1x46: A Target of Derision

Jeremy Garcia, Jono Bacon, Bryan Lunduke, and Stuart Langridge present Bad Voltage, in which a thing is hotter than the sun, the chap who now runs Microsoft is cruelly misnamed for comedy purposes, and:

  • 00:01:27 After Linus Torvalds asks kernel devs to take a break so he can too and articles start popping up about what Linux looks like after Linus, we ask: what would happen? Does this look like the changes that happen at tech companies such as Microsoft and Apple? Would we users be affected at all?
  • 00:21:28 Jono reviews the NXR Stainless Steel 7-Burner 80,000-BTU Propane Gas Grill
  • 00:37:20 Google. Everybody uses at least some of their services, and some of us use an awful lot of them. Bryan has been exploring what it takes to leave Google entirely, how to do the move, and what to use instead: how easy has it been so far? Why do this? And where does one go?

Also, we're going to take questions. Send us a question you want to ask the team to [email protected]; it might be about something we've discussed on this show, or about anything else you want, and we'll choose the best question and answer it in each show!

See details of Bad Voltage Live, in Fulda, Germany on September 30th 2015, at badvoltage.org/live, and go get your tickets to see the show!

Download the show now!

I greatly worry if linus goes if everyone starts there own fork of linux and same if the major company’s started trying to take over with corporate thinking, I don’t imagine either of those happening because with Linus’s leading I imagine many people would have considered it just from his attitude, i don’t think anyone would fork it because his attitude has left, think about how many issues people have had about Linus and look at how many successful forks we have of Linux, I just dont imagine it happening!

I actually almost got rid of Google+ ones and I was only going to use diaspora and twitter, the issue with that was a. people, and b. the ubuntu app community!

Sure the issue of no one using diaspora is there, but if the people from bad voltage use diaspora and exclusively put some of there content on diaspora then more people are likely to join diaspora because they feel like they’re going to miss out.

I was there when g+ went open for everyone to use, I remember there was no one there, until I used it enough and people where there, and then more people found out about it, diaspora is more difficult to find out then g+ because diaspora is well, diaspora and google plus is google, but people came to google eventually and eventually there was a good audience, if enough big open source people moved to diaspora and became the most active on diaspora then there would be a much bigger audience, and it would slowly pick up as g+ did.

Imagine, if the 4 at bad voltage, Linus torvalds, some public people at Canonical and fedora, Jupiter broadcasting, and some other people became strong advocates of Diaspora and pushed for diaspora to be the next big thing, it would be a big thing for Open Source and Linux people!

No one I knew had telegram until I told them that the could only text me or get telegram
to instant message me, now alot of my friends have and use telegram!

Now here’s some great things about diaspora, there are pods which are hosted by different people on there pods, if you want to have a pod then spin one up your account is there and you can still interface with other people in different pods keeping your stuff more private yet still social!
There’s good exporting features.
Its Open Source and does bountys, meaning if the Open Source world jumped on diaspora you can bet your money that it would improve much like the kernel and other Linux OS’s.

To me Diaspora isn’t as good a G+ but it feels the most linux like…
Diaspora is the Linux of Social websites to me and with our group, I think we should look at it and try and make it as good as we can, because we can’t do anything like that with G+

No I don’t use Diaspora as much as Google+ but I still use Diaspora…
And I advertise that if you want the most linux, most open, most under your control social website that you look and try and use and advertise Diaspora, even if its not the thing you use the most, if you still use it then theres more of a reason for people to try it and thus it will grow, even if slowly!

Now thats my hey lunduke want to get of G+, use Diaspora more rant thing xD you’ve talked about diaspora before several times its just I feel like if people who want it to succeed won’t try and make it work, then people who don’t know about it woundn’t even give it the time of day!

With Youtube I have no clue, I haven’t really seen much for video hosting outside of Dailymotion, vimeo, Metacafe and a few more, but non of them seem much like the open source type of website, I haven’t really gazzed through them, but I’m still waiting for the OpenSource Youtube where someone could fork it if it ever went bad…

I’ve been trying to unpick myself from Google for a couple of years, not for any particular sinister reason, but to try to avoid a monopoly of supply of services.

I’ve been partially sucessful, but have failed in the following ways.

  1. gmail - their spam filter is really good. So good, I can put up with them parsing my emails and delivering adverts I won’t see. I use pop3 and only use their web interface in dire emergencies.

