Tootfinder

Depressing article about Starlink alternatives...
https://fronts.co/article/governments-

Browse self-hostable software · selfhost.directory
The index of self-hostable projects — ranked, categorized and served with live updates.
Own your data and stop giving it to big tech.
🌐 https://selfhost.directory
:mastodon: @…

Browse self-hostable software
Discover self-hostable software you can run on your own server — a curated, open-source directory with setup guides, alternatives, licenses and live version track…

from my link log —
No-one knows the type of char char.
https://blog.knatten.org/2019/05/24/no-one-knows-the-type-of-char-char/
saved 2019-10-17

No-one knows the type of char + char
Quick quiz! Given the following: Which overload gets called by the following? Alternatives: f(unsigned int) f(int) f(char) No-one knows the type of char + char If you answered 4), congratulations! …

Netherlands-based inference chip startup Euclyd raised a €200M Series A co-led by Samsung, Somerset Capital, Scaleup Europe Fund, and Innovation Industries (Kai Nicol-Schwarz/CNBC)
https://www.cnbc.com/2026/09/14/samsung-euclyd-ai-chip-funding.html

Samsung backs Nvidia AI chip rival in $230 million funding round as GPU alternatives boom
Dutch startup Euclyd raised the funding in a round co-led by Samsung, Somerset Capital Partners, the Scaleup Europe Fund and Innovation Industries.

#ListeningClub After moving my digital music library to a larger hard drive, I’ve had nothing but trouble with Apple Music. Time to look for macOS alternatives. So far contenders are Swinsian and Doppler. Suggestions? On the other hand, I’ve been listening to vinyl more lately because it JUST WORKS.

Airtable alternatives available from Agaric: https://agaric.coop/blog/airtable-alternatives-available-agaric

Looking for an Airtable exit before it is priced out from under you or becomes unusable?
https://agaric.coop/blog/airtable-alternatives-available-agaric

Cowboys’ edge rush in ‘wait and see’ mode until training camp https://cowboyswire.usatoday.com/story/sports/nfl/cowboys/2026/07/14/dallas-cowboys-edge-rush-wait-see-mode-2026-training-camp-von-mi…

Reduced meat and dairy consumption improves health, environmental and most nutritional outcomes without increasing diet costs among Scottish adults https://www.nature.com/articles/s43016-026-01384-3

Reduced meat and dairy consumption improves health, environmental and most nutritional outcomes without increasing diet costs among Scottish adults - Nature Food
Using microsimulation of Scottish Health Survey adults, this study compares 33 pathways for achieving the UK Climate Change Committee meat and dairy reduction targets. Most pathways improved nutrient intake, health and environmental outcomes without increasing diet costs, with greater benefits from reducing red and processed meat among high consumers and using gram-for-gram substitutions with foods including vegetables, beans, eggs and plant-based alternatives.

Is there a good #FOSS #animation studio? I'm annoyed that my kids are required to use a big commercial app for a camp that's aimed at teaching them the basics. I'm entirely ignorant here, but I would've thought totally adequate alternatives exist for learning the ropes.

🎯 It acts as a pre-execution firewall: when an agent tries a command, dcg inspects it in sub-millisecond time and either allows it silently or blocks it with a clear explanation safer alternatives
🔧 A three-tier pipeline with SIMD-accelerated quick-reject lets 95% of commands pass in under 10µs — only commands with dangerous keywords hit the expensive regex stage

EU Member States are deprioritising 'non-wires' solutions or non-fossil flexibility as alternatives for network expansion.
https://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/press/press-releases/20…

I spent twenty minutes today speaking with Mitch McConnell. He gave me his thoughts on natural alternatives to combating the algae at the Reflecting Pool. #MitchMcConnell #TwentyMinutesWith Mitch

"This ruling confirms what we have argued from the start: interoperability is not optional under the DMA, it is the law. Developers finally have legal certainty to build competitive alternatives to Apple's ecosystem, and we remain committed to monitoring enforcement of today’s decision, says Lucas Lasota, FSFE's Senior Programme Manager Legal"
@…

The more I think about it, and the more I compare the new #Commodore phone to the available alternatives, the more I like the majority of the choices they have made. It’s just a shame that the blacklisting of browsers is an absolute and utter dealbreaker. Doing a web search and messaging are two non-negotiable features for my phone.

