

nsfw already requires an account on new.reddit and the app
Not in the US. There it has that same button.
I like computers, trains, space, radio-related everything and a bunch of other tech related stuff. User of GNU+Linux.
I am also dumb and worthless.
My laptop is ThinkPad L390y running Arch.
I own RTL-SDRv3 and RSP1 clone.
SDF Unix shell username: user224
nsfw already requires an account on new.reddit and the app
Not in the US. There it has that same button.
Everyone has different preferences.
My separate debit card and transport card won’t discharge or just stop working as likely as a phone. It also won’t be suddenly affected by bugs, nor will it get slower. Nor do I get Google also tracking every single payment as well.
The only disadvantage is compatibility. So many things, and now even some shops use contactless-only terminals, while I got contactless or magnetic payments blocked. Only chip + PIN.
But anyway, the shop that had to downgrade to contactless only due to increased fees on regular old terminal also started asking people to pay in cash instead, again, due to the fees.
I had luck with VNC, although it’s still worse than RDP. There’s also some RDP implementations on Linux that are apparently better, but VNC works well enough for me.
But there’s no sound, I don’t know if RDP has that. I’ve used VLC for sound forwarding. I also tried PulseAudio TCP module, but that didn’t quite work. With VLC I can do lossy compression.
What I wish would work better is X11 forwarding. That could be so awesome, just having the remote windows local-like. But from what I can find, in the past, programs used X11’s drawing features which would save a lot of bandwidth, while now they just draw pixel by pixel.
To give you some idea, I’ve tried it on LAN with gigabit ethernet, ping below 1ms. It would saturate the port and still be kinda slow.
I also found it OK-ish, at least after my usual disabling of BITS and SuperFetch (SysMain now, I think), and disabling auto-updates, I think in gpedit.msc, and using the provided BypassNRO.cmd to create local account.
Alright, maybe not that OK, but after the initial setup it ran fine even on officially unsupported computer made in 2007. Just had to modify the installer by merging W11 image into W10 installer.
Anyway, the Windows store or whatever isn’t that used, and I got tired of updating every random program coming from .exe files. But similarly I don’t like the large hops in versions like Windows 10 -> 11, or similarly with Linux Mint, so I went with Arch.
Anyway, I’ll be a smaller minority. I most liked Windows 8.1. It was really well optimized.
price for a domain name
Or host your own VPN on home network. Or use Tailscale VPN, that also works behind CG-NAT, and can usually get direct connection.
8 weeks? Really?
Where I live people usually start going about it in September or October till mid fucking January. Or at least the supermarkets/advertisements start that. Remember Jesus? Time to waste money, give it to us!
Advanced versions can even instruct your phone to change important settings under the hood and expose you to significant vulnerabilities.
The scariest thing for me.
At one point I got something along the lines of “Your carrier has changed some settings, tap to review.”, once again showing me that my phone isn’t mine.
In this case it was emergency alerts, but I don’t know what all they can change. It wasn’t a carrier phone, by the way.
I also found apps related to (I think) multiple carriers, just disabled by default on Moto G52 5G. Orange was definitely one of them.
My closest attempt at pronouncing that:
echo 'šxʷməθkʷəy̓əmasəm' | aplay -c 1 -f u8 -r 2000 -t raw -
Unfortunately, when buying a phone I always have to make some compromise. If I aim for hardware or very specific feature, there’s going to be a compromise in software.
If I was looking for software, Google Pixel with GrapheneOS looks quite nice.
To be specific with the key features/functionality of my phone:
Software: Surviving high DPI without the software falling apart (I hate how large everything is on phones by default, plus >=600dp the tablet mode is awesome), OMAPI (needed for external eUICC), manual band mode selection (indoors and in vehicles this can sometimes make a huge difference, like from 35Mbps to 150Mbps based on my tests), manual cell tower selection (I haven’t yet made much use of this apart from figuring out that towers in city seem to have 1km limit), and a lot of other stuff in Engineer Mode that I don’t yet understand so I won’t touch (some settings can persist factory reset).
Hardware: 85.14Wh battery (22,000mAh for the more marketable way to write it, and for comparison, my ThinkPad has a 45Wh battery), Dual SIM + SD card (not hybrid), IR blaster, headphone jack, custom button (short, long, double click), 1,000lm light that sucks up 6W (I don’t have a way to measure that though), night vision camera (IR), FM radio that works without earphones (still works better with them).