  2. Android apps - I have cyanogenmod on my primary handset, but the few android apps I use, I use, and the pain-free way to install and maintain them is by having Google apps in the handset.

  3. Google probably (because of 2) have my contact details. My litmus test for this is: would you be happy for a government to have these details, and if not, why would would you let a private company have this information. I struggle with this one most of all.

I hardly use them for search at all - maybe once or twice a week.

I’m neutral about how I feel about the benefits of doing all this, but have a general distrust of relying on a single supplier who may or may not be evil :slight_smile:

To surmise, I tried, had some success and some failures.

Despite your protests on the quality of this podcast, it wasn’t a shitty as you imagine.

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Dropped Google a few years ago, but I don’t have Lundukes strict rules. Diskstation for files, some domain provider for email, DDG for search, no need for G+, docs,sheets and I use iphone and the maps app.

Have a google account at work for google analytics.

I don’t know, I think there could have been something if @bryanlunduke would have gotten into the gas vs. charcoal debate! Then, it could have gotten into the briquette vs. lump debate (for anyone serious about grilling knows it’s all about charcoal). :smile:

But, then, as one champion BBQer said: “It’s not about the grill, but the rub”. I find that I can burn stuff on any type of grill just fine.

I wonder what will happen to other porjects and contingency planning. I am not sure moving of email is really that much help as most of my email are on mailman and indexed anyway. I don’t like smartphones much and am not an android user. I still use google maps when I need to go somewhere. Most of miy emails are on mailing lists.

I also like duck duck go for !bang commands. I still use google plus and log in. I actually find I can never remeber passwords for places I don’t log into. Doesn’t Stuart actually have to use launhcpad to login to many places.

Also the what happens when important person for project. Heck even most tech confrences today put all videos on youtube. I also see mostly video and not just audio anymore. I have switched from crhome as a browser over a year ago first to firefox but then jumped again to qupzilla. Argh now I want to look at where that city is the open.

For self hosting photos there is a service I really like which is lazygal which is a package that is nice. I even have a gallery of screenshots. Also why were there no kale refrences after the grill review. I still may have a picture of the paper jono as part of the weakest geek at scale 13x but I have not uploaded that online anywhere.

The Google topic was pretty interesting. I’d like to hear how Mr. Lunduke gets on with that, though so far so good it seems.

After the Reader shutdown I stopped using docs, drive, and the rest of the cloud tools. So I am already using an owncloud instance for file syncing. For docs I usually use plain text markdown converted to HTML/PDF or Libre Office. And for photo backups I use flickr.

Getting rid of Gmail is tricky if you use [email protected], since now you have to tell everyone about a new email address. I imagine Bryan was smart enough to use gmail but with a custom domain, in which case the switch seems easier.

Android is hellishly difficult to get rid of, for me at least. And I only got a smartphone last year. There are so many great apps, no other phone OS comes close IMO. It really is Windows vs Linux back in the early 2000s, but worse. I read that Bryan doesn’t use a phone, and the non-Android solution didn’t seemed that great to me (an ancient portable PC) and wouldn’t be generally applicable. You should be able to use the same hardware, more or less. Back in the Windows vs Linux days you could just install Linux on the PC you already used. Nowadays the barrier to entry there is insurmountable. I can’t install Ubuntu or Firefox OS on my Moto G phone, for example. I could maybe use Cyanogenmod, but that is so sketchy compared to something like Debian back in the day. Following the guides on random forum posts (“use at your own risk! bugs: you tell me!”) and downloading unsigned zips from Mega does not fill you with confidence about the security of the whole deal.

If you’re an Android developer then you are totally screwed, as you need a GMail account to submit apps. I guess the real alternative there would be to develop for Ubuntu Phone or Firefox OS and not perpetuate the Googlesphere. Although submitting to F-Droid and the Play store would be the moral equivalent of the Youtube/Archive.org suggestion, though I don’t know how you go about submitting to F-Droid (seems a bit “if you have to ask then you’re not worthy”).

I try to use DDG over Google’s search, but it gives worse results for most things. Google has a nice feature where you can filter results by the last 24 hours, last week, month or year, so you get rid of all the ancient cruft from random forums when searching for something that you know has changed radically recently. DDG has nothing similar, so its index is full to the brim of old stuff.

er, not really? I sign in to Ask Ubuntu with my Ubuntu One/Launchpad account, and discourse.ubuntu.com, but that’s about it?

