hperrin

If you’re looking for an alternative to Gmail, may I introduce Port87.

I’ve been working on this email service for four years, and I just opened it to the public today. The way it works is a might different than other email services.

You still get an address like yourname@port87.com, but you don’t usually use that form. Instead, you add a label like yourname-lemmy@port87.com. This is often called subaddressing or plus addressing. With Port87, these addresses go into labels. Everything between the dash and the at is a label. When you sign up somewhere, you can give them a label, even if it doesn’t exist yet. Then it becomes a pending label that you can approve to move it in with all your other labels. This really helps with organization too.

You can also give labels meant for real people, like yourname-friends@port87.com. On labels meant for real people, you can enable screening that responds to anyone new with a link to prove they’re human. When they click the link, their email is delivered.

Lastly, you can give out your “bare address” (yourname@port87.com) anywhere, because any email to it doesn’t get delivered to you. Instead, they get a response saying to email one of your other addresses, then a list of all of the addresses to your public labels. For example, I have a public label at hperrin-opensource@port87.com that’s meant for email about my open source projects. That gets included in the list in the auto reply when you email hperrin@port87.com.

Oh, also, you can bring your own domain! The main benefit of your own domain is it prevents vendor lock in. If Port87 ever stops meeting your needs, you can pack up your domain and take it to another provider. It also prevents losing your address if Port87 ever shuts down.

If you can’t tell, I’m very passionate about email, and the more competition there is to Gmail and Exchange, the more they’ll be forced to actually stop trying to Embrace Extend Extinguish email.

I was discussing this with some friends yesterday, and we’ve basically narrowed it down to three contenders. In order:

1. Salt
2. Ice
3. Copper ore

Rules:

Going by dictionary definition of “rock”, which means “stone”, which means “mineral”.

Water is a mineral according to the dictionary, which is why ice is in there.

Minerals are inorganic according to the dictionary, so things like sugar crystals don’t count, since they’re organic.

So, is it one of those three, or are there other delicious rocks that we’ve overlooked?

My first app on Flathub: Stream Overlay!

If you stream games on Linux, this can help you by showing your chat and alerts on your screen on top of your game.

This is my first application on Flathub! If you’re a game streamer, this can help by having your Twitch chat and alerts appear on your screen, above your game.

It’s a FOSS application, available here on GitHub:

https://github.com/hperrin/stream-overlay

A fully automated, on demand, personalized con man, ready to lie to you about any topic you want doesn’t really seem like an ideal product. I don’t think that’s what the developers of these LLMs set out to make when they created them either. However, I’ve seen this behavior to a certain extent in every LLM I’ve interacted with. One of my favorite examples was a particularly small-parameter version of Llama (I believe it was Llama-3.1-8B) confidently insisting to me that Walt Disney invented the Matterhorn (like, the actual mountain) for Disneyland. Now, this is something along the lines of what people have been calling “hallucinations” in LLMs, but the fact that it would not admit that it was wrong when confronted and used confident language to try to convince me that it was right, is what pushes that particular case across the boundary to what I would call “con-behavior”. Assertiveness is not always a property of this behavior, though. Lately, OpenAI (and I’m sure other developers) have been training their LLMs to be more “agreeable” and to acquiesce to the user more often. This doesn’t eliminate this con-behavior, though. I’d like to show you another example of this con-behavior that is much more problematic.

A fully automated, on demand, personalized con man, ready to lie to you about any topic you want doesn’t really seem like an ideal product. I don’t think that’s what the developers of these LLMs set out to make when they created them either. However, I’ve seen this behavior to a certain extent in every LLM I’ve interacted with. One of my favorite examples was a particularly small-parameter version of Llama (I believe it was Llama-3.1-8B) confidently insisting to me that Walt Disney invented the Matterhorn (like, the actual mountain) for Disneyland. Now, this is something along the lines of what people have been calling “hallucinations” in LLMs, but the fact that it would not admit that it was wrong when confronted and used confident language to try to convince me that it was right, is what pushes that particular case across the boundary to what I would call “con-behavior”. Assertiveness is not always a property of this behavior, though. Lately, OpenAI (and I’m sure other developers) have been training their LLMs to be more “agreeable” and to acquiesce to the user more often. This doesn’t eliminate this con-behavior, though. I’d like to show you another example of this con-behavior that is much more problematic.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ca/post/43297441

I just started working on a self hosted Android & iOS ereader app. I’d like to know what features you would like to see if you use this kind of app.

Current Planned Features

• Support for EPUB, TXT, and HTML ebooks.
• Syncing over WebDAV. (Bring your own server. I’m not hosting people’s pirated libraries.)
• Multiple libraries (a WebDAV server is a library), and multiple users per library.
• Current progress from offline reading will get synced when back online.
• Dark mode.
• Custom fonts and themes.
• Text to speech.
• Keep awake.
• Orientation lock.
• Open source. (GPL license)
• Native apps using React Native.
• Animations can be turned completely off.
• Really good e-ink screen support.
• Tablet and phone sized device support.

Background

I use a Boox Palma, but sometimes I don’t have it with me, and I’d like to read on my iPhone.

With the current ereaders I know of, there’s always some downside. Syncing costs money, rendering is janky, page turn animations can’t be disabled, themes cost money (really???), no cross platform support, etc.

I want to learn how to build native apps with React Native, so I’m using this as a learning project. I’m not trying to make money on it, so it’ll be open source, and you have to have your own WebDAV server with all your ebooks on it to sync.

Non-Planned Features

Some things I just can’t do or won’t help me learn, so I’m not going to do them.

• PDF support. (Maybe in the future, but not the initial version.)
• Web app. (I don’t want to host it.)
• Kindle app. (React Native doesn’t support them.)
• Syncing over anything but WebDAV. (I’ll be using WebDAV properties, and I’m not interested in doing any other providers.)

So I’d like to know, what are some features you would like to see, and what are the pain points you’ve experienced with your current ereader apps?

I just started working on a self hosted Android & iOS ereader app. I’d like to know what features you would like to see if you use this kind of app.

Current Planned Features

• Support for EPUB, TXT, and HTML ebooks.
• Syncing over WebDAV. (Bring your own server. I’m not hosting people’s pirated libraries.)
• Multiple libraries (a WebDAV server is a library), and multiple users per library.
• Current progress from offline reading will get synced when back online.
• Dark mode.
• Custom fonts and themes.
• Text to speech.
• Keep awake.
• Orientation lock.
• Open source. (GPL license)
• Native apps using React Native.
• Animations can be turned completely off.
• Really good e-ink screen support.
• Tablet and phone sized device support.

Background

I use a Boox Palma, but sometimes I don’t have it with me, and I’d like to read on my iPhone.

With the current ereaders I know of, there’s always some downside. Syncing costs money, rendering is janky, page turn animations can’t be disabled, themes cost money (really???), no cross platform support, etc.

I want to learn how to build native apps with React Native, so I’m using this as a learning project. I’m not trying to make money on it, so it’ll be open source, and you have to have your own WebDAV server with all your ebooks on it to sync.

Non-Planned Features

Some things I just can’t do or won’t help me learn, so I’m not going to do them.

• PDF support. (Maybe in the future, but not the initial version.)
• Web app. (I don’t want to host it.)
• Kindle app. (React Native doesn’t support them.)
• Syncing over anything but WebDAV. (I’ll be using WebDAV properties, and I’m not interested in doing any other providers.)

So I’d like to know, what are some features you would like to see, and what are the pain points you’ve experienced with your current ereader apps?