Nice that the link ultimately leads to a PDF, for those of us who have ditched residential Internet but like to collect stuff for offline reading.

the wii

The wii was mentioned in the PDF but not in any detail. I was able to install some FOSS apps on an otherwise useless wii (which was designed to be dependent on a cloud store which has been unplugged). One useful app converted the wii into a media player that could access Samba shares on the network. So if you are lucky enough to have non-“smart” TVs (read: non-snooping TVs), you can use a wii to access your video library – which can be fed by MythTV.

Roku (not mentioned in the PDF)

Roku abandoned the consumers just like Nintendo did with the wii. But you can also install a FOSS app that makes the Roku into a media player that you control, which can be fed by MythTV content for example.

TomTom (not mentioned in the PDF)

There is OpenTom.

The problem – it’s all glitchy

The shame of it is that so few people are interested in keeping old hardware going that projects to liberate devices are half-baked and fizzle out with no persistent maintainers. Someone starts a work of passion but these one-man shows never get the traction they need.

No, I have no links or guides. It was an off-the-cuff idea. But speculatively, I would assume you could start by following one of many guides on how to configure an Android as a functional hotspot, such as:

• https://www.androidauthority.com/mobile-hotspot-setup-631280/
• https://www.wikihow.com/Use-Mobile-Hotspot-Without-Using-Data

Then cut off the uplink by removing the SIM chip or going into airplane mode (then re-enable wi-fi). I’ve not tested that. From there, if that works, you would need a web server. F-droid has a few prospects:

• a standard webserver
• a file server that uses HTTP
• a webserver specifically to serve sensor data

Ideally you would also have a redirection mechanism that acts like a captive portal and redirects all traffic to your server. That’s getting a bit beyond me… perhaps a firewall like Netguard or AFwall could do that, but I’m not sure.

I can understand the /fuck lawns/ ideology in some specific contexts, like lawns that are in water-starved regions. But I don’t get the across the board blanket stance that all lawns are always a bad idea.

What about buffalo grass lawns, as opposed to blue grass? Or whatever kinds of sustainable grass species that do not need to be watered artificially for a given region?

What about use cases like turf for dogs and kids to play on?

Downtime by a freedom-respecting trully decentralised node like slrpnk.net really exposes how Lemmy clients leave a LOT to be desired.

The prospect of data loss is gutting. A proper client would be syncing threads of interest between the server and my PC, so during downtime I can still at least locally access past content. No proper clients exist for Lemmy.

Indeed. The instances that have solid uptime have, in most cases, sold their soul to the devil (aka Cloudflare, which is a centralised threat on the free world and all things good).

For me, rats are filthy, gross, and creepy. But that is not why I fight them. I normally would not care about their presence as long as they stay on their side of the walls. But I fight them for two reasons:

• Their teeth never stop growing. So they are teething their whole life and also build nests, which means non-stop house destruction.
• They can carry hantavirus. It’s an airborne transmission and can come from rat urine and feces.
• The day I decide to remove my ceilings (likely to take away rat turf), I expect to get a shower of feces.

I’ve heard that as well; and claims that they are essential to keeping the sewer pipes clear. Not sure to what extent I would put stock into all that but they are certainly a pest. Disease, filth, destruction of homes.

My city ultimately considers them a pest considering there is a tax-funded public pest control office fighting rats year round. People can call them and they will come to the home and deploy rat control measures (usually poison) at no cost, just like a pro exterminator.

Would be useful to plant a specie that attracts rats, so the trams can cut down the rat population.

The middleware app you link to says this:

Navigation apps that support the default Android Developer Option’s ‘mock location’ feature location source.

I installed a similar FOSS middleware app (which apparently no longer exists):

https://f-droid.org/en/packages/org.broeuschmeul.android.gps.bluetooth.provider/

It worked as far as getting the fix via NMEA over bluetooth and sending the mock location to the kernel, but the problem is that OSMand and Organic Maps are not written to make use of it. What version of OSMand are you using? I am trapped on an old version because OSMand decided to leave those with pre-AOS7 devices in the dust. Maybe they added mock locations afterwards.

Not sure where to start with an eyeroll? from a clueless Cloudflare boot-licker. Coming from a CF domain (another technofeudal fiefdom) there is probably no hope for you. But since there are at least 6 others equally clueless, I’ll go out on a limb and link the research in the off chance the extent of disclosure with Google’s Location service sinks in with someone:

http://web.archive.org/web/20250422153816/https://www.scss.tcd.ie/doug.leith/apple_google.pdf

I appreciate the tip but I installed that some time ago. It just shows an empty map whenever I try to use it. My phone is hardened. I give no apps the privilege to use clearnet. StreetComplete may be fussy about IP addresses. But I think the facility to add notes on the OSM website without logging in will be my solution given my complex set of circumstances.

afaik you can even sign up with a temporary email

My notes show that I supplied an @sharklasers.com disposable email address. Most likely the confirmation msg never arrived.

As I see you haven’t created notes for these problems yet, I created them for you. You can see them here:

Thanks! I was planning to, but I don’t get online often.

Flower Burger was already updated in March to the croissant shop, so you used outdated map data in your app, osm was already fixed months ago.

OSMand broke old devices by making them dependant on a non-updatable cert authority and forcing TLS. So anyone with AOS older than 7 can no longer update maps using the app (even if they run the latest version of OSMand that works on their device). My workaround has been to manually fetch the map (e.g. `Netherlands_noord-holland_europe_2.obf.zip) from https://osmand.net/list.php. The zip file I unpacked and side-loaded was dated April 16th, 2025. So it’s unclear why the update from months ago did not make it into the maps being distributed at https://osmand.net/list.php.

