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Thank you S. for becoming one of the 200 people that we need to support TROM forever. See https://www.tromsite.com/donate/

Actually S. had a lot of issues donating since his Mastercard refused the donation. After weeks of trying to figure out what is the issue he finally went to the bank and asked to allow for European payments. And then it all worked fine.

A few people tried to donate to our campaign using Mastercards and the donations failed. Now we know why. Some banks refuse these sorts of payments. If you can, please go talk to your bank to unblock these payments.

Much thank yous for supporting TROM financially. You support a lot of projects!

#tromlive




My Pixel 4a got an upgrade to Android 14. But not from Google who dropped support for this phone recently, but from @CalyxOS ! Imagine that. Huge kudos to the Calyx team and a big middle finger to Google by making humans buy new phones every year and rendering the old phones obsolete just because of no software updates.

In a trade-based society all humans care is about their trade advantages. Fuck Google with their Pixel 8 software support till 2030. That's a marketing nonsense. They should be ashamed for even releasing yet another phone that's exactly like the previous one, and making their old phones obsolete by refusing to push updates to them.

A few months in and I love CalyxOS. Everything works great. My phone is ads and trackers free. A true trade-free OS for the phone :).

Nope, 4A 4G. But I guess the 5G also got an update


Here's a photo of Jupiter through my Pixel 4a and Celestron SLT 130 telescope. I can do better probably and this is with no enhancing, straight out of the phone:

Just a start... :D - I will try to do better. But you can still see some color and the stripes.

I tried to enhance it here a bit:

And here you can see 2 moons:

#Astrophotograhy

This entry was edited (1 day ago)


hmm my TROMjaro is freezing randomly, several times a day for the past week or so. Probably has to do with some recent updates but I am baffled since I tried different kernels, I also tried the NVIDIA open source or proprietary drivers, even removed it altogether. This is a terrible bug/situation for anyone..... It is true that I install too many packages to test for TROMjaro and do so many experiments on my system, but I'd like not to reinstall the OS now...

Gthumb cannot start anymore due to some "segmentation fault (core dumped)". Kdenlive doesn't start duet to some weird error "kf.service.sycoca: The menu spec file ( "" ) contains a Layout or DefaultLayout tag without the mandatory Merge tag inside. Please fix it."

IDK what is happening... :D

I may have to start all over and reinstall. But it would be terrible to reinstall TROMjaro to then have it freeze again.

Damn...

EDIT: Could be the BIOS. I updated. Let's see....

This entry was edited (3 days ago)
It seems to be the new kernel 6.6 .... interesting. It works perfectly fine with the older LTS 6.1 kernel.... At least in Linux you can change the kernels very easily.



TROM part 3, Earth, now fully subtitled into Spanish thanks to Rafa, Vicky and Cesar! - https://videos.trom.tf/w/59Da9g1PnyJnFkvR3yRMWC

The previous 2 are also subtitled into Spanish. There is only 1 more part left and we will have it all in Spanish. You can watch the documentary here https://www.tromsite.com/documentaries/trom2/

#tromlive




The Sun through my telescope (Celestron 130 SLT) and Pixel 4a:

Taken an hour ago. Awesome sunspots. How cool to be able to see the sun so up-close.

#Astrophotograhy

0xd9a reshared this.



@PeerTube we have released our documentary exclusively on Peertube and only there, in June. It is 5 hours long, 4 parts, and we worked 3 years to make it. Here it is https://videos.trom.tf/w/p/fVpfZ9VfWrWawHkggKi7Wz

Please consider adding it to your https://joinpeertube.org/#find-peertube-videos website as a showcase of original Peertube releases if you think it is worth it. We have it subtitled in a few languages already and it is basically about why the bad things that happen in the world (where do they originate from), but also about how we could maybe change that. It is about open source, volunteers, and overall treating people as humans and helping them. To help each other.

