scientiac::syntropy

Typst is Love

2025-07-12T00:00:00+00:00

Let me start by saying, I just love typst. A bit too must at this point. Whenever I get the chance I just sit down and open typst. Electricity goes down, I open typst. I feel bored I open typst.

Now that I think of it, I don't have anything else to do on my laptop and only interactive thing is typst.

You might be thinking what typst is. So, let me introduce you to typst.

Introduction to typst

Typst is a typesetting software that help you make documents. And since documents are the things we all just need to make, it is one of the most essential piece of software for everyone.

It is no new idea [I mean, it is a new idea but, making documents using a typesetting in plaintext has been a thing since ages.] There has been LaTeX and Markdown and org and other typesetting software and each of them have their own strengths and weaknesses. Typst aims to achieve all their strengths and none of their weaknesses. At least, that is how I see typst to be.

Comparing Typst with other typesetting software

Properties	Typst	LaTex	Markdown	Org
Fast Preview	Yes	No	Yes	Yes
Lightweight	Yes	No	Yes	No
Extensible	Yes	Yes	No	Yes
Simple Syntax	Yes	No	Yes	Yes
Platform Agnostic	Yes	Yes	Yes	No
Automatic Dependency Management	Yes	No	Not Supported	Not Supported
Single Binary	Yes	No	No	No

Let me tell you what all these means too:

Fast Preview: If you can see the changes live as you type.
Lightweight: If it can be installed quickly and has a small footprint(storage consumption).
Extensible: If modules/packages can be made and used as dependencies that you can just import. Like templates, styles and formatting that can just be imported to use.
Simple Syntax: If you can do the basic formatting without needing to know complex syntax for it. For e.g.


"\begin{itemize} \item  \end{itemize}" makes a bullet list in LaTeX
"- " Makes a bullet list in Typst
"* " Makes a bullet list in Markdown
"- " Makes a bullet list in Org

Platform Agnostic: Here technically every software is platform agnostic and can be used in any text editor of your choice but the complete "Org-mode" is only available in emacs and is very difficult to replicate it anywhere else.
Automatic Dependency Management: I only realised that it is a thing when I actually used Typst, but if you import something, the LSP automatically installs the module if it isn't available on your device. Latex cannot do that and the other software are not extensible so, you cannot use modules at all.
Single Binary: This makes typst very portable and easy to install since it doesn't need to rely on other packages in the system to work. Which is not the case with Latex at all and not for others too unless they are, in that case, sorry I didn't know.

How I use it

I use typst with my text editor of choice neovim. If you ask a person who uses Neovim as their text editor, they'll say how much they hate it when they have to type text in a normal text editor. Since it is just plain text, I surely can write it without the need of any LSP or Plugins and use the typst compiler to render it continuously on save. But, it has a LSP called tinymist and it has a previewer plugin for Neovim called typst-preview which generates live SVG preview and any good browser can render it.

The best thing about tinymist and typst-preview coming from vimtex for LaTeX, the preview is instant and it also follows the cursor as I move in neovim. When, I am bored I just scroll on my neovim to see the preview scroll automatically on the browser.

Talking about browser, I use qutebrowser for preview since it supports the VIM keys by default and I can remove all the UI elements to just see the preview while it being a full fledged browser. And it is just awesome.

I use lazy as my plugin manager for neovim and the following snippet sets my whole environment for typst apart from installing typst itself and qutebrowser:


return {
  "chomosuke/typst-preview.nvim",
  ft = "typst",
  version = '1.*',
  opts = {
    formatterMode = "typstyle",
    invert_colors = '{"rest": "auto","image": "never"}',
    open_cmd = 'qutebrowser %s'
  },
  config = function(_, opts)
    require('typst-preview').setup(opts)
    vim.api.nvim_create_autocmd("FileType", {
      pattern = "typst",
      callback = function()
        vim.defer_fn(function()
          vim.cmd("TypstPreview")
        end, 10)
      end,
    })
  end,

}

Here is how my typst setup looks like. It doesn't look like much but it works too well. I use harper-ls for my grammar checking and with everything on the single environment I can write my documents in the editor I want with proper formatting, live preview and offline grammar checking. What more can I ask for?

If you want to check the document and see how I have formatted it you can see the source code here, and the compliled PDF here. You can also visit the directory in github.

You might be wondering, why I didn't mention Microsoft or Google Docs.

I forgot about it. I am being honest here, I forgot about it while writing the comparison but the typst homepage has a pretty nice comparison between LaTeX, Typst and Google Docs.

But, if you want to know my take on these Word Processing Software is that I just hate aligning and placing figures and images in them. The age old meme still holds true. (Or, maybe it's my skill issue.)

Mandatory "In the end"

I love using typst. I feel like I have made documents in typst more than I have used any other software to make documents in my life. And after the neovim setup I just fell madly, deeply, truly in love with it. And I just recommend it to everyone and want typst to grow to the point where all academic journals accept it as a format to support papers in. It will be just smooth sailing from there on.

My only wish is being able to do Literate Programming in typst, then it'll be the best for writing reproducable technical documents, kinda like what org can do with org-tangle. But, it is just a wish and if someone esle doesn't, I might try to make it a reality.

This much for today, I might add more to this if I feel like I missed something. Or, maybe I will write a follow up blog on this. Seeya soon...

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Tech Minimalism

2025-05-29T00:00:00+00:00

Firstly

I don't really have hardware that is minimal. It could be minimal for some people, but having a working smartphone and a pretty good laptop isn't minimal, judging by the plethora of things I can do within these devices.

A huge chunk of my personality is influenced by Linux and the principles/philosophies I have learned to interact with the Linux and Open Source ecosystem. KISS, UNIX, DRY, YAGNI, etc. These are some of the things I have been exposed to for too many times. I see that they all have one thing in common; Minimalism.

What are thoseeeee?

Let's start with KISS because I like the sound of it,

KISS

Keep It Simple Stupid or one of the variations below implies that simplicity should be a design goal.

Variations

Masculism v/s Matriarchy

2024-09-17T00:00:00+00:00

I would like to apologize for the very clickbaity title. This is what it takes to be heard in the internet.

In our rapidly evolving world, the concepts of feminism and patriarchy have become increasingly polarizing topics. However, it's crucial to consider the existence of alternative perspectives, such as masculism and matriarchy, which offer equally valid viewpoints in this context. As a humanist, I believe that men and women should view each other as complementary pieces of a whole, functioning together, kinda like plants which have both male and female organs in the same body.

The natural differences between male and female in humans are not as extreme as in some species, where male bees die after mating or female spiders are consumed by their offspring. While individual humans have unique personalities, strengths, and weaknesses, neither males nor females are complete without the other. Historically, we have coexisted for the sake of offspring and family.

It's important to recognize that traditional gender roles, where females solely care for children and males exclusively work or hunt, are not the only viable arrangement. Both caring for children and earning a living are equally necessary, and these responsibilities should be shared based on individual abilities and circumstances. Suppressing one gender from their potential is counterproductive; instead, we should foster understanding between partners and organize our efforts intellectually to create a balanced approach to living, caring, and raising offspring.

My analysis of internet content, particularly on platforms like YouTube, reveals a troubling trend. As a male, I've noticed that I'm often exposed to male-oriented content, which can lead to increasingly extremist views portraying men as "right" and women as trying to "win at everything." Conversely, women may be exposed to equally polarizing content depicting men as oppressors, killers, and rapists. This divisive approach creates an "us vs. them" mentality, where each side views the other through an extremist lens.

The media's focus on controversial and extreme content, driven by the pursuit of attention and profit, has contributed to this polarization. However, I believe that no sane, educated person is inherently an oppressor or oppressed in a relationship. Most reasonable men support equal rights and opportunities for women. Labeling entire groups as weak or strong is unscientific and counterproductive.

As humans, we have achieved remarkable technological and scientific advancements through proper planning and reasoning. It's essential to question outdated ways of thinking and embrace new truths as they emerge. Prioritizing one gender over another in the name of culture, especially when scientific evidence contradicts such practices, hinders human progress.

However, it's also important to recognize that new ways of thinking aren't always entirely correct. For instance, pornography, while introducing many people to sex and reproduction, has created unrealistic expectations and unhealthy influences on relationships where people are no longer being stimulated by "normal" and getting into extremes which might have caused in an increase in rape and child abuse cases. Similarly, social media has fostered insecurities about lifestyle, body image, and personal appearance by presenting an idealized version of life that makes people feel inadequate and might be the cause of depression and anxiety feeling worthless and never enough.

That being said the causes of child abuse, rape cases and an existance of countless supressed voices of victims isn't only by extreme porn but also a sense of authority of some males in the society who actually are opressors and think they can get away with anything or the arrogant confidence that "nobody will believe" they have done such things.

I once had asked my friend about what could have caused these cases where men get away of doing such cruel deeds and she said, "Our society is largely run by men. Most positions of power – be it in government, corporations, or law enforcement – are occupied by men. This creates a system where men in authority might be inclined to protect other men accused of wrongdoing. They may downplay the severity of crimes, question the credibility of victims, or find ways to shift blame onto the affected parties. This pattern often leads to a conclusion that somehow excuses the perpetrator or suggests the victim is partially responsible for what happened to them." which I think is true.

I long for a society that supports and uplifts everyone, regardless of gender, physiology, or biology. A culture where people help each other overcome weaknesses instead of using them as grounds for oppression. By working together, we can solve problems that we as individuals cannot tackle alone and for that we have to remove the extreme categorization of people soley based on sex or race. Because in the world where no two people are alike I don't think that categorization solves any issue.

Perhaps reality is more neutral, and I dont know what I am talking about because the internet is where I live and I consume what it offers. I just hope that we are heading toward a better future where the differences of people isn't a problem but our strength.

Lastly...

I was very scared to publish this in the internet, but, it's crucial to address these complex societal issues. They don't have easy solutions, but open dialogue is a vital step towards understanding the world we inhabit.

This post is just the beginning of a larger conversation. I eagerly anticipate your responses and insights, as I recognize there's still much for me to learn.

Additions

2024-09-18

I decided to use the word "humanist" as a more neutral term to address similar values to feminism aiming to avoid the negative connotations some people associate with the word "feminist". The word "humanist" respects the feminist thought because it aligns with the feminist principles and by no means shadows the historical as well as ongoing struggles for women's rights. Feminism is in no way about female superiority or harming men, and to be a humanist is also being feminist without the mentioned wrong perspective of society and in general the male population.

It is catered toward a male population who would hesitate to talk about feminism due to the polarization of the topic by the mass media. Understanding the values of "humanism" and providing the information that humanism is in fact feminism just hiding behind a curtain of insecurity of being misjudged for the looks and the negative protrayal.

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Home Manager: Cosy Home With Nix

2024-07-31T00:00:00+00:00

Home Manager is a Nix thing that helps one manage their home directory, specially the dotfiles in a Nix fashion. And here I am talking about Nix not nix*. It is nix* but not that nix* but you can use it in most kind of nix* if the nix* you mainly know are most linux distros and macos.

Confusing right? No! I made it confusing! Home manager is just a tool to write all your configurations (.dotfiles) in a cosy Nix language and is primarily inspired by the NixOS and use the Nix package manager. Well, a little confusing because the OS is called Nix, the language is called nix and also the package manager is called Nix, and at last all unix based systems are also in combination known as nix*(with an astrisk in the end).

Okay, one last time. Home manager is just a tool to manage the dotfiles using the Nix language, leveraging the power of the Nix package manager and is inspired by the NixOS configuration. It focuses heavily on reproducability being distro agnostic despite of being focused around NixOS.

Still pretty confusing right? Well, it is what it is.

How I use it

I am writing this blog on my new windows machine, inside WSL in a NixOS-WSL distro where most of my configuration files are managed by Home Manager. And this home manager configuration is the same configuration that I use in my NixOS system, with just the configurations of the graphical applications removed.

Pretty cool right? It even works on windows(technically not, but still). I use it to manage bash, git, lazygit, helix, newsboat, starship, zellij, zoxide and other applications in the terminal world and alacritty, firefox, foot, imv, mpv, sioyek, spotify and other tools in the graphical realm. And I have used it in linux, on mac, currently in windows via WSL and even on android inside Nix-on-Droid recycling the same configurations everywhere. See? all major operating systems (technically inside linux except mac) and on both ARM and x86 architecture.

Why use it

It is one of those things that you think is very time consuming and difficult to manage and use but it saves time on the long run. You can easily transafer your application configurations from one device to another in a file(technically, because you would not want to write all the configs of all your things in a single file) and Nix will handle installations and setup of all those applications using just that file. All you need is nix to be installed on your system. And since, nixpkgs is the biggest package repository among any linux distribution I dont even think of using any other package manager to install things even if I am on any non NixOS distributions. And the cherry on top, everything will be version controlled using git(you will be forced to, haha) so you will never lose your precious configurations(even the history).

How to use it

First and foremost, you need nix(the package manager) installed on your system. Then I suggest you to enable flakes and nix-command in your nix.conf file though they are experimental features. Despite the fact that they are experimental features, they are already widely adopted and are instead preferred by nix users over the traditional method.

Then initialize a flake on a directory, add the home manager inputs as they tell you in the documentation on how to use home manager with flakes. Then write your configurations. Finally, switch to your new home manager configuraton.

In short, follow the docs and you'll be set. And maybe as a head start watch vimjoyer's video on home-manager.

Lastly...

I just love nix and it's ecosystem and I am pretty biased toward it. Home manager may not be your cup of tea but give nix a try, using it as a secondary package manager for your distribution like you use flatpaks and snaps. It may not be regualr user friendly but it is very developer/tinkerer friendly if you even scratch a tiny surface of it. That's all I've got to say today, see ya.

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KDE Network Nepal: Event 0

2024-04-05T00:00:00+00:00

KDE?

Somewhere around 2017, I started using Linux. KDE was the first Distro I ever tried. It was the whole reason why I switched to Linux. Now that I realize, it was actually KDE Plasma I was attracted to and I still love it. I can make my desktop however I want it to look, that was enough for me to step to the Linux world. KDE also makes a good deal of other software and not just plasma, Kdenlive and Krita being two of the most popular products. I particularly love Kstars to track stars and constellations when I am stargazing.

Network Nepal

KDE isn't a company of sorts, it's a community. A group of people sharing interests with each others and developing software for everyone. And not just any kind of software, high-end Free/Libre and Open Source Software. People are the heart of the community and the more people there are the better will be KDE.

