That’s basically how I learned programming. I’ve bought a book I was interested in, an as I was progressing, always typed the sample codes by hand and tried them.

Even today I buy a bunch of programming books.

Hell yes. I’m a person who always valued my own privacy, but I didn’t have much, especially during university plus almost ten years afterwards.

I lived with my brother in his tiny apartment, and my mom was most of the time living there too. My mom is a very nosy person, and it happened sometimes that I got home to seeing my personal belongings being re-arranged, some missing.

Sometimes she would just open my cabinet right in front of me and search for something in there like it’s second nature, without even asking.

It was extremely infuriating and humiliating to me. And I feel so lucky and so peaceful now that I have my own apartment.

Whatever is more convenient.

Generally speaking I try to look for the app first, because that’s the most optimized experience for mobile, while the browser version is often not very smooth. But apps lately are getting so awful that the browser version is better.

E.g. YouTube is in the browser for me, because Firefox + uBlock combo is the only way to avoid ads.

As ads today are to be avoided due to privacy and security reasons, I got rid of all apps that are flagged as “contains ads” in Google Play store.

Just a funny story from a few months ago: one day when I opened LinkedIn, an unusual screen welcomed me, that I couldn’t jump over: I had to pick where I wanted ads to appear without the LinkedIn app, with two choices: either above private messages or in-between posts. I deleted the app instead. Then I wanted to use it in the browser, but it didn’t work in Firefox, the website just froze after login. So yeah. No more LinkedIn for me. Sometimes I log in on desktop to see if there’s anything, but it’s getting so rare, basically there’s nothing to see there.

So if neither is convenient to use, then I use neither.

Don’t use their services.

I’ve been using Deezer for almost a year now.

Things I like:

• Duo subscription is suitable for long distance couples (this was the main reason I subscribed to Deezer and not Spotify).
• Wide range of songs, even some pretty rare gems are available there.

Things I (we) don’t like:

• As others mentioned, discovering unknown songs is not really a thing on Deezer. Spotify was so good at giving me other songs than what I used to listen, and it aced it. Deezer cannot do that. It only has predefined lists with songs that everyone knows (“hits” in other word).
• My girlfriend sometimes experiences lags, so probably in Asia they don’t have servers.

What do you mean? This is organized! And I have such a drawer too. This is the collection of slightly large kitchen tools that are not large enough to place them in the cupboard.

Whether every family has this drawer or not, I wouldn’t know, so I’m not very helpful with settling your argument. I’d bet, every family has this drawer though. Because everyone must have those kinds of utensils, and there’s no other logical place to store them. Some people hang some of them on the wall, but even then, there are some that cannot be hung on the wall. Those go into this drawer.

This is my way of doing it too, but at the end always a lot of milk remains in the bowl and I have to refill it with cereal multiple times.

If I add less milk in the first place, then for the major part of the cereal it’ll feel like I haven’t added any milk at all. Weird stuff.

I use Brita, but I’m absolutely disappointed with it and I don’t even know if it’s worth for me to waste my money on it.

The other day there was yellow water coming from the tap, probably it has to do something with the construction outside. But I only noticed it while filling up my Brita jug, and guess what - it remained yellow after filtering it. I mean, no change at all. Not even slightly clearer, no. The same. And I use original Brita cartridges which are expensive af. I was in two weeks of usage that time, so the cartridge wasn’t even near the end of its lifecycle.

The other part of my disappointment is that these Brita jugs are extremely brittle. The first one cracked on the bottom after one year, the second one cracked at two places also after one year (although the second one isn’t leaking yet). And I have no idea why they crack so easily, it’s not like I’m slamming them to the kitchen counter in any way. I’m actually quite careful with it, knowing how poor quality it is. Absolute garbage.

So I’m also seeking for a high quality brand, but I’m not ready for those reverse osmosis things, just a pitcher.

I truly believe in Scrum, as it can make a team’s work very efficient when it’s done right. Been there, done that.