Please consider it and maybe our instance too - https://videos.trom.tf - dedicated to science/technology/activism.

#tromstuff

reshared this




Sea Turtle Rescuers Illegally Evicted - https://videos.trom.tf/w/iVedLTb1FPhTUb1nr1bTFx

@Dima does a fantastic job at highlighting the good people that still live in this backwards trade society and why they are struggling to do the good things that they do. Imagine doing good things like saving turtles, and not only that you are not helped in this society, but face many roadblocks.

Dima keep on doing your important work! Your videos are much needed for everyone to understand the struggle the volunteers have to face, but also to understand that people are motivated to do good things. We just have to enable that by helping them.

If people had access to at least their basic needs as trade-free, we would see a lot of change happening.

Support Dima on Patreon if you can - https://www.patreon.com/BeBraveToAct

#tromlive





Thank you to everyone who is supporting our TROM project via donations. Currently we have 36 people supporting our 200 for TROM cause https://www.tromsite.com/donate/ - basically we need 200 people to donate 5 Euros a month to support TROM forever. Distributing the toll we put on everyone to make the project sustainable.

You support some 20 websites and a lot of digital materials, plus future projects. See the main website https://www.tromsite.com and the tools that we have.

It would be amazing to achieve this goal and it is not an unrealistic one. Thousands of people use our tools and websites.

Again a big thank you to everyone!

#tromlive


Alexio reshared this.







Can someone please tell spain and the people living there that it is not normal to stay inside with your winter coat and shoes on and be cold when outside are 10 degrees? In Romania we stay in a tshirt inside when outside there are -10 degrees or less.

INSULATION! That's the difference Spain!

It is amazing to me how Spain, and other tribes too, waste so much energy and people feel uncomfortable too, just because they do not insulate their houses. We have put carpets in the entire house here in Spain, use a gas heater in the day time or go on the terrace if it is sunny since it is much warmer than inside, and have fluffy clothes designed for the winter that we use inside. And still it is COLD and uncomfortable!

It is insane. Inside humidity is being created and thus a lot of mold. We have to clean and paint.... It is a disaster Spain!

Overall a massive waste of energy and a lot of discomfort.

This entry was edited (1 week ago)

Rokosun reshared this.

I'm waiting for someone from #Spain to explain this mess 😁

I understand your perspective Tio, but it is crucial to avoid generalisations about an entire country based on your personal experience on the Girona coast. Spain is diverse, with significant climatic variations between regions. In addition, preferences and practices in climate management can differ considerably.

It is true that in some areas, such as the Girona coast, the climate is more temperate compared to colder places such as Romania. This can influence people's heating habits and needs. Rather than assuming that the experience in Girona reflects the reality of the whole country, it would be more accurate to recognise the climatic and cultural diversity of Spain.

Personally I think that sometimes it would be better to let that frustration out by talking face to face with a person, a friend possibly. I say stupid things a lot of times because I need to discharge my frustration but I don't post it on the internet.

And here's the confirmation of my personal experience https://www.euronews.com/green/2022/12/09/europes-energy-crisis-in-data-which-countries-have-the-best-and-worst-insulated-homes - Spain one of the worse when it comes to building insulation. And here are more people complain about that from around Spain https://www.thelocal.es/20211104/why-are-spanish-homes-so-cold


Your example is really exaggerated. Songs and podcasts are an entirely different thing. You are comparing a 3 minutes audio that is meant to make you dance or sing, with an hour long mouth-talking audio?

Movies and documentaries at times overlap like in the case of the above example which tries to "teach" you about that scientist. And overall their format is very similar in many regards. Stories that you follow. In that regards yes, I find movies (most of them) boring and useless. Reality is far more complex and interesting.

