As the customer, which in a practical sense is the only perspective that matters to me day-to-day, Epic offers me nothing close to what Steam or GOG can give me. Hell, even EA’s and Ubisofts launchers were more useful since they at least had exclusives. All Epic has is Fortnite and for someone like myself that doesn’t care for that kind of game, there is no reason to even consider their platform for anything.

And given my recent switch away from Windows and to Linux full time on my gaming PC to put a further wedge between me and the things Microsoft has been doing with Windows that I don’t like that is a good thing given Epics history of embracing things that will never work as smoothly on Linux as Steam games do with Proton or GOG’s native Linux options do.

Because the know the people that buy it either are stupid or have no choice (in the cases of the few that actually have to eat those kinds of diets for health reasons).

“It is so secure we don’t even need to check it anymore.”

MBA idiot says right before something they are in charge of gets compromised because some hacker took such a statement as a challenge.

But in order to create a solution that will be mainstream enough to make in-roads into the hold Big Tech has on the market

Firstly, I doubt their users asked them to be “mainstream”, only their want for a piece of the app store profit pie is asking for that.

Secondly, if the only way to make in-roads on big techs hold on the market is to become just like them, then maybe they should be trying to find a better way.

F-droid is not going to beat the Play store at its own game. And it shows how naive the maintainers of F-droid are if they really believe that.

I’ve been using KISS launcher off and on since Branch bought Nova. Not nearly as flexible when it comes to customization. But if you just want a simple launcher that supports stuff like custom icon packs it is a good one.

Eh, no matter the phone I have had or the version of Android it has, it has more or less looked the same for years since I just install Nova and import the backup. Same thing for my lock screen. I will probably continue to use it the same way I have for years no matter what it technically supports.

I moved to esim for everything since my carrier (US Mobile) supports it and has a nice utility built into their mobile app to allow you to move your number to a new esim anytime you want to switch phones.

I don’t think you have to worry about that. I don’t think any Pixel has ever sold well by most metrics.

Mine stays on 24/7/365 unless I am going to be out of town.

All of these types are articles always leave out the calculations of what your time is worth to you and the maintenance costs of spare hard drives and other equipment. The TCO is not just the initial investment in hardware/software alone. Unless you plan to host something unreliably and value your time at nothing. In which case I hope you don’t get friends or family hooked on your stuff or everyone will have a bad time and be back to Google Drive/Docs and Netflix within 5 years.

The reason they leave it out I feel is because once you factor all of that stuff in the $10/month your paying for Google Drive storage or the ~$25 your paying Netflix starts to make a lot more sense when pared with a decent local backup from a Synology NAS for the “I can’t lose this” stuff like baby pictures of your kids. Which blows their entire premise out of the water.

Amen. It has become so normalized to treat company health like Ricky Bobby treats Nascar races, “if you’re not first you’re last” “if your not more profitable this quarter than last then your going out of business”.

I moved to Podcast Republic, and sometimes AntennaPod, on Android, Downcast on iPhone, and just import the OPML from one of those into gpodder to listen on desktop/laptop.

No accounts or other BS to keep up with, just the latest OPML export. Much nicer, and no one can take it away from me or “shut the service down” in the future.

They can try, but it is unlikley to work for long. So my general reaction is:

Everyone that was paying attention to the Microsoft Windows support lifecycle web page back then knew that statement was horse shit.

It is likely because Israel vs. Palestine is a much much more hot button issue than Russia vs. Ukraine.

Some people will assault you for having the wrong opinion in the wrong place about the former, and that is press Google does not want to be able to be associated with their LLM in anyway.

I’m surprised there was no further validation or approval for that kind of money beyond “find the right person and socially engineer them.”

The ever increasing subscription prices and rights holders pulling content have nothing to do with it at all I am sure. /s

And here I thought I had a lot of hdd platter coaster’s.

This sort of thing is what keeps me away from Samsung phones.

Don’t give Ubisoft money for their games and they will change their tune or close up shop soon enough.