Libb

Antidote. From Druide Informatique is a great set of spellcheckers (and gramamtical guides) for French and for English.

Alas, a few years ago they dropped their Linux version. Also, it’s not from the EU but from Canada… which has not yet been invaded by the USA.

Edit: too many things to list, I’m tired (and I don’t have Antidote on my Linux machine)

I understand. Hopefully someone will be able to suggest something more useful ;)

When I go some place I tell my spouse I’ll be there. Are you looking for something more specific in ‘sharing you location’?

Given the volume of writing I do, I don’t think hand-writing is feasible.

I write everything longhand. Many people have been writing entire books longhand, and have been doing it for centuries. And a few of us still do ;)

The last few years average out to about 2000 words a day, and most of it is done on computers where I can comfortably type for long periods, and much faster than I could write by hand.

Depends what you want to write, but speed may not be the key elements. Obviously, with tight deadlines from your publisher it may be a valid point but (I’m 50+) along the years I realized I would save more time by writing slowly but then spend less time rewriting/editing (less, as editing is still an essential part).

All of that to say: sure, digital technology may be a great help but it is not a necessity (unlike what big tech want us to believe). Tolstoy did not use a computer, neither did Flaubert, Shakespeare and Dostoevsky, nor did Nietzsche or Plato (to name just a few authors that have written a lot). It’s mostly a question of habits, aka developing the hand, arm and shoulder muscles used to write, and of endurance: the more you will write by hand, the longer you will be able to write without feeling too much fatigue. And of organization—aka, how you take your notes and maybe how your organize them. When I draft a text or take notes on the go, something I do every single day of the year, I use my own shorthand which helps me saves a lot of time. I also organize all my notes (research and personal alike) in an analog system that has been formalized many years ago: Zettelkasten. It works wonders and, in its way, it’s easily ‘searchable’.

One last suggestion: using the right writing tool may help a lot in reducing fatigue too. Have you tried using a decent fountain pen (with good quality paper)? But enough about handwriting :p

If you’re using iCloud, have you activated the optional Apple’s Advanced Data Protection? It ensures that no one, supposedly not even Apple can read your files on iCloud.

For anything digital (I draft longhand but I still need to type the final version), the moment I became privacy-conscious, my solution was to switch from Mac to a Linux PC, with full disk encryption. With This Linux PC there is no tracking and no telemetry (I was horrified to realize the volume of data that was send back to Apple by my Mac, it’s easy to test it: install LittleSnitch and tell it to not let apple’s services connect to the web. Sure most of it is probably fine. But probably was not enough for me) and I can use VSCodium (a Microsoft-free version of VSCode) for Markdown and LibreOffice Writer for word processing. For cloud storage, I would suggest Filen.io a small German company that offers zero knowledge end-to-end encryption.

I think many dedicated journaling apps (like DayOne on iOS/Mac) do offer password-protection but I have no idea how reliable it is. I would rather trust some Free/Libre software and the community to tell me what is safe.

BTW, feel free to come say hi to our small !journaling@sh.itjust.works community (I’m the admin). As an analog user myself, I would love to have more digital users participating. Well, to be perfectly honest I would love to have more people participating, digital or not ;)

I’m not much of a gamer (I play chess, though), I only wanted to say I needed no ‘fix’ nor terminal in order to get my Mint to update to its latest versions ;)

Mint 22.1 still runs Kernel 6.8 whoch means you’ll be hitting the terminal to either upgrade to mainline kernel

The last two major updates of Mint were done through some GUI. There were a few warnings (about a few extra apps I had installed) but everything was done through that app and went smoothly. Edit: and so quickly (yeah, I’m looking at you, macOS)

or add extra repositories

I don’t think I use extra repositories but I did add two PPAs and did it through the GUI ‘Software Sources’ that comes with Mint. I just checked, it also offers the option to add ‘Additional repositories’, if that means ‘extra’?

• Firefox is owned by the Mozilla Foundation, which is US-based and I say that as a lifelong Firefox user, mind you. Waterfox is a UK-based fork of Firefox. Not owned by Mozilla. Also, based on Chromium (the open source part of Chrome) there is the cool Vivaldi browser (Norway).
• Why Ubuntu only? Promoting almost any GNU/Linux distro would be a good move. I will promote the one I’m using: Mint. I’m happy to say that everything works out of the box and have been working great for 4 or 5 years now—and I never have to use the command line if I don’t want to… which, frankly, I don’t mind using, quite the contrary ;)
• Cloud: I tried following the suggest links and gave up on the 3rd one. It’s too technical, at least for me. depends what you’re looking for but here is a couple of EU/European cloud storage providers I use: Infomaniak (Swiss, works great, more features than just cloud), Filen.io (German, works great, more limited in features but offers full end-to-end encryption).

