Well, as long as everyone is being shitty, I guess we shouldn’t mention how they’re shitty. Except apparently some aren’t.

That’s pretty funny. It’s been legally mandated that bootloaders be unlockable in my country, which I’ve done before.

Claiming that someone stole what you stole is a little hypocritical. Not having a Pebble, and having discovered them just after they were shut down by Google, I’m glad Rebble did what they did. But claiming ownership seems a little over the top. Having an archive of apps available via a third-party site sounds like a win for both parties, except for the financial side. Certainly, not paying anything would be a benefit for RePebble, and not having an option to charge anything would be a loss for Rebble, but it sounds like an unmitigated win for Pebble and RePebble users.

RePebble seems to be very committed to going FOSS, up to releasing some or all of their code as GPL3, which is hard to argue around. I’ll be revisiting this saga in 6 months or so when I’m in the market for a smart watch.

You can mostly disable them. Delete your Samsung account, don’t agree to their terms of service besides the most basic one or two that is required. No defense of Samsung, just what I did to deny them as much as I could of my information until I replace this phone and never buy Samsung again.

I’m a pretty big fan of using fuck, but holy fuck, that was a lot. I wonder why you feel that passionately about it?

I deleted my Samsung account when an update about 6 months ago came along that basically wanted ALL your personal data so you could use AI for photo search, etc. Then I found out about all the other minor things they insist you have an account to use. So, yeah, Fuck Samsung! Now I need to find a phone I can live with to replace it when it stops working.

Nice to have certainty for the future.

Being able to set a bone, sterilize a wound, and stitch it closed would make a huge difference for a lot of people. High proof alcohol and cauterization, and fine enough needles are the hardest parts on that list.

But only for about 500 years, then you’re a madman or a witch and things get really interesting.

Had to upvote because you’re entirely correct. Protein deficiency isn’t really a thing in the developed world, except for those who are eating exceptionally poorly. There is one amino acid that is absent or very low in most legumes, but it can be found in most grains or nuts, so the slightest effort can remove the risk of deficiency.

Most nutritional diseases in the developed world are due to excess, not deficiency.

The main goal for MREs isn’t to be cheap, it’s to be nutritious, shelf stable, and easy to prepare. There are certainly cheaper ways if your only goal is to be nutritious.

I made some burritos a couple weeks ago. Mainly rice and beans, with some beef, cheese, and salsa for flavor, seasoned to my liking in a flour wrap. The intent was to freeze them for quick meals, so no fresh veggies. One or two of those paired with a salad would be quite nutritious, and probably cost less than $1 each. If I skipped the beef and cheese, it would certainly cost less than $1 each.

The bulk of those meals would be rice and beans, and you can buy them in bulk, but they’re still cheap even if you don’t.

Android isn’t FOSS, AOSP is. If you keep conflating that, I’m not sure what you’re getting at. And having a sandbox or VM that allows you to run Linux apps is not the same as having native support. That would be like saying Windows had Linux support 20 years ago because VMWare existed.

And no, control of your phone doesn’t equal Linux, but native support for a FOSS OS at the base level means that if the maintainers decide to go in a different direction, you can more easily part ways with them. AOSP used to be a more complete version of Android, but that has been clawed back repeatedly as Google transfers functionality to Google Play services and elsewhere, which has caused difficulties for LineageOS and GrapheneOS to be maintained over the years, including Graphene exploring moving to another device for support from the one line of devices they support now.

Clearly, this isn’t solely the fault of Android and Google, hardware vendors bear a lot of blame, as well as their desire to exert more control over their customers. But Google and Android have the exact same issue and certainly won’t be pressuring hardware vendors to open up their standards.

I can’t remember how many OSs I’ve installed at this point, and if the amount of frustration I feel when Windoes does an update and decides it’s time to ask half or more of the Starting for the First Time! questions is at all indicative of the fear and dread someone who has never installed an OS in their life before feels, these people would rather return the machine than pay $200 for Windows+installation, and installing it themselves is out of the question. I might be surprised, but the average user, even the average gamer, is unikely to want that hassle.

Can I compile FreeCAD for Android? Can I run Linux apps that are compiled for ARM on Android? As far as I know, no. So it’s even less Linux than MacOS is BSD, and how is that helping for software freedom, or placing the control of the phone you bought in your hands?

So the question becomes when, not if, a Linux phone reaches parity with AOSP-based phones.

Shit, these are all the things I’m looking for. Now I have something to do this weekend. Do you run SteamOS beta? I do, and it’s been pretty good, but I’m not sure how the plug-ins feel about it.

Interesting, I’ll have to look it up. Not having times isn’t world-ending for me, but I do like having them. And achievements are nice, too.

Yes, but you can expect almost no useful updates from AOSP anymore, which means it’s up to groups like those who develop GrapheneOS to keep up with what people expect while Android ostensibly keeps advancing, and they only support one hardware line.

AOSP has been neutered as much as Google has been able to. This was the reasonable next step.

The vast majority of the software updates they do appear to be open sourced, which makes it really hard to lock the market using anti-competitive measures. And making Linux more mainstream makes it better for everyone, not just gamers. And if Valve makes games that are optimized for their hardware spec, how is that any different than an XBox, Sony, or Nintendo game, except for the part where it will also work on other PCs without having to wait for a port?

It’s reasonable to be cautious about any actor, especially one as powerful as Valve. But nothing I’ve seen, except for the loot box stuff, has been actually anti-competitive, to the point where my GOG and Epic games work well enough on Linux these days that even the games that warn me I’m on an unsupported platform work just fine.

Im currently playing a game from Epic on my Steam Deck, I’ve recently played games from GOG, and of course Steam. The biggest drawbacks with non-Steam games are having to go to the desktop to install them, and not having my time in big picture mode tracked for those games. So, not seamless, but exceptionally playable. I’ve even customized button maps for non-Steam games, and also had to do nothing at all to have them work well.

If Steam keeps extending like this, people will stop buying Windows for gaming. I will acknowledge that my gaming requirements aren’t as extensive as some, and I’ve never installed Fortnite or Roblox for my own use.