Tomorrow my parental leave officially starts, so I’ll be off the grid for a little over a couple of months. I’ll be back mid September with (hopefully) recharged batteries. In the mean time, have fun!
Use smartphone as a webcam
Droidcam makes the setup easy on Linux
These days of coronavirus where a lot of people work from home the number of teleconferences per unit of time has skyrocketed. Most of us are forced to use video conferencing software of dubious privacy practices without having much say in the choice, but that is a story for another day. If you are like me and do not have an external webcam to plug into your PC, don’t run off to the store just yet. There are solutions to make your Android smartphone act as a webcam that work really well. One of them is droidcam from Dev47Apps, which works even if you don’t have Google Services installed. This post quickly discusses how to set this up on your Linux PC using both wifi and ADB.
Arch with LUKS on LVM
Arch Linux installation with LUKS on LVM encryption
2020-06-16 edit: use dd to create swap file instead of fallocate
It is well known that Arch Linux does not have the easiest install process of all Linux distributions. In my opinion, for technical users this is a big plus, as you get to know your system better simply by having to set it up from scratch. This comes with the perk that you only install the packages you need, leading to a smaller and arguably snappier system.
In this guide, I’m documenting my latest Arch Linux installation on my laptop, where I used full disk encryption with LUKS over LVM. BTW, you should always encrypt your disks on your mobile devices, either laptops or phones.It comes virtually for free, and it provides countless benefits.
Tor with qutebrowser
Run qutebrowser with tor by default
If you are a qutebrowser user and care about privacy and anonymity, you may want to run qutebrowser using the tor network by default. Doing so is easy. This post documents how to set it up.
My experience with Soverin.net
Problems plague the privacy-centered email provider soverin.net
My degoogling process started a few months ago, and it included moving on from Gmail to a privacy-focused email provider, amongst many other actions. I surveyed the landscape and considered Proton Mail, Tutanota, Posteo, and a few others. Finally I settled with the Amsterdam-based Soverin.net, openend an account back in July 2019 and paid for a full year of service. What follows is the story of why I cancelled my account yesterday in favour of another provider.