KDE Network?
The KDE Network is a group of KDE representatives in their respective cities/countries. They promote KDE, and it’s work in their local community.

After learning about the KDE Network and a way to contribute to KDE as a Student. I had proposed an idea of a KDE Network for Nepal to represent KDE in Nepal to my friends and simultaneously to the KDE Promo team. Due to the support of KDE Promo team especially @aniqakhokhar and @paulb from the team, I along with my fellow FOSS geek friends decided to Introduce the Network from an Introductory event along with KDE 6 Megarelease celebration.

We hosted a meetup for students interested in Free and Open Source Software (FOSS). The event welcomed freshmen from computer engineering and electronics communication and information engineering programs, alongside some sophomores and juniors.

The meetup covered a range of FOSS topics, including what it is and how it works. Attendees learned about Linux, its components, and the KDE Plasma desktop environment. They also explored the KDE software collection, and then got to know what the Network was. To make the event fun, there was a KDE trivia quiz too!

Along with us, some students shared their experiences with FOSS, making the meetup a great interactive session. Everyone had a chance to learn from each other, and it was a window to the exciting world of open-source software for many students.

I'm excited to organize future events showcasing the exciting ecosystem of KDE software and Linux, spreading the knowledge of FOSS to a wider audience. Till then...

KDE Network Nepal's [matrix] channel to chat: #kde-network-nepal:kde.org
Visit kde.org to know more about KDE Software and the awesome community.

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Youtube, whatyaar!

2023-10-31T00:00:00+00:00

Yaar YouTube! What's this. Being the biggest video platform you keep degrading day by day. The changes I'm seeing just makes me sad. You are unusable without me modifying you to an extent. You are not the platform you used to be.

You've Changed!

Ad-block blocker? Seriously? How does that work? Thought we were allowed to modify the product on our end but not distribute it. Well, we were doing that and were happy with it. And what about the legality of checking the user's system individually, but it's expected now, you guys even forgot your first motto and even removed "Don't be evil." from you code of conduct.
Removing dislike counter was a pretty bold move, wow! We heard your explanation "Some people were getting harassed by the dislike spammers." who are these "some people" here? You yourself? Because the last YouTube rewind was prolly the most disliked video till you removed the counter. You made our life harder by removing a perfect metric to know if the video was worth watching or not.
Add to queue behind paywall? Why? Why even put a perfectly fine feature that was enjoyed by the non premium users for ages suddenly behind the paywall? I have only seen it as a premium feature in mobile but I don't think it'll take you long to put it behind even on the website.
Multiple, queued and un-skippable ads. I don't even want to talk about them! I don't even know if any other platform has this kind of ad system.
Start to shorts directly? This gets me furious! I did not come to YouTube to watch TikToks PERIOD.

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NixOS: A Purely Functional Linux Distribution

2023-09-27T00:00:00+00:00

There's a Problem

Existing package and system configuration management tools suffer from an imperative model, where system administration actions such as package upgrades or changes to system configuration files are stateful: they destructively update the state of the system.

This leads to many problems, such as the inability to roll back changes easily, to deploy multiple versions of a package side-by-side, to reproduce a configuration deterministically on another machine, or to reliably upgrade a system.

The Solution

A functional system configuration model.

This means, all static parts of a system (such as software packages, configuration files and system startup scripts) are built by pure functions and are immutable, stored in a way analogous to a heap in a purely functional language.

NixOS, a non-trivial Linux distribution that uses the Nix package manager to build the entire system configuration from a modular, purely functional specification.

NixOs Features

A reproducible and declarative system: This means that the operating system can be configured using a declarative system that can be reproducible in multiple devices.
Atomic upgrades and rollbacks: This feature keeps track of each time the system configuration is changed (generations) and makes it available to the user to roll back to the previous changes.
Binary caching: This provides a unique compromise between the binary-oriented approach used by distributions such as Debian and the source-oriented approach used by distributions such as Gentoo. Binaries can be used for standard components, and custom-built packages and modules can be used automatically when a pre-built binary is not available.

NixOS Commands

Normal

nixos-rebuild is a command to rebuild the entire system according to the declarations in /etc/nixos/configuration.nix . It consists of many flags like switch,boot,--flakes etc to specify the rebuild method.
nix-collect-garbage is a tool to clear the garbage packages (the packages which were installed during a rebuild but now are not needed for the smooth functioning of the system as per the declarations), it comes handy to clear the previous generations which are not required anymore to fallback on.

Imperative Operations

nix-shell is a (legacy) tool to spawn temporary virtual environments with packages that are not in the system. You can use nix-shell -p git you'll be dropped into a nix-shell environment where you can use the git command and if you exit the shell the environment will be lost.
nix-env a (legacy) tool to use nix package manager in an imperative style similar to other linux distributions. You can use nix-env -iA pkgs.firefox to install firefox and keep the changes in a stateful manner.
nix-channel a (legacy) tool to manage channels (similar to repositories), it allows to do things like changing the version of the channel that the package manager will pull from. For eg: If you want to use the latest unstable branch but you are running a stable release version of system (22.04 or similar) you can change it by using the nix-channel.

Flakes (Experimental Features)

This is a feature of nix that improves reproducibility, composability and usability in the Nix ecosystem. A flake is a source tree (such as a Git repository) containing a file named flake.nix that provides a standardized interface to Nix artifacts such as packages or NixOS modules.

To enable flakes, you should add the following configuration to your configuration.nix file

  nix = {
    package = pkgs.nixFlakes;
    extraOptions = ''
      experimental-features = nix-command flakes
    '';
  };

In general nix flakes does the following changes to the old nix workflow:

It replaces channels which was an imperative operation which diverted from the fact that NixOS was meant to be fully declarative.
Ability to lock dependencies by creating a flake.lock file ensuring reproducability.
Makes it easier to install external software that is not yet packaged in NIxpkgs.
Adds a way to import Nix expressions from elsewhere on the internet.

Sources:
NixOS Research Paper
Nix Research Paper
NixOS Website

Learning Resources
How to Learn Nix
Intro to Nix Flakes by TWEAG
The Nix Hour (Youtube)

I will be updating more notes about nixOS on top of this map.

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Forwarding Ports

2023-07-31T00:00:00+00:00

Introduction

Port forwarding, also known as port mapping, is a crucial networking technique that enables computers or services in private networks to establish connections over the internet or intranet with other public or private computers. It effectively transforms the port-forwarded computer into a server by linking it to the broader intranet, allowing seamless communication between internal and external networks.

When configuring port forwarding, you reserve a specific port number on the gateway exclusively for communication with a service located on a specific host within the private network. To interact with the network-internal service from outside the local network, it's essential to know this designated port number and the gateway's address.

The applications of port forwarding are diverse and vital for various purposes, including but not limited to:

Running a public HTTP server, enabling the hosting of websites accessible from the internet.
Permitting Secure Shell (SSH) access to a host, facilitating secure remote management and access to the system.
Allowing FTP access to a host, simplifying file transfers between systems.
Running a publicly available game server, enabling multiplayer gaming experiences across the web.

How to port forward?

To set up port forwarding correctly, follow these steps:

Configure a static IP address for the device you wish to forward ports to. Dynamic IP addresses may cause connectivity issues after router restarts.
Log into your router's administration panel and navigate to the port forwarding section.
Enter the specific port numbers you want to forward, along with the static IP address of the target device.
Choose the appropriate forwarding protocol (TCP, UDP, or both) based on the requirements of the service.
Save the changes to apply the port forwarding settings.

How does it work?

Port forwarding operates on the distinction between public and private IP addresses. A public IP address allows you to send and receive data from anywhere on the internet, while a private IP address restricts data exchange to your local network only.

Sending Data

When your device sends data packets, they are received by the router, which identifies the data as destined for a port-forwarded device. The router then forwards the data packet to the public IP address, making it accessible from anywhere on the internet.

Receiving Data

Conversely, when a remote device sends data to your public IP address, the router intercepts the data packet and forwards it to the specific port-forwarded device within your local network, ensuring seamless receipt of the data.

Why port forward?

Port forwarding is essential for several reasons:

Remote Access: It enables remote access to services and devices within a private network, facilitating tasks like remote management, file access, and more.
Hosting Services: Port forwarding allows hosting servers for websites, games, and other applications, making them accessible to users over the internet.
Optimizing Connectivity: By forwarding specific ports for particular services, you can improve connectivity and reduce network congestion, leading to better performance.

In summary, port forwarding is a powerful tool that enhances network capabilities, facilitates seamless communication between private and public networks, and empowers users to host various services and applications with ease.

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Polyphasic Sleep: Analysis

2023-05-09T00:00:00+00:00

A different take on sleeping habit.

Polyphasic sleep is the practice of sleeping during multiple periods over the course of 24 hours, in contrast to monophasic sleep, which is one period of sleep within 24 hours. There are different kinds of sleeping habits where the most followed schedule specially in my country and also in the whole world is the monophasic sleep.

We usually sleep at night and work in the day in big chunks. Humans evolved as a diurnal (active during the day) species; we don’t see especially well during the night, and the hunting method that helped early humans catch large prey, which saw groups track them to exhaustion, works best if you can see where you’re going. It is safe to say that it's an evolutionary advantage, or is it?

I got interested in polyphasic sleep after the video from No Boilerplate. Though I haven't yet started to implement it. I have been researching about it extensively. I am a student with classes from 10:00 to 17:00 every day excluding Saturday as the weekend. So, my sleeping habits should be managed according to that schedule. And attending club events and working there after the college time, I have to cram in some sleep into the busy schedule.

Why ?

Computer Engineering has been an experience till now. This first year I failed miserably, the two semesters went by so fast, I wasn't able to do much except tinker around with this site and procrastinate by writing poems when I had time. 6 subjects in the first semester and 5 in the second, these were basic subjects but now in the third semester things are not going to be easy as it was before. 7 core subjects in 5 months is not very easy to handle. Especially being the class representative who has to manage class schedules, inform the whole class about notices, maintain the teacher-class relation, be available for almost anything regarding the class anytime and unfortunately should be okay with getting calls from unknown numbers any time of the day, which sometimes gets very frustrating.

Enough of the rant, I need to manage time, and it should not be like how I did in the first year, It was a mess. I need my working time to be the maximum amount and that means the sleep time should be the minimum healthy amount without it making me sick and unproductive. And I see polyphasic sleep as one of the ways to tackle that problem.

What ?

Polyphasic sleeping generally tends rely on the observation that our brain only gets about 2 hours of REM in every night of sleep. Hence, the main goal is to fall asleep to the REM phase and not waste time in deep sleep which is the rest of the time spent on sleep. Deep sleep is considered restful for the body but no more than waking forms of rest. Hence, the difficult part is to get to the REM sleep instantly.

There are many schedules for polyphasic sleep; biphasic, everyman, dual core, tri core, core only, nap only, flexible and non-reducing. Which have their own benefit and time constrains. Most of these are either very difficult to follow or do not work with my schedule and the schedules like Uberman and Dymaxion are very very difficult to follow but not impossible.

Scientist, artist, engineer, and inventor Leonardo da Vinci, who lived from 1452 to 1519, reportedly used an Uberman schedule to sleep for 20 minutes every four hours. Other engineers and inventors may have applied this unconventional sleep pattern, such as Nikola Tesla, who lived from 1856 to 1943. Though this sleeping schedule never quite took hold among the general public, polyphasic sleep rose in prominence in the 1940s as inventor Buckminster Fuller touted his Dymaxion method, which was four equidistant 30m naps taken every 6 hours, totaling only 2h of sleep a day.

Which ?

According to my routine I am leaning toward the Everyman Schedules. Particularly the alternate variant of the Everyman Two Schedule somewhat equidistant which is one of the rarest Everyman Two scheduling options. According to polyphasic.net, The ideas behind this scheduling option are:

Use the core as a blanket duration to stay awake until very late morning hours (close to noon/lunch break).
Once adapted, the night will feel much shorter as there is more time awake until almost noon. The core usually starts around midnight or slightly earlier; this trait can resemble certain reduced monophasic lifestyles with a very early morning wake time.

Though I can't follow the exact schedule, I am thinking of modifying it in a way that fits with my daily routine.

Modifications ?

Unmodified Everyman Two: Somewhat Equidistant variant:


  Core Sleep : 00:00 - 04:30 (4hours and 30 minutes)
  Nap I      : 10:30 - 10:50 (20 minutes)
  Nap II     : 17:00 - 17:20 (20 minutes)

  Total Sleep: 5 hours and 10 minutes

My variant:


  Core Sleep :  00:00 - 04:30 (4hours and 30 minutes)
  Nap I      :  08:30 - 08:50 (20 minutes)
  Midday Nap :    ~ 14:00 ~   (20 minutes)
  Nap II     :  18:00 - 18:20 (20 minutes)

  Total Sleep: 5 hours and 30 minutes

So ?

Adaptation is the most difficult thing to start anything. There are recommendations to jump start adaptation like; staying awake before starting, naptation and cold turkey. This is just me analyzing the possibilities. I'll write another article about it if I fail or succeed in the adaptation. Until then, goodnight!

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How I use the Internet Today

2022-12-02T00:00:00+00:00

Today's internet is a nightmare to use and navigate, in my opinion. I have little knowledge about the old internet. So, I don't have much to say about it, but from what I have experienced in the old internet is that it was actually decentralized. Firstly, our internet is occupied by the tech giants. When I talk about the internet, a normal person would think that it's something that makes Facebook work or something that helps us to chat with people in WhatsApp. The concept of internet being a social, decentralized hub where people can express themselves in their own way has been shadowed by the famous monopoly, i.e. meta(in my opinion, but there's google as well), and now it is seen as the place where we play by the rules of a company and express ourselves in short microblogs with limited number of words and a single UI where everyone is forced to be in the same place because they will be alone if they want to try something new.

The other things are search engines and advertisements. The search engines today show us results which are paid for by the owner to show on the top of the search result or optimized in such a way that the search engines will show us the particular sites on the top. Either way, it provides people to choose specific words and hijack the search results of a person, shadowing the factual results. Many websites that I see on the top are websites written by bots and hosted just for the sake of people clicking it and watching their ad, i.e. to earn money without any real information.

Talking about ads, the ads too are harmful nowadays. The ads today are mostly targeted and changes according to the user's web usage and interests. Targeted ads may be a good way to earn money from but are equally bad because it can be about anything, a news website might have ads for a gambling app or a good writer may have an ad which supports something illegal. They are not chosen and trusted by the owner of the website which puts their reputation in danger as well as the person surfing a good website may get scammed because they trusted the ad from the site they trust.

