Open Standards
Should you fix errors and contribute to Google Maps for free?
Google Maps is incredibly detailed and useful. But Google uses it for tracking and deliver ads. Should you contribute for free to build its monopoly?
Open Standards
Open Standards
The need for adversarial tech-interoperability legislation
Legislating open protocols and adversarial interoperability can help ensure more competition in the digital services market.
ProtonMail vs Mailbox.org comparison
Comparison review of the two secure PGP-oriented email providers ProtonMail vs Mailbox.org. A huge price discrepancy for the same service.
Authentication and Passwords
Firefox, Security Keys, U2F, and Google Advanced Protection
How to use U2F security keys (USB A or C, Bluetooth, others) with Firefox and Google’s Advanced Account Protection program.
Open Standards
New Google Podcasts app: who needs data portability anyway?
The new Google Podcast app doesn’t play well with other podcast apps. It doesn’t support some podcast standards, or importing or exporting subscriptions.
Open Standards
Firefox to reintroduce OpenSearch discovery and install in Firefox 61
Firefox removed the ability to add new search engines with OpenSearch when it removed the separate search field. It has now restored OpenSearch discovery support.
Linux
XDG Base Directory shell scripting tutorial
Learn how to work with XDG Base Directory variables and defaults in your Bash scripts. Write well-behaved scripts that respect user preferences.
Backup
Flatpak, Steam Cloud, XDG Base, and why Linux doesn’t sync progress
A Steam Cloud documentation mistake is the root cause of why some Steam game titles won’t Cloud Sync when installed with Flatpak on Linux.
Microsoft Windows
New Web Media Extensions adds Ogg, Theora, and Vorbis to Windows
Free Windows extension from Microsoft adds support for three more open-source multimedia codecs and container formats.
Codecs
Microsoft adds Ogg, Theora, and Vorbis media formats to Windows 10
Windows 10 adds support for three new open-source multimedia codecs, Theora for video and Vorvis for audio, and the Ogg multimedia container format.
Open Standards
Why are Facebook and Twitter so bad at parsing RDFa metadata?
Social networks are some of the web’s largest consumers of RDFa metadata. Yet, their document parsers really suck at handling it.
CalDAV
Windows 10 supports CalDAV/CardDAV but limits provider-support
Windows 10 supports syncing email, contacts, and calendars with all major providers. However, Microsoft chooses to close it down to a handful of providers.