If the old name is still visible on the building than it can be mapped, if the signs are already removed, it has no place on osm: https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Good_practice#Don’t_map_historic_events_and_historic_features

I wouldn’t blame you for not following the policy, but I must say it’s not a great policy. There are quite often mismatches between what the web (e.g. reviews) say is in a place and what OSM states is there. The discrepency is unresolved for the user if the user cannot see what was there previously in order to work out if OSM is wrong or the other source is wrong.

In principle, the historical map linked by that wiki could be useful in this regard. I’ll have to fiddle with it. But not everyone has the luxery of using obscure or exotic tools from a desktop when trying to navigate an unfamiliar city they are passing through. Users don’t need a deep history; they just need to know what was there previously on any turnover that happened in the past 5 years.

If you can root your phone

Only certain phones. I tried several different hacks out in the wild for my version and they failed. It’s also an off-brand phone that gets no notice by any of the alternate OS projects so flashing is not an option either.

you can install whatever location mocking app from fdroid,

What exactly are you referring to? The stock AOS already supports mock locations. And I’ve used it. But not many apps are designed to make use of the mock location. I vaguely recall coming across an app that hacked the official GPS API to use the mock location in order to fool apps that are naive about mock locations, but of course that bit only works on rooted phones.

It’s a shit show all around. But in any case since not all phones are rootable, apps need to be written to specifically read the mock location feed as a GPS alternative.

Network based location is available via other ways, not just by the goog, if you install microg

I heard of microg before; looked into it, and went no further. I don’t recall what the problem was, but I vaguely recall that it still requires some kind of ties to Google.

(edit) MicroG is proposed as an alternative to playstore. I used to use Raccoon, a desktop app to fetch playstore junk. It still required a Google login to use Google’s API. The circumvention was to use a shared account. I imagine that’s also how microg must work. But I eventually decided Playstore garbage does not belong on my phone anyway. I will only use apps I can obtain outside of playstore.

or only its location part unifiednlp, you can get quick rough location from celltowers and even crowd sourced wifi based location, formerly collected by mozilla, nowadays by poziton.

If there is some way of getting that info using an unrooted phone that has been Google-neutered to the full unrooted extent, I would be interested. I could not remove most of the Google infra but I could disable it. I had it in my notes to check out Unified Network Location Provider and forgot about it. Thanks for the reminder.

My notes also mention this app, which only works on recent phones (not mine):

https://f-droid.org/en/packages/net.wigle.wigleandroid/

Not sure if that was the barrier that stopped me looking further.

In any case, there is still a role for old TomToms to play here. Using cell towers and wifi APs requires your navigation phone to have those radios powered on, which need energy.

I agree. But you have to start somewhere. The guideline has been converted into legislation in Belgium since last week.

Do you have more detail on what was implemented? I could only find this repairability index, which I suspect won’t be much more useful than energy indexes and nutrition indexes.

If you just found this few in a city of several million people it means amsterdam is very well mapped, good work local mappers!

I verified roughly ~15 or so data points during a day visit. So statistically ~8 out of ~15 does not look great for such a heavily travelled city.

You should leave a note on the openstreetmap website,

I tried to register there at some point and could not complete the process. I did not note exactly what the issue was but most likely I failed a humanity check, which is usually my problem given my low tolerance for those checks as well.

You can do this without registration, the barrier of entry is as low as possible deliberately, so those like you can report the problems easily.

Oh, interesting… good tip! I’ll be making use of that for sure.

Also don’t call this misinfo, it’s usually simply outdated data.

Misinfo is the correct term. It’s not just old info, it’s also wrong info.

This is why I said at the local level. City council cannot change federal laws.

Also when people would dig through the piles they would often throw shit everywhere

The problem is that they are in piles to begin with. I have climbed on piles of appliance waste stacked ~5 meters high. These are not neat stacks but randomly dropped/tossed things which roll when you step on them. I fell once and got bruised but was lucky I did not get impaled. I’ve been kicked out of junk yards ½ dozen times.

The problem with the chain of disposal is the public tosses something out and the privately-operated metal recovery business immediately claims it as their property to be cashed in for its melt value. They immediately treat the incoming appliances as garbage. A middle step is missing. The middle step should not involve a massive pile of junk that is dangerous to climb. Large appliances should all be on the ground with space around them to inspect. The metal recovery business should not have a claim on the property before this middle step.

The EU has been grappling with right to repair laws for over 10 years now. It’s a complete shit show.

At the moment, a washing machine maker in the EU is only required to release repair documentation to professional repairers who are insured, not consumers. And they only have to do it in the 1st 10 years, not in the time period that things actually break. At the 10 year mark, they automatically lose the docs and stop making parts.

The law you reference is not yet in force AFAIK. But when it comes into force and each member state eventually legislates, look at what we are getting-- from your reference:

A European information form can be offered to consumers to help them assess and compare repair services (detailing the nature of the defect, price and duration of the repair). To make the repair process easier, a European online platform with national sections will be set up to help consumers easily find local repair shops, sellers of refurbished goods, buyers of defective items or community-led repair initiatives, such as repair cafes.

That’s crap. It’s fuck all. Consumers are not getting service manuals. They are just being told where they can go to get someone else to do the work. We can of course already find repair cafes because they publish their own location. But repairers at repair cafes are just winging it. You cannot bring them a large appliance like a washer. They don’t even have water and drain hookups. And even if one repair cafe made an exception for large appliances, their repairers are not insured and thus cannot legally get access to service manuals.

Everything at the state/fed/intl levels is a total shitshow. This is why I asked in the OP what can be done at the local level.