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Ruben De Smet

@rubdos@mastodon.social

mastodon 4.8.0-nightly.2026-10-06

Postdoctoral researcher at Vrije Universiteit Brussel. Indistinguishable from random. #Privacy enhancing technologies. #Rustacean. #Whisperfish.

Also a weird #coffee person (Aeropress/V60/Flair), bakes his own #bread (Dutch oven and yeast), drives an #EV (Renault Zoe 2017).

466 Followers

193 Following

50 Posts

Joined November 21, 2018

blog:

https://www.rubdos.be/

Twitter:

https://www.twitter.com/rubdos

PeerTube:

@rubdos@video.rubdos.be

Keyoxide:

https://keyoxide.org/513a9bcbf23e393d1a05148df8265a881213dc10

Ruben De Smet @rubdos@mastodon.social

· 3mo ago

Is there a central name-and-shame place to list apps and vendors which enforce "genuine" Google #Android? Users of #microG are increasingly confronted with these warnings and #nags that are transitively forced upon us by idiots in Silicon Valley. This is not #Google caring about our security. This is #Google caring about their power and grip on society, far outside what they should be able to reach. #sovereignty #digitalsovereignty #gafam #privacy

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Ruben De Smet @rubdos@mastodon.social

· 5mo ago

Second blog on my ten year #SailfishOS journey so far

https://www.rubdos.be/2026/04/17/my-sailfish-os-journey-apps.html

This second part goes into #apps, and what Sailfish OS looks like in practice for myself. Did I miss an app? What's your favourite Sailfish OS app?

#Quickddit #Tooter #Unplayer #gPodder #Whisperfish #Deadbeef #LinuxOnMobile

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Ruben De Smet @rubdos@mastodon.social

· 5mo ago

Blog about my journey with #Jolla and #SailfishOS: https://www.rubdos.be/2026/04/15/my-sailfish-os-journey.html

This is the first in a small series of posts about Sailfish OS, and how I use it as my daily driver. Feel free to dump questions here, and I'll see what I can cover!

I'll definitely mention #Whisperfish...

#LinuxOnMobile #FreeSoftware

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Ruben De Smet @rubdos@mastodon.social

· 3mo ago

In anticipation for the #Jolla Phone Day1 event, I made a little detour to #Tampere https://forum.sailfishos.org/t/intermezzo-to-tampere-visiting-jolla-in-busy-times/30483

Intermezzo to Tampere: visiting Jolla in busy times

Sailfish OS Forum

Intermezzo to Tampere: visiting Jolla in busy times

Inspired by @makrolon, I decide to test the train connection between Helsinki and Tampere. And a great connection that is! My goal today was to get a snap of the front door of Jolla’s office, and to explore Tampere a bit. Turns out the front door is pretty easy to find, it’s right there on Open Street Maps, and Pure Maps + OSM Scout got me there without a hassle. … but then @abranson invited me in, and showed me the offices! I’ll have to return another day to actually see the city. Th

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Ruben De Smet @rubdos@mastodon.social

· 3mo ago

If #Google says that a new law is a horrible idea, then definitely persue said law! https://noyb.eu/en/eu-member-states-and-google-suddenly-want-keep-cookie-banners

EU Member States (and Google) suddenly want to keep cookie banners!

EU Member States (and Google) suddenly want to keep cookie banners!

The EU Commission proposed a solution to get rid of cookie banners. Some Member States are now working against it, despite requests for simplification

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Ruben De Smet @rubdos@mastodon.social

· 2mo ago

Replying to

@fede@ioc.exchange Rockpool doesn't track health-related features on-device yet, otherwise I'd recommend a Pebble if it suits you, hardware-wise. https://github.com/abranson/rockpool/

GitHub - abranson/rockpool: Pebble client application for Sailfish OS

Pebble client application for Sailfish OS. Contribute to abranson/rockpool development by creating an account on GitHub.

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Ruben De Smet @rubdos@mastodon.social

· 5mo ago

Replying to

@frankps@mastodon.babb.no Will do! I've always found that Sailfish had been a bit underappreciated, and it's time to give it some visibility!

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Ruben De Smet @rubdos@mastodon.social

· 5mo ago

Replying to

@mollyim@fosstodon.org Awesome. Following with great interest!

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Ruben De Smet @rubdos@mastodon.social

· 5mo ago

Replying to

@mollyim@fosstodon.org I'd be interested in having a Flatline-on-demand in my Gitlab pipeline integration, and as a Github-Actions-equivalent. Is that something that should be provided in the upstream Flatline repos?

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Ruben De Smet @rubdos@mastodon.social

· 5mo ago

Replying to

@ilpianista@functional.cafe And *finally* I have configured Dee, gonna test it the next hours! :D

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Ruben De Smet @rubdos@mastodon.social

· 5mo ago

Replying to

@Setok@attractive.space Some day. The Jolla store should be a beacon of quality and usability, and I want to achieve that before getting it there. But it's been on my mind and on the code a lot lately!

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Ruben De Smet @rubdos@mastodon.social

· 5mo ago

Replying to

@romeu Hmm. What about kLOC/token? 🤔

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Ruben De Smet @rubdos@mastodon.social

· 5mo ago

Replying to

@ekari@mementomori.social @ilpianista@functional.cafe @cy8aer@chaos.social Running from OR works, but I had to reimport all my stuff from gPodder. But it works well now 🙂

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Ruben De Smet @rubdos@mastodon.social

· 5mo ago

Replying to

@Idcrafter @jolla Yep! Have been running that for a long time now, and it's the preferred mode of operations by most if you want to use Play Services.

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Ruben De Smet @rubdos@mastodon.social

· 5mo ago

Replying to

@Antti98@mastodon.social I've never really looked at the YG source; I probably should. But it'd be mainly for GUI stuff, and that's usually not my cup of tea. Telegram lives on this dangerous edge of rolling their own crypto and *not usually exactly catastrophically* failing at it. It's often the laughingstock of the cryptographic community, because they're a perfect example of violating all the best practices. If you have some time, @matthew_d_green@ioc.exchange is a great listen: https://securitycryptographywhatever.com/2024/09/06/telegram/

Telegram with Matthew Green

securitycryptographywhatever.com

Telegram with Matthew Green

We finally have an excuse to tear down Telegram! Their CEO got arrested by the French, apparently not because the cryptography in Telegram is bad, but specia...

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Ruben De Smet @rubdos@mastodon.social

· 5mo ago

Replying to

@Antti98@mastodon.social Ah I cannot in good faith recommend Telegram, but it's really cool that it's got voice calls! Still hoping that I get it in Whisperfish sooner rather than later :)

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Ruben De Smet @rubdos@mastodon.social

· 5mo ago

Replying to

@jrovu@mastodon.social There's quite a bit of stuff here: https://support.signal.org/hc/en-us/articles/6712070553754-Phone-Number-Privacy-and-Usernames If you set a username, you automatically get a link and a QR code on the same screen (at least on Signal Desktop).

support.signal.org

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Ruben De Smet @rubdos@mastodon.social

· 5mo ago

Replying to

@oven@mastodon.gamedev.place They have a bottom upgrade kit https://frame.work/be/en/products/laptop13pro-bottom-cover-upgrade-kit and a chassis kit https://frame.work/be/en/products/framework-laptop-13-pro-chassis-kit-silver depending on how far you want to push your upgrade. I'm still very happy with my 7840U today, so I'll hold out a bit until the RAM gets reasonable again.

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Ruben De Smet @rubdos@mastodon.social

· 5mo ago

Replying to

@sico93@social.tchncs.de There seem to be some mentions of Deutschlandticket on the forum: https://forum.sailfishos.org/t/sailfishos-and-deutschlandticket-does-it-work/23076 FWIW, Deutschland is the country with the most Sailfish OS users, as far as I can tell! You'll quickly find some people on the forum with the same issues, would you encounter some.

SailfishOS and Deutschlandticket, does it work?

Sailfish OS Forum

SailfishOS and Deutschlandticket, does it work?

