but I still get the benefit of noone but me having access to my received emails.
Same. I have been using Brave Search since its launch and it has been great in my experience. I also love that it has its own index. I have tried the free Kagi trial and it seems to work well, but I can't justify the cost for little to no benefit and it still depends on bigger search engines for indexing.
There are a couple of problems I have with that. 1) Many websites limit the number of passkeys I can link to my account. Some only allow 2 or 3. I have more devices than that. 2) If I am supposed to create a new passkey for every device, how do I login in the first place? Most websites currently fallback to password login which defeats the security benefit of using passkeys in the first place.
I currently only use passkeys for a few websites that have awkward password login workflows or do not autofill properly from my password manager. I just have a single passkey for each that is synced via Bitwarden. Currently, I see passkeys as using an electronic biometric lock on the front door while passwords are still regular locks on the backdoor. The biometric lock on the front door does not do much for security when the backdoor still exists and I have come across very few websites that support only allowing passkeys. And those that do still run into problem 2 listed above.
It is disappointing how much of a hassle streaming has become. Both the services themselves and the devices used to stream on. I still love the Apple TV, but I have been using a mini pc more often lately due to all of the ads streaming services are showing. Unfortunately, many streaming services limit the resolution on web browsers.
Email definitely has its issues, but given that every other form of digital communication is getting worse and more locked down, I have no confidence that a replacement would be better. While increasingly difficult to get self-hosted email to be accepted by the big providers like Google and Microsoft, it is still great to at least have the option of hosting a universally accepted form of communication yourself.
It is mostly around Just-In-Time (JIT) compilation. From what I can tell, it is an arbitrary restriction for apps published on the App Store. It looks like UTM can be sideloaded without the restriction.
One negative of the Pixel camera app is that it forces Google Photos as the gallery app, even if Google Photos is disabled or not installed on the phone. I think there is a third-party shim app that essentially redirects requests to Google Photos towards whatever gallery app is set as default, but that should not be necessary.
The iOS app is very simple right now. That is good from a ease of use perspective, but it does not say what model is used and there is no way to choose a different model. In some quick testing, the responses are fast but extremely inaccurate. Most of the responses were completely unrelated to the prompt. The best responses were only partially correct, but were at least dealing with the right information.
I am very happy to see more development focused on local AI that does not require subscriptions or sharing personal data and are able to work completely offline. Unfortunately, this app is not useful currently. I am assuming they chose to use a very small model to support the most devices and provide fast responses, but the output is extremely inaccurate. I will not be using this app until they support a better model like Llama 3.2. PocketPal is still the best local llm app I have found on iOS and Alpaca is great on Linux.
This is such a high quality game that it is almost unbelievable that it is free and open source. The fact that it is also still seeing active development after more than 15 years shows just how passionate the developers are.
I use and appreciate GrapheneOS due to it being one of, if not the best, option we currently have.
That said, I do not like how much the project depends on Google.
- GrapheneOS is based on Android, which is solely developed by Google.
- GrapheneOS only supports Google Pixel devices. Thankfully, they are working on partnering with a different manufacturer, but details are still very limited.
- They recommend using the Google Play Store (requires a Google account) to get apps and recommend against using F-Droid.
- Their Vanadium web browser is based on Chromium, which is controlled by Google. It also does not have an ad blocker or support extensions. They recommend against using Firefox. Firefox, and Safari to a more limited extent, are the only web browsers keeping Google from having complete control over web standards and the way we can access the internet.
This is not a criticism of the GrapheneOS project or developers. I understand that security is the biggest priority of GrapheneOS and I understand that Google is often good at security. They are following the goals of the project. It is more directed towards the GrapheneOS community that often blindly recommends GrapheneOS as the only option and treats any alternative as inferior and not to be considered. Most users do not need security at all costs. Especially among the free and open source enthusiast community, freedom and user control are often prioritized. There should be more awareness and discussion about what the user wants and whether that actually aligns with the security-first goals of GrapheneOS.
I love the ability to block apps from accessing the network. There is no reason apps like the keyboard, camera, or other offline apps and games need access to the internet.
But many browsers on iOS support ad blockers. Most like Brave and Vivaldi have it built in. Others like Orion and Edge have added support for extensions. Firefox is one of the only that does not have any support for an ad blocker.
As with most new operating systems, its biggest problem was lack of apps. Mozilla seemed to abandon Firefox OS right as Progressive Web Apps were starting to take off, which would have done a lot to fix that problem.
That can block some trackers, but does not block ads or “suggested” content. There are also some devices that have hardcoded DNS settings that bypass any local network DNS settings.
I wonder if that is something new in 25H2 then. My computer also does not have working network drivers out of the box and when I installed 24H2, it just gave me a screen to install the network driver from a flash drive. There was no way to skip or continue without it.