No, most will be incinerated.
Nearly as bad, what's wrong with a manual fan?
Britons to buy 8m mini fans this year – but almost half will end up in landfill | Retail industry | The Guardian
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2026/jul/08/uk-mini-…

Britons to buy 8m mini fans this year – but almost half will end up in landfill
Shoppers urged to seek quality products or alternatives as data shows demand surpassing least year’s total

Just noticed the (Computing Within) LIMITS 2026 workshop papers are on arXiv already. A selection:
Narratives That Limit the Possible: Interrupting Narrative Closure in Computing Practice
https://arxiv.org/abs/2606.17360
Modest, artistic, and radical solutions to the environmental impact of ima…

Narratives That Limit the Possible: Interrupting Narrative Closure in Computing Practice
Computing's dominant concepts - innovation, efficiency, resilience, professionalism - often migrate from reflective ideals to instruments that limit behaviour, redirect responsibility, and foreclose critique. We call this drift weaponisation: the discursive repurposing of professional concepts so that they stabilise business-as-usual while making structural alternatives appear unreasonable, illegible, or out of scope. Using collective autoethnography across education, justice, public administra…

I know Substack is a bad platform for self-publishing articles, but what alternatives do writers recommend? I know Ghost, it even has a theme I like, but whenever I look online I'm somewhat convinced by a bigger platform's influence.
Do you…

Revealed: How Substack makes money from hosting Nazi newsletters
Exclusive: Site takes a cut of subscriptions to content that promotes far-right ideology, white supremacy and antisemitism

Y a quoi comme alternatives crédibles Š google en termes de moteur de recherche, basé en Europe avec son propre index ?
le retoot rends les cheveux soyeux.

A deep dive into Grok Bot, including its architecture, use cases, and alternatives, as xAI adds shareable bot templates and online purchases through Stripe Link (Flavio Copes)
https://flaviocopes.com/grok-bot/

A deep dive into Grok Bot
A detailed Grok Bot guide covering setup, persistent computers, skills, routines, templates, approvals, real use cases, limits, pricing, and alternatives.

so where's the thread discussing alternatives to Debian?
and has anyone got Zotero and Scrivener (under wine) running under FreeBSD? Everything else I can deal with....

🚀 Quick start: run it natively via cargo, pull the Docker image (malisper/pgrust:nightly), or connect with psql on port 54321 — no install needed for the browser demo.
📊 Status: V1 / experimental, not production-ready. Roadmap: close the remaining compatibility gap toward 100%, stability work, plus 64-bit transaction IDs and VACUUM alternatives. Licensed AGPL-3.0.
🌐

Friends Don't Let Friends Make Bad Graphs! Do you agree with the examples of bad graphs and the alternatives Chenxin Li (@chenxinli2.bsky.social) lists at #RStats

GitHub - cxli233/FriendsDontLetFriends: Friends don't let friends make certain types of data visualization - What are they and why are they bad.
Friends don't let friends make certain types of data visualization - What are they and why are they bad. - cxli233/FriendsDontLetFriends

Reduced meat and dairy consumption improves health, environmental and most nutritional outcomes without increasing diet costs among Scottish adults https://www.nature.com/articles/s43016-026-01384-3

Reduced meat and dairy consumption improves health, environmental and most nutritional outcomes without increasing diet costs among Scottish adults - Nature Food
Using microsimulation of Scottish Health Survey adults, this study compares 33 pathways for achieving the UK Climate Change Committee meat and dairy reduction targets. Most pathways improved nutrient intake, health and environmental outcomes without increasing diet costs, with greater benefits from reducing red and processed meat among high consumers and using gram-for-gram substitutions with foods including vegetables, beans, eggs and plant-based alternatives.