Now let's get to the Topic

Browser

The first thing I need even before I access the internet is a browser. I prefer the Firefox browser because it helps the world by saving us from the monopoly that is chromium/chrome. The thing is that, every device today comes pre-installed with chrome and even if you go and get a browser from the internet it is most likely to be a chromium based browser (Opera, Vivaldi, Microsoft Edge, Brave, UC Browser etc.) if it isn't Firefox. If Firefox was not a thing, the web would have been controlled by a sole company, i.e. google, whose main aim is to give as much ad to the people so that they can earn money.

Firefox

Search Engine

After I have Firefox installed, I prefer to choose a search engine which doesn't show targeted ads and works most of the time. I choose DuckDuckGo for that, but you may have your own preference. DuckDuckGo or DDG for short claims that it's a privacy focused search engine, but they seem to have better results than google for not being a sell-out. It's not perfect, and I do get websites written by bots or scams there as well, but is a "good guy" than google.

DuckDuckGo

Content Blocker

Now that I have Firefox with DuckDuckGo, I need a content blocker. My choice in it is uBlock Origin every single time. It's a must-have add-on to surf the web without being covered by pop-ups and ads. It removes most of the ads as well their spaces in the websites, so you don't get blank spaces in the middle of an article or post. Furthermore, it also has advanced features like the ability to remove specific elements from a website, which comes in handy when it cannot remove stuff completely or if I want to remove something from a website that's bothering me to read something there.

uBlock Origin

Doing all this is mostly enough for a normal internet user because it solves most of the things that the modern internet forces upon us.

Tiny Little Details

Containerization

I use an add-on made by Firefox called Firefox Multi-Account Containers which allows me to keep all the parts of my online life contained in different tabs colour coded and labelled, helping me to keep different activities or sites separate from each other. What it does is that it allows me to do shopping stuff in one container and research stuff in another without the cross site cookies being shared with each other, making my shopping life not interfere to my academic life.

Firefox Multi-Account Containers

Yum! Cookies

Cookies are small files sent to your browser from websites you visit. These files monitor the sites you visit and the items you click on these pages. These are used to remember what you did in a particular site the last time you visited it. I mostly reject cookies and allow only the essential ones. And to automate the process I use an add-on called "I don't care about cookies" which blocks the pop-ups and if the cookies are essential it accepts it and I never have to do the annoying thing every time you open a new website.

I don't care about cookies

Password Manager

With an abundance in social platforms and having to use multiple things being a heavy internet user, I need to have multiple accounts with multiple passwords and authentication process. So, to manage my password I use Bitwarden, which helps me save a lot of time as well because I log out from everything every time I close my browser.

Bitwarden

Enhancers

I use sites like YouTube, mastodon and hacker news and I don't like the experiences there, it may have to do with design or any other things like bringing back the dislike counter on YouTube. I use add-ons like stylus, sponsor-block, return YouTube dislike, YouTube enhancer etc. to improve my experience.

Return YouTube Dislike Stylus

I am a vim guy and having vim keys bidden to the browser is just that cherry on top that I needed. For that, I use an add-on called "Vimium" which does exactly that.

Vimium

Everyone has their own use-cases and people use the internet for multiple things. Following my method and using my configuration may not be viable for everyone, but it works for the most part. The best way to improve your experience is to use the internet and experiment with it to set it up to your liking.

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Some Thoughts On Privacy

2022-11-17T00:00:00+00:00

and also on privacy respecting media.

These are my views on this topic so, a reply with a correction or your view would be highly appreciated. For a different perspective on this topic, check the end of this article.

My Experience

I encountered what privacy is by coming to Linux and interacting with the people of the FOSS community. And It has taught me things that I would not have learned anywhere else. But when it comes to why we need privacy, and why losing some comfort is worth it, I quite can't teach or make it clear to people. I follow the practice to be private on the internet mostly because I agree with the people from the community. I learned about the Gemini protocol, the Fediverse, the Matrix protocol, self-hosting and many more concepts because of the community.

Not using Facebook and mainstream social media like Instagram, Twitter, etc has surely changed the way I think about people and the internet but it also has broken my contact with my family and relatives. I asked the ones who wanted to contact me to install "Signal" and to contact me there since it was the easiest to set up and use for everyone. Though it isn't a perfect replacement for a "social media" like Facebook it has done the job for the most part, at least has fulfilled my basic social interactions.

Here are my thoughts on the positives and as well as the negatives of maintaining/trying to maintain privacy:

The Positives

Judgements

It is an undeniable fact that we judge a person firstly by how they look. If they look clean, wear attractive clothes, has big eyes we seem to make our mind up that they are the kind of friends we want and if anyone has a darker skin color, is wearing oversized clothes, or has imperfections on their face we tend to be far from them. Being and interacting with "anonymous" people on the internet has made me think about our prejudice toward people. Nobody has judged me and I haven't judged anyone but have helped each other regardless of how we look (here on the platforms like mastodon(Fosstodon), Gemini(Station and Geminiverse)). So, one aspect of privacy on the internet that I like is that it minimizes prejudice.

Safety

Maintaining privacy and not disclosing the location of where we live, who our relatives are, where we work and many similar "Oh! it doesn't matter." things will make us safe from the people who "hate" us or our views and may bring threat to us. It creates a virtual chamber where we can settle disputes without physical contact and gives everyone enough time to think and argue about their view.

Tunneled Vision

The internet has lost its position from the place where we gain information about a vast range of topics to the place which agrees with what you like and nothing else. These algorithms in our media collect information about us and feed us what we have an interest in, which may seem to be a very good thing when we look straight into it but behind it, it's not something made for our comfort but for them to increase our watch time in those media and show us as many ads as possible which also are shown based on our interests making us their product to the ad distributors. So, being private and not letting these media collect media helps us to not get distracted by ads and not get tunneled to a certain view as it won't just show what we prefer but also shows us multiple perspectives.

Focus

Not having to care about maintaining an image in the media and being seen as equal by everyone else and treated like everyone else removes many burdens from the mind and helps focus on the subject matter and views instead of branching focus to other unnecessary variables helps (at least for me) to be more productive.

Expectations and Mental Health

Being private on the internet also demands similar people and media thus taking away the people that may create a sense of insecurity, like having expectations of being a celebrity or being "socially accepted beautiful", getting celebrity worship syndrome, expectation for filmy love or romance. Since everything on the internet is not true and mostly tampered with to make it look "good", being private on the internet and using media that respects ones privacy helps a lot in preventing psychological health issues, especially for teens.

Decrease in chances of scams and spam,
Protection from identity theft,
Offers freedom to express oneself, and much more that I cannot think of.

The Negatives

Fame and Recognition

We need fame and recognition to be respected in human society and being famous on the internet has become our priority but internet privacy and fame might not go together so, complete privacy isn't possible. A well thought privacy threat model should be implemented never-the-less to mitigate the threats instead of completely giving up on internet privacy because having fame adds more threats as well as responsibilities.

Connection and Contacts

Losing contact with relatives, friends and family trying to give priority to privacy is one of the most experienced downsides of it. Not everybody understands or cares about privacy and leaving centralized privacy disrespecting monopoly leads to losing contact with people you were in contact with yesterday. Using workarounds to access those media may mitigate the issue but is not a complete solution.

Information Distribution

We have to get local news and information distributed by collage and clubs or the organizations where we work, which mostly are circulated exclusively on the centralized privacy disrespecting monopoly media. This centralized locking of information has been one of the barriers to freedom and internet privacy as well.

Being an outcast from a circle,
A hassle to manage and keep track of,
People try more to exploit you the more you try to be private, and unfortunately, the negatives too don't end here.

Privacy in itself is a very broad subject to be discussed. A single person's view isn't sufficient on what privacy is and what isn't so I expect some flaws in my writing if seen from a different perspective. So, I thought of accumulating everyone's view on it. I also request you include a list of authors and their articles related to mine at the bottom of your reply/article as I have done below. That way everyone who is reading can find every other person's view.

Please send your article to me at @scientiac@fosstodon.org if you wrote a reply so that I can include it on the list below.

Some More Views

Author: Scientiac

On Pseudonymity

Author: marginalia.nu Author: Szczeżuja (gemini://) Re: Pseudonymous Author: usebox.net (gemini://) re: Pseudonymous Author: Lykso (gemini://) why a pseudonym

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Facebook a Choice, Not an Obligation

2022-07-03T00:00:00+00:00

A brief reminder of the freedom of choice and privacy.

Last year, I decided to ditch Facebook and meta in overall because of the raising privacy concerns and addictive nature of these mainstream social media platforms. Of course backed by my knowledge of privacy and the help of different online communities, especially the Linux community talking about internet privacy and the openness of FOSS I quickly realized that the world of internet is not a very good place to be in, especially the social media platforms without federation and very high filtration of what people can/not, want/not to see. I realized that the posts that I am scrolling through are picked and compiled for my tastes and to keep me stuck in the place for so long that I see enough ads and decide to buy one of the products that I see is what I want but don't need.

I felt that the social media should not have any filtration over its contents by a person to person basis but have a good moderation for a set of people/community where one thing of one community may think what they are doing is good/legal while the other communities because of their social norms sees bad/illegal. Another thing is the arrangement of posts, the posts should be arranged in a chronological manner with respect to time (new posts on the top and older at the bottom.). It should be private and should have an ability to federate with other platforms if one decides to not use it but wants to be in touch with the people inside it. And last but not the least It should be open by which everyone is ensured that they are safe and the company/organization is not using our data for their own betterment behind our back.

But what you get is not always what you want. I had to make a Facebook account because my university circulates all its regular notice via Facebook and only Facebook, despite them having a website of their own where they do post some very specific notices. I could have lived with the university's specific notices but every other group/club/association; the club for students interested in robotics, in software development, associations of computer, civil, etc engineering students, etc inside my university share information solely on Facebook which I being someone interested in robotics as well as software really want to know.

It could be a whole different story if anyone except I were concerned about their privacy and/or didn't use Facebook with one reason or another. But even if I proposed a solution it will be just for me, and they will eventually stop following it and keep posting on Facebook as they are doing right now. I quote Olamundo from mastodon (@olamundo@red.niboe.info), "Having a Facebook account is an option (which highly educated people are expected not to take, considering current news and concerns), not an obligation."

It's very difficult to maintain privacy on the internet, either you have to completely disconnect from them or keep using what they give without even considering if privacy was a thing.

Proposable Solutions :

Using a website for everything with support for RSS.
Using mastodon or any other federated social media for notice circulation, along with some sort of redirection to it for Facebook.
Using MATRIX w/o bridges for those who don't want an account on discord/messenger and still be able to contact with everyone.
Using discourse or similar software for notice as well as chats.
Anything that doesn't require any specific non privacy respecting software and is accessible by everyone.

Links:

Information on RSS (subscription method for websites) Federated Social Media (Mastodon, Pleroma etc.) Matrix (bridging chat platforms.) Discourse (a forum for community)

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Using Light Mode

2022-04-30T00:00:00+00:00

I have been a fan of dark mode for a long time. People including myself are so invested into dark mode that everything whether it supports or not is on the dark scheme, or even worse "pure black". Every website turns black no matter what the creator had intended. Every app goes dark forcefully with mismatched buttons and forms but we still use it.

I have read many articles about people changing their display modes to 'light' and saying that "dark-mode" isn't as beneficial as we considered it to be. We all assumed that dark mode reduced the strain in our eyes and also saved battery. I cannot be a 100 percent sure and say that it doesn't.

I recommend reading the article published by The Nielson Norman Group¹ about dark vs light mode, where they have concluded that using Light mode resulted in better performance than using the dark mode for most people.

We humans evolved collecting food/hunting in the daytime and taking rest at night, our eyes are developed to be used in the presence of more light. Eyes in general are supposed to be more functional and useful when more light is present. The pupils in our eyes becomes wide when we are in an environment where there is less light, and they become narrow where there is more, but the performance of our reading doesn't just depend upon the amount of light passing through our pupil, but also the size of the pupil through which the light passes.

Our eyes just like the cameras work in the same principle (Actually cameras work in the same principle as our eyes do). If the aperture of the eyes is larger, the depth of field is shallower as a result it is harder to focus on things, but when our eyes have enough light the pupils shrink making the aperture smaller and eventually increasing the depth of field and making it easier for us to focus.

It is not that 'dark-mode' has no advantages. It has! The claim that it saves battery is correct, but only if the technology used in the display is OLED. But most laptops and display people use are IPS/LCD panels, which cannot turn off the pixels to display true black like OLED does. There is always a backlit besides the screen which glows when the screen is on even when the colour displayed is black. Dark mode may even be better for people with cloudy ocular media (like cataract) because the display emits less light as the people suffering from this problem prefer less light as more light reaches the eye with a cloudy lens, there’s a bigger chance of a distortion.

Light mode isn't perfectly good either, because there may be long-term effects associated with light mode, like the chances of myopia.

In their study, Andrea Aleman and her colleagues at University of Tübingen in Germany asked 7 human participants to read text presented in dark mode and light mode for an hour each. To see if their predisposition to myopia changed after reading, they measured the thickness of the choroid, a vascular membrane behind the retina. The thinning of the choroid is associated with myopia.

Conclusion

Light mode helps us focus better and also reduces strain in our eyes as compared to dark mode, automatically improving our performance and hence our productivity. But in the long term, there might me chances of myopia. Another thing is that dark mode is still required for the people who still enjoy dark mode and also for the people who are suffering from cloudy ocular media or similar problems. As of me, I will be continuing the experiment and keep changing things and try different shades of colours keeping the light theme in mind. I am a person who loves the terminal, so the terminal in light mode is going to be very difficult to adapt, but let's see where this experiment takes me.

Links:

Article published by The Nielson Norman Group

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Monopoly

2021-10-30T00:00:00+00:00

A brief introduction to strategy of big tech companies.

Everything in this world requires competition and challenges so that it could evolve. So if there is nobody to compete with, there cannot be development. This is a serious issue in today's tech world where tech giants like Google, Facebook, Microsoft have gained total monopoly in their fields.

