For today's #ThankYouTuesday, I want to thank Michael Dexter. @dexter

Michael is someone who is always present, both physically and morally, at every BSD and ZFS event. He raises funds, organizes, handles technical details, and does all of this tirelessly and relentlessly for many years.
His talks are always engaging and full of valuable content.
It was a pleasure to meet him at EuroBSDCon, and it will be a pleasure to see him again at the first available opportunity.

Thank you, Michael!

This afternoon, an acquaintance joined a Mastodon instance and asked me which "celebrities" are present in the Fediverse, as if it were important to determine the value of a social network based on that.

I told him that the most important user in the Fediverse is him. Just as it’s you, reading this. Someone who has decided to interact with others freely. Who has chosen to trust their administrator (or create their own instance) more than they trust those who run traditional, monolithic, centralized social networks.

So, I want to thank all the friends of BSD Cafe, whether local or not, for being here and making this place what it is. And I thank all my friends in the Fediverse, who make my timeline lively, interesting, intelligent, fun, and thought-provoking - every day, at any time.

#BSDCafe #Mastodon #Fediverse #SocialNetworks #SocialMedia #Community #Trust #OpenSource #DigitalFreedom #JoinTheFediverse

And so, it’s Saturday night. Again. Sometimes, it feels like, after turning 40, the weeks fly by as quickly as days did when I was 20.

Time flows, and we pass along with it.

That’s why I love living each day with enthusiasm, positivity, and an open heart. And even though it’s still Saturday night here, this image from just a few hours ago is perfect to wish everyone a wonderful #SilentSunday

(look at the alt text for a deeper idea I had when taking this photo)

#Photography #Photo #Italy #Ferrara #History #CityPhotography #City #AncientCities #OldTimes

This week in a nutshell: a series of Windows VPS migrated from Proxmox to FreeBSD, a new OpenBSD installation, and a NetBSD-based tutorial in the works. A series of FreeBSD jail migrations between various servers (some optimizations, others upgrades). A long-awaited reply that still hasn't arrived. The video of my interview, however, has arrived. A surprise article (which won't appear on my blog but in a much more important place for our BSD community) has almost been finished. Some new and old friends have joined the BSD Cafe.

A Pixel 9 Pro XL with GrapheneOS has become (to my great satisfaction) my daily driver – and I must thank the post https://exquisite.social/@h3artbl33d/113437597486377905 by @h3artbl33d for reigniting my interest in making it my daily driver. Yesterday, I also got a smartwatch fully supported by Gadgetbridge (thanks for this great piece of software, @gadgetbridge )so I no longer have to send my personal data around. And once again, thanks to the friends on the Fediverse (I won’t list them all) for the interesting list of suggestions that came from this post: https://mastodon.bsd.cafe/@stefano/113474709502407272.

Some photos, lots of bureaucracy, almost enough sleep. Now it's Friday night, and the next step is to head to bed. I’ll configure Gadgetbridge more thoroughly while my wife starts dozing off before deciding what to watch, so I’ll probably end up watching something on my own.

Meanwhile, as often happens whenever she sees me a little tired or a bit demoralized, she quietly pulled out and hung up what’s in the photo, next to my bed station, to remind me of the positivity and joy of those days.

Happy Friday, friends of the BSD Cafe and the entire Fediverse. Have a great weekend!

#Fediverse #BSDCafe #FridayEvening #Relax #EBC24 #EuroBSDCon #EuroBSDCon24 #Friends #BSD #Community

Saturday relaxation: I'm doing some tests to see if I could use the Google Pixel 7 with GrapheneOS - and without Google services - as my main phone. I've solved many of the issues:

- F-Droid for downloading main apps
- Aurora Store for Play Store apps
- For push notifications, I already have the ntfy server on my own server. By using UnifiedPush, many apps can use it
- Tusky (or moshidon) perfectly supports UnifiedPush (although I usually have notifications turned off for social apps)
- FluffyChat and Element support UnifiedPush and work well on my server
- Whatsapp works perfectly with the Matrix bridge, so I don't need to install it
- Mercurygram for Telegram perfectly supports notifications via UnifiedPush
- For email, I'm unsure whether to keep a separate connection (also to receive email notifications if my ntfy server is down) or use NotiMail to redirect them to UnifiedPush
- 2FAS Auth for 2FA

I will probably create a profile with Google services only for the apps that strictly require them, but it won't run in the background and I'll only use it when needed. For example, everything related to banking apps comes to mind.

Some apps remain out, mainly intercom apps. However, I could integrate them into Home Assistant and use that for sending notifications.

Yes, I think I could use a device daily without Google services, being fully in control of my data.

#Pixel #GooglePixel #GrapheneOS #OwnYourData