Might want to be aware that if you give money to Mullvad, some of it ends up funding the far-right in Sweden: https://www.theregister.com/software/2026/07/21/some-mullvad-vpn-customers-tunnel-for-exit-after-co-founder-donates-millions-to-populist-party/5275012
Similar story for Proton with the far-right stuff: https://theintercept.com/2025/01/28/proton-mail-andy-yen-trump-republicans/
Yeah that’s not even close to the same story.
I recently took a new look at the VPN market because of this and because my subscription was nearing empty. So many providers are untrustworthy. I narrowed it down to Mullvad, Proton and iVPN, where iVPN would be the most ideal (no political drama yet)… But then I read complaints about the speed from their servers. I ended up buying more time with Mullvad, but I’m not thrilled about it so if anyone has different experiences or insights please share.
I really like Immich as an alternative to Google photos. It has face recognition and allows for context searches. “Person X on the beach”
It can be run completely local on a Raspi.
And if you give it a GPU it can do ML based context searches
You don’t even need a GPU. I’ve got it running on a pi 5
Are any of the map apps actually any good? I used organic maps when I went out with a friend but couldn’t find the izakaya we were supposed to meet at. I don’t even know if I can search in Japanese.
for me, Comaps is pretty perfect. except when a road gets closed off or something i need to use Magic Earth as they actually did know the road was closed…
- Dislike Proton and Mullvad for political reasons, but I understand they provide good services.
- I also dislike Firefox-forks. Not because they are bad, but the only reason to use Firefox is to avoid Chromium. However, if you don’t use Firefox, usage statistics go down, ad-revenue goes down, and Mozilla will struggle to maintain Gecko. If Gecko goes down, so will LibreWolf and Waterfox.
- I don’t use many of these services (I keep photos local, use my bank’s payment app etc.) but some recommendations are very interesting. I still stick to an Android phone and wonder how reliable /e/OS really is.
I use Xeovo instead of Mullvad personally. I guess there is also sailfish OS instead of Android but i don’t know how compatible it is. Pretty good list, i am actually trying out element instead of whatsapp which works to a certain extent. But whatsapp is the final boss here to me
whatsapp indeed is very impossible, my friends dont wanna ditch it 😭
Anyone have a good recommendation for a better messages app than Googles?
FOSSify
Tried it, it’s a bit too bare bones for my taste. Also got some weird garbage characters in received messages.
What’s wrong with Netflix?
