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Put the internet back under your control with the FreedomBox

Published

4 years ago

April 23, 2019

On today’s internet, most of us find ourselves locked into one service provider or the other. We find ourselves tied down to Apple, Facebook, Google, or Microsoft for our e-mail, social networking, calendering — you name it. It doesn’t have to be that way. The FreedomBox Foundation has just released its first commercially available FreedomBox: The Pioneer Edition FreedomBox Home Server Kit. With it, you — not some company — control over your internet-based services.

The Olimex Pioneer FreedomBox costs less than $100 and is powered by a single-board computer (SBC), the open source hardware-based Olimex A20-OLinuXino-LIME2 board. This SBC is powered by a 1GHz A20/T2 dual core Cortex-A7 processor and dual-core Mali 400 GPU. It also comes with a Gigabyte of RAM, a high-speed 32GB micro SD card for storage with the FreedomBox software pre-installed, two USB ports, SATA-drive support, a Gigabit Ethernet port, and a backup battery.

Doesn’t sounds like much does it? But, here’s the thing: You don’t need much to run a personal server.

Sure, some of us have been running our own servers at home, the office, or at a hosting site for ages. I’m one of those people. But, it’s hard to do. What the FreedomBox brings to the table is the power to let almost anyone run their own server without being a Linux expert.

The supplied FreedomBox software is based on Debian Linux. It’s designed from the ground-up to make it as hard as possible for anyone to exploit your data. It does this by putting you in control of your own corner of the internet at home. Its simple user interface lets you host your own internet services with little expertise.

You can also just download the FreedomBox software and run it on your own SBC. The Foundation recommends using the Cubietruck, Cubieboard2, BeagleBone Black, A20 OLinuXino Lime2, A20 OLinuXino MICRO, and PC Engines APU. It will also run on most newer Raspberry Pi models.

Want an encrypted chat server to replace WhatsApp? It’s got that. A VoIP server? Sure. A personal website? Of course! Web-based file sharing à la Dropbox? You bet. A Virtual Private Network (VPN) server of your own? Yes, that’s essential for its mission.

The software stack isn’t perfect. This is still a work in progress. So, for example, it still doesn’t have a personal email server or federated social networking, such as GNU Social and Diaspora, to provide a privacy-respecting alternative to Facebook. That’s not because they won’t run on a FreedomBox; they will. What they haven’t been able to do yet is to make it easy enough for anyone to do and not someone with Linux sysadmin chops. That will come in time.

As the Foundation stated, “The word ‘Pioneer’ was included in the name of these kits in order to emphasize the leadership required to run a FreedomBox in 2019. Users will be pioneers both because they have the initiative to define this new frontier and because their feedback will make FreedomBox better for its next generation of users.”

To help you get up to speedm the FreedomBox community will be offering free technical support for owners of the Pioneer Edition FreedomBox servers on its support forum. The Foundation also welcomes new developers to help it perfect the FreedomBox platform.

Why do this? Eben Moglen, Professor of Law at Columbia Law School, saw the mess we were heading toward almost 10 years ago: “Mr. Zuckerberg has attained an unenviable record: he has done more harm to the human race than anybody else his age.” That was before Facebook proved itself to be totally incompetent with security and sold off your data to Cambridge Analytica to scam 50 million US Facebook users with personalized anti-Clinton and pro-Trump propaganda in the 2016 election.

It didn’t have to be that way. In an interview, Moglen told me this: “Concentration of technology is a surprising outcome of cheap hardware and free software. We could have had a world of peers. Instead, the net we built is the net we didn’t want. We’re in an age of surveillance with centralized control. We’re in a world, which encourages swiping, clicking, and flame throwing.”

With FreedomBox, “We can undo this. We can make it possible for ordinary people to provide internet services. You can have your own private messaging, services without a man in the middle watching your every move.”

We can, in short, rebuild the internet so that we, and not multi-billion dollar companies, are in charge.

I like this plan.

Cars

Zoom Just Added New AI-Powered Features, Here’s What They Do

Published

24 mins ago

March 27, 2023

Francisco Peguero

Zoom is also adding an AI-assisted auto-framing system called Intelligent Director to its Zoom Room system. This one relies on a multi-camera setup and picks up the best camera angle to depict a person in a video conference. The company says it paves the way for a “more equitable meeting experience for remote and in-person attendees.” Interestingly, Zoom is borrowing the idea of huddles from Slack, which itself introduced video chats to huddles last year that look a lot like Zoom. Introduced earlier today, Zoom Huddles is a video-centric virtual coworking space with a healthy bunch of collaboration features.

