Yes, GrapheneOS is Android (it’s AOSP without Google Play Services and GApps, with open source replacements). It’s like what CyanogenMod was back in the day. I haven’t used Graphene; I’ve never owned a Pixel. And Graphene is only on Pixels.

I’ve used a ton of Android custom firmware… from around Ice Cream Sandwich through Lollipop — back when Android was named for desserts. My favourite CFW was LiquidSmooth based on Jellybean, based on AOKP, which was an AOSP fork that tried to be “cool.” It wasn’t quite as cool as Paranoid Android (which was fucking awesome), but it was way more stable. And CyanogenMod was the most stable but “boring” by comparison. I mean it wasn’t flashy. But LiquidSmooth was rock solid. So no, I haven’t used Graphene, but I’ve used forks/ROMs like it.

If Google Play Services is running on it, and you’re not blocking it with a firewall (not sure if you even can, but I suppose it isn’t impossible), then yes, it’s spying on you. (I do not think GrapheneOS runs Google Play Services.)

The iPad also wasn’t Apple’s first tablet. The Newton basically sucked and no one liked it. But now there’s really no point in buying anything but an iPad if you want a tablet, even if you use an Android phone.

There were a ton of bad MP3 players before the iPod and a bunch of smartphones before the iPhone, except in both cases, some of them were good. You just had to be real savvy to find those diamonds in the rough, because it sure was a rough market.

The problem is, Google is a data services (advertising and marketing) company. The only reason Android even exists is because Google bought it from a hobbyist (Andy Rubin) because they knew they could use it to scrape more data than Gmail alone. Android exists to harvest your data so that Google can collect and sell it.

Meanwhile, Apple is still kind of trying to sell phones like computers. They’re pushing performance harder than their rivals, and they want to be a privacy-first company, but they’re based in the US, and are licking fascist boots, so it’s not a good look. And now Apple is pushing services as well, subscriptions and whatnot. Is it really better than Android? Especially given the shortcomings in app choice (e.g. sideloading) and the broken ass keyboard? I dunno. I’m a Mac guy, I like Apple tech, warts and all. And I still think they protect your privacy. I think, like Mozilla, they collect telemetry so they know how their products are used, but I don’t believe they are tracking your activity across apps/the web, building a profile on you, and selling this to advertisers. And they’ve gone after companies that try to do so on their platform — when CEO Tim Cook came out and said “starting today, we’re still going to let Facebook track you across apps and the web, but we’re going to make them get your permission first” or something like that. And from then, you had to agree to the tracking. If you said no, the app was stopped from doing it. Apparently it was effective, Facebook ran a huge ad campaign claiming to be a small business and saying Apple was hurting small businesses like them. (They’ve since found ways around it. Apple has tried to block them. It’s a cat-and-mouse game.) Anyway, point is, I don’t know how long Apple can keep selling phones like computers. Arguably, they stopped a while ago. And that’s a shame. And it’s why, as an Apple guy, I’m rooting for Linux phones. Because if Apple won’t sell a phone like a computer, well… that’s the kind of phone I want. A pocket computer that can call.

I mean, the best way is to throw iPhone money at Google, and get iPhone 11 level performance out of a Pixel 10, then wipe the firmware and replace it with GrapheneOS. This is problematic for a couple reasons. One, if you’re gonna pay iPhone money, maybe just get an iPhone? Solves a big chunk of the privacy issue, but doesn’t get you away from American tech companies, which was your original point. So we set that option aside. Two, you have to give Google money, so they win either way. Sure, they lose out on that targeted ad money, but they sold you years-old tech at a premium price — so they win. Of course, you can buy a used Pixel, but it’s gonna be even less powerful (assuming it’s an older model).

I think the best option is to take the open-source AOSP (Android Open Source Project) that the closed-source Android is based on, and make a fork that doesn’t use Google, like Amazon did with Fire OS. Then you’d just need a hardware partner.

Apparently, Graphene OS is looking into this, but I don’t like the idea of a stripped-down Android phone. If I’m paying iPhone price on years-old hardware, the OS better kick some ass. The alternatives to iPhone just offer too many compromises in the name of virtues that I don’t really think matter enough. If we can’t get an alternative that can match iPhone on performance, it should have an awesome user experience.