#Gardening question:
Leaf - blowers: good or bad?
Removing dead leaves from alleyways or lawn: good or bad?
If removing the leaves is good but leaf-blowers are bad: are there good alternatives? 🙏
Edit (hopefully that won't change poll results) - thanks for the votes and comments so far!
People are suggesting using a rake as an alternative, which sounds good but apparently …

Null is problematic, but why? Let's see why, and let that guide us to new alternatives. #PHP
https://www.garfieldtech.com/blog/much-ado-about-null

Much ado about null
null is controversial, and often derided. But let's go a bit deeper and understand what it means to mean nothing, and let that guide us to better error handling.

@… @… I use KeePassXC and I've heard vague rumors the developer is problematic. The geat thing is that since KeePass is an open format, there are multiple competing alternatives.
Update: there was controversy over the use of…

Oh no, so far I was a fan of #1password.
I wrote them that we can't continue our company account if they loose their morale compass!
What are the alternatives for a small company password manager in case they don't back up?

1Password Supports the Ethnic Cleansing of Europe — Andrew Lilley Brinker
1Password has committed $300,000 to Omarchy. This is unacceptable and must be rescinded.

Due to popular demand, our article about European social media alternatives is now also available in english. #dnip
(Translation supported by artificial friends, corrections welcome)
https://dnip.ch/2026/06/19/social…

Meanwhile, Fat Putin is eliminating subsidies for & eveb paying companies not to implement energy alternatives to Iran's fossil fuel.
https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/executive-order-14315-en…

Getting great @… natively into Safari only works via a plugin, and that’s pretty error-prone. So I went looking for alternatives. @… and Orion Browser are both excellent.
Orion won, because it also lets me use Fi…

Dutch Surf sta elaborando un'offerta per liberarsi dalla dipendenza dalle grandi aziende tecnologiche
La cooperativa olandese per l'informatica applicata all'istruzione e alla ricerca sta conducendo progetti pilota con strumenti open source, affiancando valide alternative ai servizi esistenti delle grandi aziende tecnologiche.

From Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives
September 17 at 7 pm PT for this year‘s Rosenbluth Lecture with Linda McQuaig and Neil Brooks, who will be speaking about their new book Cancelling Billionaires Before They Cancel Us. Linda needs no introduction as one of Canada’s top journalists and progressive commentators. Neil is a lawyer and academic, and his work was extremely influential to me when I was starting out as a progressive economist. They will be available to chat and sign…

Rosenbluth Lecture 2026: live at Vancouver's Harbour Centre | CCPA
Where: Challenge Theatre, Simon Fraser University Harbour Centre campus, 555 West Hastings Street, Vancouver

I just hope the cool people won't just be offline, when Bluesky draws it's last breath.
I hope they'll realize, that community funded alternatives, that are built for people and not corporations, are the way to go.
Social media isn't dead.
Big tech "solutions" are.

In my latest blog post, I address 5 common myths about Self-Care and suggest some simple alternatives.
https://www.worklifepsych.com/five-myths-about-self-care-and-what-you-can-do-instead/

I decided it was time to check out Firefox alternatives.
LibreWolf came up, and being a FF fork, and a quick check shows it seems to update in a timely manner, I decided to give that a go.
I decided to utilise Firefox Sync to get most of my FF setup imported into LW. Went smoothly enough, although I discovered that the tabs syncing is just providing a list of what's on other devices, not actually creating and populating all of the same windows.
And, of course, some ext…

