Another one of those super light super anonymous super useful tools that quickly went from let’s-try to use-it-every-day.
SnapDrop solves my problem of quickly getting stuff from device to device without cables, USB or cloud drives. It does so from my browser, across platforms.
Where FilePizza lets you send files across the internet, SnapDrop works when you’re standing right next to each-other. Or at least are in the same building.
Receiving a file from my phone
Sending files with SnapDrop couldn’t be easier. On your laptop, pc or phone, open snapdrop.40two.site from any recent browser. The bottom of your screen will now show what random (geeky) nickname your device has been given.
Click on one of the devices in your screen to send one or more files to it. Right-click (or long-touch) to send a message.
That really is all there is to it. No install needed.
The official site for this service should be snapdrop.net. It seems to be down (as of Jan’23) though, which is why I am running my own intance. Bookmark: snapdrop.40two.site
Fed-up with YouTube’s never ending, ill-targeted advertisements and the Rabbit Hole called ‘recommendation algorithm’?
Read on about an alternative video platform on the Fediverse called PeerTube.
40two.tube – a PeerTube instance filled with CC documentaries
Wait. Video platform? Fediverse?
Think of YouTube; a large collection of videos that you can search and browse by tag, popularity or channel. Users, uploads, subscriptions and channels, likes and comments. A player with all the controls to watch those videos in your browser.
YouTube offers all that, for free. All you have to do in return is watch endless advertisements, have your metadata stored and profiled and rely on Google’s opaque rules on acceptable content and classification.
You can use something like invidious to get rid of tracking and ads but still, one single company decides what videos are acceptable, which ones are promoted to whom and worst of all, what videos or channels can suddenly be removed.
PeerTube
PeerTube is an Open Source video platform that you can self-host so you can build an alternative to YouTube, where you decide how to moderate, what acceptable user policies are and what content to allow.
No ads, no trackers, recommendations based on tags and descriptions rather than search history and a responsive, lightweight player that equals, if not surpasses the YouTube experience.
PeerTube is federated with other instances on the Fediverse, meaning that just like with email and telephone it does not matter where you subscribe; you can search, watch, subscribe and comment across the entire network.
Suddenly those hundreds of mini-YouTubes become something useful; with fresh content every visit and searches returning more than those same 4 videos.
PeerTube streams video to any modern browser using p2p technology meaning that as long as you are viewing a video, others viewing that same video will share it with you. This reduces the load on any one instance, which in turn means your server will not die in a smoking heap if a video hits Reddit.
Why not give it a try? Use the list of public instances to browse for any instance by category, video count or popularity. Or better yet, grow the Fediverse and host your own!
40two.tube
I set up my own PeerTube instance at 40two.tube and collected (mostly) privacy and technology related documentaries published under a form of the Creative Commons license, or donated to the Public Domain.
Yet Another Chat Tool? Some new User-less Network Doomed to Fail? Not quite.
Federation
Matrix is federated. Which means is that – just like with email – you can setup a Matrix identity on any homeserver and then communicate with any other Matrix account on any other homeserver.
You do not need a phone number or email address to register, just a random username and a good strong password is enough.
End-to-end encryption
All direct – one on one – chats are encrypted end-to-end, and chat rooms can be set so, and this includes meta data, so not even the administrator can access your data*.
* note that the IP address and time of your last connection is stored for 28 days in the database, so bad people accessing the database can get that particular bit of info.