So no smartphones.

Nokia is Finnish and I’m not sure if t hat’s considered European. It’s not American though. In fact the only American company left making phones is Apple. The problem is, the rest of them uses Android, which spies on you. Counterpoint: Apple won’t let you install apps your government doesn’t approve of. Counterpoint to the counterpoint: Android. Fucking. Spies. On. You. Counterpoint to the… you get the idea: Apple still hasn’t shipped a working software keyboard. Pick your poison. Spyware or a broken keyboard and you can’t use a few apps you may not care about… but you’re buying from an American company whose CEO kisses Trump’s arse and literally gave him a solid gold participation trophy.

I want to see real Linux phones that don’t run Android and are somewhat competitive with Android phones, at least in the mid-range space. No one expects them to compete with the iPhone, or the equivalent Android phone that comes out 3-5 years later and stops getting updates while the iPhone it matches on performance is still getting them… but it shouldn’t have to. We kinda hit a plateau a few years ago.

Otherwise, definitely worth a look.

Wild guess: Spotify was founded in Europe.

It’s now based in the US, and a lot of its revenue goes to alt-right loonies. Renewing their podcast contracts is why you’re paying more year after year to stream music.

I like Apple Music because they pay artists more, but I might be a little biased as it came with my phone and computer and I have a family plan with others who enjoy it (and yes, they are family).

The true alternative to streaming anything is using Plex (or something like it) to make your own music streamer, buying all your media (that pays artists more than any streaming platform), and streaming it to yourself that way. It is illegal to rip CDs, DVDs, and Blu-rays in the US, but technically if you own the media it’s fine to have it, you just can’t have broken the copy protection. Kind of a catch-22. But it costs a lot more as you have to buy everything. If you already have a massive CD collection, it’s not as big a deal.

I know the feeling. I’ve watched a couple things set in my hometown. The continuity errors are a trip.

Oh yes, I remember, and what’s even funnier is it was TNN (The Nashville Network) or something else not sci-fi related before that.

The network did not invent science fiction, so they had nothing to defend, and when they changed it to Syfy, no one was trying to take that name, either — and the quality plummeted after that. Probably because “well we’re no longer the Sci-Fi channel so here’s a bunch of reality TV.”

Then again, I’m also mad that most rock radio stations went away. We talk about AI slop, but the slop has been there for a while. It’s just, people used to make slop to satiate the masses. They still do, but now they use AI to do it, too. And it’s not AI’s fault, per se. The slop was always here.

I vaguely remember K-9 Mail.

So Thunderbird requires a browser engine? I didn’t think an email program was dependent upon a browser. I would expect one that was to be inefficient. Like a lot of people I work with use Outlook inside of Microsoft Edge. And I just look at them like they’re crazy. Our workstations are powerful enough that there’s not much difference, but why would you do that to yourself? (No, I’m not going to ask them. I don’t want to hear their reasons. And it’s not really hurting anything.)

Huh. TIL Thunderbird is on Mac. It’s not on iOS for whatever reason. I guess I heard it was coming to iOS at some point and figured it just wasn’t on Apple in general?

Used it years ago, willing to give it another chance. Mail (by Apple) is fine on iOS, but on the Mac, it could be a lot better. I’m no fan of Outlook, but that’s what we use at work, and it makes Apple Mail look so bad. (I’m not going to pay for Microsoft 365 or Office on my Mac. I do not see Outlook as an option for my home computers. I don’t like Microsoft software enough to pay for it.)

I’m gonna say Broadchurch. I don’t think it was unpopular, but I have to look it up every time to remember the name. It features a past and future Doctor (as in, Dr Who). David Tennant was a Doctor before he was on Broadchurch, and Jodie Whittaker was a Doctor after. She plays a mum whose child goes missing, and he’s the inspector sent to her remote (?) village to investigate. That’s the first season. The second season deals with the town’s issues with the bad guy from the first season, and I forget what the third season’s about, but it’s all good.

They made an American one, and some of the same people were in it, but it only lasted one season. So I’d say go with the British one.