Starting with google, the operating system you use which is android is Google's product (Though the actual operating system is open source the services built on top of it are mostly made by google and are closed source.) ,the phone app you're using is from google, the photos app , YouTube, Calendar, Email, Maps, Podcasts, Assistant etc. are Google's products but no one searches alternative for because they are interconnected among themselves. If you just delete your email account your photos backed up in the cloud , your youtube libraries , your location history and addresses ,your browsing history, bookmarks, your phone book, the services logged in with google, everything will be deleted so, you will not be able to (and will not even consider to) get out of it's system.

Now, lets look at Facebook (Now known as Meta). Everybody uses facebook but no one knowns that there exists platform mastodon, disapora , friendrica, etc which has the same objective as Facebook's. But facebook being a big company knows what to do to not let people escape from their own ecosystem. They saw Instagram as a competition but instead of competing with it they decided to buy it. Now, everybody who were in instagram got connected to facebook services. Similarly , they purchased WhatsApp because it felt like a threat to their own facebook messenger. If they couldn't buy it, they take the main feature of that particular apps and add them to their own. They brought the stories feature and the disappearing messages feature from snapchat, twitter had a heart button they brought a whole range of buttons with different emojis on it saying it's a react button They also bought Oculus which was a company developing virtual reality headsets. As of now, the only way to log in to the headset is by using a facebook account. You can sign-up for a different thing like pinterest (For example) via your facebook account which seems like a easy way but it's not. Because if you somehow lose your facebook account ,now a totally different platform is out of access because it used facebook to log you in.

Talking about Microsoft they are the king in the space of desktop computer operating system. Almost every apps are made for windows, their office suite "the Microsoft office suite " or "Office 365" has become the only office suite that is used by almost everyone even if there exist other suites like only office, libre office, etc. They have their own extensions for files .pptx , .docs, .xls etc which is used by almost every office computer in the planet where the .odf (Open Document Format) which is an open source document format doesn't play well with their office suite so the people using MS office will keep using the same office and doesn't leave them. The OS itself comes pre-installed on computers so no normie would ever change the OS instead they will just keep using what they got i.e. microsoft.

This is just a tip of an iceberg and there is a lot more in this topic. This behavior of big tech companies completely destroys the competition on the market because there remains nothing to compete with when they are the only one providing that service.

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Nova Launcher (Dracula Theme)

2021-10-27T00:00:00+00:00

'Dracula' everywhere!

I have created a dracula themed nova launcher layout and wanted to share it.

Install using Git

If you are a git user, you can install the theme and keep up to date by cloning the repo:

https://github.com/dracula/nova_launcher.git

Install manually

Download using the 'GitHub .zip download' option and unzip them. [Github .zip download]

Activating theme

Warning This will override your custom layout. So, be sure to backup your custom layout.

First Install [Charcoal Icon Pack] [Charcoal Icon Pack]

Goto Nova Settings -> Backup & Restore -> Restore backup
Navigate to ".novabackup" file, [It's your choice to apply 'with' or 'without' layout] (Inside "extracted folder -> dracula") and select it.
Now, set the given wallpaper to your home and lockscreen.
Boom! It's beeeeautiful!

)xxxxx[;;;;;;;;;>

Wanna Save your layout? DIY!

Step by step instruction to change the color scheme of nova launcher to dracula.

Your setup will be "kinda" incomplete without a perfect background and a icon pack with the same color scheme (Both of them are given. 😉)

)xxxxx[;;;;;;;;;>

Home Screen

Search Bar Style

Search bar style - Bar Color - Advanced
Set the hex code to #bd93f9

Indicator Color

Indicator color - Advanced
Set the hex code to #bd93f9

Dock (If enabled)

Dock - Dock Background - Advanced
Set the hex code to #44475a

)xxxxx[;;;;;;;;;>

App Drawer

Background Color

Background color - Advanced
Set the hex code to #44475a

Scroll accent color

Scroll cccent color - Advanced
Set the hex code to #bd93f9

)xxxxx[;;;;;;;;;>

Folders

Window style

Window style - Background color - Advanced
Set the hex code to #6272a4

Folder Icon Appearance

Folder icon appearance - Color - Advanced
Set the hex code to #bd93f9

)xxxxx[;;;;;;;;;>

Search

Background Color

Background color - Advanced
Set the hex code to #bd93f9

[Desktop search bar is already set.]

Drawer Search Bar

Drawer search bar - Bar color - Advanced
Set the hex code to #bd93f9

)xxxxx[;;;;;;;;;>

Night Mode

Turn On Night Mode and unselect all the options on the ' use dark theme on ' section.

)xxxxx[;;;;;;;;;>

Notification Badges

Notification badges - Choose a style
Choose ' Numeric Dots '

Presets

Choose Custom
Turn off ' match icon color '
Colors - Border - Advanced
Set the hex code to #bd93f9
Color - Border - Badge
Set the hex code to #bd93f9
Color - Border - Text
Set the hex code to #ffffff

)xxxxx[;;;;;;;;;>

Congrats! You have changed your nova launcher's color scheme to 'Dracula'.

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Dark (Realization)

2021-10-18T00:00:00+00:00

Something that my hyperactive brain came up with.

I live in a dark place. There is no light and the cold freezes me near to death. I can barely be alive, these decisions are hard to make. Should I burn my clothes or should I keep them on. Should die feeling the warmth or is it better to live longer shivering in the cold? Is it better to hide my feelings and be happy in front of others or should I make them pity about me and get relieved thinking they know the pain?

I am a human being, I can think about the consequences. I can see the effects of my choices. I can predict the outcome. I can do calculations more than any animal on the planet can do. That may be a good thing but the dilemmas, the multiple consequences, the positives and the negatives, values and cultures, my religions, my gender, peoples expectations, judgments and a lot other things like those add a lot of variables to the decision. Should I break all the cultures that has been taught to me to marry the girl I love or is it better to break up with her and marry someone who my religion and the stars lining on the sky think is best for me. This is just an example, but there are more dilemmas as we gradually move from a superstitious and highly religious society to a scientific and more literate society.

I am in a society where a decision made by me can break the elders heart but can be a good example for my children on the future. I can marry a guy being a man which might be a shameful act for a society of the age group of my father but on the other hand could be a great example to the future children that being gay isn't a thing to be ashamed of.

We want to make the world a better place by making everyone like ourselves. We think that our opinions are better than all others. Nobody wants to hear what someone is saying but everyone wants to say something that they think is the best. Instead of embracing the difference we have; color, religions, cultures, gender, shape, richness, etc and a different set of brains which can think differently we tend to fight against each other thinking we are not the same.

I stopped writing this article four days ago and I am trying to give this a proper ending. But the way my Brain processed these things is different than it was four days ago. I am unable to think further. The thing that I realize from this is that not even my own brain thinks the same every time. The same article will be different If I wrote it in a single day than if I wrote it one paragraph each day.

We humans don't want to change from who we are. We don't want others to teach us what is right or wrong but we do want to teach others. We feel happy on finding mistake of others. Not everyone will realize this anytime soon and the world is not going to be a better place in the near future. It's like the adoption of Linux as an operating system. There is not going to be a mass adoption of Linux anytime soon even though It is the best operating system which is privacy respecting, easy to use heck even 'ecofriendly'.

Not everything that is good is praised and adopted by everyone. It is mainly because they don't understand it or because they are so used to their own thing that they don't consider that change is a good thing. Nobody can convince anyone to adopt something they like if the person have no understanding of what it is (The case is even severe than that if that person has false information about it). The thing is that, people get scared of the things they don't understand.

This article is not going to change anyone's mind if someone disagrees with what I have written but will definitely bring a smile to the faces of the ones who did agree with what I am saying even before I even wrote it. Because that's how a human brain works.

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My Experience with Bricks and Bootloops

2021-10-10T00:00:00+00:00

The scariest moment when flashing custom ROMs(for amateurs).

If someone told me to root a phone five years since now, I would get scared of damaging the device. I didn't have internet at that time and also a very little knowledge of what it could do. I just knew that it could let me see the passwords of connected WIFI as well as the passwords of WPS enabled WiFi which at that time was like a treasure to me. A friend of mine had rooted his phone and he shared his experience that his phone was completely dead a few days after while adding a module. He shared stories of phones blasting and catching fire because of root and since I didn't have internet there was nothing to do except to believe in his stories. Those stories caused me to think that I would never root my device ever.

But after some years we had internet in our own house and I used to watch life hacks, hacking videos, new gadgets and inventions, new and useful apps for android, phone reviews, customizing android, and all sorts of tech videos on YouTube. On some hacking videos (hacking with an android, I didn't have a computer at that time.) I again stumbled upon root. Then I watched videos describing benefits and disadvantages of rooting. I loved to watch what a phone could do with Magisk modules and was very eager to try rooting. But still deep inside my brain there was a feeling that I would damage my new phone.

After a lot of watching advantage and disadvantage videos I decided to root my phone, I knew that it would void the warranty of my phone but after four months of buying I was so eager that I unlocked the bootloader (MI made me wait 7 days) flashed a custom recovery and rooted my phone. I installed a bunch of modules with Magisk and Ed-exposed, tweaked MIUI with substratum which did cause my first boot loop, but it was easily fixed because there was a zip pre-managed by substratum for those cases.

A few days after I rooted, there was an update to MIUI and I decided to install it like I normally did. My phone wouldn't boot to the system, It just rebooted after the MI logo. I was having chills in my heart, suddenly I felt very cold, I booted to recovery and tried to format my device. It didn't solve the issue, but all the files on my device were deleted. I started searching for fixes, I flashed the official MIUI ROM by forwarding it via adb, but the Issue was still there. I tried flashing pixel experience, Havoc, Corvus etc. but nothing worked. It was 12 AM already, and I still was trying to fix my phone. Then I found out that there is a different kind of ROM that could be flashed from fast boot mode, first I tried the latest fast boot ROM, and it still didn't work, then I tried the oldest fast boot ROM, It changed the boot screen to old MI logo but was still stuck on a boot loop. At that point I was crying, I had bricked my phone, The warranty period hadn't finished, but my warranty was already void. I slept at around 2 AM with a cold heart and tears in my eyes.

The next morning I woke up at 5 AM, at that point I was ready to do anything to fix my phone. I tried a bunch of things from the internet but none of them worked, then I came across a tool called "ALL in One" on XDA forums dating back to 2014 (This story takes place in 2020). I immediately downloaded the tool, installed the exe file, and opened the program. There was an option to flash recovery ROMs, I downloaded the latest official recovery ROM, connected the phone to my computer and flashed it using the tool. And magically it worked, a tool from 2014 saved my phone. But that incident didn't stop me from rooting my phone because as soon as the phone booted I went back to the recovery mode and flashed the magisk file.

After some weeks I flashed a custom ROM from the same tool and fell in love with it. I tried different ROMs after that and yes I did go into a boot loop sometimes, but I could easily fix it. Now, it isn't a big deal to me to flash a ROM or root anyone's phone and I love doing it.

You might be wondering how I know that you're awesome!
Because I know you read this via RSS.

RSS

2021-10-08T00:00:00+00:00

Despite being old it's gold.

RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication. It refers to files easily read by a computer, called XML files, that automatically update information. A link to a website is created using this tech and that very link is identified by an RSS reader software which then fetches the information from that particular linked site and shows it to the user. RSS was created by Dan Libby and Ramanathan V. Guha in 1999 with a motive of making it easier to subscribe to web feeds. Checking each site one by one will take forever. Signing up for their newsletters could ensure you keep up with the latest updates and information, but it's also easy to mistake the emails as spam or to ignore them altogether in your crowded inbox. Then again, relying solely on the site's social media updates might mean you miss something important you wanted to know about.

In simple terms, RSS helps you create your own e-magazine where you get only the information you want to get from the sites you've chosen. Not only can you subscribe to your favourite websites, but you also can subscribe to blogs and podcasts if the RSS reader supports it. RSS readers can fetch text information, audio, images and even video files, so you won't lose any information you want to get in any form. Even though it can fetch every kind of file all you get in an RSS reader is the title, a short description, some pictures or a video, and the link to the original website (Usually* because RSS cannot fetch the ads present on the site which hampers the monetization of those sites since no ads = no income.).

Workings


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╹  ┗━╸┗━╸╺┻┛   ┗━   ╹┗╸┗━╸╺┻┛╹╹┗╸┗━╸┗━╸ ╹ ┗━┛    ╹ ┗━┛   ┗┻┛┗━╸┗━┛┗━┛╹ ╹ ┗━╸   ━┛

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╻ ╻┏━╸┏┓ ┏━┓╻╺┳╸┏━╸   ┏━   ┏━╸┏━┓┏┳┓┏┳┓╻┏┓╻┏━╸   ╻ ╻┏━╸┏━┓┏━╸   ╻┏━┓   ┏━┓┏━┓╺┳╸╻┏━┓┏┓╻┏━┓╻     ━┓
┃╻┃┣╸ ┣┻┓┗━┓┃ ┃ ┣╸    ┃    ┃  ┃ ┃┃┃┃┃┃┃┃┃┗┫┃╺┓   ┣━┫┣╸ ┣┳┛┣╸    ┃┗━┓   ┃ ┃┣━┛ ┃ ┃┃ ┃┃┗┫┣━┫┃      ┃
┗┻┛┗━╸┗━┛┗━┛╹ ╹ ┗━╸   ┗━   ┗━╸┗━┛╹ ╹╹ ╹╹╹ ╹┗━┛   ╹ ╹┗━╸╹┗╸┗━╸   ╹┗━┛   ┗━┛╹   ╹ ╹┗━┛╹ ╹╹ ╹┗━╸   ━┛

Advantages

You get the latest updates. Whether it is about the weather, new music, local news, or a new posting from a rarely-updated site, learn you get as soon as it is published.
You can save a lot of time by reading a self curated feed instead of browsing all the websites one by one.
Unlike emails, you can easily subscribe and unsubscribe whenever you want.
You won't be spammed with useless information, unlike emails where you might get every kind of spam and non-informative emails after they get your email.
The feed you get is organized in a chronological order, and you can keep track if it is already read or not.
RSS doesn't have ads and trackers that you find on a website, which is good for your reading experience as well as your privacy.

Disadvantages

Articles (Info) from the sites is received in a certain amount instead of the whole article, so you are very likely to go inside the webpage instead of just reading the RSS content.
It is very difficult to accurately track the number of subscribers who read an RSS feed or the items contained in an RSS feed.
RSS readers load up different websites at once and since most RSS contents doesn't contain full articles you also go to their website, increasing the data traffic.
RSS contents will not be counted as views to the websites, so it could impact on the income of the creator.

