Just in my personal experience, I use IronFox with Mullvad, which YouTube flags and throws the “Sign in to confirm you’re not a bot” error whereas NewPipe, for example, typically works (I believe they have a workaround similar to yt-dlp that leverages the Android VR API).

Ah, that’s good information - thanks!

I know you mentioned having tried it but my experience with DDG has been pretty good and it’s what I use (edit to add that I’m not doubting your experience with it has been poor and this isn’t intended to sound flippant).

I see Kagi come up a lot. I don’t trust engines like Kagi not to link my payment data with my search history, personally. They’re a US company, so consider what that means in the current state of the world and privacy. I haven’t deeply investigated the validity of it, but the Kagi CEO allegedly harassed a journalist (minor edit, a blogger) who had a critical take on their service, and supposedly they were founded as - you guessed it - an AI company.

And sure, DDG is a US company, too. But they don’t really have anything personally identifying to link my searches back to me. I can accept the ads (though I have uBlock), which are only contextually targeted based on search keywords. I don’t think I’d use their browser or extensions, which would have a much more privileged place in my “tech stack”, but for search it does well enough.

Oh man, I had totally forgotten about this game! I might have to pick this up.

Hmmm… seeing as food is the number one way to our- er, I mean, a Crow’s heart… you might be in trouble! But worry not, I’ll put in a good word with my brothers… I mean my local neighborhood Crows because I am definitely a human living in a house around other humans!

I think it’s an underappreciated city and I always really liked it when I lived there.

I could see Susie as Kali. I could also see Berdly using either Kali or Arch, because he’d be all over that smug “I use Arch, btw”. Toothpaste boy would be Mint because… toothpaste.

Thanks! I think the trouble I had with Bandcamp is that it seemed to be missing some stuff I wanted - some of it was more niche but a good bit of it was pretty popular so I was surprised by that. No reason I couldn’t use more than one source though.

7digital looks promising, thank you!

Are there any good alternatives to Qobuz? I tried it out and was annoyed that they didn’t seem to embed metadata in the files (like album art) unless you use their “downloader” and I think it’s silly that I have to install that to just… download some files. Or maybe I missed something?

Couldn’t have said it better myself!

Man, this picture was taken from the perfect vantage point…

I was shopping at a big box furniture store and as I was checking out they asked the usual “do you have a phone number with us?”. I replied “no”, to which they asked “are you sure?”, to which I replied “yes, I’m certain, I don’t do rewards programs”. They asked if I “didn’t just want to try a number to be sure”, so I said “okay”.

When the PIN pad prompted me, I entered my number as 000-000-0000. It locked up the whole POS (in both senses of that acronym) for a good 2-3 minutes before they finally pulled the plug. As it was starting back up, I said “we don’t have to check, it’s okay”.

Naturally, the cashier said “okay, let’s try again”. So their POS crashed. Again. And they had to open another register and move me and everyone else to it. I wasn’t really embarrassed though. I’d like to think they learned something, but I doubt it.

Thanks for the writeup! I think bidirectional sync is what I’m used to but very few solutions seem to support it outside of the big tech ones, like you mentioned. Perhaps I need to re-evaluate whether I truly need it; I guess it’s not often I switch between editing a document on my phone to my laptop and need those changes synced instantly, and I did find a way to get Cryptomator to immediately upload any pictures or screenshots I take. I would still like my Obsidian notes files to upload instantly too, though, I think.

Thank you! I did just find in the FolderSync docs that 2-way sync isn’t supported for encrypted files, which is a bit of a bummer. I think Nextcloud on Android had a similar limitation where it would only actually sync at most every 15 minutes. I did find the Cryptomator app on Android does have an “immediate upload” folder, but it’s only for images captured with the camera and screenshots… which I guess for now fulfills most of my needs, so I may stick with that after all.

Thanks for the suggestion! I have a few questions, if you don’t mind: what did you like more about rclone than Cryptomator? Is it suitable for sync, or is it more for backups? I’m ideally looking for near-ish to real-time sync for contacts, notes, files, and pictures. Are there any frontends for Linux you’d recommend, or do you script out the functionality you’re looking to implement?

Did you try Syncthing at all? I ran into the same issues with Nextcloud on Android and I’m trying to decide on Syncthing or FolderSync and I wanted to see what people thought. I’m currently using Cryptomator but it doesn’t do everything I’d like yet.

Yeah I just spent a few days trying to get Nextcloud on Android working and it was a disaster. I ultimately decided to use Cryptomator to handle the sync since I’m already using it on my PCs, but I’m looking at maybe Syncthing or FolderSync (not sure which is better) because Cryptomator lacks some functionality like keeping local copies and making files available to other apps like galleries, music apps, etc.

Oh, it’s you. It’s been a looong time; how have you been? I’ve been really busy being DEAD. You know? After you murdered me? Look, we both said a lot of things you’re going to regret, but I think we can put our differences behind us. For science. You monster.

I find… we’ll just say “the villain” of Undertale compelling, but it’s one of my favorite games so I’m a little biased.

I think I’ve always sorta “known”, but since much of my family and most of my country (or at least the part I’m in) are phobes, I didn’t really have the chance to really accept it until my late 20s.