squaresinger

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squaresinger,

Tbh, I don’t recommend beginners to try out multiple distros in the beginning. Realistically, if you don’t have in depth Linux knowledge already, all you’ll be able to differentiate is the look of the DE and the wallpaper.

I find, too much choice tends to confuse beginners more than it helps them.

So I’d rather recommend something simple like Ubuntu and let them try out the flavours with the different DEs.

Choice is better for later when people actually understand what they are looking for.

squaresinger,

Most people I helped getting Linux to work are actually not techy at all and they haven’t touched the CLI at all so far…

I guess it differs if you use Linux because you are interested in the technology or if you use it because Windows 11 doesn’t run on your PC.

squaresinger,

Cuphead will now be renamed to whatever the cup from Beauty and the Beast was called.

squaresinger,

Thanks! Couldn’t be bothered to look it up :)

squaresinger,

In this case, you should get a 3D printer.

squaresinger,

The thing is, what use case can benefit from a blockchain?

Scamming, gambling, crime and speculation benefited from the lack of regulation, but barely cared about the underlying concept of a bitcoin.

But for anything real, much better solutions have existed for decades or centuries.

Blockchain is a solution without a problem and has been that for 25 years now.

If you have a solution that hasn’t found a problem in 25 years, chances are that there will never be an actual problem that solution would solve.

So the killer apps of blockchain remain scamming, gambling, speculation and crime. Until there are more stringent regulations, then they’ll go back to Western Union and Paysafe cards.

squaresinger,

That’s why piracy is back on the menu.

squaresinger,

I wasn’t specifically talking about this product alone, but about the general trend. I don’t own any Amazon hardware.

A few years ago, piracy was all but dead because or really good offers like Netflix. All the stuff you wanted was there and the price was ok.

Now to get the same that you got for a tenner a month on Netflix, you have to pay for half a dozen of streaming services.

Youtube forces you to watch more ads than actual content. All services are increasing prices while decreasing what you are getting for that money. And all sorts of products are retroactively introducing ads.

I mean seriously, if someone bought that stick, they paid for it. They shouldn’t have to worry about updates actively making the device worse.

It’s an industry-wide trend that sucks, and it’s one that creates resistance. People start pirating, use adblock and some hack their devices. Not because it’s impossible to have a situation that suits everyone, but because they purpously use enshittification to suck more money out of their customers.

squaresinger,

This here is the solution for what you want: xda-developers.com/disable-system-app-bloatware-a…

You can disable whatever app you want until the system doesn’t work any more. Just install an alternative for what you want to disable (e.g. the launcher) and then disable the Amazon version.

squaresinger,

As long as it still boots, you can undo the change with a simple adb pm enable [packagename].

I wouldn’t recomment disableing system critical things like systemui. You can google each package together with “Can I disable X” and you should get decent infos.

Regarding the launcher:

I don’t have a Fire TV but I had a Fire Tablet. So if these two work the same, you can install another launcher without issues. But Amazon removed the setting for default launcher, so it will always pick the stock launcher when you press the home button.

To override that, there are two options.

  • Install the Automate app by Llamalab and make a small flow that detects when the stock launcher is the currently active app and then automatically launches the new launcher. This option is completely safe.
  • Disable the stock launcher. If Android doesn’t find it’s set default launcher, it will instead open the first launcher it finds. Worked good on the Fire Tablet, but I can’t verify that this doesn’t cause issues on a Fire TV. So this might be a bit risky.
squaresinger,

Happy to help!

Btw, check out Netguard (either the F-Droid version or the one from Github, since these two versions allow system-wide adblocking).

And Newpipe.

If you don’t know these apps yet, they will change how you use your Android device.

squaresinger,

Finally designers are realizing it’s not 2013 anymore and nobody liked the Win8 designed-in-powerpoint style.

squaresinger,

Sure the designers of this monstrosity thought, “There are only black people living there, so it’s a win-win” -.-

squaresinger,

The hybrid physical/virtual is a great touch

The original reason for this was that I didn’t want to spend all that time getting pass-through charging to work, so for charging the keyboard needs to come off.

But this “quick release” design has the advantage that you can use the phone without keyboard when that’s advantageous, e.g. when I want to type really quietly while in bed.

This also gives me a direct comparison between physical and virtual keyboard, that you usually don’t get on a pure keyboard phone. And I have to say, typing on the screen is a PAIN compared to the physical keyboard.

and the ability to customize what’s in those top two rows would be amazing.

For the two virtual rows? Yeah, I’m using the Gr8ly customizable keyboard for that (play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=symbolsshor…) which allows me to put whatever symbols I want on there.

So cool what you can do with modular open design!