RSS is a very old but useful tech. With it being one of the go-to methods of creating feeds, RSS has been implemented in various fields and can fetch different data from different sources. I am personally using RSS to keep track of what my friends are doing on Instagram and Twitter, as well as subscribing to websites as well as YouTube channels I like. These social media don't have RSS integrated with them, but frontends like Bibliogram(Instagram) and Nitter(Twitter) allow you to subscribe to the publicly available profiles with RSS. RSS is a must-have thing if you go to websites frequently to get information.

Links :

You might be wondering how I know that you're awesome!
Because I know you read this via RSS.

Sad? Just Smile!

2021-10-06T00:00:00+00:00

More than just a self help technique.

Many people I know are constantly sad and tensed, and I wonder why it is the case. Because I am a pretty chill guy, my sadness lasts for a very short time. It might be because I have very fewer responsibilities and don't have to do much work. I don't know how it actually feels like, maybe I haven't experienced something they have experienced. I see people stressing out and wonder why they don't be "just happy". It sounds dumb, but that's what I feel, why wouldn't they just feel happy about what they are doing. I know that It's like telling a person with depression to just be happy. But actually that is the feeling I get when I see these people. It's totally fine to be sad, I am an adult and I do cry sometimes, but that doesn't mean that I am sad all the time. Or even if I am feeling bad I smile, and after a while it goes away. If there's no need to look sad (like, in a funeral or anything else.) I just like to handle the situations smiling or even giggling. That has its own benefits, but a huge negative is that it makes you a little "not serious". I have experienced this a lot, mostly when I am giving a suggestion and my friends doesn't give a damn about it. Is it really necessary to be bold every time and say the things you want to say in a so called "serious" manner? I usually don't talk in groups but a single person and I do try to make attempts to make the other laugh in a conversation, but that's everyone I guess, because who would really like to be very serious in a conversation. There's a huge role of a person's expressions in a conversation. If the speaker is smiling and talking, the listener will definitely smile despite the pain inside them, the person will feel fresh after taking with you even if they were sad. If you're feeling angry, and you talk with someone in an angry manner, you will get the same expression from them because that's how it works. A simple smile can determine the day of that person you were just talking to. Now that I think of it, it feels more simple. It's like Newton's third law of 'motion', but with an "e" on the front. If you smile they will smile back, if you are angry they get angry back at you, if you help they will help you back, if you are sad they will feel the same (though it's not the same thing that you're experiencing, but they do).

It's funny how people don't realize that they both are angry and arguing with each other because one person was a little angry which started a chain reaction on their anger now they both are fighting. I am not funny nor am I very handsome and charming, but a smile is all it takes to make a person next to you feel happy, and I do smile.

That's all for today, keep smiling.

Be Happy

You might be wondering how I know that you're awesome!
Because I know you read this via RSS.

My Journey to Linux and Privacy

2021-10-02T00:00:00+00:00

Butterfly effect of my encounter with KDE.

I first came across linux a couple years ago [In 2017] when I was surfing the internet about customizing the windows desktop, and I saw a video about customizing the KDE Desktop. I clicked on that video and realized that the thing he was using wasn't windows but something else. I quickly searched about KDE and I found Linux. At that time I didn't have my own personal computer that I could modify, not even windows. I was just curious if it was possible to customize computers as I used to customize my smartphone a lot.

Linux isn't something that you understand with a random video especially if the video contains words like 'distro', 'desktop environment',etc. So, I started searching about those things. And as I learnt new things about linux new terms and words kept comming up and I searched about them and got some information about them as well. No sooner I started researching about linux, I realized that it was very vast. I realized almost everything on a linux system can be replaced by an alternative program.

I came to know that the linux operating system is an Open Source operating system. I searched about open source too and got a simple idea that if the source code of a software is visible and changable by any people from anywhere than it is an open source software. (I didn't even know what a "source code" was and did some research about it too.)

I followed linux youtube channals like Chris Titus Tech, The Linux Experiment, etc (Not DT because I didnt like his presentation even though he is my favourite youtuber as of now.) and began to watch their videos regularly. I really liked the concept of open source too, so I gradually started switching my phone apps to open source apps like 'MX Player' to 'VLC', 'Chrome' to 'Brave', 'Google to Duckduckgo', etc.

I researched about Linux and OpenSource for more than two years, then the Corona Virus struck, countries started lockdowns and everyone was trapped inside their houses. First year went without any classes not even online but when the second phase hit every school and colleges starting pushing online classes. And since both of my parents were teachers and a tiny smartphone didn't handle the online classes very well, we had to buy a computer. Then, in the beginning of 2021 we bought a laptop (This is the first ever full-fledged computer that I ever had in my own house.).

Just the day after we bought the computer I was so curious that I wanted to install linux on my computer, I didnt find any pendrive on my house except an old 2GB pendrive that my father had, I backed up the pendrive to the windows and started searching for linux images. All the distros I wanted to try were more than 2 GB in size and then I decided to install arch linux. I read the documentation and watched some videos and sucessfully dual booted (Virtualization was a no-go because this computer had a HDD and 4GB of ram) my computer with Arch Linux and Windows.

I started learning new things, especially the terminal and tested out different Desktop Environments and Window Managers(I couldn't use it). I starting using FOSS and one of the main perks of FOSS was "Privacy". Till then I used to make an account for each and every site I found, that too with my real name and primary email address. I learnt more about privacy and how we cannot trust the propraitory services and softwares. I used to use evernote, I migrated to Joplin. I started hating big tech giants like Google, Microsoft, Facebook etc.

I started hating the algorithms that showed the feeds of my facebook, Instagram and Youtube. I started hating them for the fact that they collect a lot of information about us and our devices. I hated the fact that the required unnecessary permissions even to use their apps. I hated the fact that the messages were not end to end encrypted. I hated the fact that the posts weren't on a chronological order based on the time of the post published.

I started searching for alternatives but the thing about social media is that I couldn't just find one and start using it because all my friends were on facebook and Instagram and not anywhere else. I couldnt convince the majority to make an account on an unknown platform where there's noone other than me. I made accounts on mastodon and matrix and started using them. I invited some of my friends to these platforms, some are still here and some already deleted their accounts.

I recently deleted my facebook and snapchat account and I will soon be deleting my Instagram account too. Matrix didn't seem to be easy to understand for the normal people so I am beginning to invite them to signal to be in touch with them.

In a few days I will be :

Deleting my Instagram Account.
Installing a custom rom without google in it.
Making list and rss feeds of the people I follow on twitter and youtube.
Using as much open source as possible.
Backing up my data from google to nextcloud. ...and maybe more

You might be wondering how I know that you're awesome!
Because I know you read this via RSS.

Terminal and CLI

2021-10-01T00:00:00+00:00

It's like alcohol, bitter in the beginning, obsessive later.

A terminal in reality is a hardware component that is used to enter and transcribe data to the computer but the terminal we are talking about is an emulator of the hardware; a terminal emulator.

We linux users without the use of terminal suffer to do basic stuff. Searching for a command from a huge list of buttons is a hassle, if you know what the command is you can immediately execute the particular command in a split second. Since, the GUI is built around the terminal interface rather than making a GUI application and then implimenting the termnal functionality, it is much easier as well as faster to execute simple commmands in the terminal to get the work done.

Advantages of using a CLI

CLI applications takes less space than a full fledged GUI application.
Being lighter it is snappy to work on.
It is clean and minimal.
Great applications like awk, grep, wget etc. are available which are designed to do one thing and do it well.
Because it is so flexible. Commands can be piped together (ls | grep filename), they can be captured (gcc program.c > ./standard_out 2> ./standard_error), and can be substituted (ls /home/whoami or ls /home/$(whoami))
Detailed information about what a program is doing can be seen in TUI interface which is generally disabled in GUI for the sake of making the it look beautiful.
Because of the ability to automate tasks. cron and bash scripts allow long, complicated, and/or repetitive tasks to either be simplified or automated completely.
It is universal and is same across all kinds of *nix operating system despite of the use of different DEs , Themes or Layouts.
You get to know and handle the tools better.

Disadvantages of using a CLI

Remembering all the differrent commands is hectic.
Multimedia applications are useless.
A lot of inappropriate command some would say.
Bad for certain tasks that involves graphical UI.
Things that require a lot of typing, such as long file names, can be annoying without minimal cut/paste support.

People when they feel the need of using a CLI get scared of the *nix operating systems (Windows do have a command line interface but not as powerful as the *nix terminal.), this is a reason why people are afraid to try linux and is it's greatest dis-advantage.

You might be wondering how I know that you're awesome!
Because I know you read this via RSS.

Search Engines

2021-08-31T00:00:00+00:00

Finding things in the web.


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                                    ,ad88888YYYYYYYYYYY8888ba,
                                 ,d888P""'              ``""Y88b,
                               ,d888"'                       "Y888,
                              d88P'                            `Y88b,
                            ,d88'                                `Y88,
                           ,888'                                  `Y88,
                          ,d88'                                    `Y8b,
                          d88'                                      `88I
                         ,88P                                        I88
                         I88I                                        I88
                         I88I                                        I8I
                         `888,                                       d8I
                          `888,                                     d88'
                           `888,                                   d8PI
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                         ,dP'   "Yb,                          _,d8" P'
                       ,dP' ,db,  "Yb,_                    ,ad8P" ,P'
                     ,dP' ,d8888b,  `"Yba,,__        __,ad88P"  ,d"
                   ,dP' ,d88888888b,    "88Y8888888888PP""   _,d"
                 ,dP' ,d888888888888P  ,d"8              _,gd"'
               ,dP' ,d888888888888P' ,d" ,8bbaagggggaaddP""'
             ,dP' ,d888888888888P' ,d" ,d"'
           ,dP' ,d888888888888P' ,d" ,d"
         ,dP' ,d888888888888P' ,d" ,d"     
       ,dP' ,d888888888888P' ,d" ,d"       
     ,dP' ,d888888888888P' ,d" ,d"
   ,dP' ,d888888888888P' ,d" ,d"
 ,dP' ,d888888888888P' ,d" ,d"
dP'  d888888888888P' ,d" ,d"
8"Ya, `888888888P' ,d" ,d"
8  "Ya, `88888P' ,d" ,d"
8a,  "Ya, `8P' ,d" ,d"
 "Ya,  "Ya,  ,d" ,d"
   "Ya,  "Y8P" ,d"
     "Ya,  8 ,d"
       "Ya,8d"
         "YP"

Search engines are software that search the things you want in the vast web and shows relevant information to you. They generally search the required information using your "textual web queries". Some are even developed to search the web using pictures you have input on it. They show the information in a list of links which are relevant to your query. The world's first search engine was 'Archie'(1990). The most famous search engine today is 'Google' launched in 1998.

There are many search engines, but some of the famous ones are as follows :

Google

The most famous search engine.
The best search algorithm.
Has the best image search engine.

Bing

Microsoft's search engine.
Good integration with windows operating system.
Allows preview on video search results.

DuckDuckGo

Privacy focused search engine.
Gets data from microsoft's bing search engine.
Bangs (!) lets you search directly on famous websites like wikipedia, dictionary, etc

Brave Search

Privacy focused engine (currently in beta).
Made by a private browser company 'Brave' and is resleased in June 2021
It also has the bangs (!), and is integrated with its own chromium based browser.

Search results can vary between engines due to the use of different indexes or indexing technology. Some engines fetch results from different engines and prevents them from tracking your searches. Some examples are Startpage (Google) and DuckDuckGo (Bing).

You might be wondering how I know that you're awesome!
Because I know you read this via RSS.

Linux Distributions

2021-08-30T00:00:00+00:00

One operating syatem , thousand choices.

Linux Distribution or Distro is an operating system based on a Linux Kernel which is configured in a certain manner. A typical Linux distribution comprises a Linux kernel, GNU tools and libraries, additional software, documentation, a window system (Xorg or Wayland), a window manager, and a desktop environment. They also vary upon what device they are made for ;desktops, servers, laptops, netbooks, mobile phones ,tablets or a toaster. There are thousands of distros out there which have different and unique user experience. They are classified by packaging systems, installation method, user experience, software availablity, release cycle, philosophy, use cases, etc. So, a complete chart of classification is difficult to make.

Some of the famous Linux distros are :

Arch

Arch Linux is an independently developed, x86-64 general-purpose GNU/Linux distribution that strives to provide the latest stable versions of most software by following a rolling-release model. The default installation is a minimal base system, configured by the user to only add what is purposely required.

File Mask - .pacman
Package Manager - pacman

Debian

Debian is a free operating system (OS) for your computer. Debian uses the Linux Kernel, and most of the basic OS tools come from the GNU project. Debian generally follows standerd relese cycles and is easy to install and run.

File Mask - .deb
Package Manager - apt

Redhat

Red Hat Enterprise Linux (often abbreviated to RHEL) is a Linux distribution developed by Red Hat for the commercial market. Red Hat Enterprise Linux is released in server versions for x86-64, Power ISA, ARM64, and IBM Z and a desktop version for x86-64. It too generally follows standerd relese cycles instead of rolling relese.

File Mask - .rpm
Package Manager - yum

Slackware

It is the oldest currently existing linux distribution. Slackware provides no graphical installation procedure and no automatic dependency resolution of software packages. It uses plain text files and only a small set of shell scripts for configuration and administration. It too is a standerd relese distribution.

File Mask - .xz
Package Manager - slackpkg

Gentoo

Gentoo is a free operating system based on Linux that can be automatically optimized and customized for just about any application or need. It is a rolling release distribution. It's compiled locally according to the user's preferences and is often optimized for the specific type of computer.

File Mask - .tbz2
Package Manager - portage

SUSE

The SUSE distribution is a stable, easy to use and complete multi-purpose distribution. It is aimed towards users and developers working on the desktop or server. It is a generally standard release distribution and is the first enterprise Linux provider of the world.

File Mask - .rpm
Package Manager - zypper

You might be wondering how I know that you're awesome!
Because I know you read this via RSS.

KDE Connect

2021-08-29T00:00:00+00:00

Quality integration between Android and Linux.

KDE Connect is a KDE application that connects your phone to your computer if you have a Linux Desktop (Windows integration is on beta). It is very Powerful, I can say that it is the best among all the Phone - Computer integration softwares across all the operating systems. The Features of KDE connect are as follows :

You can send files to or from the computer very easily. It can either be done by opening the app and choosing the 'Send Files' option or just by opening the share menu from the file and choosing the recieving device.

