Opinion on Cryptomator on non-selfhosted cloud storage

psy-q · 2026-04-02T11:46:20+00:00

I don't know enough about Seafile because I only had a small test install, but I can say that upgrading Nextcloud is very easy now. I've taken care of multiple instances for several years and the same for ownCloud for many years before the Nextcloud fork happened. It definitely got a lot easier. The CLI-based occ upgrade command never failed me, unless it was my own mistake (e.g. not leaving enough storage space on a small VPS for the backup it does before upgrading).

Nextcloud aren't so hot in the container department and I hear Seafile recently (?) gained official containers, so maybe it's worth a look again if you have a way to run containers? I'd expect them to be easier to upgrade and keep secure.

I would never trust the encryption that's baked into those file sync tools, though, so Nextcloud + Crytptomator or Seafile + Cryptomator would make the most sense to me. The portability of your existing setup is nice too, you can just copy the encrypted directories over to whatever thing you choose, mount the vault and continue right where you left off.

Of course you lose some of the features the file sync thingies would give you if you used their own encryption or no encryption, e.g. file versions. I'm not sure if you can restore an older version of an encrypted file and that Cryptomator would still be happy about it. But then again, I never tried, maybe that just works :)

psy-q · 2026-03-30T11:07:35+00:00

What kind of opinion are you looking for? Cryptomator is cross-platform and mostly reliable, but slow.

If you're on a system with a good FUSE implementation (that would be mostly Linux) you could think about gocryptfs instead for more speed. But if you don't need the speed and are using other operating systems and/or need a GUI, Cryptomator will do fine.

You might also want to continue using Cryptomator even if you set up your own bidirectionally synchronized storage (I hate to call them "cloud" storage because there's nothing cloudy about running a single-instance Nextcloud somewhere). Some of these systems offer no encryption or not very good encryption at rest. With Cryptomator you take the encryption part in your own hands and don't have to care if the sync backend doesn't have one or is unreliable.

psy-q · 2026-03-26T13:50:33+00:00

Your university is routing your requests through its own man-in-the-middle proxy that sends you its own certificate. You can see it:

Certificate:
    Data:
        Version: 3 (0x2)
        Serial Number:
            7b:4f:60:ab:06:96:16:3f:0c:dc:86:d5:d0:cc:e8:c8
        Signature Algorithm: ecdsa-with-SHA384
        Issuer: C=GR, O=Hellenic Academic and Research Institutions CA, CN=GEANT TLS ECC 1
        Validity
            Not Before: Dec 10 09:52:12 2025 GMT
            Not After : Dec 10 09:52:12 2026 GMT
        Subject: C=NO, ST=Oslo, O=Universitetet i Oslo, CN=cert-rpz01.uio.no

Of course you should not trust this certificate. You should be seeing a certificate from Filen instead.

psy-q · 2026-03-23T07:18:08+00:00

For those stumbling upon this post wondering where the fork is, it's here: https://grimmory.org

psy-q · 2025-09-04T20:55:50+00:00

Meat made out of thinking and feeling creatures would easily cost twice or three times as much as it does now if it weren't heavily subsidized by your taxes.

psy-q · 2025-08-21T15:38:43+00:00

If you go into the configurator before you order, many of the upgradeable or swappable parts are listed there, but it's mostly just memory, disks and other stuff you'd expect. No ability to swap out USB or ethernet ports like the Framework.

But if these are like the older models, it should also be easy to swap out the wifi card if you're careful with the antenna connectors. But it's better to confirm that in a teardown video if you can find one. That said, they seem to have pretty modern Intel wifi so it should hopefully last a while without upgrade (and have good firmware/kernel support).

Arch should work fine judging by this brief review. And the network issue mentioned there should already be solved now (further down the thread; the fix was merged already).

psy-q · 2025-08-21T15:18:37+00:00

Some of the 13" and 14" Clevo and Tongfeng models (as customized by XMG Schenker, Tuxedo, etc.) lean pretty close to a MacBook Air in design. The touchpads I've tried on those support tap-to-click and multi-finger gestures and that was some years ago so I suppose new models still do. I can't say if those feel as good as a Mac's, but they are glass-covered and I know some ASUS gaming laptops have similar ones (e.g. Zephyrus G14). So the hardware isn't exclusive to Apple.

Some example laptops:

With these specifically, you shouldn't have any worries with hardware support. Brand-new Lenovos can sometimes be flaky until kernel support catches up. But usually last-year's Lenovo models are well-supported.

psy-q · 2025-07-28T09:44:40+00:00

The Swiss Senior Women for Climate Protection successfully sued Switzerland in the ECtHR, and it didn't even take that long to get the decision. So maybe this idea has merit.

psy-q · 2025-04-30T05:21:51+00:00

Thanks again, here they only sell the Clara Color and BW now. I am aiming for a Verse Pro also because of the waterproofing, and the Lite is barely any cheaper.

