Kenny
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kennyqin.com
Kenny
@kennyqin.com
Platform Engineer | Privacy Advocate | FOSS Enthusiast
πŸ“ Sydney, Australia
πŸ’¬ Signal/Threema

I provide commentary on social issues that mostly relate to digital technology. A follow is not indicative of endorsement.
I hosted my own Pleroma node for a few years ago, actually. I think I'll just quit social networks completely rather than doing that again. πŸ™‚
February 6, 2026 at 8:05 AM
I haven't posted here in a while and, truthfully, that's partly because I didn't appreciate logging in one day to see a bunch of age verification nonsense. In Australia, Bluesky is not mandated to do anything but, yet, they did.

No drastic actions for now but I probably won't post much anymore.
January 25, 2026 at 10:08 PM
I managed to get "Reverse Scroller" set up to reverse the scroll input for my locked down MacBook. It's still insanity that I need a third-party app to do this but at least it's done now. 😌
December 6, 2025 at 6:44 AM
I went searching for my next yearly mobile plan. Again, there's nothing for minimalists like myself. In the last year, I used 12GB of data and that's with more impulse browsing than usual.

The cheapest plan I can find is ~$150. PAYG plans are impractical as the cheapest one I found is $51 per GB.
kennyqin.com Kenny @kennyqin.com Β· Dec 2
I'm shopping for a new mobile plan and find that every telco expects that you're loading videos and consuming social media non-stop.

I want a cheapo plan that gives me 20GB of data (10 would probably do, honestly) for a whole YEAR.

My mobile phone costs have gone up drastically the last two years.
December 1, 2025 at 4:17 AM
It's been almost two weeks with me trying to adjust to scrolling in reverse to what I'm used to. I hate it because whenever I switch to my non-Apple machines, I then have to re-train myself again. Thinking about just abandoning using a mouse.
kennyqin.com Kenny @kennyqin.com Β· Nov 18
Got a mouse to use with MacOS and forgot that you can't have separate "natural scrolling" settings for trackpad and mouse. I want to throw this whole setup in the bin now. No, I can't use a utility to fix it. This machine is locked down.
December 1, 2025 at 4:05 AM
Thanks. I actually do really appreciate that insight.
November 18, 2025 at 6:08 AM
Got a mouse to use with MacOS and forgot that you can't have separate "natural scrolling" settings for trackpad and mouse. I want to throw this whole setup in the bin now. No, I can't use a utility to fix it. This machine is locked down.
November 18, 2025 at 3:36 AM
I just saw that at the bottom of the article I linked that the contact picker needs to be specifically used by apps. What the heck.
November 16, 2025 at 12:51 PM
On the bright side, Android 17 helps with this.
www.androidauthority.com/android-17-c...

And, yeah, I know GrapheneOS and iOS can already do this.
Android 17 is building a new Contacts Picker to keep your address book private
Android 17 may finally let you share only specific contacts with apps thanks to a new Contacts Picker tool. Here's how it may work.
www.androidauthority.com
November 16, 2025 at 12:45 PM
Anyone remember the "Say no to Black Friday" campaigns from a few years ago? πŸ€”
www.reddit.com/r/tutanota/c...
www.facebook.com/tutaprivacy/...
November 16, 2025 at 12:42 PM
I joined a tech interest group today. Most of the participants were 70+. Surprisingly, they were quite informed on a lot of topics.

Despite mistakenly claiming that Facebook and Google are owned by the same company, one ~80 year old said his social group shies away from FB due to privacy concerns!
November 3, 2025 at 10:46 AM
Call me slow but I just found out that #AppleEarPods have a USB-C variant. I grabbed one immediately due to its reasonable price and I'm already convinced that it'll be my go-to for voice calls on Android as well as for as for voice chats when gaming on my #SteamDeck. Such a great product!
October 31, 2025 at 4:23 AM
A friend linked an Instagram post with no context whatsoever that I ignored. The next time I saw them, they mentioned a restaurant that apparently they'd messaged me about. I had to kindly tell them that I can't view Instagram posts because Meta makes you log in...
October 27, 2025 at 5:52 AM
Just noticed that your website is now threema.com instead of threema.ch. Maybe worth an announcement?
Threema – Highly Secure Communication For Individuals and Companies
The secure instant messenger from Switzerland. GDPR-compliant chat app for individuals and organizations that value security and data protection. Trusted by millions.
threema.com
October 17, 2025 at 11:52 AM
Not sure if there's a better way to do it but I achieved it by following the "Add a custom search engine in Settings" instructions.

support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/add...
Add or remove a search engine in Firefox | Firefox Help
This article explains how to add or remove the search engines that Firefox uses.
support.mozilla.org
October 16, 2025 at 12:17 AM
Just switched my default browser search engine to noai.duckduckgo.com. This isn't an anti-AI move. I'm just trying to be mindful of the additional compute being used all the time.
DuckDuckGo - Protection. Privacy. Peace of mind.
The Internet privacy company that empowers you to seamlessly take control of your personal information online, without any tradeoffs.
noai.duckduckgo.com
October 16, 2025 at 12:16 AM
As someone who's dabbled a fair amount in self-hosting, photo management is really something I don't think I want to spend the energy managing.

Ente is actually self-hostable if I change my mind. πŸ˜€
October 3, 2025 at 8:39 AM
@ente.io is a media management tool that I've been using for 2 months now. I love that I can organise and share (with others) my photos and videos knowing that everything is private.

The price is affordable and I can see myself using for many years to come. 🀞

This post was not sponsored. πŸ˜…
October 3, 2025 at 8:36 AM
I also looked at Plus Codes which is similar. It's not as user friendly but at least it's open and already adopted in the map apps I use. I just can't imagine sharing the code verbally to someone in an emergency scenario.

plus.codes
Redirecting...
plus.codes
September 11, 2025 at 1:39 AM
TIL about what3words. I quite like the concept but it's proprietary and the company behind it will take legal action against you down for stepping outside their ecosystem making it a nonstarter for me; not to mention that their app doesn't work on my phone without installing more proprietary crap.
September 11, 2025 at 1:37 AM
I found this government dataset on Telstra Wi-Fi payphones. You can export the data as GPX and import it into an app like @comaps.app. Super cool!

data.wpcouncils.nsw.gov.au/explore/data...
Find a Telstra Wi-Fi payphone near you
This dataset captures the rollout and usage statistics of Telstra's free Wi-Fi service available at public payphones across Australia. Initiated in August 2022, the program began with approximately 3,...
data.wpcouncils.nsw.gov.au
September 3, 2025 at 11:10 PM
The elevation graph feature is something I'm greatly looking forward to being added to @comaps.app. Sadly, it seems like there are blockers before it can be added.

codeberg.org/comaps/comap...
August 16, 2025 at 11:54 AM
TIL: After installing Fedora Silverblue, you should almost immediately install the Flathub version of Firefox if you want a functional browser for video streaming. This is because there are a bunch of dependencies that are a pain to manage that just work out of the box with the Flathub installation.
July 7, 2025 at 11:18 PM
Tell me you're an evil company without telling me you're evil. People often ask me why I disallow them to take photos of me. It's because of bullshit like this. πŸ‘‡
June 28, 2025 at 5:31 AM