I also appreciated Torchwood. It’s an adult sci-fi series set in the Dr Who universe, and it had its ups and downs (mostly downs), but it was generally worth watching. Unfortunately, the lead actor had a bad habit of pulling his pecker out backstage to prank his coworkers and he got canceled for it. Nobody said he ever abused them or that he pulled it out in public, it was just schoolboy antics backstage, but it was enough. Not defending him, I’m just saying he’s not a nonce or a public menace. He just has a problem with boundaries. So, while I don’t dislike him as an actor, being a viewer, I fully understand why people don’t want to work with him anymore. Torchwood has continued as audiobooks, I think, or maybe something like a podcast where they act out roles? They call it something else, like an audio drama or something. So I’m not sure if there are actual books they’re reading from or just a script that isn’t available in print, the audio recordings being the only medium. There were also a couple games as I recall, but nothing good. A less problematic and more straightforward series (albeit, American) is Warehouse 13. Same thing. Shadowy organisation collects alien relics and stores them for the government. Hijinks ensue. W13 was fun at first, but really didn’t go anywhere. (Also, it was on Syfy, if that tells you anything — as in, the network couldn’t be arsed to spell “sci-fi” properly and they cared about as much about how to make good sci-fi as they did about spelling it properly.)

I’m on Lemmy (db0) because, at the time, I thought PieFed was just another instance, and I chose the instance I liked best without much thought behind what software it ran.

db0 has talked about spinning up a PieFed instance, but I would have to join it and I’d have two accounts. I’m not sure I want to manage two accounts. AFAIK they are not talking about converting to PieFed (if such a thing is possible).

On the tech side, the two mostly federate with one another. I (maybe mistakenly) called out a PieFed user for not posting a link. They thought they did. And they did — it was visible on PieFed, but it was not visible to Lemmy. So they apologised and posted the link in the body of their text, and I apologised for not understanding how things worked. So that is an issue Lemmy (the people who make the software) would have to address, and then db0 would have to update the code on their server (I believe).

So I think as long as they continue to federate to one another, it’s fine to just use what you want. If one starts to pull ahead and the other is not catching up, it might be wise to switch, especially if there is a way to pull all your subscriptions, blocks, and managed communities from one to the other.

I have no idea about the ethics of using either.

Ao3 (Archive of Our Own) exists for people who want to read stories. People come to Lemmy (and sites like it) to interact.

One suggestion would be to make interactive stories. Have someone post a chapter with a poll or ask what a character or characters should do next. Whichever numbers or arguments win the author over determine, or help determine where the story goes. Communities like AskOuija (not sure if I spelt that correctly) do a similar thing on a much smaller scale.

Writing is kind of a big, busy task. If someone were only expected to write a chapter or a short chapter at a time and let people vote on the stories they care about, someone whose story got no traction would have no obligation to continue. Or they could try again with another story. You could even offer writing prompts (or just cross-post them from a community dedicated to them).

Willing to bet most visitors are Fallout fans, at least since 2010

Yeah like it’s fine if you’re Meta (Facebook) and you pirate books to train AI, but if you say it’s for human knowledge, so that a poor person in a third world country who might pull in $100 a month can still have access to books and music… they figure it’s worth it if a bunch of spoiled Americans can also get it for free, as long as they seed.

It isn’t.

There’s an Ars Technica article published yesterday or the day before about the book metadata scraping, and a representative for AA came right out and said they deliberately violate copyright law in most countries.

They believe, apparently, that collecting information is more valuable than being legal. In that case, they were ordered by a court to delete the data they scraped and they were not expected to comply (and have not done so). The .org suspension was thought to be related to that. Apparently it is not.

I was recommended Lawnchair for my use case, but I’m not sure it’ll fit. It’s completely free so worth a shot.

We hit a plateau around 2020. Watch Apple’s keynotes when they compare performance to the “competition.” You’ll notice they never specify what, exactly. It’s fine when they compare to their own past generations, but they never give solid numbers, they just throw ballpark figures out. When they bust out the charts, they don’t tell you what they’re comparing with. (Android keynotes, the ones I’ve watched from Google and Samsung, tend to focus more on features, since they’re selling phones and software — Google buys their chips and Samsung does as well in addition to making chips for others.)