Large mass limits of $\mathrm{G}_2$ and Calabi--Yau monopoles: calibrated concentration, Higgs zeros, and abelianization
Daniel Fadel, Goncalo Oliveira
https://arxiv.org/abs/2608.05128 https://arxiv.org/pdf/2608.05128 https://arxiv.org/html/2608.05128
arXiv:2608.05128v1 Announce Type: new
Abstract: We study large mass monopoles with structure group $\mathrm{SU}(2)$ or $\mathrm{SO}(3)$ on asymptotically conical $\mathrm{G}_2$-manifolds and Calabi--Yau $3$-folds, with fixed asymptotic class. After placing the AC asymptotic theory, the variational compactness theory of Parise--Pigati--Stern, and Li's singular abelian compactness theory in a common $\Theta$-monopole framework, we prove that the mass-renormalized Yang--Mills--Higgs and intermediate energy measures converge to $8\pi\|T\|$ for a compactly supported calibrated integral codimension-three cycle $T$. This identifies the two limiting currents and shows that the variational calibration inequalities are saturated. Using this common limit as the starting point for a finer analysis, if $\mathcal S$ is the calibrated support, $\mathcal Z$ the Kuratowski upper limit of the Higgs zero sets, and $\mathcal C$ the limiting nonabelian locus, defined as the Kuratowski upper limit of Li's curvature concentration loci, then $\mathcal S\subset\mathcal Z\subset\mathcal C=\mathcal S\cup\mathcal O$, where $\mathcal O$ is precisely the obstruction to effective codimension-three monotonicity. For the cohomogeneity-one large mass families on the Bryant--Salamon $\mathrm{G}_2$-manifolds and the Stenzel Calabi--Yau $3$-fold, we prove that $\mathcal O=\varnothing$. On $X\setminus\mathcal C$ the sequence abelianizes; corrected longitudinal curvatures converge smoothly, and the remaining compactness alternatives are governed by $L^2$-harmonic $2$-forms.
toXiv_bot_toot

The repo troubles aside (latest is not fully back for me), hyprland on FreeBSD turned out to be the Turd show I expected it to be. A quick glance at the forums showed me I'm not the only one. With excellent alternatives like mango available it's time to move on. One final go at it tomorrow.morning.
Btw, the first time I had to weed through large numbers of completely useless AI slop guides. Speaking of a pile of shiite 💩

RFK Jr. rips L.A. homeless agencies, endorses faith-based alternatives - Los Angeles Times
https://archive.ph/hAUvg

CoMaps is open-source community-oriented privacy-first navigation app for mobile devices. It is currently choosing its fiscal / umbrella host which would be most aligned with those goals, so if you have opinions, come vote at https://codeberg.org/comaps/Governance/issues/166

Poll on umbrella host
Dear members of the CoMaps community. After we've [investigated a large number of potential umbrella hosts](https://codeberg.org/comaps/Governance/wiki/Umbrella-Orgs) that could potentially fit as a host organisation for the project, we've now narrowed it down to two alternatives that we think wo...

Instead of •judging• people who are stuck between a rock and a hard place, we all — but especially us tech folks! — should spend some time •actually learning• what’s locking people in to a platform going bad. There are some answers in the original QP. Here are some guesses of my own:
- Is prohibitively hard to migrate their catalog / inventory?
- Are they unsure how to proceed?
- Are they burned out on platform switching?
- Do they have some larger process that really, really works and are loath to abandon it?
- Do the alternatives not provide the same functionality?
- Will they lose contact with their supporters if they switch?
- etc.
Those are all made-up guesses, but they're all examples of •perfectly good reasons• for someone to be resistant to switching.

A Scoping Review of Physics Informed Machine Learning for Wave Propagation Modeling in Seismology
\'Oscar Rinc\'on-Carde\~no, Gregorio P\'erez-Bernal, Silvana Montoya-Noguera, Nicol\'as Guar\'in-Zapata
https://arxiv.org/abs/2607.00178 https://arxiv.org/pdf/2607.00178 https://arxiv.org/html/2607.00178
arXiv:2607.00178v1 Announce Type: new
Abstract: \emph{Background:} Standard numerical methods accurately simulate seismic waves but are computationally expensive, particularly for inverse problems. Machine learning approaches have been proposed as alternatives that can reduce computational cost while maintaining acceptable physical accuracy. \emph{Objective:} To map how physics-informed machine learning methods have been applied to seismic wave propagation modeling based on partial differential equations. \emph{Methods:} A scoping review was conducted using the OpenAlex and Scopus databases. Selected studies were classified by problem type (forward or inverse) and machine learning strategy to identify research trends, methodological patterns, and gaps in the literature. \emph{Results:} Physics-informed machine learning has been applied to both forward modeling and inversion in seismology, often reaching accuracy comparable to standard numerical methods at lower computational cost. Application of three mechanisms for incorporating physical knowledge were identified: observational bias, inductive bias, and learning bias. To evaluate methodological reproducibility of a representative method, the original PINN framework was replicated in PyTorch, obtaining results consistent with and in most cases more accurate than those originally reported. From the reviewed literature, limitations remain in benchmarking consistency, training cost, and scalability to three-dimensional and experimentally validated problems. \emph{Conclusions:} Standard numerical methods remain the basis of seismological workflows, while physics-informed machine learning offers complementary approaches that are useful for inverse problems and surrogate modeling. Future work should focus on consistent benchmarking, hybrid formulations, and validation under realistic geophysical conditions.
toXiv_bot_toot

