cross-posted from: https://libretechni.ca/post/1944375

If you scan paper receipts which you will then later submit copies of (either to your accountant, to a tax auditor, or to your employer), it is often useful to organize them on a PDF or to print them.

Today’s FOSS tools leave a lot to be desired. We have:

• ImageMagick’s montage app, which lacks a smart rectangle-fitting algo. The user must specify which images to tile in what order. Not even sure it’s sophisticated enough to not overlap images after the first row when different dimensioned images are involved.
• LaTeX is manual labor intensive. You must micromanage the orientation and position of images.
• Arranged by hand when scanning: probably even more manually intensive than LaTeX because it requires a steady hand to precisely place the images.

Human limitations will often likely have some paper waste due to inefficient placement. A clever algorithm could determine orientation and placement of each receipt to optimise minimisation of whitespace, thus wasting less paper.

A receipt-specific montage algo could detect the font size of each receipt and either shrink or enlarge depending on user-supplied constraints. The goal should be as few A4, A3, or US letter pages as possible, but then enlarge receipts to make better use of the available page space.

In principle, someone with a big brain creates an algorithm distributed as a library. Then ideally there would be an app that uses the library to generate LaTeX code. There could also be an enhancement to ImageMagick’s montage app to do the same.

Rectangle Repacking

After the rectangle packing app is created, it would then be useful to have an app that does the opposite. We arbitrarily put many receipts on the glass for scanning. Some receipts might not relate to others with respect to who it is presented to. A GUI app would accommodate drawing many boxes to mark the boundaries of each receipt and give a way to assign a filename to each box and write the files. Then any selection of resulting files could be fed into the rectangle-packing app. ATM we have to use GIMP to crop a single box, write the file, then reload the original image and repeat for each receipt, taking care to remember what was already cropped.

If you scan paper receipts which you will then later submit copies of (either to your accountant, to a tax auditor, or to your employer), it is often useful to organize them on a PDF or to print them.

Today’s FOSS tools leave a lot to be desired. We have:

• ImageMagick’s montage app, which lacks a smart rectangle-fitting algo. The user must specify which images to tile in what order. Not even sure it’s sophisticated enough to not overlap images after the first row when different dimensioned images are involved.
• LaTeX is manual labor intensive. You must micromanage the orientation and position of images.
• Probably even more manually intensive than LaTeX because it requires a steady hand to precisely place the images.

Human limitations will often likely have some paper waste due to inefficient placement. A clever algorithm could determine orientation and placement of each receipt to optimise minimisation of whitespace, thus wasting less paper.

A receipt-specific montage algo could detect the font size of each receipt and either shrink or enlarge depending on user-supplied constraints. The goal should be as few A4, A3, or US letter pages as possible, but then enlarge receipts to make better use of the available page space.

In principle, someone with a big brain creates an algorithm distributed as a library. Then ideally there would be an app that uses the library to generate LaTeX code. There could also be an enhancement to ImageMagick’s montage app to do the same.

Rectangle Repacking

After the rectangle packing app is created, it would then be useful to have an app that does the opposite. We arbitrarily put many receipts on the glass for scanning. Some receipts might not relate to others with respect to who it is presented to. A GUI app would accommodate drawing many boxes to mark the boundaries of each receipt and give a way to assign a filename to each box and write the files. Then any selection of resulting files could be fed into the rectangle-packing app. ATM we have to use GIMP to crop a single box, write the file, then reload the original image and repeat for each receipt, taking care to remember what was already cropped.

mastodon-archive is very useful, for Mastodon. We need the same for Lemmy.

This problem is specific to the stock Lemmy client web app. When I visit [email protected], there is a NEXT button at the bottom. Clicking it simply refreshes the current page and does not advance to the next page. This problem manifests in both Firefox and Chromium based browsers.

Worth noting that other clients (e.g. alexandrite) work fine.

cross-posted from: https://libretechni.ca/post/1165681

The BBC’s radio schedule (on the linked page) is apparently only available in HTML format. I wonder if open data laws in the UK would compel them to make the schedule available in a machine-readable format like JSON or XML. Anyone know about the UK open data law in this regard?

cross-posted from: https://libretechni.ca/post/1009011

There are at least a dozen FOSS platforms for phones now. Off the top of my head:

• Replicant
• Jolla
• Sailfish
• Lineage
• PostmarketOS
• Graphene
• e/os

Several more were mentioned in a recent FOSDEM talk. It’s becoming unsurmountable for someone to search on which OS works to what extent on what device. These FOSS platforms all have wikis and various ad hoc scattered datasets that are not in a proper format, like JSON or XML.