Multimedia Control

You can pause, play, rewind, foreward, turn volume up or down from each device connected via KDE Connect. You can control the media on your phone from your computer or you can control the media on your computer from your phone.

Presentation Remote

You can turn your phone to a presentation remote if you need it. It can use the accelerometer and gyroscope sensor to detect the motion and point on the area on your screen just by moving your phone in the air. You also can change slides from the app itself.

Remote Input

You can use KDE Connect as a trackpad and a keyboard for your computer of you need. This functionality can be set both ways, you can also use your computer to type things on your phone. It also can bring mouse like functionality where it creates a mouse pointer on your phone which can be used via the computer.

Browse Your Phone's Storage

KDE Connect uses sshfs to connect your phone's storage to your computer wirelessly. You can edit, move, copy, rename, etc the files of your phone via your computer in it's file manager. You can basically do anything you can do with the file manager.

Find Your Device

You can use your computer to ring your phone or use your phone to ring your computer if can't find one.

Sync Notifications

You can receive the Notifications of your phone on your computer as well as can receive the Notifications of your computer on your phone. You also can reply from the other device if it support replying from heads up notification.

Send Text Messages

You can send messages to your contacts from your computer without needing to touch your phone if you prefer texting via cell network.

Clipboard Sync

You can sync the clipboards of your devices so that you can copy something on one device and paste the same thing on the other device.

Terminal Commands

This is the most powerful feature of KDE Connect and which I love the most. You can set pre configured buttons on your phone with a particular line of command which will be executed on your computer with a single click from your phone. Some of the things you can do are :

Shutdown
Restart
Hibernate
Sleep
Change Brightness
Logout
Lock and Unlock Desktop
Open applications
Take screenshots

The possibilities are endless, you can do anything you can do on a terminal. This feature alone makes KDE connect far superior than any other software.

Bonus Tip :

You can easily get the screenshot of your desktop on your phone with a single click of a button on your phone with this command preconfigured on the KDE connect settings.

Firstly, Install flameshot and timer Make a hidden screenshot folder. Then, set the following command on the "run command" section of KDE connect settings.

flameshot screen -p && timer 5 s ~/audio/duck_song.mp3 hide && mv

Note : Your smartphone should be mounted to the computer via KDE connect.

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Desktop Environments

2021-08-28T00:00:00+00:00

Linux : You want it, you get it.

A desktop environment is a set of programs running on the top of an operating system which share a common graphical user interface. It is also known as graphical shell. It determines the user experience, look and feel, customisability, usability and many others aspects of a graphical experience. It is abbreviated as DE. A desktop environment can determine the whole user experience of a operating system. Every operating system has a desktop environment but Linux is the one with multiple swappable desktop environment. Since Linux is very modular you can swap almost anything from it which also includes the DE.

Windows and OS X doesn't give you the ability to change DEs so there is not much to talk about them. But we have a lot of DEs in Linux, some of the popular ones are :

KDE

KDE is one of the most famous and customizable DEs. It also is my favourite DE. KDE is considered as the most customizable DE of all. You can customize most of the parts of your DE from the system settings and additionally you can add modules and third party applications to customize KDE even more. It is very lightweight and easy to use out of the box. It itself is "the beauty and the beast".

Gnome

Gnome is also one of the most used and popular desktop environments. It is very very beautiful out of the box. It is fairly customizable and easy to use. Gnome is very good for normal people because you don't really need to customize it to get a smooth and beautiful desktop experience.

XFCE

XFCE is termed as a light desktop environment with very low ram consumption and a fairly customizable desktop environment. It is the most suitable DE for old computers with weak hardwares. Basically, it is fast and low on system resources, while still being visually appealing and user friendly.

The list of DEs will go on and on but some other DE are as follows :

MATE
LXQt
Deepin
Cinnamon
Pantheon
Cosmic
Unity
Cutefish
Moksha
LXDE, etc

Normally DEs Offer :

A set of standard APIs, a programming environment, and guidelines.
Set of languages to choose from.
Settings to configure whatever you want.
A suite of essential applications including a camera app, a file manager, a terminal emulator, an image viewer, music and video player, office suite, etc.
A display manager which determines the look and feel of the login screen.

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Alternative Frontends

2021-08-27T00:00:00+00:00

Another step for better privacy.

The frontend is the interactive and visual part of a software which is designed to be beautiful and user friendly. Alternative Frontends are those softwares which helps in viewing contents of a different platform with different visuals provided that another (Alternative) backend extracts data from that platform. Since we don't interact with the backend of the software Frontends are what we normally describe as websites or applications.

There are some frontends to platforms that help us get the publicly available data from them without the need to log in. Some of them are as follows :

Look for ' list of instances' in the given webpages to find the actual websites.

Cloudtube (YouTube) - Website

Cloudtube is an open source frontend website to YouTube . It gives us the ability to watch videos, subscribe to channels, and get the RSS links of channels without the need to log into YouTube. Check

Newpipe (YouTube) - Application

Newpipe is an open source android application and a frontend to YouTube . It gives us the ability to watch videos, subscribe to channels,save and create playlists, view trending videos and also to get the RSS links of channels without the need to log into YouTube. Check

Invidious (YouTube) - Website

Invidious is another frontend to YouTube that also offers a popular and a trending feed (Unlike Cloudtube). There is also an option to sign in. You can get videos without logging in too. Check

Bibliogram (Instagram) - Website

Bibliogram is a website that takes data from Instagram's public profile views and puts it into a friendlier page that loads faster, gives downloadable images, eliminates ads, generates RSS feeds, and doesn't urge you to sign up. Check

Barinsta (Instagram) - Application

Barinsta is an open source android application that allows you to view Instagram's public profiles without the need to login. It also has an option to log in to Instagram from your account. It gives you the ability to download pictures, videos, stories and also to view profile pictures in full screen which the original Instagram application doesn't allow you to do. Check

Nitter (Twitter) - Website

Nitter is a frontend to twitter. It allows you to search and view public profiles. It also allows you to get the RSS feeds of the public accounts of twitter. Check

Fritter (Twitter) - Application

Fritter is an android application with the same functionality as Nitter. It allows you to view profiles which are public. It also gives you the ability to follow accounts and save posts to a different section. It provides you with a feed of the posts from the peoples you have followed, which you cannot get from nitter. Check

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HTML

2021-08-26T00:00:00+00:00

A standard markup language for documents in the web.

HTML (Hyper Text Markup Language) is a language that makes the documents of the website readable to human which we normally see while browsing the web. It was created by Tim Berners-Lee in 1989. We don’t know the exact date of HTML creation, since it was a long term project, but the birthdate of the first HTML website is known to be on August 6, 1991. The first publicly available description of HTML was a document called "HTML Tags", first mentioned on the Internet by non other than Tim Berners-Lee.

Every webpage may actually be a HTML file. Each HTML file is just a plain-text file, but with a .html file extension instead of .txt, and is made up of many HTML tags as well as the content for a web page. A website may often contain many html files that link to each other. HTML files can be edited with any kind of text editor since it is just a text file.

HTML tags are the hidden keywords within a web page that define how your web browser must format and display the content.

Mostly tags have two parts, an opening and a closing part. For example, is the opening tag and is the closing tag. The closing tag contains the same text as the opening tag, but has an additional forward-slash ( / ) character in front of the word.

CSS - Styling HTML

CSS is short for Cascading Style Sheets It is the preferred way for setting the look and feel of a website.It define the colour, size and position of text and other HTML tags, while the HTML files define the content and how it is organized. Separating them allows you to change the colour scheme without having to rewrite your entire website.Since it's cascading, setting the colour of body text will mean all headings and paragraphs within the body will also be the same colour.

World's first HTML site is still running, wanna check it out? World's First HTML Website

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LBRY

2021-08-25T00:00:00+00:00

A decentralized platform for content creators.

LBRY is a new protocol that allows people to build apps on the top of it which then can interact with the contents available on the LBRY network. LBRY allows the creators to set a price for the stream (Like I-tunes) or give out the video for free (like YouTube). You can publish any kind of file such as video, audio, text, documents, etc. It uses Blockchain technology for the creation of databases on the network.

The monetization scheme for content on the LBRY protocol is also based on the Blockchain technology developed by the creator of Bitcoin. Unlike YouTube that serves you ads for monetization LBRY lets people themselves interact with the creators by giving them the ability to treat creators in the form of cryptocurrency (LBC) .

Almost all the tech giants today are centralized services that sells user's personal information and attention to advertisers. But LBRY is a protocol making it a decentralized option for publishing contents. Since it's decentralized it means that the content and your privacy is owned by you, not the tech giants whose service you use.

Workings of Blockchain in LBRY

Blockchain technology like Bitcoin and LBRY enables people to create databases that no single entity controls.

With Bitcoin, when you send money to someone, your computer broadcasts "hey, the person with this particular private key is sending money to that person over there" to the network, and the mining algorithm ensures everyone agrees that indeed, you sent that money, so your balance goes down and the recipient's goes up.

In LBRY, the same mechanism is used to store an index of what content is available and how to download it, as well as financial transactions (such as tips, and purchases of paid content) using the Bitcoin-like currency LBC (LBRY Credits). When a creator publishes something on LBRY, an entry is made on the LBRY blockchain. You can think of it as an announcement: hey everyone, I've published this file, here's some information about it, and instructions for how to download it from the peer-to-peer network.

Advantages

It's free and open source.
There are no ads.
Based on a secure platform called Blockchain.
Decentralized
Direct interaction between fans and creators.
Flexibility of content and their file types
Free speech

Disadvantages

Uses cryptocurrency as money which is still not available in many countries.
Comparatively slower than centralized platforms.
Lack of popular content creators.

Normally it is used as an alternative to YouTube. And mostly video files are uploaded. There even is a feature to sync videos from your YouTube account to LBRY. You can access the LBRY content via the following apps and websites:

Apps

Android : LBRY
Windows : LBRY Desktop
Mac : LBRY Desktop
IOS : Odysee LBRY

Websites

Odysee LBRY LBRY

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Evernote to Joplin

2021-08-24T00:00:00+00:00

There's always an open source alternative.

Using open source software is far better than using proprietary garbage. So this is one of my efforts to move to open source from a proprietary application that I use very often and love very much. Goodbye Evernote !

Evernote

Probably the world's most used note taking app. It's simple yet powerful. You can use it for free on 3 devices with not much limitation from pro features. I have used Evernote (Free) since April 16th, 2018. It has been my must have tool for years. The data gets backed up in their server. It is fast and simple to sync my data even if I uninstalled the app. It has many tools to format the text as I like. It also has a web clipper that gets a webpage clipped on my note. It groups notes in notebooks and can tag them too.Overall it's a powerful note taking app which is well designed and beautiful.

Joplin

Joplin is an open source note taking app having similar features to Evernote. It has the ability to backup your notes on the cloud of your choice. I even have an option to store my notes on their own cloud for some payment. The text formatting is done in markdown so it is sufficiently powerful for me. It also has a web clipper. it has the ability to group notes in Notebooks as well as tag them. It is one of the most powerful open source note taking application.

I recently migrated from Evernote to Joplin and wanted to document the process. ( Without the need to pay for syncing notes in the cloud similar to Evernote Free )

Steps

Creating a Free Nextcloud Account (For free syncing)

Creating a free Nextcloud account is easy. First, sign up with your choice of server from the given link. Sign up! Then delete unwanted things from your Nextcloud storage (Optional). Normally you get 2 - 5 GB of free storage. That's enough for keeping notes. You can keep other documents too if you want.

Exporting Notes From Evernote

To export notes, follow these steps :

Open Evernote Desktop.
Go to Notebooks.
Click of the options icon and choose export notes.
Choose the format as markdown (Evernote).
Specify the export folder.
Do this for every Notebooks you want exported.

Importing Notes To Joplin

To import notes to Joplin, follow these steps :

Open Joplin Desktop.
Go to files option.
Select import notes.
Navigate to the folder where you exported the notes from Evernote.
Select and import the notes one-by-one.
After importing there might be some minor mis-formatting of text.
Edit your notes to be perfectly formatted.

Integrating Joplin to Nextcloud

On Joplin go to it's settings.
Go to synchronization.
Change the initial cloud to Nextcloud. (You can use Dropbox if you want)
Open your web browser and get into your Nextcloud.
Select the hamburger menu, there you'll see a WebDAV URL, copy it.
Come to Joplin and paste the WebDAV URL.
Input your email and password.
Check the synchronization, It should work !

Configuring it to sync with Android/IOS

Download and open Joplin.
Go to Configuration
On the synchronization section, select Nextcloud.
Input WebDAV URL, Email and Password like you did in desktop.
Check the synchronization, will definitely work!

Don't Worry , Be Happy!

Here! You have successfully migrated from Evernote to Joplin. Now use Joplin like you used Evernote.

© 2021 scientiac
All rights reserved.
Drafted and edited on Joplin.

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Open Android Apps

2021-08-23T00:00:00+00:00

Some android apps that can be replaced with garbage.

Android is full of proprietary garbage. Most of the applications we use are closed source and cannot be trusted. But there are open source alternatives to most of the proprietary apps that we use daily.

