Endymion_Mallorn

I mean, i could confirm her going back to 123r3, so more than just 20 when I touched the grand lady.

Mayday would prefer against that, since it causes hassles with her existence.

That’s better than the one “bug” I found. Obviously it was in a spreadsheet that was being touched by too many hands without any level of guidance. Problem is, it was a truly ancient error that the “end users” weren’t seeing in their fancy tables or charts. But when I looked at it, it was from when the file was converted from .123 to .xls.

Following Washington’s guidance is what I call it.

It is neither useless nor funny. It’s optimization for storage capacity. If everyone in the world put in that level of effort into compression, computer storage and processing would actually be faster than the previous generation.

The Statue of Liberty wasn’t something commissioned by the USA. It was just how one French guy saw us. The New Colossus is not law, it’s a poem.

We’ve never really been proud of immigration. The only President with a reasonable take on immigrants was Teddy Roosevelt - and his belief was that the only path forward is full assimilation.

She does. And I can’t drive, so I take mass transit, which makes her worry for my safety.

You’re not a dick for saying it. But switching and losing daily driven features isn’t really something I think is fair. And that’s why I would be the one to change. I’d probably just keep the apple device on hotspot mode and use the Android as a tablet and VOIP call/text device.

Are any of them as user-friendly and accessible as FaceTime? The people in my life (myself included most days) value good UX over technical genius.

We were teenagers 20 years ago, is how.

Privacy is relative. I need my wife to know where I am and vice-versa.

That’s the issue. It’s a great set of goals, but I need to be able to make my wife happy today. Long-term plans for the future are all well and good, but we live in the present. So at the moment, Android is the most open compromise I can make.

Okay. Give me a Linux phone that works out of the box that suits the following dealbreakers:

• Compatibility with iMessage and FaceTime. This is essential because my wife, my MIL, and other family members all use it. I can’t be expected to change everyone over, I need to be compatible with the majority. I might be able to convert them over time, but it’s going to be gradual.

• Always-on location information sharing with location data pulled from both GPS & terrestrial sources.

• Full support for Bluetooth devices, especially the ANC function of AirPods or similar (oh, and support for my mother’s hearing aid app).

• OS-level support for telephony and SMS + MMS + RTC messaging. With software that has an instantly usable UI.

• A deep repository of trusted software with clear and easy UX that doesn’t require adjustment - it all needs to “just work”.

Those are the dealbreakers for me.

I would like to move away from Android and iOS. But I’m not sure it’s really feasible. Hell, I might even have to move fully to iOS, because that’s what the wife uses. That’s the challenge with Linux or alternative OSes on mobile. It goes against the purpose of the device - it needs to be able to interact with the people in your life.

Because I have Android and she has an iPhone, we can’t easily share headphones (her AirPods or my generic ones) or some of the other accessories. For instance, I don’t want a device without a 3.5mm jack, so none of my headphones work for her. About the only thing we can share is the USB-C cable, and it’s less efficient on my device. We have to use Google Maps to share location, the built-in functions don’t talk. We have to use regular SMS and calls or Discord to talk, because FaceTime and iMessage don’t have compatible Android software. I love her with all my heart - and frankly speaking she’s worth more to me than software advocacy.

That’s what causes ecosystem lock-in. As Sartre said, Hell is other people.

I mean, I did offer it as one of over a half-dozen reasons. And my opinion is just that you shouldn’t go halfway. If you’re going to pay a subscription, the artists and staff ought to get paid. Otherwise, go full pirate and if you want to support an artist, find a way to do so directly, without platforms or labels.

Discoverability is a difficult challenge in a pirate context, imo. Last.fm still exists, so do bandcamp and soundcloud. Pandora, Soma.FM, and both terrestrial and internet radio can still work if you find the right genre. The other options include going to your local library, and your local media store of choice.

Another one that works is finding out the songwriters, producers, and engineers on your favorite songs/albums and tracking down their discography. Often enough, you’ll find similar-sounding music by tracking the tech guys.

Fair enough. My whole life has basically been defined as “very niche” since about 2012. But then again, I basically only use music to shut out the world. And yes, I said use, not enjoy. It’s basically a source of predictable noise that acts as a filter to the more random noise around me so I don’t have more issues than usual. That’s why staying in-genre matters and Pandora helps - it matches based on the predictable traits.

I’ve honestly never understood people who feel the need to “replace” Spotify. I just download the music I like to my device and listen to it via VLC. If I want to discover new music in genres I like, I’ll go and listen either to a terrestrial radio station, Soma.FM, or Pandora (which has many of Spotify’s issues for me, but serves more as a platform for discovery of obscure music). The rare times I listen to music, I’m usually going somewhere on mass transit, or I’m on foot. And during those times, my phone is either fully turned off (so I’ll use an MP3 player), or it’s in Airplane Mode. Spotify has never made sense for my use-case.

1. Closed non-federated streaming platform; requires an Internet connection.
2. Requires a subscription for a lot of basic functionality.
3. Even though it requires a subscription, they barely pay artists - the only ongoing benefit to using a non-pirate setup.
4. The increasing amount of “Perfect Fit Content” & LLM-generated music in playlists to avoid said payments.
5. They provide a guaranteed platform to political podcasts.
6. Audio quality is not only dependent on the subscription, but even the top-tier is generally subpar and can vary based on how they throttle you that day.
7. As a platform for mass appeal, discoverability is, loosely speaking, crud.

Pick any of those you like.

Eugenics and slavery.

Note that those are widely considered bad things.