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Eoghan Sweeney

Eoghan Sweeney

@eoghan.bsky.social

2.7K followers 610 following 890 posts

Journalist; trainer osintessentials.com Also @osintessentials.bsky.social

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Eoghan Sweeney @eoghan.bsky.social · 5h

Thank you. Not sure how I slipped up with that - I think I'll blame my age

a dog is covering its face with its paw and the words `` sorry '' are written above it .

ALT: a dog is covering its face with its paw and the words `` sorry '' are written above it .

media.tenor.com

Reposted by Eoghan Sweeney

LibreOffice @libreoffice.bsky.social · 6h

Please – please don't recommend insecure software 😟 OpenOffice has years-old, unfixed security problems: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apache_... – All development moved years ago to LibreOffice, the actively maintained successor project. Still free and open source, but with vital fixes and improvements...

Eoghan Sweeney @eoghan.bsky.social · 5h

Thanks. I'm not putting myself up as an authority on this stuff - this kind of feedback is a big help. I guess I'll be staying away from the office tools on kSuite. Any idea why they're not using Libreoffice?

Eoghan Sweeney @eoghan.bsky.social · 8h

I read that. Some pertinent points. But it still started with a CEO seemingly going out of his way to cosy up to Trump - including an attention-seeking @

Eoghan Sweeney @eoghan.bsky.social · 8h

That's true. It's more really about not wanting to have any association with that

Eoghan Sweeney @eoghan.bsky.social · 9h

I was using Proton for a while, but the CEO's enthusiasm for Trump was discouraging. With Vivaldi I've found there's absolutely no fall-off in user experience, particularly if you don't require your browser to log you in to the Google suite

Eoghan Sweeney @eoghan.bsky.social · 11h

Incidentally, if you're looking for an alternative to Slack, Infomaniak's kChat looks solid. And kMeet, which uses Jitsi, is a more than capable option to Zoom

Eoghan Sweeney @eoghan.bsky.social · 13h

1/6 Update on my efforts to wriggle free of the big US tech platforms. There are a lot of good alternatives out there. Starting with the ones I'm happiest with at the moment:
Infomaniak - Impressive suite of services, including cloud storage, OpenOffice, file transfer, and more besides

Eoghan Sweeney @eoghan.bsky.social · 13h

6/6 Photo sharing - Pixelfed: I don't use it much. Basically an Instagram replacement. Works fine, but if lots of engagement matters, the small user base will disappoint you
Music - Tidal: I find it a bit less unpleasant than Spotify

What am I missing?

a close up of a dog with big ears and the words im all ears

ALT: a close up of a dog with big ears and the words im all ears

media.tenor.com

Eoghan Sweeney @eoghan.bsky.social · 13h

5/6 Project management - Zenkit: Not as intuitive or full-featured as Trello, but it's European
Ride-hailing - Bolt: It's not Uber
Video hosting: PeerTube; Dailymotion - Only using them right now for private videos to share with family. Either works fine for that

Eoghan Sweeney @eoghan.bsky.social · 13h

4/6 Maps - HERE WeGo; OpenStreetMap: Very hard to compete with Google, but for many tasks they get the job done
Video editor - Kdenlive: Not as user-friendly as the big players, but does what I need it to do
VOIP - Talk360: Not used much. Basically a Skype replacement

Eoghan Sweeney @eoghan.bsky.social · 13h

3/6 Password manager - pCloud: Just works, easy backups
Authenticator - Aegis: Works without hassle. Slightly annoying that it makes me choose to use biometric every time and doesn't accept me setting that as the default
Notes - Joplin: Simple, works well. Syncing via Infomaniak kDrive

Eoghan Sweeney @eoghan.bsky.social · 13h

2/6 Browser - Vivaldi: This has been a no-brainer. Very smooth user-experience, including Chrome-style profiles
Email - Tutamail: Straightforward, no unnecessary frills, but effective and reliable, which is as much as I want from mail
Messenger - Threema: Does the job. No exposure to AWS

Eoghan Sweeney @eoghan.bsky.social · 13h

1/6 Update on my efforts to wriggle free of the big US tech platforms. There are a lot of good alternatives out there. Starting with the ones I'm happiest with at the moment:
Infomaniak - Impressive suite of services, including cloud storage, OpenOffice, file transfer, and more besides

Eoghan Sweeney @eoghan.bsky.social · 16h

Of the messengers with reasonable long-term prospects, Threema still strikes me as the best choice.
Signal, Wire and Olvid are vulnerable to AWS outages.
WhatsApp - Zuckerberg toy
Line, Viber, Telegram - too much data collection
Others, I'm not sure how long they'll be around

Eoghan Sweeney @eoghan.bsky.social · 1d

I was slightly disappointed that the Swisstransfer app doesn't play nice in Graphene - but it works fine in Vivaldi mobile

Eoghan Sweeney @eoghan.bsky.social · 1d

Yep. Not an app, but Starlink being an obvious other example

Eoghan Sweeney @eoghan.bsky.social · 1d

I use Threema with the family. Haven't tested it exhaustively. For replacing US services, been playing around with Infomaniak as well - no messenger but some interesting stuff in kSuite

Eoghan Sweeney @eoghan.bsky.social · 1d

Signal being affected by the AWS snafu stands out - obviously far from the bulletproof service many expect it to be. E2EE means the content of comms should always be safe, but picture a scenario - with Bezos firmly in the Trump camp - where the administration decides it wants the app offline

a close up of a black dog making a funny face

ALT: a close up of a black dog making a funny face

media.tenor.com

Eoghan Sweeney @eoghan.bsky.social · 1d

Absolutely. And it's a common issue. How often do you hear people say they don't want to try a different service because "I can do everything on Google"?

Reposted by Eoghan Sweeney

John Scott-Railton @jsrailton.bsky.social · 1d

Your favorite thing is down because DynamoDB at Amazon's AWS US-EAST-1 Regionwoke up with Main Character Syndrome.

This is the default /legacy backbone for a ton of things.

Including Amazon's own stuff.

Massive outages.

Here's what's going on & what we know 1/

Eoghan Sweeney @eoghan.bsky.social · 1d

That's a lot of down

Eoghan Sweeney @eoghan.bsky.social · 1d

Ugh, typo. Although for the moment we seem to be Postplexity

Reposted by Eoghan Sweeney

James Chaffee @jchaffee.bsky.social · 1d

When AWS goes down, most tools that teachers use also go down. If your lesson was built around one of those websites, your plan goes out the window.

Eoghan Sweeney @eoghan.bsky.social · 1d

Yep. And I've had people this morning ask me what's up with Duolingo/Roblox/Preplexity/etc etc. A lot of eggs in that basket

Eoghan Sweeney @eoghan.bsky.social · 1d

Are enough adults now aware of 6-7 to have made it terminally uncool?