Now the thing is, it forces people to actively collaborate, and I’m quite an introverted person. Also, a good Scrum workflow includes regular demo sessions (perhaps even with customers), and I absolutely hate that. But I accept it, it’s part of the game and I think it did contribute to my own self improvement as well.

Every hardware is beautiful from every angle.

I thought so too, but about a year ago or so this same question popped up, and some of the comments were really eye opening.

The essence of it was something like this: if you use the upvote/downvote buttons as agree/disagree, then you’re contributing to turning this platform into an echo chamber, which is the particular thing that makes social media such a shitty place.

You should use this feature on posts to indicate if it’s relevant to the community’s rules or not, meets the community’s guidelines or not, contains factual, useful information or not.

On comments, you should use it to indicate if it’s relevant to the topic or not, valid argument to what they’re replying to or not, regardless of your own opinion.

A great example someone commented was, when he explained they were browsing lemmy together with his girlfriend, they had a great laugh at a comment, and then he promptly downvoted it, to her surprise. And it’s because, even though the comment was fantastic, it was off topic, it wasn’t useful for the actual conversation.

Oh, and actually, there was a thing, even on Reddit - believe it or not - which acted as upvote/downvote guidelines, describing how you should use those buttons.

I’ll try to link the original post here if I find it.

Edit: Here’s the comment I was referring to on the original post: https://lemmy.world/comment/5219066

Firefox because it works perfectly for me, and it’s customizable with extensions.

I guess, that’s not the biggest issue. Everyone has that, who’s sorting their trash. The real annoying part (at least for me) is taking the effort to physically take the trash apart. For example removing cellotape from cardboard, removing metal clips from cardboard, washing food remains from containers, removing paper labels from cans, etc. It takes time, and sometimes it’s not even easy to do.

I go to great lengths to do all that, but when it turns out to be impossible, I just throw it in the general waste and I don’t care.

Here’s a mixture of applications, some for Linux, some for Android, some for both. And some of them might work on other platforms as well, but I’m not sure.

Borg for making backups. For the first glance it could look overwhelming, but after reading through the quick start guide, it’s really easy to use.

VeraCrypt for encryption of removable media.

Megalodon as a Mastodon client.

Voyager as a Lemmy client. It has a very weird and unintuitive UI, but there are no ads and the content is well readable, well presented.

OsmAnd for offline navigation. It’s especially great for cycling and hiking, as even the most insignificant trails are on the map. It isn’t free, but it’s cheap.

Thunderbird for emails. Until recently I just used the online interface for my emails, but ever since I got a Proton subscription and multiple aliases with it, I started to use Thunderbird so I can see everything in one place, and also it has advanced filtering capabilities (the best of any email client I’ve ever used).

Proton Calendar, just for the sake of not to use Google.

Firefox with uBlock Origin. These two together is the bare minimum nowadays if you are thinking about browsing the internet.

VS Code for smaller stuff. Not gonna list my extensions here, but there are a few less known ones that I always install.

Zed is in early development, but if it gets as mature as VS Code, I’ll consider using this instead.

JetBrains IDEs for software development. It makes me cry every year when I spend a buttload of money on renewing my license, but for me it’s worth it. No other IDE ever made it so easy for me to set up and work with projects.

Dia for UML or database schema diagrams, and bunch of others. Sadly it’s a bit outdated, but it’s simple and easy to use.

I guess, it depends on the dictatorship. For example if it’s the one being formed in the US currently, here are some ideas: https://theintercept.com/2024/11/14/trump-agenda-organize-protest-movement/

Ever since I got my own place, I’m significantly less stressed. So much, that my health condition pretty much got back to normal after living with a colon disease (AND my mom) for a long time.

Folks, do not underestimate the power of stress.

The good things:

• It really is an advantage over normal USB, that I don’t have to trun the plug three times while trying to connect it, as it can be plugged in either way.
• I find the extra protection also cool, so in case you accidentally try to plug in something you are not supposed to, it just simply won’t work instead of, I don’t know, supplying too high voltage or something.

