I hate the fact that none of the big names support CalDAV natively. DAVx5 is cool and all, but app developers really need to step up their shit and support CalDAV already. Not just Microsoft Exchange and Google Calendar but CalDAV as well. It’s not like they need to rebuild their apps from scratch.

At this point you might just be better served using a web app instead of a native mobile app. Maybe K-9 Mail transformation into Thunderbird Mobile might bring some good news, but I’m not holding high hopes.

Maybe we should, under the EU’s DMA, force anyone that bundles a calendar/note app with their phone OS to support CalDAV as well as any proprietary protocol of their choice.

Excellent analysis. Especially this part:

It will be much more productive to try to solve this with the handful of Browser vendors than trying to regulate each and every consent banner.

Early cookie banners were a bad experience but they were manageable. But now thing have transitioned into content-blocking modals, dark patterns, forced individual consent/rejection for each and every one of the 943 partners they’re selling your data to, sites that refuse to serve content if you reject tracking and other ways to frustrate the end user.

I’m done with every piece of shit predatory actor inventing their own way of malicious compliance with the GDPR. You either implement the user-friendly consent API or you get no more tracking at all. Paywall your shit for all I care, at least then you’ll have a sustainable business model.

Yeah I believe this to be a fallacy. If all your contacts use WhatsApp, they still haven’t grasped the concept of installing two applications side-by-side. Or they don’t fully understand why people are using signal over WhatsApp. If you fail both of those, congratulations, you’ve failed to be a self-aware tech user and you’re now demoted to a braindead consumer.

I know, mind blowing right? Point is, society in general should not accept others forcing you to keep the WhatsApp monopoly in tact, which is exactly what’s happening here.

It will take some time but eventually adoption will spread, even among your contacts. It’s just a matter of critical mass, and there are some pretty compelling features within Signal that make it a worthy replacement.

Yeah that’s the thing. Users stick to reddit because they have ties with the individual communities, not so much the platform itself.

People used to use Facebook for similar reasons. “Because all my friends are there”. Not because Facebook was so great.

It can be difficult to leave communities behind that you feel a part of, even if you just lurk most of the time. The fact that reddit was turned into a corporate dystopic shitshow does bother users, but it hasn’t outweighed their needs to still be part of their respective communities.

But seeing as official reddit sources claim that “they’re still in the early stages of user monetization”, it might not be long before we see what’s left of the platform turn into the biggest dumpster fire the internet has ever seen.

I think it depends on the adoption of Linux on the desktop. When more people get a taste of what freedom of software brings, they are going to want that for their phones as well.

That or we might just be years away from the next big thing where everyone walks around with AR glasses and the cycle starts all over again with companies competing for a duopoly, and we’re just fucked.

Others in this thread have covered most of the points already, but it is mainly software support for certain key things I want to do using my phone, such as online banking.

I realise most of this is just anxiety about taking the plunge and seeing what it’s like, so if I have money to burn I might just buy a second phone just to see if it’s a viable option for me.

But yeah, I wish mobile Linux was popular enough for there to be support from key service providers. Though it might be a long shot since “desktop” Linux is still growing and we haven’t yet seen the support shift.

It was a big mistake by Google to base the Android Framework entirely on Java. Pivoting to Kotlin because you’ve discovered that working in Java produces nothing but garbage does nothing to fix the situation either.

Can’t wait for generic Linux phones to be a (more popular) thing so we won’t have to deal with this clown world nonsense anymore.

Yeah, most western European languages actually.

Dutch, French, Spanish, Italian… Though most of these languages alternate between “taking a decision” and using a form of “to decide”.

German seems to be the exception. They just had to be different. Guess that’s that German precision for ya, they have to “hit their decisions” otherwise they won’t count.

I have no idea why they’re even remotely interested in Windows as a product anymore. Surely they can’t expect that much revenue from integrated AI services when most of the general public’s needs can be covered by web services that will severely outmatch Microsoft’s development speed (y’know because of juggling legacy code and all).

Considering the fact that they gain most of their revenue by far from their Azure cloud services and enterprise customers, it just seems like a stupid business decision to invest this much into all kinds of random features for their desktop OS aimed at consumers.

In proper systems architectecture theory, we generally try to avoid mixing up functionality this much because a modular design allows your system to evolve without too much pain. Why build all this crap into Windows when you can just opt-in by installing an application for it?

I really don’t get it…

Apple’s whole modern “it’s reliable and just works” cult following exists because they found a fix for situations where the problem was between keyboard and chair.

Both Windows and Linux-based operating systems are plenty reliable if you actually know what you’re doing and you know how things work. Apple started a culture where you don’t need to know how things work because you have no influence over your own devices. Which lets people do the simple tasks without adressing the problem that your userbase will not amass any computing knowledge whatsoever.

And when Apple devices do fail (and trust me, they do), they fail catastrophically without a way to fix the problem yourself (which is by design).

The distinction is larger for computers than it is for mobile devices, but yeah in general Apple devices are for simpletons. But the biggest issue is that Apple’s design philosophy actively creates these simpletons.

It’s strange to me that the differences are so vast between different continents.

