bet

@bet@lemm.ee
0 Post – 27 Comments
Joined 1 years ago

since podcasts are I think just RSS feeds of audio files (mp3 for those I've checked) the ads aren't in any way marked in the stream. The only thing I've found is adjusting the skip buttons in antennapod so that skip fwd does 10 seconds, and back does 5; that seems to let me avoid listening to most of the ad; tap fwd until it's back in material, then back once.

But I listen to a lot less podcasts; if I want hands- and eyes-free material I'm more likely to use TTS in my (text) RSS feed reader of choice, currently Feeder.

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I find keep terrifically useful. But it is not supported by Google Takeout, so when they turn it off, I'd lose everything. I'm currently trying out sNotz from f-droid as a replacement.

when I wanted a lemmy app, searching f-droid only pulled up Jerboa, and I remain happy with it.

I'd love one. Preferably the opens-like-a-book style, not the vertical ribbon.

But I don't want to carry around something that costs that much. They're currently priced for someone with way more money.

For me, the key is FOSS. I was a keen fan of swiftkey, its word predictions worked great. Then it was bought by a company that I distrust, and when I was forced to choose another, I decided to try to ensure I'd never have to switch again.

A little while after I bailed on swiftkey, the news reports came that it was auto-filling random strangers' credit card numbers; I felt vindicated.

If what you want is the recorded performance of someone reading a book, then yeah, librivox for legal audiobooks, and other commentors have other amswers that are on-topic. But DRM-free ebooks --- text things, like epubs --- can be read aloud by good ereader apps. I like Moon+ Reader Pro from Google Play, and Cool Reader from f-droid. For me, the emotionless robotic reading of TTS engines is more like a hands- and eyes-free way to enjoy the author's words as written; I find listening to someone performing an audio reading of the book a different experience.

Before ebook reader apps learned about TTS I used to take my txt ebooks, feed them through flite (Festival Lite), then convert the resulting audio to ogg vorbis and load them on an iRiver PMP to play during long drives.

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I got started with RSS using a TUI program on unix, whose name I forget. But then Google came out with Reader (and Listen for podcasts). When they lost interest and dropped them, I exported my OPML and switched to apps I could find on f-droid. Now I back up my OPML scrupulously and am currently happy with Feeder and Antennapod; Google taught me I didn't want to depend on someone else's server for something like this; it's too important. If ever I find I want some feature that requires a server, I'll self-host something (Nextcloud?), but I seem to be well enough served by purely local clients.

Thanks! That sounds like a fun exercise for my next phone

It's not GUI (no icons, no widgets) but I have for many years preferred

Search Based Launcher (Minimalistic home-screen) https://f-droid.org/packages/com.vackosar.searchbasedlauncher/

It uses the text names of apps for launching them, and allows both hiding and renaming apps. Renaming is helpful for dealing with e.g. "Voice" being both Google Voice and Voice Audiobook Player.

Hooray, it includes SingleFile!

I'm in a similar situation. My Pixel3 is the only phone I have that can install a banking app, but my Nexus 6 still gets monthly security updates via LineageOS. Since Google wants me to repla e phones every few years, when one of these dies, I'm getting an A14 5G. On a cost per year of running everything including apps that block custom ROMs, Pixels are far too pricey. I think they envy Apple their pricing, but don't do support.

And as long as I'll have to get a phone, I want newer radios.

Jerboa. When my previous preferred discussion forum decided to erect a paywall, closing out third-party apps, I came here; and searching for Lemmy on f-droid got me Jerboa. For a while, the app was spontaneously exiting, but before I was driven to try another, it seemed to have gotten fixed.

If you skip updates long enough, someone might find a security hole, and if you've skipped the update that fixes it, you'll be able to jailbreak it, install koreader, read epubs without conversion, use the filesystem for ebook organization.

Also, you'll avoid advertisements, which Amazon is now pushing to the homescreens even of kindles that were bought with the extra-cost no-ads option.

I really hate video, prefer reading. But by reading the material to a camera, people get paid by youtube, and then set up a patreon for buying access to the material they read. Everybody loses, hooray:-(

I regard "smart" as an epithet I want to avoid in appliances. Light switches, thermostats, refrigerators, and all the rest seem to work great without adding internet connectivity, security breaches, corporate surveillance, and vendors removing functionality, or ending support to turn the appliance into e-waste.

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I run LineageOS on my Nexus 6, to get ongoing security updates. I also keep one other sacrificial phone running stock android with bootloader locked, so no more security updates, but I don't run anything on it but my banking app, since it's too insecure.

In the sense I think you're asking, never: contributing a fix or an improvement is never a one-and-done, fire it off and forget it edit. Each contribution is a request to open a dialog. Implicit in each pull request are multiple questions, perhaps including "is this a good idea", and "do you like this attempt to do it".

If the project maintainer who reviews your PR doesn't like it, they can expend the effort to try to explain why, and teach you. So try to make their job easier, by opening with a clear explanation of why you're doing it, and if what you did involved design decisions, why you chose as you did.

after Google shut down Reader, I took my OPML (list of subscriptions), and switched to a FOSS local RSS reader; import my OPML and carry on. I've switched software occasionally; right now I'm happy with Feeder (from f-droid).

Getting my news is something I care about too much to entrust to someone's server; I'm happy with it purely local.

I use jove (a small, lightweight emacs) within Termux, and M-X filter-region through sort

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Kindle isn't based on Android; it's bare Linux with heavy DRM and a very limited ebook reader app on it. Whether the MacOS kindle app would help, I don't know.

If this comes through, I might no longer need Iceraven (andoid firefox with full addon support, like before they tore it out; I use it for Singlefile)

Thanks, I hadn't heard of that one

That looks like an app for playing audiobooks; I've used Voice Audiobook Player from f-droid for that.

Derek Lowe has some explanation:

In The Pipeline

I don't do Windows, but I happily sync directories between my Android phones and my Linux PCs (especially a cloud server I lease) with rsync over ssh within Termux.

If you can set up an rsync server on Windows that should work. Besides actually implementing robust and efficient sync, rsync is also smart about platform differences.

For the specific case of Windows to Android, I've heard of people scripting up tools to shove all the contents of a directory over adb push.

With "Unexpected Keyboard" (from f-droid) it's ok. I've come to expect that there's a basic choice between easy, with GUI, and powerful (like "sort a region of lines"), which is only GUI if you've got a powerful GUI, like plan 9. Otherwise, powerful means keyboard-driven.

When I've got a long, complex edit, I've got a nice, pocket-size, battery-powered folding bluetooth keyboard; combined with the kickstands on my phone cases, it is pretty good.

I've got three soft keyboards enabled on my phone, to choose between as needed.

Unexpected Keyboard is my default; it's a perfectly cromulent basic keyboard, that makes all the punctuation, ctrl/fn/esc available for comfy shell work.

When I need to type in non-ascii characters like accented letters, I have AnySoft available. And pwsafe has a soft keyboard in it to let me avoid passing my (exceedingly hard to type, long random) passwords through the clipboard.

I used to have Hacker's Keyboard in the mix, but Unexpected Keyboard has made it unnecessary.