Owner, which makes AI agents that manage restaurants' websites, marketing, and other functions, raised a $240M Series D at a $2.3B valuation (Joe Guszkowski/Restaurant Business)
https://www.restaurantbusinessonline.com/technology/owner-rais…

Owner raises $240M for 'AI-native' restaurant tech
The funding, led by Goldman Sachs Alternatives, will help Owner develop AI agents for independent restaurants.

There's a post going around claiming rice can't be used to absorb water and therefore shouldn't be used to dry wet electronics and that "it's a myth that it's a desiccant" and some people even claiming it's xenophobic—well it's not a myth; it does actually absorb water (this is also why you should close containers with uncooked rice air-tight). Here's a study on this with electronics (hearing aids in this example): https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27869510/
The question is more if it is a *good* desiccant in general and for electronics in particular, and the answer is probably it's a so-so desiccant (not terrible but there's better alternatives) and "for electronics, use only as last resort if just air-drying the thing has failed", the issue is mainly that rice is dusty and the dust can get inside the electronics and make things worse.
A protip from dealing with retrocomputing stuff: if it's electronics that you can open and have like one main circuit board in them that you can completely remove, like maybe e.g. a laptop mainboard you can rinse the removed board thoroughly with 99% isopropyl alcohol and let it dry thoroughly (the isopropyl alcohol displaces any water and will evaporate without leaving residue). Note: personally I would do this only with low-voltage electronics.

I guess I haven't do lamentations about Trakt (@…) after a lot of the changes lately, so I'll start now and do it in small steps.
I don't understand why they have to do another website rewrite (dubbed Web V3).
I hold on to the old website for so long, while I'm trying to find alternatives (more on that later). The moment that it is not accessi…

In his #ag2026garching talk Genzel stressed that we still have no *proof* that SgrA* is a SMBH as a few alternatives haven't been excluded yet - we need to get much closer to the Schwarzschild radius still.

I hope Andy Burn 'em has some advisor who actually reads Environmental Research Letters. The review essay by Emily Grubert, summarizing a frustrating 25 years of research with no apparent effect on climate overheating, is blunt.
" For people and places that rely on fossil fuel production and face major transition challenges (Xenarios et al 2026), failing to be explicit about the degree to which transition must proceed, or the extent to which alternatives might actually be ava…

SambaNova Executive Chairman Lip-Bu Tan says the AI chip startup is set to raise $800M to $1B, sources say at a ~$10B valuation, up from $2B in February (The Information)
https://www.theinformation.com/articles/intel-backed-ai-chip-f…

Intel-Backed AI Chip Firm SambaNova to Quintuple Valuation to $10 Billion
AI server chips that effectively compete with Nvidia’s have never been more in-demand as AI developers and cloud providers seek lower-cost alternatives to the market leader. In the latest example, nine-year-old chip startup SambaNova is set to raise between $800 million and $1 billion, its ...

I love docs as code but have never enjoyed Jekyll as much as the alternatives. What I hadn't realised is that the dependencies for GitHub Pages ( the place where I normally run into this tech stack ) are now so old that they aren't installable on my modern operating system.

