Six Android apps I swapped for open-source, year-one verdict
I have been running a de-Googled Android phone (a phone that has been set up without Google’s apps and services, or with Google’s apps stripped out) for about a year. The de-Googling…
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225 articles
Free legal ebooks: the lending sites that killed my $20 habit
I used to spend $15 to $20 a month on ebooks I would read once and never open again. Then I tried the library apps, the public domain sites, and one or…
The Adobe alternative is easy to announce and hard to maintain
A software suite becomes a real alternative when people can depend on it after the announcement has faded. The launch story here is unusually large: according to XDA’s report, a Reddit user…
Before installing Ungoogled Chromium, vet the build
Ungoogled Chromium is not just a browser download. It is also a choice about who packaged the build, how current it is, and what browser conveniences you are prepared to lose. The…
A fine-tuned model needs tests before it reaches users
Fine-tuning is not a shortcut from a general language model to a trustworthy specialist. It is a way to change a model’s behavior using examples for a more specific task. Whether that…
Self-hosted passwords make recovery your responsibility
A password vault can look familiar after a move while the work behind it changes hands. In the MakeUseOf account, the author moved from 1Password to Vaultwarden and used Bitwarden clients. Browser…
Decide whether vector search needs a database of its own
A search feature does not need a new database merely because its interface includes an AI model. The useful decision comes earlier: does the product need to find records by meaning, or…
Before copying a shell command, check which tool macOS runs
The same command can look familiar on two computers and still behave differently. A shell (the program that reads and runs typed commands) resolves a name through PATH (an ordered list of…
What to verify before accepting an AI-written Python change
A code change from an AI agent still has to earn the same approval as a change from a coworker. The author can produce a large diff (the set of edits between…
A small model makes AI training easier to inspect up close
A language model with 25 million parameters is not a miniature copy of a commercial assistant in every meaningful sense. It is better treated as a teaching lab: small enough to run…