I honestly just fear updates at this point. They always seem to break more stuff than fix, the only exception to that for me has been PixelExperience custom ROM (discontinued).
Edit: Android is simply missing proper backups. Bad update on my laptop? Timeshift. Bad update on stock Android? It is what it is.
First Moto G5s Plus which got high battery drain, sluggishness and crashes after Android 8.1 update. This was bad enough I had to fix it with custom ROM. Then Poco X3 Pro which reportedly had issues with performance after MIUI 13 update, so I stayed on older software. Now my Ulefone Armor 24, which only has one update primarily to fix Google pay, but also brings a newer security patch, reportedly causing many crashes that make the phone unreliable and a bad experience.
Also many Samsung phones had an update that removed access to manual band mode selection, and if I recall correctly, that update didn’t even revert them to default.
It’s not the best for security, but I basically now just fear any updates. If everything works, then it can only be broken.
Maybe I should at least somehow start checking known vulnerabilities. As of recently, I should probably stop using applock on my outdated Ulefone
Exposed ”com.pri.applock.LockUI“ activity allows any other malicious application, with no granted Android system permissions, to inject an arbitrary intent with system-level privileges to a protected application. One must know the protecting PIN number (it might be revealed by exploiting CVE-2024-13916)
https://cert.pl/en/posts/2025/05/CVE-2024-13915/
Though my device has AppLock v14, so I am not sure.
This makes me worried about the ultra cheap Chinese manufacturers. I mean the likes of Unihertz, Umidigi, Ulefone, Doogee, Oukitel, etc
Usually these don’t get updates at all.
Even weirder, for example I have Ulefone Armor 24. They used to ship with Android 13. They still advertised it with Android 13 when I bought it. Mine like a few others have said arrived with Android 14, but the earlier ones aren’t offered A14 update.
Someone on Reddit contacted support about this and they replied that they don’t provide cross-level upgrades because Google doesn’t allow them to release those to end users.
Anyway, point is, they save on everything possible, starting with software updates. And I have doubts about them changing this, unless EU is a large market for them.
Hey, hey, it’s average.
It is improving search result, with filters. Ads, tracking, data deletion possibility, in-app purchases, license, etc…
At least some of these are already tracked.
In the reply to Patreon they mentioned having some automated and manual ways of removing CSAM, plus “closely working with NCMEC”, but I have no idea what that means.
And these statistics of resolved reports: https://www.missingkids.org/content/dam/missingkids/pdfs/cybertiplinedata2024/2024-notifications-by-ncmec-resulting-content-removal.pdf
Total number of reports of 128 resolved on average in 1.91 days. Less than half the time spent by Amazon, Google and Microsoft (for Bing).
The biggest issue is probably the MediaTek chipsets. Unlike Qualcomm, they don’t provide the source code.
I only went with MTK based device for manual band selection. It can be done with root, but the only app for it I could find is network signal guru, and I am not sure about how trustworthy it is to give root access to.
I’d still be using my 2017 Moto G5s Plus if it weren’t for the dead battery and mostly gone (soldered-on) USB port.
It was fine with PixelExperience ROM, and I am sure I could still get something good onto it. But, it is what it is, an e-waste slab. I’ve run the battery down to 2 hours of standby time and the micro USB only works with very few cables at this point.
I do miss the 16:9 and separate navigation via the front fingerprint scanner.
I wonder where something like Unihertz phones could be. Recently a teardown video of one of those surprised me, and it seems they do quite a few phones that way. They have a bunch of rugged phones, and at least some of them appear to be screwed together rather than glued.
Honestly, I haven’t even considered that was a possibility nowadays. Otherwise I’d probably get one of those over Ulefone. Based on videos I’ve seen, my Armor 24 is virtually irrepairable. You have to enter through the screen which uses very strong glue and is recessed into the body. Disassembly thus basically requires destroying the screen.
I wonder how small manufacturers are going to do the 5 years of updates. I mean the brands that typically get no updates at all.
“Youtube will begin showing 4 videos at once”
The average YouTube short:
Edit: It’s called “Sludge content”: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sludge_content
Which reminds me of a certain part from Back to the future too. I’ll try to search for it, but my DVD drive is currently occupied
Edit 2:
Part 2 at 30:27 (at least on PAL edition)
Depends on location.
It’s like this in US: https://files.catbox.moe/at3ijo.png