As always with FOSS, it’s disorganised. We need every portable platform project to publish a dataset in a standard format and ideally a somewhat standardized tables so folks can grab all the datasets to search more sensibly. I should be able to run an SQL command to show, e.g. what all platforms are available on phone model X which have wifi capability. And the reverse.. I might want to say which phone has wi-fi support on the most linux-based OSs.

Personally I wouldn’t even need an app. Just datasets to import into SQLite. But an app would make the data useful for more people.

There are at least a dozen FOSS platforms for phones now. Off the top of my head:

• Replicant
• Jolla
• Sailfish
• Lineage
• PostmarketOS
• Graphene
• e/os

Several more were mentioned in a recent FOSDEM talk. It’s becoming unsurmountable for someone to search on which OS works to what extent on what device. These FOSS platforms all have wikis and various ad hoc scattered datasets that are not in a proper importable format, like JSON or XML.

As always with FOSS, it’s disorganised. We need every portable platform project to publish a dataset in a standard format and ideally in somewhat standardized tables so folks can grab all the datasets to search more sensibly. I should be able to run an SQL command to show, e.g., what all platforms are available on phone model X which have wifi capability. And the reverse.. I might want to say which phone has wi-fi support on the most linux-based OSs.

Personally I wouldn’t even need an app. Just datasets to import into SQLite. But an app would make the data useful for more people.

I have accummulated half a dozen DAB radios. None of them have an antenna jack, thus limited to the stock built-in telescopic antenna. Most of the radios do not pick up BBC.

A Noxon DAB USB stick just appeared at a local flea market dirt cheap. A quick search suggests folks have apparently got it working on linux, and even rasberry pi. It comes with a tiny rubber ducky type of antenna but it’s detachable, so a high end antenna could perhaps replace it.

Also looks like this hardware is ~14 years old, so probably as mature as it’s going to get. Is anyone grabbing album art and scheduling metadata over these USB sticks?

I think in principle these sticks could run off a linux-based phone like PostmarketOS. Perhaps facilitating this idea.

These apps are designed to combine bittorrent tech with a web browser to enable people to share websites peer to peer, so excluded people can reach restricted access websites indirectly and enjoy some liberation from Cloudflare:

• CENO [Android & Windows] has been around a while but apparently lost steam. It’s archived and had no development apparently in 4 years. It’s also broken in my attempt to launch it. (update: a fork of CENO apparently had a commit ~2 weeks ago.. so perhaps not a dead project after all)

• Akoopa [linux] is new and was just presented at FOSDEM 2026. It’s a Tor Browser fork in very early stages. Apparently it only functions as a bittorrent client for grabbing static data at this point.

• (update) Agregore looks like a healthy project.

I personally would be happy with just a backend. If I could pass an URL to rtorrent and end up with a local .mhtml file that any browser of my choice could open, I would be very happy.

cross-posted from: https://libretechni.ca/post/865880

Conceptually this seems like it could be a quite useful app for getting web pages. I learned about it from @morphite88 @thelemmy.club in this thread. It’s implemented on Android and Windows (not linux? wtf).

I installed the AOS version, which is ~100mb compressed and over 500mb unpacked. Wow.. wtf that is huge. It’s based on Firefox so I wonder if that’s where all the fat comes from.

In any case, the app simply does not work. When I launch the massive thing, it tries to contact a “bootstrap server”, and fails. I do not trust the clearnet and thus force CENO over Orbot (Tor). Perhaps that’s the issue.

CENO gives an option to enter a custom bootstrap server, but my searches come up empty. Perhaps this app it too unpopular to have alternative public servers.

Conceptually this seems like it could be a quite useful app for getting web pages. I learned about it from @morphite88 @thelemmy.club in this thread. It’s implemented on Android and Windows (not linux? wtf).

I installed the AOS f-droid version, which is ~100mb compressed and over 500mb unpacked. Wow.. wtf that is huge. It’s based on Firefox so I wonder if that’s where all the fat comes from.

In any case, the app simply does not work. When I launch the massive thing, it tries to contact a “bootstrap server”, and fails. I do not trust the clearnet and thus force CENO over Orbot (Tor). Perhaps that’s the issue.

CENO gives an option to enter a custom bootstrap server, but my searches come up empty. Perhaps this app it too unpopular to have alternative public servers.

cross-posted from: https://libretechni.ca/post/786769

FOSDEM presenter Jah Kosha will pitch the idea that the web can be made inclusive by introducing some middleware called #akoopa to share websites using torrents. This is severely needed. I cannot even read legal statutes that I am bound by because the gov publishes law on exclusive websites.

