Maxime Vaillancourt @[email protected]

I still think about that one day in July 2020 when verified accounts couldn't tweet anymore, what a weird day that was

For the tiny cross-section of folks who (A) follow me, (B) live in Quebec, and (C) care about urbanism: consider taking 15 minutes to share your thoughts on land use in the province. Let's ask for better cycling- and pedestrian-friendly infrastructure. https://consultation.quebec.ca/processes/urbanisme-amenagement-territoires?locale=en

To be clear: let's definitely do everything we can to slow down (and reverse!) climate change: reach out to your elected officials, fly less, eat less meat, drive less, etc.

But in the event that we fail, keep in mind that from a global perspective, "this too, shall pass".

"The desertification of the West is no more permanent than anything else on this planet of ongoing change."

Somewhat comforting perspective on the future of our species on this planet. A well-needed read following the IPCC report released today.

https://www.ecosophia.net/the-future-is-a-landscape/

It's 2021 and there's a guestbook straight from circa 1999 on my personal website. I love it.

Powered by @jekyllrb and @Netlify. Fully static. No JavaScript. Built-in spam protection.

I wrote a tutorial explaining how to set it up on your own site. ✨

https://maximevaillancourt.com/blog/building-fully-static-guestbook-jekyll-netlify

@nemo switching.software is great! I came across it a few months ago. Excellent resource.

Kudos for giving away the Raspberry Pi, I'm sure they'll love it. :)

@malteengeler @aral @x2ero

Fair point Aral, I hadn't seen it this way. Makes complete sense now that I read it out. Thank you for sharing your point of view, I appreciate it.

@gnufella Thank you for both suggestions, I'll look into them. :)

@nemo Thanks for the kind words!

@jbohn Thanks for the kind words, glad you enjoyed it!

@ilyess Thanks for the kind words! Google products are quite good indeed.

Regarding Standard Notes: yup, that's correct. What I meant in the blog post was to have access to them from other machines as well (say, a public computer). I have to admit though, this hasn't happened yet, and I don't foresee this happening in the near future, so likely a moot point. :)

@PeterSanchez

Thanks for the kind words!

I feel you on this one. I don't know of a good solution at the moment (and trust me I searched for one!). I explored creating my own a few years ago, but ended up tangled in XML parsing and the timing didn't line up with other stuff in my life, so I stepped away. Maybe I should get back into it!

... although I have to say I don't have a strong need for such a solution at the moment. Thunderbird and Etar work well enough for what I need.

@malteengeler @x2ero @aral

I don't disagree with you, you have good points there.

If anything, to me it's more of a hobby than a political statement (though I see how it could be considered so). I'm privileged that this hobby lines up nicely with the opinions I have on data privacy.

@lazalatin Thank you for the suggestion! I'll check it out.

Thank you for the kind words!

@grimfrenzy Great, I was planning on going with andOTP but Aegis is also recommended by other folks. I'll explore both options a bit more, thanks for sharing! :)

@Bunnyhammer Yup, andOTP is likely where I'm going next. Thanks for the vouch!

@david Thank you for the kind words David!

@pimoore Thank you for the kind words Pete!

I also tried TinyTinyRSS before, but somehow it didn't click for me. Feedbin is great! I had a great experience using it in the past.

For 2FA: I think I'm going towards andOTP, though I heard good things about Authy too. Will dig into it a bit more.

FastMail was my runner-up to ProtonMail. The deal breaker was the location of their operations (USA for FastMail, Switzerland for ProtonMail).

@x2ero @aral @malteengeler

Even if not self-hosted [1], it's already a great step in the right direction.

[1] https://nextcloud.com/signup/

8 years ago, my digital life was almost entirely stored in Google data centers.

Today, I self-host a handful of services on a Raspberry Pi on my LAN and use privacy-friendly services. Small tech feels good.

I wrote a few words about the moving process 👀
https://maximevaillancourt.com/blog/moving-away-from-google-services-8-years-in

cc @aral: I'm a big fan of your work. I donated to the Small Tech foundation recently, and you + Laura are an inspiration in this space. Keep up the great work!