This is a lovely Markdown/Mindmap app for MacOS.
And the authors opensourced their state-of-the-art rendering engine for people to build alternatives, check it out:
nodes-web.com

We should take seriously the possibility that the dependence and psychological spiral in the QP are not just an accident, but the result of conscious product design on the part of AI vendors.
Capitalism’s two favorite business models are (1) systemic capture and (2) addiction. We know AI corps are aiming for (1); that’s their explicit investor pitch. Consider the possibility that they’re aiming for (2) as well. Cigarette companies worked hard to make their products •more• addictive. Do we really think these companies with trillions of dollars of investor pressure on them aren’t doing the same?
There’s a lot of ways machine learning could create a different psychological experience for product users — and right now, vendors are pointedly not choosing those alternatives.
2/2

One of the most common fallacies is to assume that alternatives must cleanly bisect into "good" and "bad".
Often there's multiple good choices or multiple bad choices or anything in-between including neither.

Chinese open models like Kimi K3 and Qwen3.8 Max shift the industry's focus back to marginal costs and cost of goods sold, as inference costs scale with revenue (Ben Thompson/Stratechery)
https://stratechery.com/2026/whos-afraid-of-chinese-models/

Who’s Afraid of Chinese Models?
Everyone is worried about Chinese models, but the frontier labs will be fine; we need to enable open U.S. alternatives.

RE: https://hachyderm.io/@thomasfuchs/117247107886933209
The point is: because it's always a human decision it's also 100% avoidable.

As an individual, simply do not use flawed or unsuitable machines.
As a society, ban or at least restrict access to dangerous machines.
IMO the onus is more on society, because for individuals it's basically impossible to know about or be able to judge merits vs demerits of specific technologies as it's often not plainly obvious or they're dependent on it with no alternatives.

RE: https://hachyderm.io/@thomasfuchs/117060584641986816
Anyway, Periodic reminder that Chrome is bad software. It's a personal data collector cosplaying as a web browser.
Use other browsers, my personal recommendations are Safari (if you're on a Mac) and Vivaldi (works anywhere).
If you want something truly open source, there's multiple derivatives of Firefox with bad stuff stripped.
Orion is worth a look too (no Windows version yet), I think it's the only WebKit-based browser that runs on Linux. Also, in the future we might see browsers based on Servo (a newer open source browser rendering engine).
The gist is—there’s plenty of alternatives.
P.S. If you suggest Brave—which is run by a homophobe with Peter Thiel money—I will block you.

The "Private Equity Playbook" for Dummies:
1️⃣ Acquire company
2️⃣ Audit every customer
3️⃣ Cut all investment/R&D
4️⃣ Layoff training, support
5️⃣ Sell off low margin businesses
6️⃣ Raise prices. Every year.
ProTip: #PrivateEquity are VAMPIRES. If your vendor is acquired by PE, start looking for alternatives.

This is a very reasonable question:
https://pouet.chapril.org/@Zekovski/116844176606612240
The truest and most honest answer is •we have no idea how the hell learning works•, not really, only in hints and glimpses. The mind is full of mysteries, and we only have clues.
A good first step is to imagine some alternatives to the conduit metaphor — all also flawed, also tending toward misunderstanding if we take them too far, but having multiple metaphors helps us get unstuck from one:
- What if learning is like •exercise•: the strain of sustained effort stimulates muscle growth?
- What if learning is like •resonance•: what your mind perceives or experiences makes your mind echo that thing, like a string picking up sympathetic vibrations?
- What if learning is like •filling a toolbox•: problems cause your brain to seek out new tools, which give it the capacity to solve similar problems more easily in the future?
…etc etc. A fun exercise is to try to come up with metaphors of your own, think about what they imply, and notice where they fall apart.

I like my analogy: modern iOS / macOS is the IKEA of UI design. It’s…OK! It’s better than many of the large commercial alternatives! (Modern Windows UI design is the analog of buying furniture from a three-month-old company named QUFRLTZ on Amazon. Linux UI…needs a whole other thread of analogies.) But IKEA is…kind of generic. It has a tendency to look better in the showroom than in daily use. And sometimes it falls apart. It’s fine, but it’s never breathtaking.