Web developer, gamer, reader, and a true ligma male

  • 7 Posts
  • 15 Comments
Joined 2 years ago
cake
Cake day: June 8th, 2023

help-circle
  • It seems that while this update once again contains lots of (unncessary) AI bullshit, it also has some other positive changes, such as :

    • More End-To-End encrypted functionality
    • Improved file upload (apparently 6x as fast)
    • Better performance
    • Converting documents
    • Native desktop client UI (hopefully the new appImage does work for Linux, because it does not work right now.
    • Improved AppAPI for other developers to develop plugins / apps / extensions in different programming languages
    • Added pronouns to account profile
    • Right-To-Left text for the Arabic users (and whoever uses RTL instead of LTR)
    • PGP/MIME support for Nextcloud Mail
    • Chunked file upload on desktop app
    • Improved OpenID Connect API

    Overall, I am still disappointed by the direction towards AI that Nextcloud has taken, but I suspect that it makes them more money. Also, apparently large organizations / enterprises who pay Nextcloud GmbH for support, are also allowed to influence the roadmap of the software, which probably has something to do with jumping on the AI bandwagon.

    However, despite this new direction, Nextcloud still does the job for me: Easy file syncing, with document collaboration, calendar, contacts and basically act as a whole replacement for Microsoft 365 / Google Workspace / whatever with little to no problems.



  • There’s Ryot.

    Besides that, there’s also Movary, which has contributions from yours truly, but it only supports tracking movies at the moment. I’m planning on adding TV show support later, probably after the first stable 1.0 has released (In my mind it’ll probably be major release 2.0 or 3.0). The main dev and I don’t have much time these days, so it might take a while…




  • I use it to manage my documents, backup my photos from my phone to my server and access all my files from any other device. Basically Nextcloud is my replacement for OneDrive.

    Additionally, I have used it in the past to collaborate on various group projects which require documents. For example, I had to make a presentation with some other people and I could create a PowerPoint in Nextcloud, send a share link to others and then we could edit the PowerPoint in realtime with Nextcloud + Collabora, which is pretty cool. It’s the only FOSS alternative (at least as far as I’m aware of) that can compete with Microsoft 365 / Google Workspaces.


  • Honestly, I’m not really excited about the past couple of major Nextcloud releases.

    Mainly because there’s still one big issue for small-scale Nextcloud servers: performance.

    Mainly the web UI is still too slow for me to properly use, which is why I don’t use it at all (unless I have to update an app).

    It’s a bit disappointing that they’re mainly focused on the large enterprise customers instead of small hobbyists like me, but it’s still understandable; after all, their income is mainly from the enterprise customers, not from selfhosters.

    I also don’t really like how they’ve jumped on the AI hypetrain instead of improving performance. But once again, I guess this generates more income for them than focusing on other things like improving performance.




  • Docker is a container manager, but that doesn’t say anything if you don’t know what containers are.

    Containers are basically isolated apps. For example, take something like Nextcloud. Nextcloud can run in a Docker container, which means that it runs in an isolated environment completely separated from the user’s system. If Nextcloud breaks, the user’s server won’t be affected at all, because it’s running isolated.

    Why is this useful? Well, it’s useful because dependencies and such automatically update. Nextcloud for example, is dependent on PHP and if you install Nextcloud directly on your server, you’ll need to ensure that PHP 8 has been installed and set up properly. If PHP (or the required PHP extensions) aren’t properly installed, Nextcloud won’t work. Or, maybe if there’s a Nextcloud update that requires a new version of PHP (PHP 9 or 10 in the future), you’ll have to manually update PHP to the newer version.

    All that dependency management is completely gone with containers. The container itself automatically installs and sets up a proper environment for the app that’s running. So in the case of Nextcloud, the PHP binaries, extensions, and all the other stuff is all automatically included without the developer having to do anything at all. Just run one command and your entire Nextcloud instance is automatically updated.









  • My ELI5 version:

    Basically, the ‘Web Environment Integrity’ proposal is a new technique that verifies whether a visitor of a website is actually a human or a bot.

    Currently, there are captchas where you need to select all the crosswalks, cars, bicycles, etc. which checks whether you’re a bot, but this can sometimes be bypassed by the bots themselves.

    This new ‘Web Environment Integrity’ thing goes as follows:

    1. You visit a website
    2. Website wants to know whether you’re a human or a bot.
    3. Your browser (or the ‘client’) will send request an ‘environment attestation’ from an ‘attester’. This means that your browser (such as Firefox or Chrome) will request approval from some third-party (like Google or something) and the third-party (which is referred to as ‘attester’) will send your browser a message, which basically says ‘This user is a bot’ or ‘This user is a human being’.
    4. Your browser receives this message and will then send it to the website, together with the ‘attester public key’. The ‘attester public key’ can be used by the website to verify whether the attester (a.k.a. the third-party checking whether you’re a human or not) is trustworthy and will then check whether the attester says that you’re a human or not.

    I hope this clears things up and if I misinterpreted the GitHub explainer, please correct me.

    The reason people (rightfully) worry about this, is because it gives attesters A LOT of power. If Google decides they don’t like you, they won’t tell the website that you’re a human. Or maybe, if Google doesn’t like the website you’re trying to visit, they won’t even cooperate with attesting. Lots of things can go wrong here.