List of proprietary apps and their alternatives :

Play Store -> F-Droid

F-Droid is the repository of open source applications from where you can install open source only apps. It contains most if the apps present in this list. Check

Essential Apps -> Simple Mobile Tools

Simple Mobile Tools is a suite of open source essential apps such as :

Gallery
Calendar
Contacts
Notes
File Manager
Draw
Music Player
Flashlight
SMS Messanger
Voice Recorder
Dialer
Calculator
Clock
App Launcher
Camera

As the name suggests they are simple and don't have extensive functionality compared to other apps. But they will make your job done in no time. Check

Files -> Material Files

Material Files is a file manager with a material design and can do everything that the Google Files can do and more. Check

Chrome -> Fennec F-Droid

Fennec F-Droid is a fork of Firefox with the unnecessary data collection removed making it even better than the original open source Firefox. Check

Google Maps -> OsmAnd~

OsmAnd~ is an open alternative to Google Maps and is very powerful on what it does. It can keep offline maps too. There are extensions available for different maps like satellite, biking etc. Check

Twitter -> Fritter - Twidere

You can access the contents of public Twitter accounts from Fritter. But you cannot use it to login, post and comment on tweets. Check Twidere on the other hand can log in to your Twitter account and you can do everything that you can do on the Twitter app. Check

YouTube -> NewPipe - LBRY (Odysee)

NewPipe is a YouTube frontend which allows you to watch YouTube content without the need of having an account to subscribe to channels as well as can play videos on popup mode which is only available on the premium YouTube app. Check On the other hand, LBRY/Odyssey is a completely new platform like YouTube where you can find similar video contents. It uses cryptocurrency to pay the creators. Check

Reddit -> Slide - Lemmur

Slide is an open source reddit client which let's you browse reddit however you want, it is customizable and doesn't have any ads too. Check Lemmur is a android client for "lemmy" which is a completely new platform similar to reddit but is federated. Check

Evernote -> Joplin

Joplin is an open source note taking app which is a very good alternative to Evernote. It has features like Notebooks, Tags as well as Tasks like in Evernote. It can be synced on different cloud platform like Nextcloud, Onedrive, Dropbox etc as well as it's own server. Check

Gboard -> Anysoft Keyboard

Anysoft Keyboard is an open source keyboard app that can replace the Gboard app but doesn't have indic language support yet. Check

Gmail -> K9 Mail - Proton Mail

K9 Mail is an open source email client application to sign in to different email accounts. Check Proton Mail is a different email service which focuses on the privacy of the user. It also has an open source email app for Android. Check

Google Drive/ Photos -> Nextcloud

Nextcloud is an open source federated file hosting platform and can also be used for self-hosting. Check

VPNs -> Proton VPN

Proton VPN is an open source VPN service which give you three paces fo free with limited speed. It doesn't contain ads like othe free VPN applications. Check

Messaging -> Signal - Element

Signal is an open source centralized messaging platform having encrypted messaging. Check Element is an open source, decentralized and federated messaging service client of [Matrix] with encryption as well as many more features. Check

Launcher -> Lawnchair

Lawnchair is an open source highly customizable launcher for Android. It has many features like custom icon packs, resizing the icons, changing homescreen and appdrawer layout. Check

Google PDF Viewer -> Document Viewer

Document Viewer is an application which helps to open documents of different format like PDF, DjVu, XPS etc. Check

Your Phone Companion -> KDE Connect

KDE Connect is an open source application that helps to connect your phone to your computer to share files, use phone as a mouse, execute commands etc. Check

ShareIt -> Trebleshot

Trebleshot is a file sharing application which can replicate the function of shareit. Check

Zoom -> Jitsi

Jitsi is an open source video conferencing platform like zoom where you can create rooms, share your screen, share videos and conduct a conference with peoples. Check

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Linux

2021-08-22T00:00:00+00:00

An open source alternative to Windows and Mac OS.

Linux is a kernel developed by Linus Torvalds on September 17, 1991. GNU is the core utils of the operating system developed by Richard Stallman on September 27, 1983. Linux provides the kernel , which is the main connector between a hardware and a software and GNU provides the system utilities making GNU/Linux a complete operating system. GNU/Linux is commonly known as Linux Operating System.

Advantages

Free and Open Source

Linux is completely free in both ways; free as in 'money' as well as free as in 'freedom'. You can do whatever you want to the operating system and it doesn't make you pay for using it unlike Microsoft's Windows.

Customization

Since you can see the whole source code of this OS you can swap out anything with anything. You can even change the desktop environment, window managers, display managers, init system etc which seem like core parts of the OS if you compare it with windows.

Immune to Viruses

There are thousands of people watching the source code of linux, if one person tries to inject a virus or malware to the system , ten other people are there to remove it.

Light and Fast

Linux is the fastest operating system in the world, you can make it run very less background processes as per your need and use a very little RAM for system and leave remaining ram to be used by additional applications making it even lighter and faster.

Privacy Respecting

There is no telemetry enabled on any linux operating systems. If you want you can agree to send some data to them but it is turned off by default, unlike windows where each of their app have telemetry enabled by default.

By the People, For the People

There is no headquarter of linux, it's a community based OS which is improved and updated by communities if people. So no one needs to worry about sending your data to a giant data hogging company.

Compatibility

Linux is compatible with almost every kind of hardware, it can be designed to run on the servers, it can be designed to run on a supercomputer, a desktop, a laptop, a smartphone, a TV etc. Linux can literally run on a toaster.

Package Manager

The package manager on Linux is the best of it's kind. You type simple command ( eg : apt install ) on the terminal and "boom!" you got the app on your desktop. You can even update your whole system without needing to restart the machine, with a single command.

Versatility

Linux is very versatile, it comes in hundreds of flavors. These flavors are called 'distributions'. Distributions are based on different aspects, users, stability, updates, etc. You can choose to use a very stable Linux Distribution or you can choose to use a very updated Distribution. You can choose to use a user friendly Distribution as well as you can choose to just use the TUI without the GUI.

FOSS

Linux usually uses FOSS (Free and Open Source Software) which is usually free to use and gets your job done unlike windows where you pay for most of the softwares to work as well as don't know what's going on under the hood because you cannot see the source code.

Disadvantages

Fragmentation

One of the main feature of Linux is also it's disadvantage. The packaging system on Linux is different depending upon the distributions. Which requires the developers to port different types of packages for different distributions despite of being the same operating system.

Community

Sometimes the Linux community is a very helpful place where people can share ideas and problems which they solve as a team but sometimes The Linux community is one of the toxic places for people who are beginners. Most people assume themselves as superior because they use linux and refuse to help since they didn't get any help when "they" learnt linux .

Excessive Choices

There are so many choices that a beginner gets overwhelmed with the options. The excess choice in everything also causes fear in the newcomer's heart if they think they chose the wrong option.

Lack of Some Professional Softwares

Many professional softwares like Adobe Softwares, Microsoft Office, etc are not available in Linux. This can be a huge disadvantage if the user's work totally depends upon these kinds of software.

Power Management

Linux on laptops is a bit tricky because it uses a lot of power when installed draining the battery a lot faster than other operating systems. It doesn't have a power saving algorithm like windows or mac does. But this issue can be somewhat fixed by installing additional battery saving softwares especially designed for laptops.

My Thoughts

I personally use and enjoy Linux as my daily driver. It is very fast compared to the windows operating system and I can do any kind of work from semi professional video editing on kdenlive to a simple note writing on kate on Linux. Sometimes there are bugs here and there but if everything was perfect where would be the room for development ? And finally , I use Arch BTW.

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Matrix

2021-08-21T00:00:00+00:00

An open network for secure, decentralized communication


┏━ ┏┳┓ ━┓
┃  ┃┃┃  ┃
┗━ ╹ ╹ ━┛

Matrix is an open source project that publishes the Matrix open standard for secure, decentralized, real-time communication, and its Apache licensed reference implementations.

It gives you simple HTTP APIs and SDKs to create chatrooms, direct chats and chat bots, complete with end-to-end encryption, file transfer, synchronised conversation history, formatted messages, read receipts and more .

Advantages

End To End Encryption

Normally the messages on matrix are end to end encrypted, meaning they can only be read by the recipients with the correct set of keys.

Bridges

Matrix can integrate with other chat services like IRC, Telegram, Discord etc by the means of bridges. With bridges you can send messages to a telegram group bridged to matrix and they can see and reply back easily.

Decentralized

Matrix has no specific server nor it has a specific app. It is decentralized which makes it safer than the centralized messaging services offered by giant data hogging companies like Facebook, Discord, etc.

VoIP

Matrix offers VoIP service which means that you can make high quality audio and video calls over the internet and still using an open source and decentralized platform.

User Centric

Matrix can offer what the user want. If you want unencrypted messages? You can. If you want a different server? You can. If you want a different application? You can. You have the ability to make your own server, even design a whole application if you can, the possibilities are endless.

Disadvantages

Difficult to Understand

The concept of Decentralization, Federation and Multiple servers can be a bit difficult to handle by a normal brain, especially if they haven't heard about it before. Also the encryption on matrix is very good which takes us to a famous saying, "Privacy comes with a cost of convenience.". Since every client should be verified with backup keys or use another login to to verify the new one, it becomes a bit difficult than other services like Facebook , Discord which just need you to input your ID and password to login and see all the chats.

Uncertainty of Servers

Servers are the places where you have your account and where you communicate from. It's like a village where you live, but the servers can go out of fund or the administrator may lose interest and "Your village may get destructed."

Lack of Users

Most of the people that use matrix are tech enthusiasts, open source supporters, privacy enthusiasts, and other people (ahmm ! Basically Nerds!). You might not find the people whom you usually talk to in Matrix.

Overall Matrix is very good alternative to other chat services like telegram, signal, messenger, etc. It is very flexible as well as secure which makes it better than all others. And since it's a developing project there are much more features to come. Different clients also are developing "default" features of messaging apps like voice message and other features making easier for the people to shift from their existing platform too if you feel like switching.

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Open Source

2021-08-20T00:00:00+00:00

How a clean, secure, reliable, honest and better software is created.

Open source is source code that is made freely available to be modified by the public as well as can be redistributed. It is a decentralized software development model that encourage people for open collaboration. It began as a response to the limitation and weakness of the "closed source" proprietary code.

Generally, open source refers to a computer program whose source code is available to the public for use or modification from its initial design. Code is released under the terms of a software license. Depending on the license terms, people can download, modify, and publish their version (fork) back to the community.Open source software is usually a free software product, where people have access to the source code. They can enhance the program’s performance, add some features, and fix errors. Some examples of such software are LibreOffice, Firefox, and VLC Media Player.

Everything has it's own pros and cons. Here are some of the pros and cons of Open Source :

Pros :

Collaboration between different peoples can bring new ideas that can be implemented on it leading to better software.
It is secure to use because anyone can look what's going behind the scenes unlike proprietary softwares.
Since the code can be modified by anyone, anyone can customize it to their own liking.
Usually free to use.
You actually can own your software instead of renting it.

Cons :

Commercialization is difficult to achieve.
Fragmentation of software if a person doesn't like what the original community is doing. ( This can also be an advantage of Open Source, depending upon people's perspective. )
There is always the possibility that the developers of a program lose interest in working further on the software or just move on to another project.
Unlike proprietary softwares where you can phone or email them for instant tech support open source doesn't have a proper tech support medium.

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Privacy and Security

2021-08-19T00:00:00+00:00

A Concept Extinct A Long Time Ago ( A living Myth )

If you think you are private and secure then think again. Do you use a smartphone? Do you use Google ? Do you use Facebook ? If yes, your privacy has definitely been compromised. Your data might also have been leaked in one of the many data breaches throughout years. Every time you turn on the location of your device, every time you give google permission to your device's sensors it's collecting some data and sending it to google's servers. Your data can be used by many ways by these organizations. For giving recommendations on YouTube that you might love watching to selling you products that you don't even need.

Have you ever had a conversation around your phone about 'something', then later saw an advertisement on Facebook or Instagram for that same 'something'? Trust me it isn't coincidence.

Google employees can even access users' email to delete virus', or remove potentially unsafe or violent emails. Emails are considered as one of the most private medium of communicating. Guess what, Google employees can access that without a warrant. All comes down to that one part where you have signed the agreement clause when you created your account.

On his blog by David Evenden he says, " I would nearly guarantee all email vendors are the same way. They'll say they can't, they'll say they don't...but trust me...they can and they do."

There are more scary things :

You are always listened by any smart device that has microphone.
Your GPS is always tracking you.
Most of your messages are not encrypted.
Everything you say anywhere in the internet can be collected, and can be used to track, stalk, steal, and monitor your activity.

Basically you are being sold to companies without even knowing it. Your info brings money to them. How else do you think free to use services companies like Google, Facebook, etc earn money? I am not a security expert but I can say that I have done a good amount of research on this issue. Nothing is free in the internet, your information is more valuable than any form of money.

You might not be able completely vanish from the internet. But here are some things you can do to increase your non existent privacy as well as security to a certain extent.

Stop using Google,Facebook, Microsoft and their services.
Give priority to open source software.
Use different passwords for different accounts and make them complex. (or use trusted password managers)
Use two factor authentication.
Never install and run applications from an un-trusted source.
Always read the user agreements before agreeing to something.
Turn off as much telemetry as you can.
Never save passwords inside your browser.
Prefer decentralized social media and encrypted messaging services.
Always give minimum information about you to the sites you visit.

There is a lot more to this problem, this is just the tip of an iceberg. Privacy is the main currency in today's world. It's up-to us how we choose to keep our information. Just knowing this may not change your daily routine about how you use the internet but you'll learn what's happening behind the bars. Some of the things mentioned above maybe very difficult to implement. But that's the cost of privacy ; you need to trade some convenience.

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Custom ROMs

2021-08-18T00:00:00+00:00

A Better Alternative to Stock ROMs.

Since Android is an open source operating system, anybody can check and modify it's source code. You yourself can modify it as per your liking if you know what you are doing. Custom ROMs are the product of the openness of Android. If you have noticed, when you use a Samsung phone it feels different than a phone from Xaomi which is also one of the blessings of an open software.

Custom ROMs are the modified versions of the original Android operating system that can be installed in place of the Stock ROMs ( The OS that's already present on your device when you bought it. ) . Custom ROMs can be very beneficial if your phone supports it.

Advantages

Latest and Greatest

If your manufacturer stopped sending software updates for your phone then you can get the latest version of android if you install a custom ROMs on it. And since it will be how android was originally made you won't get bloatware and ads on your system apps that you normally see on generally every Stock ROM.

Versatility

There are many Custom ROMs that you can choose from. Each of them are unique in their own ways. They differ from features, battery life, performance, etc.

Privacy and Security

Most Custom ROMs have Google services scraped out from them, that alone is the biggest feature for a privacy-centric device. They come preinstalled with open source alternatives of the propitiatory apps that can get your job done. Some ROMs even give their own services for cloud storage, emails etc. making them more privacy focused. You generally get the fastest security updates making your phone less vulnerable to malwares and bugs.

Custom Kernel

Different ROMs use different kernels ( The part of an operating that is directly connected to the hardware and is responsible for controlling it ). Kernel is heavily responsible for the experience you get from your device.

Improved Performance

Many Custom ROMs offer you improved performance - definitely better than the Stock ROM that your manufacturer offers you. It is due to the fact that all the bloat are removed , latest version of android is present and the processor is overclocked.

Improved Battery Life

Since all the bloat and ads are removed the background processes on your device gets substantially reduced that adds up extra life to your device. And you can even under-clock your processor that helps a lot to gain more battery life.

Customization and Uniqueness

Depending upon the Custom ROMs you get different levels of customization as well as you get a unique looking UI which you cannot get on any Stock ROM. You can entirely hide the icons on status bar, change the boot animation, apply system wide themes, the possibilities are endless.

