Last I checked you need a phone number even for a Google account (unless you're creating the account from a new smartphone), and you'd have to use Monero to buy a burner number to even attempt owning a truly anonymous account.
I have a fairly sizeable number of burner gmail accounts from before they implemented the phone requirement, used to make them all the time for the free 15GB of drive storage you get per account before I got access to a team drive (practically unlimited drive storage). Regardless, you can still create gmail accounts endlessly using the tablet exploit i.e. get Android tablet, make account, factory reset tablet, repeat steps 2 thru 4.
So if you got huge projects (this is more aimed for live performances and major productions), but essentially instead of having your plugins running on you PC, you can offload some of the plugins to another computer, yes there will be some latency but at least no stuttering (or crashes...). Again, extremly niche case if you have to do it, but maybe you got a shitty PC and still want to run stuff in real time and got a spare PC. It might solve that problem. It can also run as a VST2, so you can offload audio processing in OBS Studio when you are streaming.
Not convoluted (not a gimmick, distracting or bloated)
Does what it's supposed to do ("Just works")
Open source too, that's nice. I still prefer Obsidian since it looks less "cluttered" on top (personal opinion there), I will add this to my list for future posts about this topic.
Ok I have to post this. I tried it... I got some issues with it.
I really want to like it. But the fact that it bugs you to login with an email in multiple menus is not a good look as a first impression (if you are someone who wants an offline PC). It also wants you to pay for just changing a color for a note, that is insane for a FOSS software to do (normies are not going to compile it themselves and tweak it). Wost of all, no way to click "open in explorer" for the file itself makes it not intuitive as obsidian or logseq. Most zoomers don't know what a folder is, so the last thing you would do to make an non-intuitive software that would to obscure it. It feels like it's designed for to be synchronized with a server (then I understand the emphasis on encryption, but I would like the option to just have .txt/.md) and you have to pay for it to be fully functional. I don't like this design at all.
Does anyone have a favorite podcast app by chance? Spotify is aids and makes schizo design choices monthly. I think you can subscribe to some with RSS I wonder if that's just a better option?
If you don't like the phone spyware that comes with your chinky smart watches, I recommend Gadgetbridge (haven't tested things beyond basic pairing, i.e. time/weather/activity sync yet). Here's their supported gadget list. Most of the time, to get it to work you have to pair the device with the original, proprietary garbage app and then extract some data from said app for Gadgetbridge.
As you probably know, there are two apps that work with Xiaomi brand smart watches: Zepp Life (com.xiaomi.hm.health) and Mi Fitness (com.xiaomi.wearable). If you want to extract what you want without root, you need the latter as Zepp Life has no logs for you to read. The non-root instructions from the devs' page work fine. There can be, however, a problem where Mi Fitness in particular won't see your watch or even have it in the list of available models. When it prompts you for your region at the start, select China and the problem goes away. I don't know why, grorious Chinese programming probabry or some other bullshit. Once you get Gadgetbridge working, it's a good idea to delete whatever other app you have installed to prevent conflicts.
There is no app browsing, but what you do is add all the Git repos for the apps you like, and you get them all in a list, and whenever any of those repos gets a new release, it will send you a notification, and you can update your apps that way. It works amazing, and I love it. It does mean that you will need to find the actual apps/repos on your own, but once you get them added into Obtainium, they're always there, and you can export your list to a .json file so if you change phones or reinstall the OS, you can simply import your list again.
Screenshots:
Back in April 2024 (my first post in this thread) I said I used F-Droid as an app repo for Android - I have since changed my opinion on it, and no longer recommend it, or use it at all. If these reasons aren't a concern for you, then it's a fine solution, but these are why I stopped using it, and don't recommend it any longer:
- The biggest concern for me, and I did not know this at the time: but F-Droid signs all of the APKs themselves with their own keys, as opposed to the original developers of the apps. This means you are solely trusting them instead of the original developers. Again, if this isn't a concern for you, then that's great, but I do not like this at all.
- In my experience, the apps hosted on F-Droid are often behind when it comes to updates for apps, specifically NewPipe I would find. NewPipe updates their app relatively quickly as Google keeps trying to block these third party YouTube clients, but the F-Droid hosted version would take a very long time, sometimes up to a month, to update the version they host. This means my NewPipe installation would often break due to Google's backend fuckery, and I'd have to go to the NewPipe Github repo to get the updated version anyway. So in this instance, Obtainium is immediately the better solution because you will know the moment a new version of the app comes out.