Thanks!

squaresinger,

On a similar note, sometime a year ago I spotted a guy using a Q10 at a shopping center in LA. Had a quick chat which was fun.

As someone who is on the other side of that conversation a lot, I do appreciate it whenever someone asks me about that weird thing I have in my hands ;)

I got this a lot more when I had it in copper/wood (top part was wood filament, bottom part copper filament), but I only have these colors in PLA, which is not durable at all. So I switched to the plain-black PETG and now people don’t notice it any more. I’m considering reprinting it in transparent PETG.

squaresinger,

It is a looong phone :)

But it still fits into most of my trouser pockets

squaresinger,

The shaped keys of the Blackberry Q10 keyboard help a lot. But picking up a physical keyboard after years of touch-only typing does take a few days to get used to it. But once you are used to it, there is no going back.

I have the direct comparison, since I have to take off the keyboard for charging, and if I want to use it while charging I need to use the virtual keyboard. It’s a pain, compared to the physical one.

squaresinger,

I get 55 WPM without errors on the physical keyboard, compared to 45 WPM on the touch keyboard where I also have a significant amount of typos.

But tbh, typing speed is not the main reason. With the physical keyboard, I am much more accurate. I can use key combinations like CTRL+A/X/C/V (the microphone button is mapped to CTRL). There is an alternate mode (activated by pressing both shift keys at the same time) that remaps WASD as cursor keys, which makes e.g. selecting text (SHIFT + Cursor key) much easier. Also I can type while walking and not looking at the phone. And don’t get me started about how much of a difference it is when I use a command line, e.g. with SSH.

squaresinger,

Yeah, all of the keyboard phones on the market are ancient and/or total crap in every regard but their keyboard and/or super expensive. Some of them are all three at the same time (looking at you Planet Computers and F(x)tec!).

I believe I might have the most up-to-date and highest specced keyboard phone currently on the planet ;)

there is 100％ a niche market.

There totally is, as is proven by Unihertz still existing. But I fear, the keyboard market is a little fragmented, and just a handful of devices won’t really capture it. People like side sliders, top sliders or portrait candy bar,. They might want a large or a small phone. They might like privacy/secure phones or hacker phones, or just cheap phones with a keyboard and nothing else. Or maybe a flagship phone with all bells and whistles and a keyboard…

The Fairberry is adaptable to pretty much any phone on the market (as long as it supports external keyboards). Foldables might be challenging though ;)

But that allows you to use any phone you like with a keyboard that anyone can make for ~€50, or maybe €100 if you get someone to do the soldering/printing for you.

squaresinger,

Yeah, I wanted a bit more performance than what the Titan provides. I wish there was a decent midrange version of the Titan pocket.

squaresinger,

The advantage is that you can rebrand it, close the source and sell it as your invention.

Btw, did you know that Apple invented Unix?

squaresinger,

!woosh ;)

This was a joke about how Apple just takes open source stuff (in this case, they used FreeBSD as a basis for MacOS/iOS/iPadOS/tvOS/watchOS), rebrands it and then claims it was theirs.

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    squaresinger,

    That’s why I almost exclusively play indie games. They don’t invest massively in graphics, microtransactions or dumb features not related to the game (like the chess/darts/drinking simulators in Watchdogs). Instead, they focus on making games that do one thing and to that one thing great.

    squaresinger,

    It’s resource consumption and graphics output are directly linked. If you gain more efficiency, that gives you more headroom to either reduce resource consumption or increase the graphics output. But you can’t maximize both. You have to decide what do to with the resources you have. Use them, or not use them. You can’t do both at the same time.

    [Rant] I swear to fucking god. Windows is harder to use than Linux. Have any of you ever USED Windows lately? Holy fuck.

    I’m helping a family member build a pc. He wanted to use Windows because “Linux can’t play games” despite me having a perfectly good gaming laptop running Linux that runs all my games, even graphically intensive ones....

    squaresinger,

    It’s kinda funny how many people have no problem at all with a cloud account on their phone but get a mild stroke when Windows asks them to create a Microsoft account.

    squaresinger,

    Totally agreed!

    squaresinger,

    That’s what happens if you design a game in a way that makes it worse to have a bad player in your team than no player at all.

    squaresinger,

    Almost done with Dungeons 3. Really fun little game that was free on Epic the other week.

    Also, I finally managed to get War Thunder working with HOTAS and Quest 2. That is pretty amazing. For the first time the climb phase a the beginning of a realistic battle is really enjoyable and not just an extension of the loading screen.

    squaresinger,

    Solution: Get the wife and kids into gaming ;)

    I got a bunch of 2DS/3DS on the cheap for the whole family, put CFW on it and now we are all playing Pokemon and Mario Kart. Including my formerly decidedly non-gamer wife.

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