Wouldn’t a custom rom, like Cyanogenmod, be a suitable compromise for @bryanlunduke? That way, if, for some reason, Google pulls the plug on Android, there would still be projects using the source and, perhaps, continue the project.

A few years ago I decided to move away from “cloud” services hosted by other people and see how much I could do for myself. In general I’m not hell-bent of severing my reliance on third-party services completely, I just don’t want my personal data to be concentrated in one place/with one company. A brief summary of what I’ve settled with:

  • File sync - I use Syncthing to sync between devices and my central file server. I use ownCloud to give me a web interface and to share file links (the ownCloud sync client has been a massive fail every time I’ve tried it).
  • Contacts & Calendar - I have these hosted in ownCloud (there are plugins) and accessed via CalDAV/CardDAV. I use DAVDroid to sync this data with my phone, rather than storing it with Google.
  • Webmail - My SMTP/IMAP server comes with my website hosting, access it via Roundcube on my own server (the same one that runs ownCloud). Roundcube accessed by contacts via the CardDAV plugin.
  • Login - I have my own install of SimpleID, and OpenID provider.
  • Password Management - I have my passwords stored in pass, synced between devices in a git repository, and use the firefox extension for filling login forms.
  • Music streaming - I have ampache on my server, my music is synced to the server in syncthing

because

which is one of the best things I have seen in ages.

Here, I have a question.

I do not have a manually curated contacts list. I can count on the fingers of two hands the number of people who I have explicitly created a contact entry for. My contacts list is basically autoderived by Google from the people I send emails to. How does this work in a world where your mail and your contacts are different services? Do you have to manage your address book by hand like the Middle Ages?

Roundcube has a little icon next to the address field in an email. If you click it, that person gets added to your address book. I was doing this to collect emails for a while before I started using ownCloud contacts (I’ve never used gmail for a primary address), so already had a fairly comprehensive contact list. My phone numbers have built up over the past 10 years as I’ve moved between phones/SIM cards/Google.

When I started hosting my own contacts, I migrated the numbers from Google to ownCloud via the standard format they provide, and merged all the emails and phone numbers (where I had both for a person) using the tool in Android’s address book. I’ve also added some real physical addresses through the tried and true method of typing them in, in case for some reason I actually want to see my friends in person.

To your remote address book? Not to one built in to Roundcube?

(I’d still want it to be automatic, I think, but Google seem to do something clever here. My Google Contacts list is not a full list of everyone I’ve ever sent an email to (or it would be huge). But anyone I want to be in there is in there, without me having to explicitly put them in. Does anyone know how this works?)

Roundcube lets you create multiple address books. You set a default, and that’s the one they get added to when you click the icon (as opposed to creating them explicitly in the Address Book interface). In the past, I just had it add them to the one Roundcube creates automatically. It also has Import/Export features so I assume that when I added the CardDAV plugin I shifted the contacts to the remote address book and set that as the default.

It might be worth noting that I’m actually having to poke around in Roundcube’s settings to remind myself what’s actually going on - once it’s set up it’s pretty transparent and rock solid.

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Also, there is a plugin to collect addresses automatically. I didn’t know it existed, but now I do, I might give it a go.

Haven’t listened to the whole show yet, but I’m beginning to notice a trend: Segments that spotlight Bryan are long.

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Do I smell a challenge?

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@bryanlunduke, I would say quiet all google stuff for the month if just for the sake of science to experiment how it really would be. As long as you prepare and anounce it well, it think your audiance will (at least I will) respect your choice and either follow you or wait for a while till you get back. Although I wouldn’t stop using it for more than a month, that probably would probably impact more then we’d all wish for.

Respect for quiting Google, I do not have a lot of google services I uses, but those I do use are quite addictive so I can imagine the struggle. I might join you, if it is allowed to use android without any google services (no playstore installed etc.) otherwise I am going pussy out and cheer for the man with the real balls: Bryan :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

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I VOTE BRIQUETTE! :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:
It would have been an interting discussion though, although one thing I did notice is that there is a rather big difference between how Americans (I guess) look at a grill and how we in The Netherlands look at grills. I used to work at a hardware store and the biggest and most luxurious grill we had is a toy compared to the one in the show, but we probably wouldn’t even call that a grill anymore, but place it somewhere in the outdoor kitchen catagory. Then again, it is the Netherland, we are used to rain all the time :wink:

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