Search engines are websites that people used to go to in order to get helpful information. These days, they just spam out a bunch of SEO garbage, AI-generated bullshit, and ads.

Google, probably

Yes, a lot of developers have done this. Many examples have been posted on this thread (OsmAnd, Conversations, Davx5) - Mindustry is another example. free on f-droid (and Google store too I think), but $10 on Steam.

Not necessarily! I always run ln -s '/usr/bin/$EDITOR' $(which $EDITOR) after a fresh install, so I have a valid executable on the path called $EDITOR.

Of course, then I have to make sure to add export EDITOR=\$EDITOR to my .bashrc. (Obviously.)

It was always obvious to me that as long as I was using closed source software that any day could come when the vendor would screw me over. In fact, it could have been running it with bundles and bundles of spyware already and I had no way of knowing it. So I pledged to start using open source software only, to make sure that wouldn’t happen. First, I migrated all my desktop applications to open source alternatives. Then I finally made the switch.

I don’t have any suggestions, but this is incredibly impressive. I haven’t heard of jmp.chat before, but it sounds like you can create multiple identities using different phone numbers - is that correct?

If so, that sounds amazing. I really hate how the modern world is trying to force people into a singular identity online, and the way that they’re using phone numbers to do it. This sounds like it could be a pretty decent method to avoid that.

+1, I would recommend neovim with lazyvim. The documentation is excellent, and it’s very easy to set up.

https://www.lazyvim.org/installation

What exactly is it that people obsess over? The desktop environment and terminal customisation? Setting up NetworkManager with nmcli? Using Vim to edit a .conf file?

Welcome to the crowd! Eventually, you realize that an operating system is just an operating system: something you use to get work done, and the less you notice it, the better it’s doing its job. The pride of setting it all up mostly ends very shortly after you’re done. At that point, you realize that pretty much all distros are the same, give or take.

That said, there are always moments that make you realize that your OS is amazing. When you’re faced with a new and difficult task that you don’t know how to achieve, then you look at your distro’s documentation and solve it in a few elegant steps. And I’m not an Arch user, but that’s when the Arch wiki will really be your friend, as well as all the other resources that Arch has for its users. I can’t think of examples of these kinds of moments because they’re so rare, but those are the moments that feel great and really make you appreciate your OS.

One for every current ~0.5% market share!

Interesting! Sorry, I don’t know why I thought you were using swipe keyboards, it must have been stuck in my memory from reading other comments. I definitely agree that pressing the buttons was a little annoying, but manufacturers could probably make softer buttons if they were willing to put the money into developing them.

Anyway, I really miss the phone I had from about 2008-2010. It had two sliders that moved in orthogonal directions. One of the slide directions revealed a standard 12-button phone pad, while the other had a 4-row keyboard. And yet, I’m pretty sure it was under 1.5cm, so not too large. It was definitely easier to keep in my pocket than current phones!

If it weren’t for reading Lemmy/RSS feeds and a camera, I’d probably be going back to dumb phones for my next one…

But what’s the error rate? I could type at 200 words per minute (even on a phone!!) if I didn’t care about how many typos I was making. And swiping keyboards get confused incredibly easily. The error rates are especially bad when you’re writing words that only use a single row of keys - on QWERTY keyboards for example, try writing something like “type”, and you could get that, or you might get something else, like wipe/write/ripe. Other groups could include things like tip/top, pit/pot, wit/wire and the selected word will be wrong almost as frequently as it’s right. And autocorrect systems can’t really correct for things like when you mean to press enter and hit the backspace key instead. Plus, their suggestions are generally just very stupid. So while buttons take longer to press on physical keyboards, the reduced error rate makes typing speed about the same in my experience.

Plus, with physical buttons, you get tactile feedback, so you can tell when your fingers are slightly off and adjust them, whereas on a flat surface, you have no idea whether you pressed the correct button or not. You have to stare straight at the screen to make sure every press is correct, which is exhausting and bad for your eyesight. I feel a lot more eyestrain from simply typing on phones, whereas with physical buttons, I didn’t even have to look at the screen, and I could look at something else around me while typing. And don’t get me started on how many calls I’ve missed because I accidentally hit the hang-up button, or couldn’t find the accept call button - not a problem when you have physical buttons!

