LibreMonk

cross-posted from: https://linkage.ds8.zone/post/543756

This seems quit serious because there is a security issue when one app can interfere with another.

If Ungoogled Chromium is running when Nheko launches, U/C instantly freezes. No i/o is possible with U/C. Then when Nheko is quit, U/C goes down with it.

cross-posted from: https://linkage.ds8.zone/post/523771

Before posting an image to the fedi, I want to be mindful about the network burden it will cause. I’m only uploading the image once but potentially thousands of people could end up downloading it.

If it’s a color image, then JPG is typically best. This #ImageMagick command reduces the filesize quite a bit, trading off quality:

  $ convert "$original_image_file" \
    +dither \
    -posterize 8 \
    -sampling-factor 4:2:0 \
    -strip \
    -quality 75 \
    -interlace Plane \
    -gaussian-blur 0.05 \
    -colorspace RGB \
    -strip \
    smaller_file.jpg

If it’s a pic of a person, this processing will likely be a disaster. But for most things where color doesn’t matter too much, it can be quite useful. Play with different -posterize values.

If you can do with fewer pixels, adding a -resize helps.

  $ convert "$original_image_file" -resize 215x smaller_file.jpg

If you can get away with black and white, jpeg is terrible. Use PNG instead. E.g.

  $ convert "$original_image_file" -threshold 30% -type bilevel smaller_file.png

For privacy, strip the metadata

The ImageMagick -strip option supposedly strips out metadata. But it’s apparently not thorough because the following command yields a slightly smaller file size:

  $ exiftool -all= image.jpg

What else?

Did I miss anything? Any opportunities to shrink images further? In principle the DjVu format would be more compact but it’s not mainstream and apparently not accepted by Lemmy.

cross-posted from: https://linkage.ds8.zone/post/523771

Before posting an image to the fedi, I want to be mindful about the network burden it will cause. I’m only uploading the image once but potentially thousands of people could end up downloading it.

If it’s a color image, then JPG is typically best. This #ImageMagick command reduces the filesize quite a bit, trading off quality:

  $ convert "$original_image_file" \
    +dither \
    -posterize 8 \
    -sampling-factor 4:2:0 \
    -strip \
    -quality 75 \
    -interlace Plane \
    -gaussian-blur 0.05 \
    -colorspace RGB \
    -strip \
    smaller_file.jpg

If it’s a pic of a person, this processing will likely be a disaster. But for most things where color doesn’t matter too much, it can be quite useful. Play with different -posterize values.

If you can do with fewer pixels, adding a -resize helps.

  $ convert "$original_image_file" -resize 215x smaller_file.jpg

If you can get away with black and white, jpeg is terrible. Use PNG instead. E.g.

  $ convert "$original_image_file" -threshold 30% -type bilevel smaller_file.png

For privacy, strip the metadata

The ImageMagick -strip option supposedly strips out metadata. But it’s apparently not thorough because the following command yields a slightly smaller file size:

  $ exiftool -all= image.jpg

What else?

Did I miss anything? Any opportunities to shrink images further? In principle the DjVu format would be more compact but it’s not mainstream and apparently not accepted by Lemmy.

cross-posted from: https://linkage.ds8.zone/post/517080

I have over 700 street addresses that ultimately need to become a category or group of favourites in #OSMand. In the past I used a web service called something like nomenatum. I don’t think that option still exists. This article suggests batch encoding on this site, claiming it’s gratis but it looks like a costly subscription.

I must say that using a service to do the job of software is not a great idea. We have #OpenStreetMaps. In principle, OSM and a tool should be able to handle this offline without a service.

Of course it’s possible to search each address by hand in OSMand and then save the location. It would be absurdly labor intensive but it proves that a service is not needed, in principle.

Is there any way to feed a list of addresses to OSMand?