- Minor annoyance, but they intentionally host an old outdated version of their F-Droid client on their site at the spot where most people are going to download it from, so you always need to update the client the very first time you run it. Not the biggest deal, but when you reinstall your OS fairly frequently, this gets annoying and time wasting.
Also, when it comes to video editing software, I'm going to echo the positive experience for Davinci Resolve Studio. The Linux version that I use isn't the most polished, but even so, it works really well overall, and I love it. Used it to make a few bigger video projects that I was extremely happy with, and it really didn't take a very long time for me to learn how to use (took me a couple weeks), and once you figure out the basics, you're set for most things. I will also echo that the free version does everything that I think most people would want from a video editing program. The only feature the paid version offers that I ever make use of is the additional supported video formats when importing media into your project, but this could be easily worked around by using a tool like Handbrake to convert it to another format if you really need to.
Also to update my prior suggestions for YouTube clients:
Desktop - I still primarily use FreeTube, but on the occasion that it breaks (due to Google's fuckery) and I need to wait for it to be updated, I use the newly released GrayJay desktop client. Very happy with this combination.
Mobile - I primarily now use BraveNewPipe, which is a fork of NewPipe that adds Sponsorblock, the Return YouTube Dislike plugin, and adds support for Rumble and Bitchute. BraveNewPipe does take a little longer to update than the normal release, so when that does happen and an update is required, I still use the regular NewPipe.
As for desktop browsers, I still use Firefox over Brave now - I previously had both browsers (and did go back to Brave for a little while), but I have removed Brave a little while ago and just use Firefox. I appreciate the adblocking that comes built into Brave, but they have recently started pushing their AI super hard that takes a lot of tinkering if you want to completely get rid of it, as well as their "anonymous tracking" which in my opinion is counter productive to what a private browser is supposed to be. As of today, I would have to spend more time tinkering with Brave to get it to where I like it than it takes for me to get Firefox to the way I want it out of the box. So while both have their problems when it comes to having to turn a bunch of shit off to get it to where I like it, Firefox takes less of my time to make it usable for me. All that, plus I still have some trust issues with Brave from when they were installing a VPN service in the background onto Windows machines without telling the users, and it took a really long time for them to change that. While I don't use Windows, makes me wary of installing such a browser on other people's Windows machines, plus makes me wonder if they would ever do something like this again later.
For a mobile browser, I currently just use the Vanadium browser that comes stock with GrapheneOS. There is no adblocking built in, but I have added the Mullvad adblocking custom DNS in the browser, and it does a very good job in my experience.
Does anyone have a favorite podcast app by chance? Spotify is aids and makes schizo design choices monthly. I think you can subscribe to some with RSS I wonder if that's just a better option?
On Windows I think Grover Podcast is really good. There's a free version, plus a cheap Pro version that unlocks some extra features. It's one of only a few Windows Store apps that I really like. If you have an Xbox, you can download it on there too, but sadly there are no mobile versions.
AFAIK it's made by one guy and I'm not sure he's even still supporting it, but for my needs, what the most recent version offers is perfect.
I'm in dire of need good project mapping software. Started working on a personal project and as these things go, at some point everything becomes too complex to handle in your head alone. I've been drawing diagrams and taking notes on notebooks but that doesn't cut it.
I need something that will let me create "mind maps" of my project. It needs to be able to work well with dev file extensions. No need to execute anything, just to be able to open them. Like, I want to import all of the /src directories and then put files and folders from it in a canvas. Then import the /src from another part of the project, and map those together with the other ones etc etc.
Used Obsidian, it has plugins just for that, but when you enable the plugin for .ts/.js files it crashes and doesn't work at all. I tried Notion, but that's more of a corporate type of project management software and I don't need that.
My needs are simple and revolve around being able to import project files and map them together. Map relationships between interfaces,databases, repositories, services,event emitters, controllers, routers, shit for transaction control like Unit of Work etc etc. I don't want any fancy type of "mapping". Just to be able to put the document in a canvas, label it with "this shit here impacts" -----> "that shit here" (draw a line and describe how). Zoom in to the document and draw a line between methods with notes like "did it that way 2 days ago because if I do .lean(), horrors beyond my comprehension happen in" -----> *list of modules where horrors happen*.
Maybe it doesn't even need to open the actual .ts file, just make a screenshot and keep it in the canvas as an image. Then when I update it, it detects it and does a new snapshot for the canvas.