So far it caused a lot of headaches though:

• Way too often I found myself in a situation, where I couldn’t use some devices, because I didn’t have the necessary adapter. This issue should be temporary though, so I’m not complaining.
• Some cables are not compatible with some devices, and it can be really confusing. Before I knew this, I was certain that a monitor and a laptop of mine weren’t compatible for a long time, until someday I read about this and tried it again with a different cable.
• In most cases this is not an issue, but rarely I find that the USB type-c plug is not as robust as a micro USB for example. On my girlfriend’s Samsung S8 it always slipped out, so the contact was terrible, while a micro USB plug does have some clamps to properly attach. Again, in most cases the type-c plug is clicking in properly, so it’s not an acute problem.

No need to tell me all this; I’ve been using Linux for more than 15 years and I don’t freakin’ care what’s happening to Windows.

Now either you haven’t read properly what I said, or my wording was not clear - apologies in the latter case. Either way, I’ll try to explain what I meant.

1. It’s pointless for Microsoft to make Recall (or anything) unremovable, since someone will find a solution to it pretty quickly. So those who use Windows, most likely will still have the option to continue to use it without Recall, in my opinion.
2. I also highly recommend everyone to just use a usable operating system instead.
3. Telling the average user to use a better operating system is one thing. That’s fairly doable nowadays, I don’t see basically any obstacle to that, and I wouldn’t even mention it, because you just tell them the facts, and the smarter ones will listen and think it through, the rest of them will do whatever they want, it’s their problem. What I find very problematic, is industrial environments. There are tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands or millions of workstations, terminal computers, controllers in companies of varying sizes, where it’s absolutely not cost efficient to switch from Windows to something else (well, at least not until they get into their first data breach attributed to Recall or other shady Microsoft services). They have highly specialized tools complete with documentation and support and everything made for the one specific platform they are operating on, and it’s certainly not easy to change that, especially without halting production. If there’s one IT advice I could give to those companies, it would be to start creating a strategic plan to drop their Microsoft dependencies, and then execute their plan. It would take probably years, but they gotta start doing it like ASAP. And along the way, while porting their toolchains, they could as well do it the smart way: make it highly portable, so whatever platform they switch to, wouldn’t be the only option. Should that platform go south just like Windows did, they’d have the option to switch again to something else, just much easier this time.
4. According to my experience, customization tools to remove bloat (including Recall) are not permissible in work environments, and spyware (such as Recall) are not (supposed to be) tolerated either. If this doesn’t make them switch to a better platform, nothing will.

Just because Microsoft makes Recall “unremovable”, doesn’t mean anything to me. We’ve seen debloater tools, alternate start menus, someone even ported explorer from Windows 7 to Windows 10/11.

I’m pretty sure there’s gonna be a solution for this in no time.

That being said, just use a better OS ffs. I get it, some companies cannot easily switch from Windows because of tools specifically built for Windows, or due to strict policies or regulations or software support, but damnit, somewhere you have to draw a line and start a migration process to an alternative system. And maybe learn from this, and make your tools portable next time.

Having spyware on your system is certainly a big no-no at companies, and probably the aforementioned debloater/customization solutions as well.

I’m using Deezer, because its Duo plan’s T&C doesn’t require couples to live in the same household. (Fuck Spotify because of their shitty plan.)

Unfortunately Deezer’s Android app sucks, because it never reaches the server. Sometimes songs are just restarting or stopping, and you have to press the “add to favorites” button hundreds of times to finally successfully add it to your list. It’s horrible. But in the browser it’s smooth, there’s no problem with it. I even find songs I would never expect to find there (much more than on Spotify). Also you can create playlists together with others, even if others are using a different streaming provider.

If your only choice is between YouTube and Spotify, I’d go for Spotify because fuck Google, and also Spotify app is smooth, and has the ability to control your music from your phone even when the music is playing on another device. (This is possible to do with 3rd party apps with any music player, but Spotify has it built in.)