I know litteraly no one who actually uses iMessage. Never once (in recent years) seen some communicate through a channel that isn’t WhatsApp, Signal or something similar. The whole “ew, green bubbles” drama just isn’t a thing here. (Though the existence of iPhone users still harms society in different ways)

Though I do agree with many commenters that the EU caving to the lobbyists is a bad thing. Having the law only apply to “problems that are big enough to care about” is still a loss for the consumer in the end. I’m all for standardisation and free choice, which means any commercial messaging service should comply. Exceptions only for open source projects funded by non-profit organisations.

Right, like how they design connectors that when shorted will instantly fry your CPU.

Or the part where they design flex cables that are too short for you to bend your screen back all the way.

There is a long list of hardware fuck ups that are outright stupid choices that competent engineers would never make. The only reason these defects exist is because they cause people to buy new devices more frequently.

They know how to do fancy hardware, not how to do reliable and durable hardware.

It crazy how worked up non-customers get over this stuff. It’s not like rabid apple fans are grabbing their pitchforks.

See, here is where we disagree. The amount of revenue Apple generates, makes them an example for other companies, and you see them start making the same dumb choices.

I want this trend of tech enshittification to stop and the brain-dead Apple fans are to blame. Because they allow themselves to get milked for revenue, the whole consumer space has to deal with companies trying hard to nudge the boundaries with every new product. All aimed at extracting just a little more money than they did before.

So no, in addition to not buying their shit devices and services, it actually helps to make others stop buying their shit as well. I am done allowing people to take the easy way out and to stay ignorant about the consequences of their choices. If you praise Apple to me, you’re going to get an earful.

I don’t think anyone here is against this per se. It’s just that this store was probably intended for other purposes than providing an infinite supply of digital waifus that will actually respond.

I’m all for degeneracy, everyone has a right to get naughty, just like everyone has a right to friendship, love and happiness. Which is why it is a good thing these exist. I just don’t think they intended for them to be here, and in such large numbers.

Exactly what I was thinking. The whole AI hype has been cringe so far and this just confirms it. Seems that the ratio between legitimate use cases and fucking around is kinda skewed towards the meme side of things.

Or it might just signify our population has a HUGE lonelyness problem (for a myriad of reasons).

Definitely nothing wrong with that. People have spent way more outrageous amounts of money on other hobbies so just go for it.

If the expense is worth it to you, there is no reason not to. And you’ll likely find other uses for the secondary phone too.

If you ever want to do more serious surveying, look into what people are doing with RTK antennas and their smartphones. There are definitely some interesting options for very serious centimeter-accurate surveying that can be done with just a smartphone and an external RTK antenna.

Not just Wayland.

Every experience I’ve had so far with running anything Linux on Nvidia hardware has been unpredictable to say the least. Not just personal experience but those around me as well. Somehow it always comes down to driver compatibility issues, and there is a reason Torvalds used such strong words when describing the developer experience in dealing with Nvidia.

And these problems will likely persist until they decide to fully publish the source for their drivers.

A trend I’ve noticed over the years is that there are just very little jobs available where you “design shit”. It feels like the market is saturated with designers and companies already have all the workers they are looking for.

Meanwhile most people I’ve seen graduate have no real talent for the job. And they never seem to get hired for positions that require talent in design for manufacturing.

You’d think there would be more jobs available, but there simply aren’t. All the jobs are either trade skills, pure CAD or some other part of the product lifecycle that doesn’t require any real design skill.

engineer UK /ˌen.dʒɪˈnɪər/ US /ˌen.dʒɪˈnɪr/

a person whose job is to design or build machines, engines, or electrical equipment, or things such as roads, railways, or bridges, using scientific principles:

• a civil engineer

• a mechanical/structural engineer

• a software engineer

Cambridge Dictionary

I’m all for letting people ramble, but Engineering is, by definition, the design of tecnical stuff.

Risk management is a part of “designing things”, but it is not what makes you an engineer. Converting technology into objects that solve problems is what makes you an engineer.

And there are lots of disciplines out there that started calling themselves engineers while they are objectively very deep into the grey area. If your work does not involve calculus, logic or physics of some kind, it is highly likely that you are not in fact a real engineer. (Looking at you, Sales and Marketing Engineers)

You’d have to be nuts to invest in Reddit, given the current state of the platform.

• The the CEO admitting reddit is not profitable in its current state.
• The amount of media attention the API change protests have gotten. * The ever increasing amount of search engine links to removed content.
• Memelords already talking about shorting the stock into the ground if it goes public.
• Various scandals involving the CEO, with likely more to come.
• Little to no third-party developers willing to write new software that integrates with Reddit anymore because they are now seen as an unpredictable party.

There is no way any of this leads to significant growth. The user base that has stuck around is generally not interested in the things that make reddit reddit, being a community-driven and -moderated platform. And significant changes to how the platform works (thereby taking away the unique selling points) will put it into a position where there is no real advantage over using competing platforms. This will make binding new users to the platform a difficult task.

The only ones stupid enough to buy lots of reddit stock will have an incentive to change it and make it profitable. We’ve seen musk attempt this with Twitter and just look how that has worked out so far.

The worst part is that Spez will likely still get to cash out and fuck off while the platform dies and burns in his wake.