Anything you've worked and are happy with will be greatly appreciated. Having to manage everything on my own is becoming too much because today i do something, 2 days later I need to spend 30 minutes figuring why I did it even though I keep organized comments on everything. And as the project scales it becomes harder to keep track of what I'm developing than to actually develop.
I need a visual way to make managing layers, databases, servers, proxies, dependencies etc easier on the eye and the mind.
All AIs i've asked give me the same 5-6 suggestions, they're all mostly shit.
I hope that if any of us use Discord then were are using a Discord client like Vencord or BetterDiscord. Using these clients has made Discord so much more bearable since I don't have to put up with any annoying bullshit like tracking or piece of fucking shit Nitro ads. I personally use Vencord because of its ease of use and is way faster for me then BetterDiscord having to load in all plugins on launch (I also believe Vencord has better security with its select plugins because they don't use Javascript). Vencord also has the option to install OpenAsar which improves launch times, can hide that you're typing (But I believe a plugin in Vencord already does this), and allows for multiple instances of Discord. If you do go the BetterDiscord route, here is some "banned plugins" (Courtesy of FMHY).
Another piece of software I am using is Geckium, which allows for bringing back old designs of Google Chrome for Firefox. It also allows for installing Chrome Web Store themes. Use the latest release instead of downloading from code like I did since it breaks pretty much everything.
I miss the 2015 look of Chrome so I'm using that. I remembered being able to disable most Chrome stuff on the home page but either I'm not doing it correctly or is not working.
Is there a similar alternative client for Spotify? The final straw was the inability to turn off the "third" panel that appears whenever you click on an artist, song, or album. Who asked for this? Who thought this was a good idea to implement?
Is there a similar alternative client for Spotify? The final straw was the inability to turn off the "third" panel that appears whenever you click on an artist, song, or album. Who asked for this? Who thought this was a good idea to implement?
I can't say I used to be the biggest Spotify user ('Cause I never was) so I can't say that the alternative client I use is entirely 1 to 1 with the Spotify client but I use Spotube. What the features say was more then enough to convince me. If it isn't good enough, I'm sure there is something in this list to help you.
Is there a similar alternative client for Spotify? The final straw was the inability to turn off the "third" panel that appears whenever you click on an artist, song, or album. Who asked for this? Who thought this was a good idea to implement?
I have no experience of it, but I've heard others speak highly of it. I don't know if anyone has ever been banned for using it, but I assume that might be a risk.
I have no experience of it, but I've heard others speak highly of it. I don't know if anyone has ever been banned for using it, but I assume that might be a risk.
I remember being a fucking nerd who wanted to go above and beyond in my logic and proofs class (the actual title I don't recall) and I asked what the professor used to make the math symbols and ended up doing my homework for the entire semester in LaTeX. Was a learning experience but would not recommend.
This might be a shot in the dark, but I remember MacOS having a basic color tagging function in the file explorer. Is there something I can get for windows that does something like that?
If you got a template, it's not that hard, I would argue it's nicer (I do it all the time). But if you start from scratch (or got a shitty bare-bones template), rest in pepperoni.
This might be a shot in the dark, but I remember MacOS having a basic color tagging function in the file explorer. Is there something I can get for windows that does something like that?
I just change the icons, that's the closest "solution" I got. Otherwise... if you got the BMJ spirit and love to gamba with your PC on shaddy software, you can look up "Folder Marker". But I don't know if windows can even "tag" them so you can sort them with the tags. Why did have you post this? I miss my old Mac now, reminding me of how dog shit Microsoft is.
Maybe a better follow up would be if there's any good tagging system for windows as a whole because I didn't realize the color stuff was just for changing the icon. I thought you could assign a tag to a color, like "meme," and then search for those. Might be a fun thing to do with AI to generate tags to my library of shitty fucking memes.
Does anyone know of some kind of tool that can bulk rename files to random letters and numbers for Linux? Arch Linux, specifically. I want it to rename files to something like "6g78fxf545gsdc34b".
Does anyone know of some kind of tool that can bulk rename files to random letters and numbers for Linux? Arch Linux, specifically. I want it to rename files to something like "6g78fxf545gsdc34b".
Does anyone know of some kind of tool that can bulk rename files to random letters and numbers for Linux? Arch Linux, specifically. I want it to rename files to something like "6g78fxf545gsdc34b".