It’s similar to my youtube-torrent idea:

https://libretechni.ca/post/420147

FOSDEM presenter Jah Kosha will pitch the idea that the web can be made inclusive by introducing some middleware called #akoopa to share websites using torrents. This is severely needed. I cannot even read legal statutes that I am bound by because the gov publishes law on exclusive websites.

It’s similar to my youtube-torrent idea:

https://libretechni.ca/post/420147

Not my idea.. I just saw this on the FOSDEM schedule. Seems like a great idea.

GUI web browsers are too fucking monolithic. This has enabled just 3 big corporations to dominate everyone’s web experience worldwide. The presenter (David Thompson) makes the reasonable claim that giant browsers block liberation and shrink competition. But if we break the browser up in to many small pieces, we have a fighting chance at liberation from web oppressors.

cross-posted from: https://libretechni.ca/post/715575

There are many manifestations of this way of thinking that people must conform to behaviour, methods and styles that differ from that of bots and criminals. For example:

• Countless websites falsely accuse me of being a robot based on whatever faulty logic is making poor assumptions. I cannot access publications of laws or my own credit history because Cloudflare benefits financially from crude and cheap access decisions.
• The Tor community is collectively targetted for opaque adverse treatment despite a vast majority of Tor users being non-criminal.
• Countless email servers falsely refuse my mail server on the crude basis of having a residential IP address - mandating that I conform by hiring a 3rd party relay service which then becomes an additional MitM.
• A landlord’s email system accepted my email but then silently directed it to a spam quarantine that the landlord never reviews. When a dispute errupted, the landlord claimed it was my fault he did not get my msgs. My fault, as if I have control over his mail server (which signalled to me the msg was delivered).
• Creditors refuse cash payments under the faulty premise that cash is used by criminals and thus non-criminals must change their lifestyle & give up using cash in order to support the faulty logic used in targetting criminals.
• Public libraries have removed or disabled ethernet ports (or neglect to install them) based on the faulty logic that cybercriminals use ethernet and legit users only use Wi-Fi.
• This nutter believes humans should not use emoji because he thinks bots use emoji and he would like his crude AI detector to work.
• We cannot buy lye in enough bulk to make our own biodiesel and bar soap from waste oil because lye is also used by meth labs.
• Asylum seekers cannot cross a national border because they are presumed criminal.
• (update) Cannot send email directly from your dynamic IP address because lazy email admins use that as a flag for spam.

All these scenarios represent different manifestations of the same oppressive paradigm: that it is okay to control people’s innocuous behaviour in order to support the convenience of a simplified and unsophisticated distinction from nefarious actors.

From a human rights standpoint, the result is a form of oppression that violates:

• autonomy
• self-determinism
• privacy
• consumer protection
• the right to a presumption of innocence

What do we call this?

• “Collective punishment” is somewhat fitting because a whole demographic of people are punitively targetted. But unlike the traditional meaning, it’s not a response to a particular incident. It’s more like a preemtive strike.
• “Collateral damage” is somewhat fitting because innocent people are damaged by the oppression. OTOH, collateral damage implies the victims are comrades aligned with the aggressors. But in reality the victims do not necessarily agree with the mission that causes the sloppy assault. I do not necessarily consider myself on the same team as the oppressors.

Neither are quite right. We need a term to express “pusher of forced lifestyle comformity to assist lazy baddy finders”.

There are many manifestations of this way of thinking that people must conform to behaviour, methods and styles that differ from that of bots and criminals. For example:

• Countless websites falsely accuse me of being a robot based on whatever faulty logic is making poor assumptions. I cannot access publications of laws or my own credit history because Cloudflare benefits financially from crude and cheap access decisions.
• The Tor community is collectively targetted for opaque adverse treatment despite a vast majority of Tor users being non-criminal.
• Countless email servers falsely refuse my mail server on the crude basis of having a residential IP address - mandating that I conform by hiring a 3rd party relay service which then becomes an additional MitM.
• A landlord’s email system accepted my email but then silently directed it to a spam quarantine that the landlord never reviews. When a dispute errupted, the landlord claimed it was my fault he did not get my msgs. My fault, as if I have control over his mail server (which signalled to me the msg was delivered).
• Creditors refuse cash payments under the faulty premise that cash is used by criminals and thus non-criminals must change their lifestyle & give up using cash in order to support the faulty logic used in targetting criminals.
• Public libraries have removed or disabled ethernet ports (or neglect to install them) based on the faulty logic that cybercriminals use ethernet and legit users only use Wi-Fi.
• This nutter believes humans should not use emoji because he thinks bots use emoji and he would like his crude AI detector to work.
• We cannot buy lye in enough bulk to make our own biodiesel and bar soap from waste oil because lye is also used by meth labs.
• Asylum seekers cannot cross a national border because they are presumed criminal.
• (update) Cannot send email directly from your dynamic IP address because lazy email admins use that as a flag for spam.