I have an iPhone from 2024 (16 Pro Max, so the top model, and now the second-most powerful model) and a Galaxy S10 from 2019. The S10 is still better at a few things, and hardly a bad phone in any regard (except, it’s not being used as a phone, it has no cell service, it’s just a WiFi device at this point).

Shitty apps are going to continue to bloat. They do on iOS as well. Only, we can’t delete cache. You have to uninstall and reinstall. It’s kinda shit in that regard (and others, to be fair).

The key isn’t to avoid the top phones, it’s to stop buying the latest top phone. Buy one from a year or two ago. iPhones lose half their value every year. It’s worse for Android. Of course, those are the values from the manufacturers. You always get more selling privately. But when the new ones come out, people are looking to sell their old ones. Give them a fair deal and get a phone for a fraction of what it cost new. Also, a used phone purchase is not a new phone purchased, so it hurts their numbers (I mean, instead of the seller selling to the manufacturer and you both buy new phones, you buy from the seller and the seller buys a new phone, so it’s 1 new sale instead of 2).

Same, but I still enjoy using Windows. I have 30 years of experience with it, and I have a Windows 11 machine… at work. I do stuff with Windows that make my coworkers think I’m a wizard. I’m not trying to brag about being special in a Technology community. Rather, the bar is pretty low. Like when my boss says he has two monitors and that makes him special, I tell him I have four. He taps my one and says no, you have one. I say, come round and watch this. Hold CTRL and WIN and tap left and right. I have four desktops. Super easy, hit Win+Tab or the new task view/switch icon (white square, black square icon) and add a desktop from the bottom. Lots of other shit I do. Word spreads. IT guy’s busy (or can’t be arsed to show them how to do something)? They come to me. My boss thinks I’m wasting time and gives me more work, but I have all kinds of shortcuts set up. (No AI/Copilot as that requires a Microsoft account, and I don’t get one with work and I’m not using my personal one. I could make a dummy one just for work, but I’m not poking that bear.)

At home though, I use Macs. I’m relatively new to Mac, and I’m sure they’ve had problems like Windows has had lately, in the past, but the biggest complaint seems to be “Liquid Glass is ugly.” I don’t really care about the theme. It’s a fucking theme. Does the shit work like I need? Yes. I don’t care what it looks like, though I do fancy a dark theme. Easier on my eyes. But real talk, macOS window snapping sucks compared to Windows. Microsoft figured that shit out with Windows 7. And it’s been solid since. We can use a free app called Rectangle to get up to Windows level and a few other tricks, but I don’t need it. The system snapping is good enough for me. Finder is also not quite as good as Windows Explorer. They both have all the features I need, but Finder is kinda like the dumb little brother of Windows Explorer. I could replace it with a file manager that beats both of them, but default is good enough. The only one I really know is Directory Opus, which I used on the Amiga (showing my age here), but I just checked, they’re Windows only now.

For people who still have machines that run Windows (mine died, which is why I have Macs now, I didn’t like what the PC market looked like and Apple Silicon was in its second generation (M2 Pro on the desk, M2 base on the MacBook) and seemed like a better fit for me), I’d recommend some flavour of Linux. Mint is a great place to start if you’re familiar with the look and feel of Windows. If you’re sick of Windows, but you want something commercially available (you buy it and become their customer) and supported by the company, Macs are $500 now, and that’s for the M4, two generations ahead of mine. Though, I’d recommend springing for more storage. 256GB doesn’t feel like enough. M4 Pro will get you more cores, but then you’re pushing $1000 and you can probably do better with Windows/Intel or AMD, unless you really just want to avoid Windows altogether. Still, find a machine without an OS and stick Linux on it. At that price point it just makes a little more sense.

Steam has its own DRM, in addition to DRM added by the manufacturer. So at the very least it’s going to ask Valve if you’re authorized to run the software. Whereas GOG doesn’t do that. (Steam can also make backup installers.)

Get the games from GOG wherever possible. No DRM and easy to use installers.

You should support them, but if you don’t, their installers are still DRM free and easy to install from! Also if the game is bigger than 4.3GB they break it up so you just keep inserting the next disc.