I wanna use JXL locally. It’s quite amazing technologically, you can losslessly compress a JPEG to 0.8 or so of the original size.

I compress my photos for long-term storage anyway, so why not do it with JXL.

Thanks for the app recommendation!

(Fossify is a fork of the discontinued SimpleMobileTools.)

Personally, I’ve found Fossify Gallery so far: https://f-droid.org/packages/org.fossify.gallery/ Tried it out, it works well. Any other recommendations would be nice, too.

Signal, for example, does not support JXL as of today. But saving the photo and opening in Fossify Gallery works.

If you’re in Europe or in the UK, and if you choose to NOT have coreboot, you can buy for half the price from PCSpecialist. I’ve been using them since 2020, totally recommend. The model that I had (Lafite pro 14) with an identical CPU, twice as much memory as reviewed (64Gb) costed just over 1k EUR in 2024. The build quality is very good.

But again, it won’t have coreboot, which is a significant downside. So I’m not saying anything against the reviewed notebook.

Good to know! I was really eyeing Triodos back in the day, due to what looked like a good ethical stance, but it didn’t work out at the time. Nice that they’ve fixed it! (I’ve updated my message above as well to include the bank.)

With respect to 2FA, if you want to be more ready for any future next time, you could migrate to an open-source TOTP app. E.g. andOTP. I use this one, it’s fine. The underlying standards don’t change in decades, so you can choose any compatible client and be without trouble for years and years. And it may be good to do in any case, googlified phone or not. Good apps also tend to provide password-protected backups.

I have no knowledge about RCS though, never used it so can’t tell. Otherwise GrapheneOS user for ~2 years, before that LineageOS, before that CopperheadOS for another few years.

You can use andOTP if you want a FOSS app on Android. If you’re a hardcore no-Android-at-all user (or considering), you can use KeePassXC on the desktop. This kind of defeats the purpose of 2FA, but on the other hand people with KeePassXC tend to have strong passwords due to ease of their maintenance, so you don’t need 2FA as much to begin with.

TL&DR; use andOTP on Android or KeePassXC on Linux Desktop.

(And noteworthy that ING has a million of different apps)

I’ve re-tried ING now, the app starts fine and the first steps to create an account are fine (I went up to the phone number and email). However, IIRC they used to break on further steps such as ABN AMRO breaking when wanting to scan my ID card for verification. But then again, you may not need it if you already passed that verification. Anyway, just letting you know if you’re curios; I’m aborting here.

That’s not a full solution really… unless you believe that the bluetooth software on the lamp has zero vulnerabilities that would ever be found and mass-exploited.

Dutch banks working without google are: BUNQ and ASN Bank (EDIT: and Triodos).

BUNQ has the built-in QR scanning functionality broken (the one for iDEAL, if you’re living in NL you know), but that’s acceptable because it works to scan the QR in Binary Eye, which in turn opens the bunq app and the payment can be made easily.

ASN just works, all features that I’ve tried I think. (This one is only in Dutch though.)

Banks that I’ve tried few years ago and they didn’t work: ING, ABN AMRO, Rabonbank, Tridos, possibly few others that I forgot.

Also, lately I’ve started using some of those “international” ones, not so focused on NL. I’ve found that Wise (pure web, haven’t even tried their app) and Revolut (app) seem to work well on my de-googlified phone. Hope that helps!

EDIT: re-worded the first line of my message to be indexable by search engines, because that may be useful for future readers.

I’m not sure what the point of the post is? Is it to share frustration? Searching for a solution? Sorry, I may be not good at inferring this, but I don’t get it.

IF you are in solution-finding mode, then there are a few things that you can do.

1. You can use those banks that work without google. I’ve found 2 in the Netherlands, for example. One of them stopped working a while ago, I’ve wrote about that to their support and had to discontinue, withdrawing all my funds using a Dutch procedure for full withdrawal from a bank. After half a year or so I’ve noticed they’ve fixed it and work without google again. I’ve returned as well (it’s convenient for me to have 2 banks). I’m sure as hell banks watch for their usage statistics and wouldn’t like seeing people leave their bank if it can be fixed with a simple reversal of whatever the dev team did lately.
2. You could try Linux phones such as PinePhone to see which use cases can it already cover. 30%? 70%? 90%? You’ll know what to even wait for in the Linux landscape to be able to switch. You’ll get a bit of power or mental control if you acquire this knowledge.
3. Funnily, you can expect some good news coming from all those fights between US and China, because that makes a LOT of devices ship without google services. And some people in your county (I assume it’s not China, otherwise you wouldn’t have these problems) may have phones bought there, so you won’t be alone when pushing for such changes.

Thanks a lot for the valuable detailed response!

// If anything or for future readers, I’ve decided to go for Ergotron LX for now. I’ve decided to prefer mechanical springs over gas (supposedly, mechanical lasts longer). And even more importantly, I want specifically a string mechanism for the “upwards”/“downwards” tilting of the monitor. One where you’d have the spring itself, and would be able to adjust the spring force with an additional screw (mechanically, internally, it presses against one of the spring’s ends if I get it correctly, so is quite straight-forward and durable). This way, the tension is the difference between the monitor’s angular force and the spring’s angular force, not just the monitor against tightened screws. I hope it’ll provide for easier adjustments. Ergotron has it as part of its promise as well, so if that won’t work very well, I’ll feel it in my rights to return it. So for now I’ve settled for this.

I really appreciate the responses still! 💙

I think a more fair name should be OnlyOffice. Wrapped in CryptPad for privacy and encryption. I’d also note a level of controversy around OnlyOffice, it being (still) developed in Russia, not making “we support Ukraine” / “we condemn the war” statements. There’s a bit more of that not just about the war, too.

And also to be fair, the product itself is visually quite decent, especially if you’re looking for online collaboration.

Probably clamped makes the most sense to me. I have a 10cm gap behind my desk anyway, so no need to drill wood if it can be entirely avoided

Thanks a lot for the feedback! Do you know if the outside rotational part is it adjustable on-the-go, or does it rather require loosening/tightening of the screws? I mean the part that makes the monitor “face up” or “face down”, e.g. here on the picture: https://euroelectronics.eu/cdn/shop/products/hqdefault_fec2e11e-701b-4ddd-a4ec-ba21e0bdab07.jpg?v=1587381905&width=1800

(It seems to require loosening/tightening, but want to confirm.)

Thanks a lot for the feedback! 💙 Really valuable

Clamped to the table would be ideal, but if there are recommendations for a screwing mechanism [to the table] I’m interested to learn!

P.S. Had to think rapidly because I thought the vast majority of them are clamped. My current one is clamped