No problem. :)

Nah, FOSS stands for “free and open-source software”. There was a time before paid software was a thing, so the “free” there stands for freedom.

In a lot of ways, it means the same as open-source (access to source code and allowed to modify+redistribute it), but it’s more idealistic and political, looking to prevent software from restricting what users can do.

In principle, I agree, but I feel like part of that is just AAA vs. indie.

AAA games need to provide lots of lukewarm content, because many more casual players will buy them and expect much bang for their buck + haven’t seen this lukewarm content a million times already.

On the other hand, indies will basically only be bought by people more enthusiastic about the hobby. As such, they have to pick out one or two aspects and excel at them, so that it’s something new for that crowd.

Hello Games was indie and unknown at the time, so likely only attracted that gaming enthusiast crowd, which would have been more easily bored by the extremely lukewarm content in Starfield.

This is a bit of me-thing, but yeah, I’m annoyed that YouTube is the way it is. It’s non-trivial to embed videos from there without violating the GDPR, so embedded videos are basically not a thing these days on general-purpose social media.

And personally, I also want to avoid the tracking from clicking through to a YouTube video and Google encourages long-ass videos, so I always hesitate before clicking through. Also, people without ad blockers go through a completely different circle of hell before a video starts.

Basically, I miss the days when memes could just be short videos. Where everyone could see on the embed that, oh, it’s a 30 second video, I can watch that. And then they’d just click play, without leaving the page.

I do understand that likely no one would care to provide the bandwidth for dumb meme videos on PeerTube either. But yeah, I just dream of that being a thing.

I’m not exactly fond of the space either, but man, the T is noisy. They could’ve gone with an underscore or something, so it actually looks like two different sections.

Well, typically, being married for 60 years would also involve not dying for the past 70+ years…

Well, this isn’t a problem for smaller, less centralized services, so that might be an answer. Obviously not an answer big corporations will bring to the table, but ultimately, it might simply be among the reasons why users do still prefer smaller services.

I think, it’s only in the free version of Spotify. So, if you’re paying for Spotify Premium, you wouldn’t have that problem.

But I mean, I’m obviously completely out of the Spotify loop, so definitely take that one with a grain of salt…

Not sure, what kind of notification sounds you have that you’d need to skip to the end of them. A foghorn?

I was only vaguely aware of the algorithm on Spotify and that not being allowed to skip very often is a thing there, and man, this comment read like a completely deranged monologue from some sort of alternative, dystopian reality.

Normally, I would reply to the guy, because, you know, he’s a human being, but there’s so many replies, I doubt, he can actually read all of them and potentially someone else has already made that point.

Anyways, I feel like something he kind of misses here is that many of us do it from a heartfelt place. Like, we’re all techies. We’ve all used commercial software to a point where we’ve grown so frustrated with it that we decided it is a waste of time.

So, it’s not us saying “Why don’t you go and just have more time/money?”.
Rather, it’s us saying “This thing is wasting your time? Here is a solution that I felt wasted less time in the long run.”.

Yes, sometimes that does miss the mark, because not every complaint is looking for a solution. Or because we may be frustrated with restrictions of commercial software, which are not a problem for less techy people. Or even because we’re embedded in this tech world and are hoping to make it a better place, which someone just quickly visiting may not care about.

But other times, I do just happen to know a lot about technology and a non-techy genuinely did not know about the solution I suggested and is actually really appreciative of me bringing it up. It does happen. And it’s not easy to discern who would appreciate a suggestion and who won’t.

Yeah, that is a valid opinion to hold. I am saying that trust is garbage.

You could consider compiling the KeePass app yourself, if you’re worried about that one in particular.
A guy I used to study with, decided that he just wouldn’t have a password manager on his phone.
I’ve certainly considered switching to a Linux phone for that, among many other reasons…

Yeah, I have watched videos of the guy before and would be down for 4 hours of it, but not if it’s about how FluffyMcWuffington stole the pixels from sbubby82…

I don’t even understand which part of the tree experience these tanks are supposed to replace. Are they really just there to pick up CO2? Because you can also plant a forest outside the city for that.

You’ll miss out on all the other tree benefits, but so you also will with these glass tanks.

I watched it on my phone in 1080p60 and the scale didn’t bother me. It’s not like I have to read a lot of text and the precise position of the player character is mostly irrelevant, too. Like, if you get hit by a train or something, the screen will flash red and you’ll react to it, too, so I’ll know what’s going on.

Well, and I don’t look at the screen at all times anyways. 🙃

Would like to see more of this journey…

If you type “about:profiles” into the URL-bar and create a fresh profile there, does it also happen in that?

(It will practically be like a factory-reset Firefox, except you can go back to your current data/profile.)

This F-Droid-like model (also popularly implemented by Linux distributions) is usually considered an improvement in security.

The thing with FOSS is that ideally you don’t have to trust the developer at all.
In theory, you could read the entire source code and compile it yourself. Then you’d know for sure that no malware is included.

Obviously, in practice, you can only hope that some nerds dig into the source code and notify journalists of malware-like behaviour.
It is no perfect protection. But it is the only tangible protection that FOSS actually delivers.

What does not protect you, is to trust each individual developer. They could publish innocous source code and then build the release binaries from a version with the malware-like behaviour patched in.

But because you likely don’t want to compile each app yourself, you might still feel compelled to entrust that work to a third party. This is where the F-Droid team comes in. Rather than trusting each developer, you just have to trust a single team.

Well, and if an app is built in a reproducible build, then even the work from the F-Droid team can be verified.

See “What are my options if I want to install unsigned extensions in Firefox?” in the FAQ here: https://wiki.mozilla.org/Add-ons/Extension_Signing#FAQ

If you’re on Linux, you may have that about:config flag even in your distro-provided Firefox Stable build…

I quite like the star-button on Mastodon for this. Just pings the comment author that you appreciated their comment. So, it’s not an indication to some algorithm that this comment is incredibly relevant for everyone, because well, some comments just aren’t.