Zoom also wants to offer its very own email inbox and calendar so that users don’t have to jump between the video calling platform and other apps. The result of those ambitions is Zoom Mail, which is now available to all users as a client that can be connected to your existing Gmail or Microsoft inbox. Additionally, if you want Zoom’s very own email service, the company is also offering something called Zoom Mail Service with its very own hosting, but it is limited to paid customers only. Then there’s Zoom Calendar, which lives in the main sidebar and aims to replace rivals from Microsoft and Google that are currently a part of your workflow.

Cars

How To Schedule Or Automate iPhone’s Always-On Display

Published

1 hour ago

March 27, 2023

Francisco Peguero

mokjc/Shutterstock

Apple’s iPhone 14 Pro and iPhone 14 Pro Max are the first iPhones with an always-on display. The setting is enabled by default in currently-available iOS builds, but you cannot schedule or automate iPhone’s always-on display. That changes with the latest iOS 16.4 beta, adding an option to automate the feature.

That sounds exciting, but here’s a caveat. Since iOS 16.4 is available as a release candidate to registered developers or public testers, you might find getting your hands on it challenging. Even if you decide to download it to automate your iPhone’s always-on display, you might experience some performance issues or bugs, ranging from worse battery life to iOS crashes.

Nevertheless, if you’re sure about trying the new features, head to the Apple Beta Software Program page and follow the instructions to install the latest iOS 16.4 beta, which has a new feature to schedule always-on display on the iPhones.

Automate always-on display using Focus Filters

boyudon/Shutterstock

Two ways to automate iPhone 14 Pro’s always-on display in iOS 16.4 are via Focus Filters and Shortcuts. First, let’s discuss the steps in enabling the feature via Focus Filters.

First, head to the Settings app on your iPhone and tap Focus.
Create a new Focus by pressing the plus icon in the top right corner. Select Custom from the available options and name the Focus mode. Tap on Customize Focus and head to the next screen.
Swipe down and select Add Filter under Focus Filters.
Under System Filters, select Always On Display. Ensure the Filter is enabled and tap Add in the top right corner.
Now, under Set A Schedule, do one of the following things.
1. Enable Smart Activation, which applies the Focus Filter at relevant times of the day based on your app usage, location, and other metrics.
2. Select Add Schedule and set when you want the Focus Filter to be active, enabling the always-on display.

You’ve successfully linked the always-on display to the Focus mode, which will now be active during the schedule you set.

Set up a Shortcut to activate always-on display

Primakov/Shutterstock

You can also connect your iPhone’s always-on display to a Shortcut.

Head to the Shortcuts app and press the plus icon in the top right corner.
Select Add Action and locate and select the Set Always On Display option through the search bar at the top.
By default, the Turn and On buttons activate the always-on display when you access the Shortcut.
Tap Done in the top right corner.
Accessing this Shortcut will trigger the always-on display.

Now that you know how to schedule or automate always-on display on your iPhone, here are a few things to remember. Currently, the feature is only available in iOS 16.4 beta, so regular users can’t access the feature. Although Apple is expected to release iOS 16.4 as a stable build for everyone soon, we can’t give an exact date. Second, using the always-on display might deplete your iPhone’s battery faster than usual, which is normal.

Cars

Revamped Microsoft Teams App For Windows Is Leaner, Sleeker

Published

2 hours ago

March 27, 2023

Francisco Peguero

Aside from the sluggish performance, older versions of Microsoft Teams have also received criticism for their rather bland, unimpressive looks. Thanks to a major design revamp, Microsoft is changing all that. The new look — besides being pleasing to the eyes — has been infused with several intuitive elements that were missing in the older version. Some of the significant changes include the simplification of the navigation and settings menu, and the ability to customize the interface with new themes, colors, and backgrounds.

Microsoft

The new Microsoft Teams app borrows a lot of design cues from Windows 11, a move intended to make it feel like a native Windows app. The infamous purple color generally associated with Teams is less prominent now. Microsoft has improved the visual experience of group chats thanks to the newly added group profile pics and group theming options.

One of the major pain points of using Microsoft Teams was its inability to stay logged into multiple workspaces or accounts. The newest version of Teams fixes that. This ensures that users can stay logged into multiple workspaces simultaneously. More importantly, they will continue to receive notifications from all the spaces they are part of. These new features align with Microsoft’s efforts to enhance Team’s collaboration features.