Disadvantages

Widewine L1

Your ROM might not have widewine L1 support making you unable to view HD content on applications like Netflix, Amazon Prime, etc. You will have to root and do the modifications or wait for a software update that enables it.

SafetyNet

Your ROM may fail to verify SafetyNet, not being able to install certain apps especially banking apps if you use them frequently. This also can be fixed by rooting and doing the modifications.

Only For Snapdragon and Exynos Processors

MediaTek in terms of Source Code has a policy, of not distributing it for free just to anyone unlike Snapdragon and Exynos processors. So there cannot be Custom ROMs designed for MediaTek unless they clarify themselves as opensource, or someone buys the source code from them and gives it to the developers.

Camera With Less Software Optimization

Generally the camera apps of Custom ROMs are poor in terms of software optimizations and versatility. This issue can be fixed by installing Gcam ( Which might even have better software optimization than your Custom ROM offered. ). You also have the ability to install ANX Camera ( MIUI Camera for Xaomi Devices ) but it require you to flash files from a custom recovery or via Magisk after rooting.

Root Access

Some Custom ROMs require you to have root access to work that can add a big vulnerability to your device since it opens up your system directories that might cause all your data to be leaked if a malicious app got access to it. This can be prevented by your efforts of not letting any malicious apps to get into your device and access root level permissions.

Note :-

Installing a Custom ROM require you to to unlock your device's boot-loader. The method and process of unlocking the boot-loader completely depends upon the manufacturer ( Some doesn't even give you the ability to do so. ). You might also need to install a custom recovery for the installation. If not done with proper care and knowledge you might brick your device during the process.

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Tildeverse

2021-08-17T00:00:00+00:00

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Tildeverse is a free and open association of like minded tilde (~) communities. Tildes are pubnixes - (Public Access Unix Systems) inspired by tilde.club which was created by Paul Ford in 2014. These are very useful to those who want to learn about *nix (GNU/Linux, Unix, BSD, etc) systems.

It's name is a combination of 'Tilde (~~)' and 'Universe'. Here, Tilde means 'Home' because (~~) is a sign that represents the home directory in *nix systems.

Pubnixes - (Public Access Unix Systems) in simple terms are computers across the world that can be accessed via the internet. These computer run *nix operating systems and are accessed using Secure Shell (SSH).

People Can Use It To :

Build Webpages

People can create their own websites for free. Most tildes provide a folder where you can create and store a .html file which automatically becomes a website ( Domain is determined by respective tilde communities where you signed up. ) and can be instantly viewed it by going to the assigned web address.

Build Gemini Capsules

Like normal websites Gemini capsules also are "websites" on a different protocol called Gemini. People can host their Gemini Capsules like they can host websites. Tildes provide a folder where you can create and store a .gmi file which automatically becomes a capsule and can be instantly viewed by going to the assigned gemini address.

Build Gopher Holes

Like gemini capsules gopher holes also are "websites" on a different protocol called Gopher. People can host their Gopher Holes like they can host websites. Tildes provide a folder where you can create and store a text file which automatically becomes a gopher hole and can be instantly viewed by going to the assigned gopher address.

Learn to use nix*

More than 70 percentage of people in the world are using Windows as their OS and many don't even know what an OS is, these computers on the other hand runs nix*. Nix* includes operating systems like GNU/Linux, BSD, Unix etc. These are generally used in servers; most of the servers runs GNU/Linux. People can learn to navigate between files and folders and use terminal based applications provided by the tildes helping to grasp how *nix is designed and organized.

Write Software

Tildes provide people with a suite of programs by which they can write software and learn. People can write code in Vim as well as Nano if preferred. They can ask the administrator to install specific programs of their tilde doesn't have one.

Play TUI games

TUI stands for Text User Interface; like GUI - Graphical User Interface. Since It doesn't have a GUI, people are limited to the games that are made for TUI and also to the games that are provided respective tilde. One of the common games on tildes is 'botany' where people grow a plant, water it, crossbreed it, exchange seeds with friends etc.

Conduct Shows

You can even conduct web radio shows ( AzuraCast Streams ) on tildes, particularly on tilderadio.org if you are interested in it.

Use Tilde Services and Projects

Services like tilde-chat, tilde-git, tilde-radio, mastodon, writefreely, minecraft, tilde-news,tildeverse jitsi, tildeverse mumble etc are available to use for tilde users to communicate and interact with each other. For more info about services go to : Tildeverse

Basically, It is a unified hub of decentralized services and pubnixes where people can use their nerdy programs, do their nerdy works, interact with similar nerdy peoples having fun and learning.

Difference Between Tildes

Services like Emails, NNTP, PHP etc are offered by limited tildes. For example, ~town does not offer email at all (only internal mail), cosmic could only send/receive emails in Tildeverse. NNTP service is only natively offered by ~club, ~~team, cosmic, and your~~.
Softwares like weechat, botany, etc are available in limited tildes. This is also determined by the operating system used in them.
Different tildes use different Operating Systems that determine the shell, applications, usability etc.
Tildes are located all over the world, so there is also a difference of geographical location where a certain tilde is located.
Tildes have their own specific themes, cosmic.voyage have a science fiction based theme, breadcrumb have a baker kind of theme, etc.
Particular tildes have particular objectives and specific tasks like ~radio, ~chat, etc.
~team provides XMPP service that bridges to ~chat and envs.net do Matrix bridging.

Why nix* though ?

This section from Paul Ford's essay about tildeverse explains :

Full Essay

Your typical "cloud" Unix server, designed in the 1970s to be a very social place, is today a ghost town with one or two factories still clanking in the town square - factories that receive our email, or accept our Instagram photos and store them, and manage our data. But there's no one walking around and chatting downtown.

Thus when people talk about "cloud computing" they are talking about millions of tiny ghost towns. Ironic, because what do people build on these ghost towns but social networks.

In the last decade, social networks like Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook - even Google Plus appeared. They tried to bring all those lonesome folks back together, into one enormous room. Not just a few dozen people on one computer but millions, even a billion people all sharing one giant meta-computer. Many of those services make very heavy use of Unix under the hood. So: We collectively took a very social computing platform, papered over its social parts, and used it to build a social computing platform.

Purely for kicks, I decided to turn the social part back on and throw a nerd party.

Links

Gemini Capsule of Tildeverse More About Tildeverse

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Mastodon

2021-08-16T00:00:00+00:00

Mastodon is a federated social media platform ( Actually a microblogging platform similar to Twitter ) based on a communication protocol called Activity Pub. It was released on 16th March 2016 and was created to be a safe place to share Ideas between people without having to trust a single organization for all your data. It is a free and open source software and can be used to self host social networking service so that you have the option to keep your data with you or with whom you trust.

Federation

The greatest feature of mastodon is it's federated nature. Mastodon doesn't have a single server that store and moderates the data coming in and going out from it unlike Facebook, Instagram, Twitter or any other centralized platforms have. Which gives you the option to choose who to trust with your data and why.

Instances

Mastodon has many servers with their own moderator(s) all around the globe hosted by different organizations with different mindset and different regulations. These servers are known as Instances which can be categorised by the topics,places, ethnicity, etc. So they don't have a single set of rules and regulations but have different rules on different instances making communication between known and unknown communities easier.

Moderation

Different instances have different populations and are moderated by different moderators which makes it easier to reach the users and respond to their issue. If a instance has 1000 peoples and two moderators, a moderators should only have to moderate 500 peoples, since the moderators are also the active members of the community who constantly interact with what is happening in the community they can solve the issues of the users in a more systematic and timely manner. On the other hand Twitter like platforms mostly use AI to moderate and the issues might take days or even weeks to get responded. There are times when people are responded for their issues by their moderators within minutes in mastodon.

Communication

Since it is based on Activity Pub anyone can communicate with anyone on the other instance or even with other platforms like pleroma and peertube( based on Activity Pub ) from a single mastodon account without having to make different accounts for different platforms in order to communicate with the people in that platform ( Like you need a seperate accounts to follow users in different platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube ,etc. )

Flexibility

Mastodon includes a number of specific privacy features. Each message has a variety of privacy options available, and users can choose whether the message is public or private. Public messages display on a global feed, known as a timeline, and private messages are only shared on the timelines of the user's followers. Messages can also be marked as unlisted from timelines or direct between users. Users can also mark their accounts as completely private. In the timeline, polls can also be made and you can also create messages that can be displayed with an optional "content warning" feature, which requires readers to click on the content to reveal the rest of the message. Mastodon servers have used this feature to hide spoilers, trigger warnings, and not safe for work (NSFW) content, though some accounts use the feature to hide links and thoughts others might not want to read.

Check out my article on fediverse for more details.

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Fediverse

2021-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

Fediverse is an interconnected network of different services like Social Networking, Microblogging, Blogging, Video Hosting, File Hosting, and other services which can be independently hosted on different servers but can still communicate with each other. A service client can have multiple (hundreds and thousands) servers across the globe (called Instances) where each Instance (Server) has their own rules and regulations. And since all the servers are running on a same base communication protocol they can communicate outside the boundaries of the servers and instances too. These services are connected in such a manner that a video hosting platform can communicate with a photo sharing platform or with a microblogging platform or any other platform. Every platform on fediverse can communicate with any other platform on the fediverse if they use the same communication protocol.

One of the most famous communication protocol of fediverse is Activity Pub. It is implemented on different softwares like Mastodon, Pleroma, Nextcloud, Peertube etc. There also are different communication protocols like Disapora Network, Zot and OStatus implemented on softwares like Friendica and Disapora*.

These softwares are open source and anyone can create their own server if they have sufficient will and resources.

You can find me on a microblogging platform inside the fediverse called Mastodon : @scientiac@fosstodon.org

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Gemini

2021-08-14T00:00:00+00:00

A Middle Ground Between Gopher and The Modern Web.

Gemini is a internet protocol started in June 2019 that is similar to Gopher or as they call it "The web, stripped right back to its essence". Gemini can be seen as a middle ground between the old gopher protocol of the early 1990s and the modern web (http and https).

Unlike http(s) it is text only, that means it only supports information in the form of text following the UNIX philosophy (Make each program do one thing well).

It's a place you can be if you don't want resource intensive things going on in your server and if you don't have anything to do with media streaming(of course you can put media files in it but the files should be downloaded in order to view them). Since it is text only, it is very accessable for anyone with a computer, even a potato computing device can access the information stored and shared using this protocol.

The pages of Gemini are called "capsules" named after the Gemini space capsule. These capsules are written on a format similar to markdown with file extension ".gmi".

You can access Gemini from the following apps :

Android : Ariane, Deedum

IOS : Elaho

Windows : GemiNaut

Terminal : Amfora, Astro

Mac : Castor

For more information go to their official capsule.

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Torrent and Torrenting

2020-11-13T00:00:00+00:00

A decentralized file transfer protocol and activity.

Torrents are a method of distributing files over the internet. They operate over the BitTorrent protocol. The BitTorrent protocol helps in sharing data in a decentralized manner.
Torrenting is the process of downloading and hosting torrents using the BitTorrent protocol.

Workings of Torrenting

This is done by breaking down large files into many bits and later connecting those bits together. Torrenting works by using decentralized servers to download files, and each participant in this file-sharing activity is engaged in downloading and uploading files. That is to say, all Torrent users rely on each other to carry on the file transfer activity. Essentially, you are sharing the file being downloaded while it is still in the process of downloading, without having to wait for the whole file to download.

A single person uploads a file (Makes a torrent).

A torrent can be distributed using a hash; often called a magnet link or a TORRENT file.

The file is downloaded by another person.
The device of another person now acts as a server and involves in the supplying of that file too.
As the number of people downloading the file increases, the number of servers increases, making it better available when one or more server is inactive or disconnected.
Since the file was broken into pieces, some pieces of the file goes from one server and some from another, sharing the bandwidth with the main server.

Terms in Torrenting

Seed

If the user downloads a torrent and the torrent client starts uploading the file for other people to download, the file the downloader is uploading which is available for other users to download from is a seed.

Peer

A peer is someone downloading the file from a seeder and does not have the full file yet.

Leech

If a user downloads a torrent but refuses to distribute it then the file is called a leech (Maybe the user is called a leech.).

Swarm

A swarm is a group of people who are sharing and downloading the same toerrent.

Tracker

It is a server that tracks the users of the torrent and helps to locate each other for data transmission.

Client

A client is a program that recognizes the torrent file or the magnet hash and does the downloading and uploading task.

Indexers

Indexers are the websites that collects and stores a huge number of torrents. It's where the people search for the torrent they require.

Is Torrneting Illegal ?

Since this is the most asked question, I am just going to tell you that torrenting isn't illegal. But....... There's a but. Downloading and distributing illegal (Copyrighted) files via the torrent is illegal. Torrent is just a file transfer protocol.

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scientiac::syntropy

Typst is Love

Introduction to typst

Comparing Typst with other typesetting software

How I use it

You might be wondering, why I didn't mention Microsoft or Google Docs.

Mandatory "In the end"

Tech Minimalism

What are thoseeeee?

KISS

Masculism v/s Matriarchy

Lastly...

Additions

2024-09-18

Home Manager: Cosy Home With Nix

How I use it

Why use it

How to use it

Lastly...

KDE Network Nepal: Event 0

KDE?

Network Nepal

Youtube, whatyaar!

You've Changed!

NixOS: A Purely Functional Linux Distribution

There's a Problem

The Solution

NixOs Features

NixOS Commands

Normal

Imperative Operations

Flakes (Experimental Features)

Forwarding Ports

Introduction

How to port forward?

How does it work?

Sending Data

Receiving Data

Why port forward?

Polyphasic Sleep: Analysis

A different take on sleeping habit.

Why ?

What ?

Which ?

Modifications ?

So ?

How I use the Internet Today

Now let's get to the Topic

Browser

Search Engine

Content Blocker

Tiny Little Details

Containerization

Yum! Cookies

Password Manager

Enhancers

Navigation

Some Thoughts On Privacy

My Experience

Here are my thoughts on the positives and as well as the negatives of maintaining/trying to maintain privacy:

The Positives

Judgements

Safety

Tunneled Vision

Focus

Expectations and Mental Health

More:

The Negatives

Fame and Recognition

Connection and Contacts

Information Distribution

More:

Some More Views

On Pseudonymity

Facebook a Choice, Not an Obligation

A brief reminder of the freedom of choice and privacy.

Links:

Using Light Mode

Conclusion

Links: