Thanks do much for putting my glasses on

If one assumes that the concept of the Internet is a unified and universal place to store, publish and access knowledge, then European did "invent" it, indeed, with the world-wide-web. A military computerized communication project that aims resilience is undoubtedly a noteworthy achievement. Still, it's not a project of universal knowledge. BBS, yes, but do you ever heard about Minitel?
History requires first to explain the criterion you use to cut it slices. Otherwise the best you'll get is an arbitrary podge hodge of conceptual and technical and some other obscure criteria, with an unconscious and coarse touch of political propaganda.
The closer project to the Internet is Paul Otlet's Mundaneum, read this Belgian "Traité de documentation", shamefully forgotten (or ignored to be better looted).
Read the quoted paragraph starting with: "The people who built the modem world in the 1980s laid the groundwork for millions of others who would..."
The modern world? It's not laughable to read this, it's frightening, it's at least a horrifying bias.
No surprise that the expression "modern" was first used by the "learned" clergyman of the medieval XIIIth century christian theocracy. Oh, you probably never heard about them, because it may make you feel greater: the XIIIth century people who invented binary computing (symbolic logic encoding of arithmetic - Raymond Llull), who defined the concept of fama, the bigot ancestor of social network analysis (fame or "reputation"), and last but not least, the cross-index still used by our search engines in conjunction with fama sorting (to browse the big data produced by inquisition trials -- you mean... institutionalized surveillance?!).
But... data... data... datum, doesn't it ring as an old world, latin word? So, are many of our revolutionary modern techies just some rebranded clergymen?
Daniel Merigoux

Oh man! I'm so glad to see that the headlines printed those exact same words (lyrics) on somebody else's mind!
Note that's a shameful lie to say she is "World's Longest-Reigning Monarch", Louis XIV is, as little1973 comment indeed corrected bellow. It's is a shameful lack of control to read such a mistake in a post title, wrongly quoting the linked BBC article, that actually just says she's "the UK's longest-serving monarch" ( https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-61... )
So, do the author of the post considers techies so illiterate in History that they wouldn't notice, or is it just some more propaganda, like 90% of tech news, and that the "immaterial kingdom" of Internet bigotry would do the rest?
Please, correct this wrong quotation in the title!

Hi Mike,
I'm very glad to see that quick reaction of yours to such a wrong statement about the requirement of a Google account to access the App Lounge (I'm very surprised -and disappointed- that a such a scrupulous specialist like Steven Vaughan-Nichols could have been so careless).
As a (VERY happy indeed) user for almost 6 months now of both a Moto G7 Power and a samsung galaxy S9 with /e/ installed (after trying LineageOs), I do confirm all that Mike said. Note that the latter S9 has a GUI installer that works like a breeze, you don't even need to root your phone (I actually encourage you to buy one pre-installed or a Murena from e-foundation to help fund them).
Besides the App Lounge, you can also use (as on any regular android phone) the Aurora Store, another anonymous gateway to GoogleApps, or F-Droid, a "pure" open-source repository, with lots of interesting information about apps privacy. The last /e/ update even brings a great "Advanced Privacy" feature that gives you a wide and granular control over your data: it's a centralized tracker-blocker (you can chose to enable it or not for each and every app!), it can hide your location and your IP (you can even choose the country of your IP (looks like it is thorified)).
So, on the one hand, I'm very pleased to read about such a successfully usable free open-source google-less OS for android phones. In particular because as noticed in a recent article in Arstechnica, the digital privacy gap overlaps the economic one, which may be only a surprise to tech zealots, anyway ( https://arstechnica.com/tech-p...). So Steven Vaughan-Nichols picked indeed a very relevant subject.
On the other, when I read about privacy-focused android projects, I very often have that particular feeling that they are presented just as linux was by Microsoft ideologists, like childish stuff... Notice the high frequency of expressions like "failed" (..."LineageOS -- an Android-based operating system, which is descended from the failed CyanogenMod Android fork"...), or vague like "most" (..."In the /e/OS, most (but not all) Google services have been removed"...), "big" (There's still one big problem: the App Lounge still relies on you logging in with your Google account"...), in that sense that they don't compare to anything else. More than what, bigger than what? It's a very old and common rhetoric trick to absolutize one's point of view and simultaneously negatively relativize other's. Extremist politicians use it a lot. They quantify when they win, and (dis)qualify when they lose.
My feeling is that in webzines or alikes like this one, Wired, Ars (except perhaps motherboard and The Reg) no tech is generally presented as fully useful or adult unless it makes you a Big Techs enslaved information-worker, a personal property of theirs. Therefore without the right of owning one's data about oneself like a proper name, you're just a concrete object, therefore without will, a body without soul, without consent or dissent other than one's master, without interiority. Without privacy.
Google's (and other's big tech) privacy violations are monstrous. Monstrous. They are deeply, fanatically hateful. Deeply alienating. Deeply humiliating. They reflect a very very deep hate against human, human fundamental rights of each user of their products. They are dangerously, furiously totalitarian. They took a common good, the linux kernel. And Steven Vaughan does know it indeed.
I can't say how much I felt humiliated when, just a little after talking for some time in front of my googlefull “normal” android phone about some very specific matter, as soon as I switched on my "smart"TV, a lot of related videos pop up on Youtube (matters as specific and ignored as the enforcement, by the 4th Council of Latran in 1215, of the universal confession AND SIMULTANEOUSLY the SECRET of confession, which forbid the centralization of personal data by government -- in that case the Pope --, almost exactly the same data as cambridge analytica today: sexual, politicoreligous...
So, even the worst 13th-16th centuries inquisitors decided to limit privacy violation in some way, even them knew the danger of destroying privacy the way we’re doing now. realize that we are destroying almost a millennium of fight to own our data about ourselves, a fundamental stone of the concept of free will, free thinking and even of the rule of law itself.
The French Revolution secularized the religious concept of secrecy of confession (divine will) trough universal (still masculine though) and SECRET ballot (people's will). And Australian added to the anonymity of secret vote the privacy of the voting booth. So, sorry for being so long, but that’s how we get to the point of / e /
Thanks so much GAEL DUVAL.
Daniel MERIGOUX

Hello pal,
Reread carefully the lead of your post (If you are not a human-made-bot you will get the point).
Don't you think the following lead would be far more honest (=euphemism):
AS A CONSEQUENCE OF a $5 billion fine and antitrust enforcement action in 2018 BY EUROPEAN RULERS, Google/Alphabet FORCED TO "Let Rivals Appear As Default Search Engine Options On Android" WITHOUT PAYING?
Or:
Search engine do not have to pay to use Android after Google $5B FINE AND ANTITRUST CASE
Or it sounds too free-minded?
Actually, this lead might have been written by some bot playing with modals and what grammarian call "voice" (Active and Passive) and programmed to be void of the smallest ethics, empathy and consciousness.

As long as it matters to you, and if your router has enough memory, here's how to update opkg lists using https:
From: https://www.leowkahman.com/201...
"Configuring OPKG to retrieve via HTTPS
opkg install ca-certificates
opkg install libustream-openssl
If you have LuCI (GUI) installed, enabling SSL is very easy. Navigate to System > Software > Distribution feeds. Replace all http:/// URLs to https://./
If you do not have LuCI, you will have to edit /etc/opkg/distfeeds.conf using your preferred editor."
Then in openwrt console type "opkg update" or in System > Software click on Update lists, you should see https instead of http in in the output.