Do you also sometimes encounter YouTube links while browsing on the way? Chances are you have the same problem as me: the YouTube app would open and instantly start buffering, consuming precious amounts of mobile data volume.
Do not want to miss the video but watch it later with unlimited internet (eg. at home)? Look no further - I just released a small app called ‘Watch Later’. It registers on YouTube http URLs and can add the video to your YouTube account’s Watch Later list.
Available for free on Google Play
Feedback welcome on Reddit
The App is licensed under GPL, sources available on GitHub
A lot of us fell victim to the sweet poison of cloud services – me included. Services I use on a daily basis include Google Drive, Google Maps, Github and Gmail, just to name a few. Those are comfortable programs. Running in your browser, everywhere, always up-to-date. No need for backups or any maintenance at all.
What is the price of all this?
You are not only accessing data on remote systems, but you can not know what code will run over there. This is actually worse than running proprietary software on your machine, since you lost even the most basic ways of analysing what’s happening.
Also, giving away the control over your data. Most services will tell you that the data is secure there, but do not believe them! They can access the data and will give access to whoever has enough power or money.
What now?
Everyone builds their own server? This is where a lot of still active services originate from. Mail and Websites can be run by yourself, but it certainly not possible for everyone.
The last months and the success of Bitcoin let me to believe that peer-to-peer based services can help. Bitmessage tries to replace Email. There are even more ambitious ones like MaidSafe which have no lesser goal than building an Internet replacement.
These ideas are not entirely new: Freenet is around for more than a decade now. Back in 2000 there were already visionaries who knew that we would have to defend freedom on the Internet.
The currently existing/developing services might not survive the test of time and acceptance, but there are already hundreds of projects, most of these sharing concepts and code. Thus, I am confident that we will be able to replace current cloud services one-by-one with more secure peer-to-peer based alternatives.
This article documents my first hours with my Rift.
I am following Rift stuff for a couple of months now and have been very excited from the beginning. I was tempted to buy a DK1 in winter but in the end I was patient enough to wait until the DK2 pre-order. As soon as I could order and roughly knew when I would get my hands on it, I made sure I would be contract-free so I could really dive into the Rift when it arrived.
Yesterday morning I just as normal started with some Android stuff but eventually after lunch I would be to excited about the soon-to-expect UPS guy. So I could at least make sure my Windows and graphics drivers were up to date (I only use Windows for gaming so far). I also downloaded UE4 which I plan on trying out in the next couple of days.
My old website existed only for three reasons:
- Google Play wants you to provide a business website
- German law required an ‘Impressum’
- I wanted to play with express.js
Since the site only had the ‘Impressum’, express.js was obviously an overkill. The only code redirected you to /impressum. Trying new stuff and now maybe actually fill this site with some more life, I was searching for a new engine which would fit my needs.
Maximilian Hille
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Tue, May 5, 2015