Scoop for the German government: we also have no real alternative to US troops/military supply. Should we lower the EU flag and welcome anyone wishing to took hold of it since the USA has made it clear it’s now up to the EU to defend itself?

Clicking the link should not say anything special when you land on the page (which is rather dumb) but once you create your account you should get double the base free storage (20 instead of 10). I don’t recall them announcing any change in that policy.

All those ungrateful tourists that can’t stand the idea of getting mistakenly deported into a High Security Salvadoran prison and then being left to rot there because ‘yeah, it’s kinda annoying but we can’t get him back, you know’.

If I were the all-mighty orange dude, I would put a 146% tax on every single tourist that is refusing to come spend their money in the USA! They’re nothing but traitors! They should pay! And maybe I would invade their country, to show the world who’s the boss.

Yep, like one of them said trust will be hard to restore.

That Trump is a diva addicted to having a tantrum we knew it, that’s no surprise and I could not care less him being… who he is. But to realize how simple and effort-less it was for him to break existing deals, engagements and decades long alliances while also humiliating Zelensky in the oval office, on TV, without anyone, no one of the other US political powers supposed to prevent abuse of power even protest? And then hear Trump tell all of us we could go fuck ourselves if we did not agree to pay him whatever amount of money he considered fair, like some gangster trying to racket shop owners on the block, in exchange for his ‘protection’? That’s the real issue. At least, it’s for me.

I trusted such an absurd thing would not be possible in the USA, not as easily and not as abruptly. I was completely wrong.

Trust won’t be easy to get back.

Got their reply this morning (it’s early evening when I type this), useful but leading to one more question on my part. Wait and see ;)

Could not tell as I have not looked at Lego at all for decades, but prices have been getting delirious with quite many things in the last few years.

I did not know that. I had the idea they were from the UK.

Btw, Lego is Danish. Or has that changed and the company been sold? I have not played with Lego for 50 years or so, I may be a bit rusty ;)

Experience is great so far but I have send my very first help request… yesterday evening. Will see when/if I get an answer, but it’s not even about any issue just a question about some stuff I could not understand ;)

free replacement for Gmail

have you tried infomaniak? They also have a calendar and an online office suite… and their free plan is nice (paid user here) ;)

in France, we have this saying ‘Nécesité fait loi’ which means you make do with what you have and to the best of your abilities. Also, my little finger is telling me quite a few EU countries would not mind a more authoritarian country entering the Council, a country that would then be used to tell France and Germany (and who knows, the warmly welcomed-back UK, one of these days) to go funk themselves. But I may be wrong.

You mean China? They are not part of NATO. Note that the election of Trump have almost made it crystal clear the USA does not care much about NATO anymore (they seem to only care about Ukraine’s underground which is not yet part of the EU (what a happy coincidence). So Turkish armed force ranking may very well already be a non-question just that we, NATO-members, have not been officially told so yet… In Which case China and Russia, and Turkey?, would be very happy.

Using them. Quite decent if a little bare bone. I wish for their notes app to be leaner to use but beside that it does exactly <hat it tells. Also, I quite like that, unlike so many clouds, I don’t have to move all my files and folders to a ‘filen’ folder, it can sync as many folders as one needs, even on external drives.

If you can, wait for their Black Friday deals, prices are fine but they’re even better then. They also offer more options for lifetime plans if you’re more interested than in monthly sub.

When creating you’re account, try to get an affiliate link before creating the account, as you will get double the free storage to begin with (20, instead of 10GB) and if you later decide to sub to/purchase a plan you have to keep that extra storage as a bonus. In case you need one, here is my affiliate link so you or anyone else using it can get the extra 10GB—and, nope, I won’t get anything out of it anymore, as I already did get all I was promised (up to 3x10GB more free storage), and yep, I did keep them l when I upgraded to one of their lifetime plan ;)

Turkey has asked to join the EU already. It was denied last time but something tells me next time they may be very welcome instead.
(hint: Turkey has the second biggest army in NATO right after the USA and has the most active/quickly growing weapon/armament industry in Europe too)