Yeah I knew my examples were kinda exaggerated but I couldn't think of a better one, the point is that movies and documentaries are made with a different purpose in mind, even tho they're kinda similar in a lot of ways and sometimes overlap. I also don't like most movies but I don't mind watching a few good ones from time to time 🤷



(source)

Oh wait, are people still eating 3 meals a day? I've only eaten 2 meals a day for the past....idk....2 decades? :D - and everyone I know probably.... I think 3 meals a day is too much. In fact there is a positive outcome to eating less. You age slower ;).

Anyway, yeah people are being poorer it seems. Prices are rising. Thank God for the mighty Economy and the fantasy money we worship :)

Rokosun reshared this.

Man then you'd be shocked to see how much stuff I can slam down my throat, haha 😆 Maybe it has something to do with my metabolism but I feel very tired and fatigued when I don't eat on time, so I'd rather reduce the size of a meal than skip one altogether - if I'm skipping a meal then that means I'd have to eat bigger meals to account for the missed one so that I have enough energy for the day, and that's probably worse from a health perspective (spikes in blood sugar levels and all that).
haha. maybe it is an age thing idk....


Adam ruins the social networks conversation


Rokosun reshared this.




Our TROMjaro trade-free apps library now displays an excerpt for all of the apps in the library for the APPS main page:

This has been requested for years now and we finally did it. It is indeed super useful to know what these apps are about from the main page, without having to open them.

Enjoy over 650 trade-free apps https://www.tromjaro.com/apps/ #tromlive






Star trailing...

Pixel 4A. Enhanced with Rawtherapee.

Rokosun reshared this.



Israel does not kill innocent people or genocide anyone in Gaza. And Hamas killed no civilians in Israel's attack and cares about democracy.

Get over it people! Listen to the leaders of these tribes! They are unbiased and honest.

yeah, it's sad to see how people fall for propaganda made by the Israeli government or Hamas.

Friendica Support reshared this.


!Friendica Support Out of curiosity is there a way in Friendica to ONLY allow the friends to comment on your posts? I know that basically anyone can regardless, but to never be visible to you almost like anyone who is not your friend, is IGNORED. I think that could be a great way to deal with the trolls and for big accounts to better manage their mental health.

EDIT: I created this issue https://github.com/friendica/friendica/issues/13650

This entry was edited (2 weeks ago)

Friendica Support reshared this.

@Tio ... That would be nice, to prevent certain people from commenting on my (public) post. Sometimes persons can really destroy a post when they are too penetrant. I had also asked this question and was told that ActivityPub does not allow this, currently. My hope is, that AP could possibly be improved one day. So I can control who comments or even "close the discussion" if it gets too much.
@Tio

Friendica Support reshared this.

@xy.. @Tio

I didn't realise it worked that way, good to know. If I post for followers only and a follower reshares that, does the scope change to their followers or will it remain mine?

Just thinking, if I don't want non-followers to comment, why would I want to post publicly?

@Tio @xy..

Friendica Support reshared this.

"Followers only" posts are not public. The reshare only is allowed on public posts.
This entry was edited (2 weeks ago)

Friendica Support reshared this.

Just thinking, if I don't want non-followers to comment, why would I want to post publicly?

Because you may simply want others to see your posts but not want to see their responses to it. Like I can make a Wordpress blogpost and do not allow anyone to comment. At times this is useful, especially when you may get invaded by trolls.

Friendica Support reshared this.

@Tio
/offtopic

Tio's bio wrote:

so that we can understand us, the atoms, and the rest of the universe
Gif-image of the supercomputer deep thought resolving the question to all answers saying: "42"
@Tio

Friendica Support reshared this.

haah ok you found the answer already. i can retire.


Sorry I am being silly but this is a truly funny shadow that I saw tonight:

Every night. Same place. Stay silly! :)

Rokosun reshared this.

When was the photo taken? At dawn?
Around 8PM or so. Funny thing is the shadow comes from a street light that's nearby, so it means the shadow is always there, always the same way haha.


