brzrd

I would not give up the smartphone for a dumb phone, primarily for the superior security and privacy smartphones provide that dumb phones just do not have technology for.

This conversation has a tone of settling for inferior technology to do the work a well-designed smartphone experience should.

The smartphone can be made pretty “dumb” - the user experience has more to do with the software (apps) added to it than the hardware (the smartphone) itself.

Aside from the apps the platform bundles, I only have Signal (for text and voice), email, a browser, calendar, a note taking app and a FOSS music player. I have disabled all sound and visual notifications and removed all apps off the main screen.

Of late, I’ve moved the SIM-card onto a secondary phone that resides in my bag, which is only switched-on for navigation or if I need WiFi in a snap.

It has not always been this way for me and I am sure my setup will continue to evolve as my needs change.

This!

This here. Not fully featured but a decent reader and editor which we hope will improve with time. Good effort on the devs!

LibreOffice & Open Office Document Reader | ODF https://f-droid.org/packages/at.tomtasche.reader/

This is old news, from 2022!!

The need for a free internet that is community-regulated cannot be more urgent. This move will indiscriminately ban any kind of speech, important traditional therapies, etc. Implemented, this will be a huge loss to our collective knowledge and ability to organise as communities.

Quick question: How does one set up encryption while using the Tor browser for things like searches and regular browsing (research, etc)? Would be useful to know. Appreciate.

Opening para from a NYT article on the Waldorf School in Silicon Valley:

"The chief technology officer of eBay sends his children to a nine-classroom school here. So do employees of Silicon Valley giants like Google, Apple, Yahoo and Hewlett-Packard.

But the school’s chief teaching tools are anything but high-tech: pens and paper, knitting needles and, occasionally, mud. Not a computer to be found. No screens at all. They are not allowed in the classroom, and the school even frowns on their use at home."

https://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/23/technology/at-waldorf-school-in-silicon-valley-technology-can-wait.html

If you are reffering to Signal then both app and server are open source. Just that the server is centralised.

For community building, try checking out SimpleX. Its open source and has an interesting take on anonynity. Plus it doesnt require phone numbers to create a user identity.

As for either being censorship resistant, I am unsure how we’ll they’d cope. But my guess is they would perform just fine in most scenarios.

Libre Wolf with uBlock preinstalled could be what you need.

Anysoft Keyboard on F-Droid. Lots of button customisation options to cater to individual needs.

G-Board almost definitely logs all keystrokes. Ditch it!