I got a Supernote A5X to read papers - I’m very happy with it and wouldn’t want a tablet. I specifically wanted a dumb device dedicated to notes/reading that I wouldn’t connect to the internet, which really helps me focus. The eink display is easy to read and is a great break from screens, it feels natural to write on.

However it’s not perfect - eink has a small lag in turning pages, so if you intend on flipping through a ton of pages while coding that may be a pain. The searching experience also isn’t great, typing takes longer because of the lag. I use it as an advanced notebook rather than a smart device, and I love it from that lens.

At the bottom right of every page, you can click on the “Instances” button (or just go to https://lemmy.zip/instances) to see what instances your site is federated with/is defederated from. lemmy.ml is under linked, so lemmy.zip is federating with them.

What you may be running into is that on this smaller instance, you may need to discover the communities:

These previous ways [searching for instances] will only show communities that are already known to the instance. Especially if you joined a small or inactive Lemmy instance, there will be few communities to discover. You can find more communities by browsing different Lemmy instances, or using the Lemmy Community Browser. When you found a community that you want to follow, enter its URL (e.g. https://feddit.de/c/main) or the identifier (e.g. !main@feddit.de) into the search field of your own Lemmy instance. Lemmy will then fetch the community from its original instance, and allow you to interact with it. The same method also works to fetch users, posts or comments from other instances.

(from the join-lemmy docs)

You can read their announcement and reasons here: https://beehaw.org/post/567170

Agree - I jumped from a OnePlus 5T to a Pixel 5a 2 years ago and have no regrets. It really depends on what you’re modding for, but I found that on Pixel not having (as much) bloatware, getting the latest Android updates, having real Google Camera support instead of chasing the best mod, and using Wavelet instead of Viper4Android took care of most of my rooting needs. Instead, with the unlockable bootloader I’ve been able to explore custom OSes like GrapheneOS which has been really great!

This whole website is great, thanks for sharing! Currently hooked on drawing a perfect circle

I believe it’s this issue for 0.0.36, where it will always use your account’s preferences: https://github.com/dessalines/jerboa/issues/887

It looks like a temporary fix is already done, so it should be fixed when they make a new release (0.0.37). As a quick fix for 0.0.36, it looks like if you change your account’s preferences, quit the app and reopen, it’ll use those new settings (but that’s definitely a pain), you could also use the web version.

Defunctland’s Disney’s Fastpass: A Complicated History is a fantastic dive into the logistics of managing a giant crowd over several years, from approaching it as an engineering problem all the way to exploiting the system for profit. It’s such a fascinating problem to me, and it’s presented in an engaging and fun way. The rest of the channel is fantastic too!

I’ll also recommend Fascinating Horror - these aren’t fictional horror stories, these are real disasters told in an incredibly detailed but highly respectful way. They don’t just explain the disaster and why/how it happened, but also the regulations that came afterwards to make sure these would never happen again. They’re all high quality, but if you want a starting point the Nutty Butty Caves will give you a good idea what the channel is about.

Brave tweeted this last year:

Manifest V3 will not prevent Brave from blocking ads. We built ad blocking into the browser itself so it will not be affected by Google changing its rules for extensions.

If you’re on Android 12 or higher with a supported device, you could disable camera access with a quick settings toggle. If the camera is disabled, any app using the camera just gets a black image. (It does cause a popup asking if you want to unblock the camera, but you can just hit cancel.)

I’m really excited for what it means for the future! I’m not going to buy a first-gen product like this, but the fact that Google is making a foldable hopefully means that Android is going to become a better experience on devices like these, so when the technology does get cheaper the software will be ready for it. I’m totally onboard with having a larger display in a more pocketable form factor.

I’ve only been thinking about the implications of faking a celebrity’s voice - personalizing it like this makes me sick to my stomach. Had no idea it’s already that easy. I don’t think the voice would even have to be that realistic - if they’re faking a life threatening situation, my first thought isn’t going to be “Hey, their voice sounded a little off”. Absolutely horrifying.

Hey, I can see your comment.

The Talos Principle - for me, the puzzles hit the sweet spot of being hard enough to be on my mind all day, but never feeling like the solution was out of reach. But even more than the puzzles, the philosophical elements made me reflect on life, civilization, and personhood in a way nothing else has. It was a peaceful, tranquil experience of just me, a serene soundtrack, and thought provoking text and puzzles.

Pixel 6a - was happily using a Pixel 5a 3 weeks ago, until it had a spontaneous motherboard failure 🙃. Google replaced it with a 6a, I’m still annoyed the 5a can become a brick with no warning but I’m very happy with the 6a so far and plan to stick with it until the OS updates stop.

Even if Reddit walks this decision back, the fact that a corporation is making the decisions instead of the community/content creators means that similar drama is inevitable. I can’t blame them for making a decision to try and be more profitable, but that also means I will leave and put my effort towards a network that is community-led.

At the same time, running a Lemmy instance isn’t free - I have concerns about how these instances will stay funded in the long term. I’ll also miss the niche communities that haven’t made their way over here yet, but hopefully they will!

I’ve been a big fan of helix as a terminal text/code editor - while VS Code is open source, a lot of their language servers (for example, pylance) are closed source. Helix lets me integrate open source language servers out of the box without any setup needed (besides installing the language servers), and it has a UI that helps you explore new features and learn keyboard shortcuts. It doesn’t have plugins yet, but I find that the built in features have implemented most things I’d want a plugin for; and it has different keybindings than vim/neovim, but I’ve found the new model for editing more intuitive and worth the relearning process.

I’m using Fedora - was using Arch for a while, but realized I didn’t want to put in the work to keep up with/migrate to the newest tech (Wayland, Pipewire) but I also didn’t want to fall behind. Fedora has been great at integrating new tech without me needing to pay close attention or migrate to it myself.