From now on, and for the next few weeks, I will work on adding a lot more apps to our TROMjaro APPS library https://www.tromjaro.com/apps/ - lots of cool apps :). But takes some time because for most of them I am designing an icon that will be part of the Zafiro icon theme pack (so that we contribute to this open source icon pack - we already made hundreds of apps so far), but I also need to test more these apps, make screenshot for them and all that.

It is more work than you may think.

Consider a donation if you can, to support all of the work we are doing for TROM - https://www.tromsite.com/donate/

Thanks! #tromstuff

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This is a photo I took tonight (unedited, straight out of the Pixel 4A):

I have made a lot more such photos for the past few days and learned how to make longer timelapses. I will make an article about it all soonish :).

I so love it. To reveal the universe. To do it yourself. There, where you are staying :). I love the night sky simply because there is no sky anymore, it suddenly is the outside world. A world we cannot ever experience more than being touched by a few photos reaching our eyes and devices. Beautiful and hard to believe this is all real. At times I feel like I am going crazy....

Most people live their day to day lives having no clue that these things are real...

Here's one more:

Only a little bit edited - colors and such.



My cable management situation - https://videos.trom.tf/w/9EAfUZR868Dc9vT7hGsMMB


My cable management situation


This is how I manage so many cables and connections in a way that is easy to detach from, if I ever need my laptop to be "cordless".




Good piece by John Oliver about the situation in Gaza https://youtu.be/pJ9PKQbkJv8

Rokosun reshared this.

I'm impressed at how informative and well researched this video was for a "comedy show"


FionnulaMac reshared this.

Some gallery on deviant to think on https://www.deviantart.com/quilesart/gallery - I think it's relevant to all this "shitshow" in general
Ah yes! I know the artist. We pull such illustrations from RSS sources to our https://tromnews.com/illustrations/ project.



Video and Music, two pieces of media almost entirely owned by a few giant companies. And they only allow you to enjoy them if you trade your attention primarily (watch ads), or data, or currency. That in a world where the digitization of media allows us to copy and share them infinitely at almost no cost in terms of resources.

That being said, you can still access these via trade-free interfaces.

For desktop use:

FreeTube https://freetubeapp.io - to access Youtube without ads, data collection or limitations.
Nuclear Player https://nuclear.js.org/ - to listen to any song that's out there. Again no ads, no data collection, no bullshit.

For mobile (android):

NewPipe https://newpipe.net/ - for a trade-free Youtube
InnerTune https://f-droid.org/en/packages/com.zionhuang.music/ - listen to any song you want without trading for it.

#tromlive




We went out again with the telescope and we saw Saturn, Jupiter, and parts of the Milky Way. Here are some photos - astonishing that they are made with a phone (Pixel 4A 4G).

Me and Sasha:

Edited a little bit the colors, light, and details. But not that much, a few minutes editing.

An "arm" of the Milky Way:

Improved a bit the colors and contrast. Not by much.

Our TROM telescope (no editing):

And the coolest of them all, Georgi with a head-lamp :)

No editing, straight out of the phone, believe it or not.

Am impressed. So fucking cool: great experience to enjoy the night sky with our own eyes and a telescope, and low effort great photos :).

#astrophography

Looks like you folks are having a fun time 🙂
Yup quite great to watch the night sky :)




Took a photo last night of the sky and I just fucking realized that I captured the Andromeda Galaxy by mistake!

If you zoom in you can see it a bit. WOW!

Tonight I will go out to take a bunch of photos, this time in RAW, to see what I can capture :D. These things excite me so much! These fucking things are real. HOW!?

#astrophography

That's really cool! Hope you get some good shots to share later.



@Rokosun has fully rebuilt our TROMjaro Welcome app from scratch. Now it is a lot more elegant in terms of the code, and opens up a lot more possibilities for us to integrate more features into it. Something that we will do in the very near future.

TROMjaro is a Trade-Free Operating System. No ads, no data collection, no free trials, no bullshit.

