I've just started using PlainApp, and I am extremely impressed!

Corporate software (like Google or Apple) provides nice usability by integrating your phone into your desktop and other devices. That convenience comes at the price of real privacy and freedom. Android users can access their phones using an app like Microsoft's Phone Link or Google's Messages, while iPhone users can use Apple's iMessage or a 3rd party app. All of these apps require accounts and share your phone's private data over the Internet.

Linux users also have options like KDE Connect, Zorin Connect, GS Connect, etc. Most of these are environment specific, and often not well optimized for battery life, or have limited features.

Part of the reason that I removed Google from my phone and my life is to protect my privacy and secure my data. The process is not without growing pains. Since deGoogling, can't say the number of times that I get a link, file, etc. sent to my phone that I wish to access on the desktop. There are workarounds of course, but they can be tedious and sometimes complicated. Now it's easy!

PlainApp is an open source app that allows you to access your messages, files, calls, and has a ton of other features and capabilities. It works over your local network and uses strong encryption (according to their website it's TLS + AES-GCM-256, while the readme says it's TLS + XChaCha20-Poly1305). Since your data is encrypted and never leaves your network, you can trust that it is safe.

The interface is beautiful and so easy to navigate. Setup was a breeze, and leaves you with a local web app that does everything. Because it's a web interface, it works on any device with a browser.

Now I can send and receive SMS messages, share contacts, mirror my phone screen, easily view and share media, without touching my phone (or copying a message into an email, sending it to myself, then opening the email on the computer or some such nonsense.

I'd recommend it!

Get it on F-Droid

Source code

Three years after the death in custody of Mahsa Jina Amini, which sparked the widespread "Woman, Life, Freedom" movement, women are still finding ways to protest against the regime's new methods of crackdown.

In July, 2024, after covering 18 miles in nearly three and a half years, it arrived at a quarter-mile-wide river valley that is home to a 3.2-ft.-long rock NASA scientists have dubbed Cheyava Falls—and there it hit paydirt. As a new paper in Nature reports, a sample Perseverance drilled from the rock may contain potential biosignatures of long ago microbial life.

“This finding by Perseverance…is the closest we have ever come to discovering life on Mars,” said acting NASA administrator Sean Duffy in a statement. “The identification of a potential biosignature on the Red Planet is a groundbreaking discovery, and one that will advance our understanding of Mars.”

What it found was a rock streaked in a range of colors—red, green, purple, and blue—flecked with poppy-seed-like dots and decorated with what the Perseverance scientists compared to dull yellow leopard spots. That said a lot. As the rover’s instruments confirmed, the red is iron-rich mud, the purple is iron and phosphorous, the yellow and green are iron and sulfur. All of those elements serve as something of a chow line for hungry microbes.

The poppy seeds and leopard spots, meantime, resemble markings left behind by metabolizing microbes on Earth.

These just showed up recently on my browser, and it kind of doesn't suck.

I've been using PWAs for Firefox for years, a wonderful little add-on that manages a creative implementation. It's great for sites (like Lemmy) that I want to be able to run in their own window as a separate app. They interact like independent apps, able to launch from the taskbar and Start Menu (or whatever the equivalent is on your OS). They are basically containerized, meaning that they won't interact with your main Firefox Browser. There's a thin and customizable control bar at the top, which allows for Including necessary browser elements (like back, refresh, share link) that make web apps work a little better.

This is not that.

...and that's actually okay.

Firefox has been seeking community input about adding official PWA support Back into the browser for a while now, And the discussion has been good but also raised a couple red flags along the way. It was clear that Mozilla was determined to do their own thing (as they usually do). PWAs would not, they insisted, Operate as stand alone apps Outside of the browser. Rather, core browser elements (such as the address bar) would remain visible, and be inherited directly from the browser. Per-app customization would be limited, and they would not be containerized.

They have now made good on that implementation (testing branch, and reportedly Windows-only). I've been testing it out, and it actually works pretty well. An icon now appears in the address bar, with the hint, “Add to taskbar.” It seems to work across websites, whether or not they have a PWA manifest. That was my first major green flag.

Labeling the icon “Add to taskbar” is a better description of what it is doing than “Install this site as an app,” or similar. It's more accurate and transparent, and some good thoughtfulness. It's not making a promise it won't keep - namely that it will behave as other browsers treat PWAs. Having this available on all websites was one of the top requests from users, and is implemented pretty well. It seems that if the site provides a PWA instructions, those are used, although I haven't tested that per se.

What it provides is a pretty simple to use way to interact with websites more like you would with apps. They become pinnable to the taskbar, searchable in application lists, etc. They run in a separate window that is not grouped together by the OS, but persists as a standalone window. Redundant tabs and sidebars are removed from the interface, leaving something that is in some hybrid space between a web app and a Firefox window.

It actually seems to work pretty well.It's still in development, but overall, it meets my main needs for using PWAs. These are just my first impressions and the link has more information, including some of the technical details From someone who actually knows what they're talking about.

Three students — including the shooter — were being treated at the hospital for gunshot wounds. The fourth student took themselves to the hospital with injuries sustained while escaping the high school and fleeing to a nearby elementary school.

The Jefferson County Sheriff’s office said the alleged shooter was a 16-year-old male and suffered a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head.

“This looks like a European capital, not a besieged city,” one commentator wrote, while others accused the café of projecting a misleading image of life in Gaza. The backlash intensified as international organizations, including the United Nations, recently warned of rising malnutrition and food insecurity in parts of the Strip.

Analysts say the controversy reflects deeper tensions over the uneven distribution of resources in Gaza, where some neighborhoods maintain access to imported goods and commercial ventures, while others face severe shortages. Reports suggest that the café caters primarily to wealthier residents, highlighting stark socioeconomic divides within the territory.

Tunisia's National Guard spokesman told Mosaique FM radio that reports of a drone attack on the flotilla "have no basis in truth", Reuters reported.

He added that an initial inspection indicated the explosion originated inside the vessel.

In a series of videos published to their Instagram, spokespeople for the flotilla said an "incendiary device" caused a fire onboard the vessel, which the crew was able to extinguish.

Available from F-Droid as Offline Translator.

Originally called Firefox Translator based on the use of the Firefox translation models, Translator is an on-device translation app that has grown by leaps and bounds over this summer.

It includes live image translation, using tesseract OCR and automatic language detection. I've been impressed by how quick and well designed it is since beginning testing. There are many languages available, including non-western scripts.

I'm looking into adding a video doorbell and some security cameras and want to integrate with HA. I have some cameras that came with the house, but I don't think they will work. The system has been discontinued and I don't have the "base unit" that connects them. If there is a way to use them, I'd be happy to find out if they are operational and use them. Web search has not helped.

My first priority is a video doorbell. I don't really understand much about how it works, and there is a lot of conflicting information out there. I have a wired doorbell, and I could probably manage to figure out how to run a data line if needed.

I want it to play nicely with any future system. The current camera system is wired, and I'm happy to run new wires if needed. I have plenty of storage on my home PC server, and I'd prefer to use it.

Any guides out there that really cover the overall process?

A music and science lover has revealed that some birds can store and retrieve digital data. Specifically, he converted a PNG sketch of a bird into an audio waveform, then tried to embed it in the song memory of a young starling, ready for later retrieval as an image. Benn Jordan made a video of this feat, sharing it on YouTube, and according to his calculations, the bird-based data transfer system could be capable of around 2 MB/s data speeds.