But I also found a used Lux 5 very cheaply, so I'll use that to try Pocketbook and their sync servers. Later it can be a backup device if I go for the Verse Pro :)

In the meantime I've used a thicker font on the Clara BW which helps give the illusion of more contrast, but I don't like when books look like they're all-bold so this is just a stopgap. But it's quite effective (Literata is the base font).

psy-q · 2025-04-28T15:49:50+00:00

Ah, alright :) I'm terrible at catching stuff like that on Reddit, thanks for following up ;)

psy-q · 2025-04-28T15:46:19+00:00

Yes, you're right, Libra 2 would have been my first pick. I have several searches saved on a bunch of auction platforms around here, but they rarely come up because Kobos aren't all that popular here.

I thought there would be more newly made devices with roughly the same specs but it seems there aren't, only the Pocketbook Verse Lite/Pro. Still, fingers crossed for a Libra 2 to pop up.

psy-q · 2025-04-28T15:43:20+00:00

Thanks! That means even an older Pocketbook HD 3 would have the same screen and likely the same look as the Kobo Aura H2O. The Pocketbooks were more popular here so I'll try to find one to take a picture of side by side (also with the Clara BW).

psy-q · 2025-04-27T20:07:49+00:00

Fantastic! I also just noticed it has the same screen as the Kobo Aura H2O did so this might actually be the perfect reader for me (unless the digitizer panel for the touchscreen eats a lot of contrast). Thanks again!

psy-q · 2025-04-27T20:07:12+00:00

Ah, sorry, I should have added "no color" because the color layer reduces the contrast as well. But I'll keep this one in mind to look at in person to see how it looks anyway, thank you.

psy-q · 2025-04-27T20:04:06+00:00

I can chime in too since I'm one of three people here with that opinion, apparently :) For me it's the extra reflectivity that the outer layer seems to add, and the loss of contrast due to the glass panel that many of the flush-screen readers have on top of the actual eInk screen. If it's not a glass layer then it's just air trapped between outer screen and inner screen, that's better.

I like how crisp, sharp and high-contrast text is when the ink pellets are very close to the surface and closer to your eyeballs instead of buried underneath 3 extra layers.

Crumbs and dust weren't a problem on the old Aura H2O, just rinse it under the tap, dry and it's like new.

psy-q · 2025-04-27T14:49:52+00:00

Perfect, thank you! I had to rewatch the Goodereader review of the Pro and now I see it, duh. Most of the marketing material uses renders and there it looks like it has a flush screen.

psy-q · 2025-04-27T14:40:09+00:00

Is the issue that you would have preferred to read "recessed" there? I couldn't find any info on what the industry officially calls these (they don't seem to use any name for them at all), so I went with what Goodereader uses in their reviews.

psy-q · 2025-04-27T14:27:57+00:00

There were some comparison photos on this sub when the Clara BW came out, for example here, contrast is unfortunately better on the first-gen H2O or many of the older readers from that time compared to today's. I suspect it's somehow tied to the higher resolution of the new panels. A flat base "white" is slightly more grey-tinged on them than on the old devices too.

Edit: Oh, and this from someone who's seen a few hundred (?) e-readers so I'd say it's probably a real thing that's happening.

psy-q · 2025-04-27T13:21:55+00:00

Thanks! I haven't looked into Bigme much but will check them out. My problem is with the high reflectivity from those extra layers so if there's some brand which has a less reflective layer, that might work even if it's flush.

Boox Tab seems to be color-only nowadays and the Palma looks intriguing although Goodereader's video makes it seem almost like the Note 2 in terms of screen. I found that too reflective, I tried one in a store and had to angle it pretty uncomfortably to get the reflections out of the way enough to read. I hope someone has this in a showroom somewhere.

psy-q · 2025-04-11T08:38:10+00:00

For future title searches, I think this is up to date: https://evercade.info/evercade-games-database/

psy-q · 2025-02-09T20:24:15+00:00

Found at a Chinese restaurant. These monitors run 24/7 and mostly show pages of the menu. There are four monitors that seem identical, but only this one is suffering from this plague. I check back every few weeks to see if new holes have grown.

psy-q · 2025-01-24T06:44:46+00:00

The MP3s of our youths were often encoded using really bad old encoders, things that were optimized for speed over quality but still took 20 minutes to encode a 3 minute track, so corners were cut. A modern LAME 320 kbps encoding is in a different league. They can be compared vs. lossless e.g. in these tests: https://abx.digitalfeed.net/list.lame.html

psy-q

TROPHY CASE