#tromlive




My astrophotography adventure has begun :D - @Roma pay attention :)

Just took a photo now, from our terrace. Half Moon and with light pollution. Not ideal at all.
Device: Pixel 4A

The unedited JPG from the Pixel:

Awesome! No work, just let the phone do its thing.

Now here's the RAW from the Pixel 4A, that I edited for 20 minutes in Darktable:

The sheer number of stars is unbelievable! And the core of the MilkyWay was on the opposite side of the planet....imagine how it would look like when the core is visible and the moon is "invisible"!

I LOVE this! This is reality folks! Above our head.

So from now on I have setup my Pixel to take both RAW and JPEG. Just in case I wanna retouch some photos :). How awesome!

#astrophography

This entry was edited (1 month ago)

0xd9a reshared this.



The Smartphone World and how I cope with it - https://www.tiotrom.com/2023/11/the-smartphone-world-and-how-i-cope-with-it/

This is my 20 years journey into the world of the phone. I was here when it started, I was amazed by it, then angry at it. And now I found a way to tame it. To transform my phone into my friend, and protect myself from the pile of shit that the phones are streaming on a daily basis into people’s brains.

Amazing article @tio@social.trom.tf
I can relate to that so much.
Your solutions and alternatives are jewels.
Thanks!!!
@Tio

At the risk of seeming persnickety, I must remark that the pile of poop streaming into people's brains first streamed *out* of someone else's brains. Cheap and easy electronic communications have allowed those with shit for brains to influence and taint the rest.

The big tech mafia and the government mafia start out promoting delusive nonsense to get people supporting their agendas. After time, they start believing their own delusions, and so the gaslighting and insanity grows worse. In time a culture grew in which most people had their beliefs formed from popular opinion, rather than personal inquiry. Almost everything commonly accepted as true today is half-truth or outright nonsense.

This entry was edited (4 weeks ago)


Updates




I installed /e/ OS on my old Galaxy S7 from 2016:

Really surprised to see that they support this model. Basically I made it functional again. I will try to replace its camera from another S7 that is bricked. I will document everything and it will all merge into a big article about mobile phones ;).

I really like my Pixel 4a with CalyxOS. Control control control. Am excited to start my astrophotography adventure with it :).

Nice! I mainly use a Samsung S7 Active which is just moderately deGoogled / cleaned out with ADB. Though I do also have a standard S7 which I've much more aggressively stripped down to a bare minimum of packages and it boots up so super fast now in just a few seconds 🤓

I have considered trying /e/OS before, but didn't want to lose access to the default camera app.

I recommend /e/ OS because that updates Android to version 10. Samsung got stuck at 8. Plus if you use OpenCamera then that can be even better than Samsung's camera. Maybe install it beforehand and play with it.
I have played with both Open Camera and A Better Camera before, and found that they both could be good in certain circumstances but not as reliable performing as the default app and maybe missing some feature or other which I forget. But it's been years since then, so maybe I should give Open Camera another look sometime.
Yes true. For my Pixel 4a too, I much prefer the Pixel Camera than any other camera despite using CalyxOS. Does a much better job....unfortunately there are no better alternatives.
And tbh, Android 7/8 is already new and fancy to me. I've used the S7 Active for some years just for GPS, but only in the past year or so switched it to being my actual phone too. Before that I always used my much more compact S4 mini with its (very cheaply) replaceable battery. But it got to the point where too many apps stopped supporting the Android 4.4 on that, otherwise I would still be using it today. Perfect just as a straightforward and unobtrusive phone.
The newer Android versions are also becoming increasingly locked down with less control available to the user which also makes me less keen to update to them. And in general I'm quite opposed to the modern trend of increasingly frequent forced updates of software systems with no real benefits to the end user. But I still agree that it can be seen as a potential benefit of /e/OS 👍



Our TROMjaro Theme Switcher has been fully re-written by @Rokosun in Nim and the owlkettle library. Our theme switcher is now made in a more sane way.