Or is there a linux app that can do this work, ideally offline?

cross-posted from: https://linkage.ds8.zone/post/517080

I have over 700 street addresses that ultimately need to become a category or group of favourites in #OSMand. In the past I used a web service called something like nomenatum. I don’t think that option still exists. This article suggests batch encoding on this site, claiming it’s gratis but it looks like a costly subscription.

I must say that using a service to do the job of software is not a great idea. We have #OpenStreetMaps. In principle, OSM and a tool should be able to handle this offline without a service.

Of course it’s possible to search each address by hand in OSMand and then save the location. It would be absurdly labor intensive but it proves that a service is not needed, in principle.

Is there any way to feed a list of addresses to OSMand?

Or is there a linux app that can do this work, ideally offline?

Folks— Most Lemmy client apps are on the phone. I am looking for a FOSS phone app that works offline. That is, the phone has no data plan and only occasionally connects to public wifi hotspots. I do not want to be entering login passwords and reading and writing posts when I am connected. Reading and writing posts interactively needs to happen offline. Typical workflow: when I meet people at a bar/cafe, I need the app to sync over the public wi-fi without using my attention. It should post my comments and fetch threads for which I am active, for offline access later. It needs to support multiple accounts spanning multiple instances.

Does anything like this exist? Or do all Lemmy/kbin/mbin phone apps demand your realtime attention when connected?

When reading a manpage for complex tools like rsync, or find, often there are options that imply several other options. Or like with wget the manpage will recommend a several options together for a certain situation. So consider this excerpt:

… Actually, to download a single page and all its requisites (even if they exist on separate websites), and make sure the lot displays properly locally, this author likes to use a few options in addition to -p:

wget -E -H -k -K -p http://<site>/<document>

At that point interested readers are essentially driven to do four separate searches on that manpage to chase down each of those options. So I hit: HOME / -E. Got lucky because the first match just happened to be the -E option and not chatter about “Content-Encoding”.

Then what? I forgot all options I need to search for and lost my starting place, so I had to browse/search back to where I was to learn that I next need to search for -H. Then I hit: HOME / -H. It brings me to an irrelevant match on “non-HSTS-compliant”. So I must hit / ENTER many times until I reach the right position. Searching for -k is tedious too. …And so on…

With rsync the -a: “archive mode is -rlptgoD (no -A,-X,-U,-N,-H)”. Rsync is not a disaster though as they took care to summarize all options with a one-liner in one place.

Anyway, unless I am missing a trick¹, it seems there must be a lot of time waste with users having to jump around using a dicey search mechanism prone to false positives.

¹ In the course of writing this rant, I discovered I could search the rsync man page by doing /-a\>, which at least skips past many false hits by specifying a word boundary. Still more tedious than it has to be though.

A rock star (who shall remain unnamed) told me he wanted to give away his latest work to the public domain. I helped him get the work in open non-proprietary formats.

I told him in principle that Creative Commons licensing would be what he is after, but that it has problems. Creative Commons license text contains links to the creative commons website which then hooks in more licensing terms. There is nothing wrong with the terms but the CC website is jailed in Cloudflare’s walled garden and the URL is part of the licensing text.

I told the artist he would be liberating his work but at the same time he would be technically subjecting users to a bullying US tech giant who makes content arbitrarily exclusive by shutting out some demographics of people and also abusing the privacy of those who are privileged to obtain access to the license text.

I suggested modifying the CC license to remove the CC URL and exclude Cloudflare from being a license gatekeeper, noting of course the big pitfall: if the work is not exactly CC, then it cannot use the CC name, thus the work cannot simply be treated as such by platforms which depend on the easy cookie-cutter CC license. The work cannot simply be copied to a platform that is designed for CC works.

But by rebelling he could perhaps make a splash by casting a spotlight on suppression by Cloudflare. The burden/encumberance of his unique license would trigger a discussion that might get Creative Commons to gain some wisdom and nix the hypocrisy of Cloudflare-dependent licensing.

