kirk781

joined 2 years ago
[–] kirk781@discuss.tchncs.de 1 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Which Adblock are extension are you using ( Adblock Plus by any chance?)? I just tried on mobile Firefox with uBlock Origin and rendered fine.

[–] kirk781@discuss.tchncs.de 7 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago)

Lots of circle jerking in the rest of the post that OP linked. Reminds me of the sub r/indianpeoplelinkedin (which was just a subset of LinkedIn lunatics basically) back when it used to be active ( dunno now since many smaller communities have closed down).

Also, for some weird reason, LinkedIn won't let me read the rest of the post despite me being logged in on the mobile site. It won't scroll down and just says works better in the app. Dunno if they hate Firefox or mobile users in general. I had to toggle desktop version of the site to get it to load.

[–] kirk781@discuss.tchncs.de 6 points 5 days ago

There is one called FairEmail. While it technically has a pro version (one time purchase), but most of the needed features are available on the free tier. Plus it's available on F Droid as well, so that's a plus and is continuously maintained.

[–] kirk781@discuss.tchncs.de 1 points 5 days ago

Oddly, I did know some BASIC and I have vague memories of the numeric line starters like 10 with white text on a black background giving it a retro feel.

[–] kirk781@discuss.tchncs.de 6 points 5 days ago

Lary Ellison is one of the richest men in the world right and owns some kind of private island or something that he bought basically after showing his shares of Oracle stock?

[–] kirk781@discuss.tchncs.de 4 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (1 children)

That makes more sense in context. Another Gang of Four (that I err, know more deeply for some reason) is(read:was) a political grouping in mid 70s in China.

[–] kirk781@discuss.tchncs.de 72 points 6 days ago (34 children)

Java was also my first introduction to programming as it was included in Computer Science in final year of school (at college, we did the trusty C).

I think they have replaced Java with Python now in schools because of the latter's popularity and also because many would argue, Python is slightly easier to learn than Java.

[–] kirk781@discuss.tchncs.de 1 points 1 week ago

I think my first distro was Ubuntu ( but that was because everyone around me was using it only) before I finally migrated to Debian less than a year later. Mint and Ubuntu both use Debian as their base. (Mint technically uses Ubuntu as it's base but has a Debian edition as well for backup reasons).

I know Debian's problem is it's software repos(Debian Stable can be filled with older versions of software). But it can't be denied that it is rock solid (for most part), has a comparatively decent set of software in its repos and a large set of distros use it as their base.

[–] kirk781@discuss.tchncs.de 7 points 1 week ago (3 children)

Configuring one's system to always login as root in Linux is significantly easier than rooting an Android phone. One needs to know their way to root their phone and spend significant amount of time tinkering with it so that everything works properly.

As for malicious apps, there are many such apps on the Play Store as well. In fact, I would argue that the safest distribution channel is F Droid and not Play Store.

I can't speak for foreign banks but for banks in my country, they have a problem that is way way worse than any Android stuff can solve ( read: giving access to your account only via SINGLE password and only asking for SMS OTP when transaction is done; and of course no hardware key support). I don't wish my banking data to be less secure than a WordPress account!

[–] kirk781@discuss.tchncs.de 3 points 1 week ago

Huh, didn't realize that NYT was disliked from before only. I thought it was a decent American newspaper. The only other American newspaper I can think of is Washington Post, but that is so capitalist friendly to say the least.

Among overseas newspapers, I had decent idea of UK based ones (looks and judges Sun readers :p) but not otherwise.

[–] kirk781@discuss.tchncs.de 15 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (2 children)

Ah, NYT. Amongst all subscriptions that I have come across in my country, NYT is the most expensive. Since they haven't heard of region specific pricing and just multiply by exchange rate; it's only six times more expensive than YT Premium in India.

Atleast I was under the belief that they had decent editorial standards but looks like that ship has sailed away as well.

[–] kirk781@discuss.tchncs.de 8 points 1 week ago

Ooh, my bad. Indeed it did overtake it. Reminds me of the UK overtake where it was a close race for some time (first India went ahead, then UK again raced ahead before India fleecing ahead finally for good).

26
Lock screen and ads (discuss.tchncs.de)
submitted 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) by kirk781@discuss.tchncs.de to c/android@lemmy.world
 

This link about Glance made me think about this.

Majority of folks here might not be aware of this company. Their software usually ships on low end phones mainly in the Indian/South Asian market. They do seemed to have pivoted to the US as well but I am not sure if overseas models also see this scourge. As of right now, if one's phone has this, they will basically see a new glorified wallpaper with news/text each time they unlock their phone. And if you read the article, they wish to go even furthur. It can technically be switched off though often it's buried deeper than Dante' s last layer of hell.

