Quoting: no_information_hereI learned not to trust Google quite a while ago, but it is certainly hard for regular people to avoid its services.

Quoting: ArehandoroEmail: https://www.posteo.de
Nextcloud: https://www.thegood.cloud
Article vault: https://www.wallabag.it
Password manager: https://bitwarden.com
Comms: https://www.matrix.org (Any client will do, the official is https://element.io/get-started)
Video-conferencing: https://meet.jit.si
External Backups: https://backblaze.com

Nice list, here is mine:

Email (incl basic webhosting): https://fastmail.com (excellent service)
Password manager: https://keepassxc.org/ (offline)
Messaging: https://signal.org/en/
External Backups: https://spideroak.com/
Maps: https://www.openstreetmap.org/
Phone Maps: https://osmand.net/
Phone Authenticator: https://freeotp.github.io/

I still end up using a few google services (maps, youtube) occasionally, but generally not as a logged-in customer.

Yeah, the hardest for me is definitely maps. I use openstreetmaps a lot, but the commodity to search by postcode in the UK, having updated bars/restaurants (pre-Covid19) and so on makes it a must in comparison. For bike touring and hiking though, and offline maps, osmandMaps is much, much better.

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Ah, I mustn't forget! If any of you is involved with the FOSS community and needs of infrastructure, please also look at: https://fosshost.org

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Still a long way ahead, at least another year for proper delivery, but people willing to get off Google in their smartphones could look into the Librem 5, or PinePhone if someone isn't a heavy phone user because the performance is still under par. Real Linux smartphones are around the corner, and we all know they're the future.

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Quoting: DrMcCoy

Quoting: TheSHEEEPE-mail wise, I thankfully host my own (or, well, pay a provider to host it for me)

Yes, and then Google just randomly throws half the mails you send to people with gmail accounts into their spam folder, where the recipients never see them...

I have a VPS in Digitalocean running a mail server for over 3 years and didn't really have an issue with that. There is, https://postmaster.google.com where a domain can be included so Gmail validates the authenticity of said domain. With that in place, everything goes to normal inbox.

Having said that, using a provider like some mentioned in the post is more reliable, painless and in most cases cheaper too.

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Email: https://www.posteo.de
Nextcloud: https://www.thegood.cloud
Article vault: https://www.wallabag.it
Password manager: https://bitwarden.com
Comms: https://www.matrix.org (Any client will do, the official is https://element.io/get-started)
Video-conferencing: https://meet.jit.si
External Backups: https://backblaze.com

All of them can be self-hosted too, except Backblaze, but if you lack the time, technical skills, money or simply don't want to worry about backups, configs, etc the above are my favourite providers.

Edit: Posteo itself can't be self-hosted, but a mail server is easily hosted in a VPS. For those cases, https://mailcow.email/ is a very good out-the-box solution. They also provide it as a service.

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Has there been a trend of more Norse mythology based games lately or is it just me?

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Quoting: SeegrasPatent systems are very broken and need to be abolished.

For anyone interested, here's the book, where they show that in most fields (except chemistry/pharma), patents don't even work as they should according to the patent system itself. https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/jep.27.1.3

In chemistry and pharma aren't working either. The fact that a lab creates a vaccine and is not immediately available for every other lab to palliate with a disease, whether that is a solving erectile dysfunction or a pandemic, but rather they can prevent others from doing the same, or getting rich by leasing the patent, is utterly annoying. It could only come from the mind of a psychopath.

A bit more in topic, the years when innovations, economic boost, etc had their peak in most advanced countries is when patents were least overlooked. I read an article in theconversation.com that explained this better than me, with special mention to China, but can't find it

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Quoting: JuliusAnd the back-paddle buttons are probably the most useless part of the Steam controller anyways...

I profoundly hate them. Usually, they're to be forgotten until in the heat of action, pressing a trigger, my pinky does a reaction and there you go, jumping like a maniac in the middle of a bullet frenzy exchange. I can recall the Tomb Raider games specifically on these.

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We're closing our first party studios.
We're not closing Stadia (for now).

Are there numbers anywhere on how many people signed for the platform, how many are active, how many are Pro subscribers, etc?

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The game interests me but playing a pig puts me off.

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