The artist is a rebel at heart and so he agreed. But I did not act fast. Then he died unexpectedly. All of our discussions were verbal, so his will in this regard is undocumented and thus non-existent from a legal standpoint. I think this means the naturally copyrighted work in question is forever all rights reserved and cannot be liberated, correct?

Or is it a matter of tracking down who in his will inherits the rights to the works in his estate and seeing if they concur with a liberated release?

Suppose you resist a bank that forces you to access your account exclusively via some shitty phone app, which also requires you to buy a new smartphone. And suppose you refuse, so your only access to the bank account is via the card.

What happens when the time comes that (e.g.) the gov or a creditor demands a payment by credit transfer, not by card? Are you consequently forced by your obligation to make a payment to then buy a phone? Or do you have a right to manually order a payment from your bank by sending a written letter or something?

There is this law but I’m not sure it’s applicable:

REGULATION (EU) No 260/2012, Art.4: Interoperability
…
3. The processing of credit transfers and direct debits shall not be hindered by technical obstacles.

I think that law was really intended for the bank-to-bank segment of the transaction, not consumer to bank. I get the impression we have no codefied rights, just recommendations to lawmakers, such as:

The European Commission, in its 2012 Green Paper, insisted that standardisation in the mobile payments area should ensure full interoperability between mobile payment solutions, and favour open standards to ensure the mobility of consumers when they wish to change their telecom operator or bank.
…
In its Mobile Payments Initiatives Overview, the European Payments Council stated that different mobile payment solutions from multiple payment service providers should be able to coexist in the same mobile device. In its opinion, consumers should not be bound to a specific network operator or particular mobile equipment, but should be able to switch between payment service providers, with interoperability as a key feature needed to achieve these goals.

But to be fair that was written 10 years ago. Any headway?

I somewhat urgently need a map, but for the past day or two there are no maps in #OSMand available for download. Can anyone confirm or deny this problem?

Is this related to the OSM outtage 6 days ago, which was supposedly resolved?

(edit) workaround -- download maps manually and side-load them. The maps are here:

https://osmand.net/list.php

Next question: how do you know which files cover a particular city if it’s not obvious from the filename?

cross-posted from: https://linkage.ds8.zone/post/341870

I signed an agreement with a creditor that obligates me to pay them using a bank inside the country. This was fine initially but then I moved out of the country and the acct was closed. Other banks will not open an account for me and the creditor refuses cash. So the creditor is treating me like a non-payer to a quite harsh extent.

I have over-simplified here but I just want to know very generally what the common practices are around the world for contract law situations where someone without much bargaining power signs a contract that obligates them to do something that’s only achievable if other 3rd-parties agree to serve them, and then those other 3rd-parties later refuse.

BTW, I am not interested in advice on situational hacks and angles like “find a friend to pay for you”. I want to know how courts treat the situation when all options have failed. Are people typically held accountable for agreeing to something which relied on actions of others?

(the situation is not in the Netherlands but I am still interested in answers as to how these kinds of situations are dealt with in the Netherlands)

/cc @law@a.gup.pe

cross-posted from: https://linkage.ds8.zone/post/341870

I signed an agreement with a creditor that obligates me to pay them using a bank inside the country. This was fine initially but then I moved out of the country and the acct was closed. Other banks will not open an account for me and the creditor refuses cash. So the creditor is treating me like a non-payer to a quite harsh extent.

I have over-simplified here but I just want to know very generally what the common practices are around the world for contract law situations where someone without much bargaining power signs a contract that obligates them to do something that’s only achievable if other 3rd-parties agree to serve them, and then those other 3rd-parties later refuse.

BTW, I am not interested in advice on situational hacks and angles like “find a friend to pay for you”. I want to know how courts treat the situation when all options have failed. Are people typically held accountable for agreeing to something which relied on actions of others?

(the situation is not in the US but I am still interested in answers as to how these kinds of situations are dealt with in the US; of course legal tender is a right the US gives to debtors, but I’m looking for more general legal concepts)