All these scenarios represent different manifestations of the same oppressive paradigm: that it is okay to control people’s innocuous behaviour in order to support the convenience of a simplified and unsophisticated distinction from nefarious actors.

From a human rights standpoint, the result is a form of oppression that violates:

• autonomy
• self-determinism
• privacy
• consumer protection
• the right to a presumption of innocence

What do we call this?

• “Collective punishment” is somewhat fitting because a whole demographic of people are punitively targetted. But unlike the traditional meaning, it’s not a response to a particular incident. It’s more like a preemtive strike.
• “Collateral damage” is somewhat fitting because innocent people are damaged by the oppression. OTOH, collateral damage implies the victims are comrades aligned with the aggressors. But in reality the victims do not necessarily agree with the mission that causes the sloppy assault. I do not necessarily consider myself on the same team as the oppressors.

Neither are quite right. We need a term to express “pusher of forced lifestyle comformity to assist lazy baddy finders”.

cross-posted from: https://libretechni.ca/post/689223

Most DAB radios I find¹ have text-only displays. Some even have no display at all and you must tune in blindly with arrow buttons. Apparently color graphical LCDs increase the cost of the radio enough to omit them from the design.

And yet at the same time people are throwing away quite functional smartphones in mass quantity (thanks to capitalism and designed obsolscence).

Also note that (most?) DAB radios have a USB port for attaching a drive holding music.

Wouldn’t it be sensible to create a DAB radio with no display, but with the possibility to connect a smartphone which runs an app to show station metadata? (Would also be useful if it could connect to the LAN to feed metadata and even accept commands, but that’s another discussion)

I also suspect existing radios could be hacked. That is, radio flashed to decode the signal metadata and (for ease) write it to USB mass storage, which a smartphone can mimick while running an app to display the data that lands on the SD card. The problem would be phones refuse to simultaneously mount external storage that is externally mounted. Could a rooted phone read-only mount an SD partition that is externally mounted? Perhaps the mass storage hack is a broken idea, in which case we would need to invent a protocol for this. Or does a suitable protocol exist?

¹ I say this as a locally buying (usually 2nd-hand) type of consumer. Online consumers might have a different experience.

cross-posted from: https://libretechni.ca/post/689223

Most DAB radios I find¹ have text-only displays. Some even have no display at all and you must tune in blindly with arrow buttons. Apparently color graphical LCDs increase the cost of the radio enough to omit them from the design.

And yet at the same time people are throwing away quite functional smartphones in mass quantity (thanks to capitalism and designed obsolscence).

Also note that (most?) DAB radios have a USB port for attaching a drive holding music.

Wouldn’t it be sensible to create a DAB radio with no display, but with the possibility to connect a smartphone which runs an app to show station metadata? (Would also be useful if it could connect to the LAN to feed metadata and even accept commands, but that’s another discussion)

I also suspect existing radios could be hacked. That is, radio flashed to decode the signal metadata and (for ease) write it to USB mass storage, which a smartphone can mimick while running an app to display the data that lands on the SD card. The problem would be phones refuse to simultaneously mount external storage that is externally mounted. Could a rooted phone read-only mount an SD partition that is externally mounted? Perhaps the mass storage hack is a broken idea, in which case we would need to invent a protocol for this. Or does a suitable protocol exist?

¹ I say this as a locally buying (usually 2nd-hand) type of consumer. Online consumers might have a different experience.

Most DAB radios I find¹ have text-only displays. Some even have no display at all and you must tune in blindly with arrow buttons. Apparently color graphical LCDs increase the cost of the radio enough to omit them from the design.

And yet at the same time people are throwing away quite functional smartphones in mass quantity (thanks to capitalism and designed obsolscence).

Also note that (most?) DAB radios have a USB port for attaching a drive holding music.

Wouldn’t it be sensible to create a DAB radio with no display, but with the possibility to connect a smartphone which runs an app to show station metadata? (Would also be useful if it could connect to the LAN to feed metadata and even accept commands, but that’s another discussion)

I also suspect existing radios could be hacked. That is, radio flashed to decode the signal metadata and (for ease) write it to USB mass storage, which a smartphone can mimick while running an app to display the data that lands on the SD card. The problem would be phones refuse to simultaneously mount external storage that is externally mounted. Could a rooted phone read-only mount an SD partition that is externally mounted? Perhaps the mass storage hack is a broken idea, in which case we would need to invent a protocol for this. Or does a suitable protocol exist?

¹ I say this as a locally buying (usually 2nd-hand) type of consumer. Online consumers might have a different experience.