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Merlin wasn’t available here when I checked at some point in time (last year?)

whoBIRD does use BirtNET, from Cornell, so it’s basically the same backend (although it may be an older version).

I recently tried out Merlin (which is now available here) and it’s amazing. It’s definitely more featureful than whoBIRD, although both have the core “recognize bird directly using your phone” features.

For anyone OK with non-FOSS apps, Merlin is great. For anyone who wants a FOSS app for bird detection, whoBIRD is still pretty good.

Either way, identifying apps using ones phone is nice. 👍 Big things to Cornell for making the ML for both of these apps.

Oh, nice! Then there are two great FOSS keyboard under maintenance again! Thanks for mentioning that.

whoBIRD

An app that recognizes birds singing near you, all on device, and has an option to show a photo of the bird too. It’s exclusive to F-Droid (not on Google Play), and the only bird recognizing app I know of that does it all immediately on your device (without sending it to a server). https://f-droid.org/en/packages/org.woheller69.whobird/

Organic Maps

Highly detailed OpenStreetMap maps local on your device. Wonderful for walking directions, as it has on-device routing and maps out walking pathways (which is something that even Google Maps does not do well) https://f-droid.org/en/packages/app.organicmaps/

AntennaPod

The best podcast client also happens to be Free Software and on F-Droid. https://f-droid.org/en/packages/de.danoeh.antennapod/

HeliBoard

This is the best FOSS keyboard that’s under active maintenance. It even supports swiping, but that requires a non-free binary library from Google. (Maintained fork of OpenBoard.) https://f-droid.org/en/packages/helium314.keyboard/

Breezy Weather

Good weather app that has so many details (including pollen too) and fetches from multiple sources. It looks great as well. https://f-droid.org/en/packages/org.breezyweather/

Penpot works perfectly on Linux, and you can even host it yourself in your own computer if you want. It’s web-based and works in both Firefox and Chromium browsers. (I think WebKit ones too, but it’s been a little while since I’ve tried it with Epiphany.)

I use Penpot myself all the time on Linux, but I’m usually using the hosted version so I can collaborate with others without having to maintain a server. I have also run locally in a container using Podman, even with Podman’s rootless support.

But to start using it, all anyone needs to do is point their browser of choice to https://design.penpot.app/ and sign in. There is no setup process or installation needed; self-hosting is completely optional.

Just pointing this out, as there are non-free services that the apps use:

Frog is awesome, but note that while Frog works offline for OCR, it has TTS (text to speech) which uses an online service. As long as you avoid having it read to you, it’s all done locally.

And Dialect always uses an online service. Some of the servers are FOSS, but some aren’t. But everything you type or paste into it is sent somewhere else. (This is the case with using translation websites too, of course.) I’m not saying you shouldn’t use it; I’m just saying that you should be aware.

Hopefully Dialect will add Bergamot (what both Firefox by default & the “translate locally” extension use for translation) at some point. Dialect has a longstanding issue about it, but no forward motion yet. https://github.com/dialect-app/dialect/issues/183

For something open source that runs completely on your computer for translations, you’d want Speech Note. https://flathub.org/apps/net.mkiol.SpeechNote It’s Qt based, but works well. In addition to translation, it can do text to speech and speech to text too. You do have to download models first (easily available as a click in the app), but everything, including the text you’re working with, is all done locally.

I use both Frog and Speech Note all the time on my computer (GNOME on Fedora Linux). They’re excellent.

It does work in Proton, but without audio.

There’s a bug open @ https://github.com/ValveSoftware/Proton/issues/7612

ProtonDB also lists the lack of audio, without workarounds (so far): https://www.protondb.com/app/2512840?device=any

Hopefully there will be a fix and/or workaround very soon; the game looks fun.

If you’re in Europe, it may be due to the DMA.

https://www.lemonde.fr/en/pixels/article/2024/03/06/digital-markets-act-how-the-way-you-use-google-maps-and-messenger-is-changing_6591969_13.html

You may also have noticed something new on Google, when looking for the address of a place: It’s now impossible to click on the map that appears in your search results.

Google is one of the “gatekeepers” according to the DMA (Digital Markets Act). The law recently went into effect. It is supposed to lessen the amount of preferential treatment the big tech companies give themselves.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Markets_Act

I basically gave up on podcasts on the desktop and only use AntennaPod on my phone. When I’m at my desktop, I have my phone paired with my computer via Bluetooth and play that way. I can pause it on my computer via KDE Connect (GSConnect on GNOME).

Bluetooth audio from phone to desktop works on Fedora Linux quite well. It probably works on other Linux distros too. I’m guessing it might also work on other OSes like Windows and macOS.

KDE Connect is available on Android, iOS, KDE (and can run on other desktops too), GNOME (via the GSConnect extension), Windows, and macOS.

This solves the syncing problem by sidestepping the need for it. My podcast state is always correct and I always have my podcasts with me, even when out and about.

Docker on Windows and Mac also runs containers through a VM though. (It’s more obvious on Windows, where you need WSL (powered by a VM) and Hyper-V (a way to run VMs on Windows). But on a Mac, VMs to run Linux are also used to run Docker containers inside the VM.)

Podman Desktop helps to abstract VMs away on Windows and macOS: https://podman-desktop.io/

For the command line, there’s “podman machine” to abstract away the VM. https://podman.io/docs/installation (installing on macOS is mentioned on that page and Windows has a link to more docs which also uses the podman machine command.)

As for Docker compose, you can use it directly with Podman too: https://www.redhat.com/sysadmin/podman-docker-compose (there’s also podman-compose as well). The only thing Docker compose doesn’t support with Podman is swarm functionality.

Docker compose can even work with rootless Podman containers on a user account. It requires an environment variable. https://major.io/p/rootless-container-management-with-docker-compose-and-podman/ (it’s basically enabling the socket for podman and using the environment variable to point at the user podman socket)

I saw a video the other day that compared F:NV via DirectX 9 and DXVK on Windows and how DXVK (and Vulkan underneath of course) does magic to make it so much better with frame pacing.

https://youtu.be/tGF0tKPVbqY

It’s funny how we get that by default on Linux, and Windows folks are trying out parts of Proton to improve their gaming experience in Windows in various games. 🤣

What’s even funnier is that at least in the case of New Vegas, it’s actually even better on Linux, as it compiles and caches the Vulkan shaders, so we shouldn’t have any hiccups (once it’s cached), at least if you’re running it in Steam.

It’s not necessarily that smoking is a larger percentage of the population. It varies, but stats show a similar percentage more or less… it is a bit higher in Europe on average than in the US on average — but both places are large with varied amounts of smokers. It’s more that people are outside near each other more in Europe.

https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/smoking-rates-by-country

In Europe they’re walking down the street, sitting outdoors at cafes, hanging out in the city center, etc. Whereas in the US, people are often driving from place to place to go to a destination, so you don’t notice the smoking as much. Plus, smoking sections are a concept that exists in the US (even outside), whereas they don’t in Europe. Thankfully, in much of the US and EU, most places are finally non-smoking indoors now.

This is a gross overgeneralization. It’s different in different parts of the US and different parts of Europe, of course.

(FWIW: I totally agree with you that it’s gross. And it’s far too common to run into in Europe.)