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Joined 3 years ago
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Cake day: June 17th, 2023

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  • Just commenting based on the title since I am blocked from YT and also don’t speak German. (An English transcript would be useful)


    Ditching Gmail is trivially easy. Boycotting gmail is where the interesting conversation is, because often you need to reach someone who uses gmail. You can do an MX lookup on the domain of the recipient’s email address, but that only works about 70% of the time. If they use an email firewall like Barracuda or a forwarding address, then there is no way to know where the email route ends.

    If I cannot get confidence from an MX lookup, then the recipient is getting a fax or postal letter from me. Google could still end up in the loop, but as long as you don’t reveal an email address to the recipient, at least you remain in control over what Google collects and profits from.


  • I’m not sure what you want a source for. You mean a vendor who will sell one? XO-4 Touch was apparently the last model. I just had a look at laptop.org and the site looks useless now. It used to be full of wikis with copious details about the hardware and software of the OLPC.

    There are (or were) a variety of NGOs who worked on getting OLPCs into impoverished schools. One of them was https://unleashkids.org/. They are not in the business of selling them but ~15 yrs ago they were kind enough to sell some. The idea was that teachers and developers would need them to help support the OLPC project. I suggest touching base with them and see what they say, since they seem to still be around.

    The XO-4 Touch came with “Sugar”, a foss OS just for kids. It was easy to make it boot into Gnome instead (underpinned by RedHat). And someone made an Android OS that could be flashed onto an SD card and booted in the OLPC. I should mention that the OLPC was never 100% FOSS. The usual shit-show of blobs for some of the hardware drivers. I mainly just used it as an e-reader on Gnome.

    I’ve always been baffled that these FOSS e-ink laptops did not make it onto the general marketplace, while at the same time there were no commercial makers of anything like it. There was a “Pixel QI” dual-mode screen that could be bought bare and installed in Thinkpads and other machines, but for some reason that never took off either.