I am thinking about buying the smartphone version of the german Deutschlandticket. I wonder if anybody here did have any experience with using this smartphone ticket with their sailfish device. If so I would be very glad if you shared your experience here! Thanks in Advance, Alexander

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Ruben De Smet @rubdos@mastodon.social

· 5mo ago

Replying to

@sico93@social.tchncs.de Usually those QR codes are dynamic, no? If they're static, then BarWal (https://github.com/a-dekker/BarWal/) should indeed work. If not, I'm quite sure that the Android app would work on AppSupport. Do you have the name or a link for that?

GitHub - a-dekker/BarWal: (Bar)code wallet for SFOS

(Bar)code wallet for SFOS. Contribute to a-dekker/BarWal development by creating an account on GitHub.

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Ruben De Smet @rubdos@mastodon.social

· 5mo ago

Replying to

@dylanvanassche@fosstodon.org I believe you even made me contributor back in the day. I don't use the train enough to care too much though :'-)

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Ruben De Smet @rubdos@mastodon.social

· 5mo ago

Replying to

@wuppi@social.tchncs.de Glad to be of help! I've always found the public facing information a bit difficult to find, so I hope that maybe this will make things easier to discover by the time the Jolla Phone is there!

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Ruben De Smet @rubdos@mastodon.social

· 5mo ago

Replying to

@ilpianista@functional.cafe Jolla might be a bit busy atm ;'-)

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Ruben De Smet @rubdos@mastodon.social

· 5mo ago

Replying to

@doubleubee@mastodon.social Still rocking my Pebble as well, and will cover in two posts from now! @abranson@mastodon.social and I both have the new Pebbles on pre-order ;-) https://forum.sailfishos.org/t/rockpool-thread/25596 The regional transport apps are really underrated. BeRail by @dylanvanassche@fosstodon.org still works more or less, although he's been on PMOS for years now!

Rockpool Thread

Sailfish OS Forum

Rockpool Thread

Personal news: I just got my reordered Pebble 2 Duo send to me and I discovered that it’s currently not possible to use it with SailfishOS. I found GitHub - abranson/rockpool: Pebble client application for Sailfish OS but after Bluetooth paring the service is still not connecting to the device.

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Ruben De Smet @rubdos@mastodon.social

· 5mo ago

Replying to

@osma@sigmoid.social Really, reading the Firefox and Wayland stuff on the forum was kinda mindblowing! Any apps you use that I did not mention?

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Ruben De Smet @rubdos@mastodon.social

· 5mo ago

Replying to

@mihamarkic@mastodon.social Regarding the emulator: my experience with it (which is 5+ years ago I believe) is that it's slow and doesn't cover the whole picture really well. If you can get your hands on a (cheap) device, it might honestly be a better bet.

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Ruben De Smet @rubdos@mastodon.social

· 5mo ago

Replying to

@christiannils@mastodon.social That's exactly why I'm writing this; I'm very glad to reach the right audience then!

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Ruben De Smet @rubdos@mastodon.social

· 5mo ago

Replying to

@mihamarkic@mastodon.social The OSS part I should've probably mentioned in the first post. There's a "finalization" post I'm kinda planning if I have enough content, it could definitely go in there. I know @abranson@mastodon.social has been playing with Kotlin, I haven't heard about .NET myself. I'm writing most of my stuff in Rust, and that includes Sailfish. Might be I have a post about that too.

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Ruben De Smet @rubdos@mastodon.social

· 5mo ago

Replying to

@osma@sigmoid.social Ah, forgot to mention SailOTP. That's a daily indeed. Haven't needed GPSInfo on the 10IV, which is great I guess! My piano is digital already, so no real need for tuning. Cool app though!

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Ruben De Smet @rubdos@mastodon.social

· 5mo ago

Replying to

@ekari@mementomori.social @ilpianista@functional.cafe @cy8aer@chaos.social just tried podQast. UX is great! But it doesn't seem to do mpris, which means I can't control it from my steering wheel and that's a pit :')

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Ruben De Smet @rubdos@mastodon.social

· 5mo ago

Replying to

@DonMasto@mastodon.nu Damn that's cool. I pushed an update to the post, linking back here! Thanks for the clarification 🙂

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Ruben De Smet @rubdos@mastodon.social

· 5mo ago

Replying to

@cartron@masto.hivane.net Thanks Nico, I appreciate it :)

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Ruben De Smet @rubdos@mastodon.social

· 5mo ago

Replying to

I had already appreciated it in the past, @siltaer! Fantastic post, and it's great that you're targeting the francophones!

