reddalo

They took away our freedom of installing apps on the devices we own.

It happened to me too. And they didn't even refund my $20 or so.

> assuming they don't change the plan again

Knowing Google, that's a big assumption

It's always been possible on F-Droid, I doubt they would change something like that.

And the biggest problem is that most GTK3+ applications have that kind of messy client side decoration. It's completely unusable.

Also, Win32 and Cocoa widgets feel so reactive and fast. Electron is bloated and so laggy.

Speaking of performance of media apps, I stopped using the official Spotify client after I found out about Spotifast [1]. Yes, it's vibecoded, but it feels so fast and light compared to the real client that I wonder why Spotify itself doesn't fix their official app.

[1] https://spotifast.rocks/

Also, that single phrase you quoted shows how much Raymond despises modern Windows. He can't say that blatantly, of course, but we all know.

I agree, GNOME 3 and all the subsequent versions are so bad. They made GNOME into a glorified tablet environment, but I'm using a desktop, not a tablet, for a reason.

I'm still mad at GNOME developers for ruining such a good desktop environment.

Luckily, Linux Mint managed to create a good environment that is as pleasant as using GNOME 2.

Modern macOS still lets you keep editing a file even if it's moved somewhere else, I think because file editing is done with the actual file ID rather than its bare location on the filesystem.

Windows, on other hand, prevents you from doing this in my experience.

I'm Italian and I'm super happy with this.

The referendum that made nuclear energy illegal in Italy was held right after the accident of Chernobyl; people voted with their gut, not with their mind.

Curiously enough, some Italian town signs still have a small sub-sign reading "denuclearized municipality" (example: https://live.staticflickr.com/1421/712461235_e46a2c7db5_z.jp... )

They show a notification for that, which is super annoying.

Exactly, the future is open models. Which is also the reason why those overvalued companies such as OpenAI will lead to a market crash as soon as investors realize that.

Doesn't work on Firefox.

They still are. I know some people who got software packages for free because they "proved" to be university students by submitting a forged PDF.

But then you need to phisically carry it along with you everywhere you go, if you want to log into a service :/

Exactly. That's why I'll never use passkeys: they're just another way to force us into a commercial walled garden.

Passwords with 2FA are simply better and more freedom friendly.

It's not iCloud Photos, in my case it's Google Photos. But I keep a copy of all my photos in a self-hosted instance of Immich [1], which I then back up to a Hetzner Storage Box using Backrest [2].

So I end up with 3 copies of all my photos, on 3 different providers (I mean... 2 different providers plus my homelab disk).

[1] https://immich.app/ [2] https://github.com/garethgeorge/backrest

Yes, maybe you're right. Windows used to be good in the 9x era. Then it all went downhill.

I can't understand how such a huge company can have such a lousy UX.

>Google is doing everything possible to juice their revenue right now, in ways they've never seen before

My experience confirms this: many years ago I had a website banned from serving Google Ads. They said my pages didn't have enough content.

Then a competitor started showing ads on the exact same type of pages where I had previously been able to serve them. So I tried getting my website approved again and -- surprise -- now I can serve ads again.

I think it's a very sad state of affairs, but I find even myself trusting the Facebook page more than the actual website for many places, since you can see the latest updates on Facebook (and how recent they are), while the website could be completely outdated with no way to tell it.

I think bigger apps are also slowing down updates to prevent vandalism from appearing to a wide number of users.

The main problem with Google Ads is that Google tries to squeeze money out of you in all possible ways.

I think the only sane way tu run a Google Ads campaign is to:

- only enable Google Search ads (i.e. disable all third-party publishers -- this may be a bit extreme but it's good if you're advertisting a niche product that people are actually searching for)

- only use "exact match" keywords ("broad match" is so broad that Google will show your ads in completely unrelevant SERPs)

- disable AI Max

- disable all automations

- reject any of their "optimization" tips

- set a max CPC even if they say it's bad for you

In other words, reject everything they suggest you to do. Maybe I'm wrong, or maybe this only works for my use case, but that's how I've been using Google Ads succesfully without wasting money.

I used to follow him, but then I've read some controversial news about him...

In case people don't know the Google Graveyard: https://killedbygoogle.com/

It doesn't: https://github.com/tongzx/nt5src/blob/daad8a087a4e75422ec96b...

Wholphin is a great Android TV app, way better than the "original".

>allows your TV to connect to a network

You don't need to connect your TV, you can just use an Android TV stick such as a Thompson Stick

Good times. The old Spotify client was native and fast. I miss that. The new one is heavy and clunky.