Regarding screen real estate, all you need is a slide-out keyboard. They work great!

There are a few downsides to physical keyboards, but in my experience, they’re far superior to non-keyboard devices. But what can you do - in the 21st century, practicality never matters, it’s just all about aesthetics and nothing else…

Xournal - a great way to draw on pdfs

Right - they say that they’re just going to use it to defend their “property rights”. In practice, they’re going to use it for a whole lot more than just that…

All your points are sound. The issue that I have with this is that remote disable functionality is not necessary to achieve any of these aims. Before they were connected to the internet, people were still able to rent/lease autos and the world managed to survive just fine. There were other ways for lenders to get remunerated for breaking lease terms - they could issue an additional charge, get a court order for repossession, etc. Remote disable was never needed or warranted.

So let’s start by considering the due process here. Before, there was some sort of process involved in the repossession act. With remote disable however, the lender can act as judge, jury and executioner so to speak - that party can unilaterally disable the device with no oversight. And if the lender is in the wrong, there is likely no recourse. Another potential issue here is that the lender can change the terms at any time - it can arbitrarily decide that it doesn’t like what you’re doing with the device, decide you’re in breach, and hit that remote kill switch. A lot of these things could technically happen before too, but the barriers have been dramatically lowered now.

On top of this, there are great privacy concerns as well. What kinds of additional information does the lender have? What right do they have to things like our location, our habits, when we use it, and all of the other personal details that they can infer from programs like this?

There are probably lots of other issues here, but another part of the problem is that we can’t even start to imagine what kinds of nefarious behaviors they can execute with this new information and power. We are well into the age where our devices are becoming our enemies instead of our advocates. I shudder to think what the world would look like 20 years from now if this kind of behavior isn’t stopped.

There was a quaint old time, shortly after Google was founded, where people mused about privacy over the internet. It was forgotten about as the profits started rolling in and pretty much all other companies started following along. That was the time when we started transitioning into a period of massive data surveillance. Glad to see that the conversation is starting to pick up again in some areas, though it’s definitely being actively suppressed in many others.

GDPR desperately needed on the other side of the pond…

If you want to see what the world would look like without the GPL, just look at how the BSDs are getting shanked by Apple (and many other companies too, but they’re the biggest).

If it weren’t for him, I have no idea what Linux would be today. No doubt in my mind, RMS is #1 on my list of most important software developers to have ever lived.

Why is it your responsibility to pay the creators? Google is a trillion dollar company and makes billions off of what people post on youtube. Shouldn’t they be paying them instead and not you?

Besides, it’s only a matter of time before Google takes more and more of the cut that you think you’re paying them.

You say that today. Give it a couple years. I’m pretty sure that by 2030, the cost will be ~100 dollars/euros/whatever per month and you’ll see 2 minutes of ads for every single minute of content you watch. (Okay, maybe the number of ads is an exaggeration, but I don’t think the monthly cost is.)

Don’t pay the Danegeld. It never makes them go away.

when it means they will not sell my data and will allow me control over my algorithm to prevent it from playing to my vulerabilities

The problem is that this will never happen. That boat has sailed - companies will never give up on their existing revenue streams. They may say that paying today will exempt you from the ads, but it’s only a matter of time before they ramp up the cost and start showing ads anyway. That’s how cable television started, and it’s how internet streaming will end as well. And as for the not selling data/controlling the algorithm, well you have no way of proving that they don’t do that so they’ll do it no matter what they say.

There’s no reason for google to do this whatsoever. They have their business model - any new revenue streams will 100% definitely not reduce the other ones at all. It’s just gonna be another giant dump into the pile of enshittification.

First thing is to not mount it at all. Any writes to the overwritten partition will corrupt your data.

Second thing: install system rescue cd to a live usb and boot it. Look into testdisk and photorec. It’s been a while since I’ve had to use these tools, but I believe testdisk can restore the partition and photorec can find files in a file system that has been deleted. I would try running photorec first to save the recovered files to an external hard disk, and then testdisk to try restoring them. But disclaimer: it’s been a while since I’ve had to do this, so my memory is foggy here.

Good luck!