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Ruben De Smet @rubdos@mastodon.social

· 6mo ago

Replying to

@ilpianista @RandySimons @piggz your WIP PR is being appreciated in this thread!

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Ruben De Smet @rubdos@mastodon.social

· 5mo ago

Replying to

@ilpianista@functional.cafe @chrastecky@phpc.social Beautiful...

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Ruben De Smet @rubdos@mastodon.social

· 5mo ago

Replying to

@jrovu@mastodon.social What's the advantage over the regular username-link QR code? The latter is revokable, so you can make temporary QR codes!

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Ruben De Smet @rubdos@mastodon.social

· 5mo ago

Replying to

@Fynn@digitalcourage.social Appreciate it, really! 🙂

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Ruben De Smet @rubdos@mastodon.social

· 5mo ago

Replying to

@ekari@mementomori.social @ilpianista@functional.cafe @cy8aer@chaos.social That's a good point. Mpris might be non-Harbour legal. Will switch and reevaluate. Also managed to transfer the subs from gpodder via opml!

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Ruben De Smet @rubdos@mastodon.social

· 5mo ago

Replying to

@chrastecky@phpc.social Good to know that works! I have a Protonmail account somewhere, but I rarely use it. There was someone on the forum asking about Tutanota, but apparently they don't have such a bridge.

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Ruben De Smet @rubdos@mastodon.social

· 5mo ago

Replying to

@christiannils@mastodon.social My pleasure! Anything you'd like covered in the follow-ups?

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Ruben De Smet @rubdos@mastodon.social

· 5mo ago

Replying to

@mihamarkic@mastodon.social Not having to get a device is a certain advantage, and so is isolation. The emulator was really terrible in my experience, but my memory is also really vague. One issue is that it's a VirtualBox-based emulator (iirc), but most people nowadays take the Docker-based SDK, and they don't like to be installed on the same system for some reason. But it's been a while since I used this stuff.

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Ruben De Smet @rubdos@mastodon.social

· 5mo ago

Replying to

@ilpianista@functional.cafe @chrastecky@phpc.social I did interpret it as something against installation from NPM, nothing against the CLI. Maybe it's possible to package the CLI together with the app? Cool that BitSailor is a thing, thanks for mentioning!

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Ruben De Smet @rubdos@mastodon.social

· 5mo ago

Replying to

@jrovu@mastodon.social My pleasure!

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Ruben De Smet @rubdos@mastodon.social

· 6mo ago

Replying to

@izumi I fear that they're not very responsive on the social media. Apparently they have a backlog of emails though, and I imagine it's now even bigger than back then: https://mastodon.social/deck/@Antti98/116290123115178107

mastodon.social

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Ruben De Smet @rubdos@mastodon.social

· 5mo ago

Replying to

@egonian@mastodon.social What kind of app security would you like to see, going ahead? I know @abranson@mastodon.social is working really hard on that lately!

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Ruben De Smet @rubdos@mastodon.social

· 5mo ago

Replying to

@chrastecky@phpc.social Cool! I use pass (https://www.passwordstore.org/) and there used to be a working app on Sailfish for it. Nowadays I usually ssh+wl-copy my passwords...

passwordstore.org

Pass: The Standard Unix Password Manager

Pass is the standard unix password manager, a lightweight password manager that uses GPG and Git for Linux, BSD, and Mac OS X.

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Ruben De Smet @rubdos@mastodon.social

· 5mo ago

Replying to

@ilpianista@functional.cafe @ekari@mementomori.social Definitely gonna try podQast now! Is there an easy migration path? Same question for FoilAuth :')

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Ruben De Smet @rubdos@mastodon.social

· 5mo ago

Replying to

@oven@mastodon.gamedev.place @tshirtman@mas.to @frameworkcomputer@fosstodon.org So I could basically just get the new chassis/input cover/screen and keep my current mainboard/SSD/RAM? That would be terrific.

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