When you select a theme it will remain highlighted using the accent color of the selected theme. The notifications are also improved and you can see the theme icon in the notification preview.

Roko had to learn all of these from scratch, in order to make it. He is always improving our custom TROMjaro scripts and on top of that he is a proper human being: calm, nice, smart, down to Earth, and so friendly. How awesome that he is helping TROM so much without asking anything in return. That0s becuase he does not "work for TROM", we all work together to build something important and useful!

#tromlive




Best Android (nonroot) system wide adblocker?

For the love of the internet gods, I cannot find a good one. Adaway, personalDNS Filter, PIA VPN, and more, are not doing a good job at blocking the ads inside apps or websites.

So, anyone knows a better alternative?

So much easier on desktop (Linux).

EDIT: Seems like Blokada, the "free" version, is still the best so far. Tho it advertises their "pro-bro" version.

This entry was edited (1 month ago)
Going with Firefox + uBlock origin + Ghostery + Privacy Badger
No problems for over 3 years now.
And yes, it is not system-wide adblock, as I tend not to use an apps with ads inside.
Yup or the Bromite Browser - the default in CalyxOS. Comes with an adblocker.


@Aaron gave me his old Pixel 4a 4G and now I am doing the unthinkable: I am changing my phone! For the first time since 2016. I have a Samsung Galaxy S7 since 2016 and because I do not use my phone that much I did not care. But now that I have a new-old phone, I will go for it. Especially since my S7 started to crumble.

I have already installed CalyxOS on the Pixel and so far so perfect. I will make a detailed article about it all, but yah....happy to use an unused device and make good use of it! :)

It even has an Astrophotography mode so I can already start with that. Here are some quick samples form not-so-great-days to take such photos:




#astrophography

Rokosun reshared this.


Friendica Admins reshared this.


!Friendica Admins Is it really ok to have over 100.000 Inspect deferred worker queue? Everything on my instance works great, but that number is immense. These are the deferred ones https://paste.trom.tf/ejuhetucoc.apache - I still do not understand if it is fine and I should ignore them or there is something I can do about them.

EDIT: I have submitted an issue here https://github.com/friendica/friendica/issues/13570 - can be helpful for others too,

This entry was edited (1 month ago)

Friendica Admins reshared this.

@Tio interesting, many contact related tasks, updates and create, wonder why those get deferred.

But I am of no help here, just curious like you.

@Tio

Friendica Admins reshared this.

hm yeah - my server can for sure handle it all. i7-6700 CPU 3.40GHz, 8 cores and 32GB of RAM plus 32GB swap. I doubt it is an issue of the server being unable to cope with these.

Friendica Admins reshared this.

Deferred tasks are background tasks that failed for an external reason (remote contact not reachable for example) and will be retried at a later date, with increasing delay each subsequent retrial. As a result they don't take up any resources while they're waiting for their due date.

Via https://github.com/friendica/friendica/issues/13570#issuecomment-1774329350

That's very good to know. External reasons.



Since the latest changes and optimizations I did some 2-3 weeks ago for Friendica, our instance became so fast it is unbelievable. Go from one page to another in less than 1-2 seconds, at times it feels instant. Amazing! #tromstuff

Rokosun reshared this.

Well first of all I am using a daemon and not cron jobs via this tutorial https://nequalsonelifestyle.com/2022/08/04/setting-up-friendica-daemon-systemd-service/

Then In /etc/mysql/mariadb.conf.d/50-server.cnf and add Under [mariadb]:

\#enable the old query optimizer setting
optimizer_use_condition_selectivity = 1
optimizer_switch = 'rowid_filter=off'

You can also add to the same file under mariadb and mysql:
innodb_buffer_pool_size = 20G
innodb_log_buffer_size = 256M
innodb_log_file_size = 1G
innodb_write_io_threads = 16
Amazing, thank you for the valuable information.