Do overseas(read:other Asian markets/European/American and so on) also have any local equivalent to this scourge from my country? Are ads plastered on lock screens on entry level phones common anywhere else in the Android world?

 

This is an old article I stumbled upon when browsing archives of this site. But it's quite in depth and covers the history of this somewhat politically charged topic.

 

Filled with some images as well, I wasn't expecting Verge to do a deep dive on Vietnam of all things

25
submitted 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) by kirk781@discuss.tchncs.de to c/android@lemmy.world
 

This is a regional release from the brand apparently for Nigerian market only which explains the fact that despite having decent specs( things like 90W charging, 8 GB RAM and 144 Hz high PWM dimming display), it is a 4G phone only.

Though it is gimmicky in some respects. It has a SpO2 sensor apparently built into the back but skips out on basic things like micro SD or 3.5 mm jack (but hey, they do give free USB C headphones; now I can switch from Sennheiser's IE 600 to an upgraded variant :p).

 

It is a half baked review, IMO. The author says that despite having 45 W charging, the phone takes 75 mins to charge. Samsung really slows down it's charging speeds post 80%, so testing from 0 to 100 is not a good criterion at all.

Plus, he forgets to mention that Samsung skips on a microSD card for A56 which was present on A55. Though in Samsung's favor, they are offering 6 OS upgrades and I doubt any other OEM except Google matches it.

 

I originally used Spotify a long time ago before switching to Premium again from YT Music. I mainly liked the fact that it supported third party clients ( I got a low overhead terminal based client on Linux setup that supports proper keybindings and Spotify connect as well). I also liked the fact that it had a good Wear OS app better than ironically, Google's own offering.

Sadly, my positives end there. The Wear OS itself had a giant bug for me where songs wouldn't add to custom playlists (they would add to liked songs, but not to any custom playlists NOT at the first position). Also, for some reason, there is an outstanding bug on Spotify Forums relating to Bluetooth multipoint that causes playback issues dating back to 2020 which has not been fixed till now.

People wax poetically about Spotify Wrapped and other services like YT Music have copied it in form of Recap but since I use Last.fm ; that did not play a significant factor for me. What I wanted was customizability. The simple fact that I can't remap the plus sign to say, add songs to most recent Playlist instead of liked songs is a downer (YT Music does better in that regard).

Other services are fast catching up. Google bundles YouTube (or the other way around) for little more the price (in my country Atleast) and gives Music service. Apple offers lossless audio(though ironically Apple's own Bluetooth offerings can't stream it).

Spotify does have the advantage that it has a partially open API and many third party apps/services can take advantage of it(and many have been written around it) though a part of me wishes that just like there were third party clients for Spotify on Linux/Windows, something like that existed on Android as well. All in all, I personally still have not found any streaming service (Tidal included since I used it once somehow) that rivals the simplicity of locally stored music.

46
submitted 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) by kirk781@discuss.tchncs.de to c/fuckcars@lemmy.world
 

Pre 1990s, there was supply side limit in my country and long waiting time(like years) for cars. This meant that car ownership flourished in the hands of elite only. Post opening up of economy, owning a car has become a status symbol and even villages, where once the ubiquitous sustainable cycle was the way of life, cars now rule.

Cars choke the street like pollution choke my country's cities. Trains carry hundreds of passengers, buses dozens, autos multiple, but a single vehicle mooching on the street just for sake of a single person. Since parking is a joke, people park their cars anywhere on the side of roads creating more traffic (Yes, it's a developing country). Folks here love to blame shared autos or government(and some criticism is valid) but none wonder about cars. What is the need for a single person driving an SUV that takes nearly half the space of a small bus?

I see old images of Bangalore from 1960 or Delhi from 1930s and it was wide open spaces/streets. Now it is choked to the limit. Cars have made my country an urban dystopia. There are many things I would have loved my country to copy from the US. It's obsession with cars is NOT one of them.

For me, cars are an utilitarian waste of space(until they are always running packed to capacity which they rarely do)

 

The title is err, not correct because the top 2 alternatives Opera and Arc are based on Chromium engine. I have seen tons of people swear by Arc, but I am seriously asking (since as a Linux user I can't use it), how much good can a browser be in this day and age if ultimately it's ad blocking breaks and it will since Manifest v2 will go soon(unless Arc folks have a solution for it)

The rest alternatives are Firefox, Zen (FF fork but honestly Atleast this was something new I learned from this article) and Tor (which is weird since it is not meant for normal web browsing and using it will not only be slow but put additional strain on the nodes, correct me if I am wrong).

 

An old article but still atleast introduced me to one really weird Keyboard layout

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