I'll admit the hardware on iPhones is excellent but waaayy overkill for iOS.

Let me install my own third party apps w/o the App store (I know altstore exists, but needing to renew apps every few days is super janky). If I spend my money on a device, I should be allowed to put whatever I want on it, however I want. Let me, the consumer accept the risks of doing so.

Let me use HDMI out over USB-C to an external monitor and have a full desktop with ability to run desktop class apps. Let me use the full potential of the chipsets to get actual work done and effectively replace a computer.

Till then, Android it is for me because I can do both these things easily. I know my use cases are more niche, but "Pro" naming on consumer Apple products is just fluff.

While I love Raspberry Pis and have a few older ones, it's a shame that the latest ones were very hard to come by and far exceeded the $35 price point.

I was looking to upgrade to a Pi 4 a while back but prices were outrageous or it was sold out completely. I eventually discovered tiny form factor PCs.

I bought some used Lenovo Tiny ThinkCentres (which are about 10x more powerful than a Pi 4), off eBay for ~ $70. I upgraded the Ram and SSDs and they are quite capable, low power units!

So to anyone looking for a low power computer to run Linux, consider buying used off eBay. You can get some pretty good deals on used hardware that's more capable.

I enjoyed my time with Windows 7. I even remember the Windows 7 launch party marketing. Never upgraded to 10, certainly not upgrading to 11. Happy with my adventures in Linux.

Less tactile controls made me choose a 2014 over 2015 Honda Accord when I bought my car a few years back, and I'm very happy with it! Can't imagine having most everything controlled with a touch screen. The only tech I need is Bluetooth and a backup camera. Screw software subscriptions and OTA updates to potentially alter the car I own outright.

Community Rec center membership. For a one time fee of $10; it's easily the best $10 I've ever spent and is a great city perk. I've gotten in great shape since going there.

Dreame L10 pro robo vacuum / mop. I rooted it and run Valetudo on it so it doesn't use a proprietary third party cloud service. It works very well and my floors have never been cleaner!

Yes, you should support open source when possible if the project(s) you use are beneficial to you! Your dollars are far more valuable to help out a small team of independent volunteers vs multi-billion dollar corporations that really don't need it.

If you can't donate money, donate your time / skills or do both! Make the world of software a better place, one small contribution at a time!

Termux

This app alone is one of the huge reasons why I prefer Android. I love that I can natively run a bunch of Linux utilities directly on my phone and use it like I would a regular computer. Everything from Vim, Python, and various networking utilities, I've played around with so many different tools which has helped expand my skillset over the years.

I also use the Termux-X11 addon to have a full xfce desktop environment running on an external monitor with HDMI out over USB-C.

Phones are quite capable devices and using tools like these really unlocks their full potential.

I use Vim everyday! I'm so glad I took the time to learn it as it has increased my productivity significantly and now I can't imagine not using it. Thanks Bram, for your amazing work over the years. RIP

David Bowie's Nipple Antennae

Ya my paranoia only allows me to expose Wireguard to access everything. I sleep better at night knowing that's the only thing exposed. Too many instances of major companies getting hacked who have dedicated security teams to manage that. I am one person, learning to manage my own stuff in my free time.

Butter. Kerrygold is simply the best.

Happy to be part of the top 1% in this case.

Part of their Zenfone marketing is keeping "legacy" features like headphone jack and small form factor, they should allow unlocking. Hopefully they'll follow through and allow you to modify the device that you purchased.

TIL that DVDs could even be regionally locked. That's annoying.

..And we're calling it AiPhone! * applause from audience *

Used to hate it being on the bottom but now prefer it as it's easier to reach. All the way at the top with as large as phones are these days isn't as convenient. But ya, at least they give the option for either.

As a young teen, I microwaved Kraft singles in an air tight magic bullet container trying to make nacho cheese (I was inspired by the infomercial). Lid got stuck, so I had to use a lot of force to get it loose. Molten cheese exploded all over the kitchen and on my left arm. I had second degree burns and a scar for a few years.

Dang had no idea this was a thing, but this looks very useful! I've been meaning to troubleshoot slow startup on one of my servers.

For the technically skilled, there is BlueBubbles to get iMessage on Android. I set this up recently and it works quite well. I'm running a MacOS Ventura virtual machine using docker-osx on one of my personal servers and pretty much all iMessage functionality is available. I modified the Android (flutter) project locally to get my own push notifications working using my self-hosted ntfy instance as a UnifiedPush provider instead of needing to use Firebase.

There is also Beeper which bridges iMessage and many other chat services in one app, but I wanted something fully open source that I can manage myself, plus I think there's still a wait-list and I didn't want to hand over my Apple ID to a third party.

It's hard trying to convince people (esp. iPhone users) to use a cross platform solution because they perceive us Android users as the problem and they know iMesssge just works. And for the non- technical, that's understandable even if frustrating. So as a software engineer, I am the one making accomodations so they can still use iMessage. But it also made for a fun project for me to learn about.

Everyone's Upstairs Neighbors

GTA 3 / Vice City. My brother had a PS2 and would let me play. I never bothered with the story / campaign, I just liked to wonder around, steal cars, and drive. I enjoyed using cheat codes to spawn tanks and get full wanted level and outrun the cops.

DHARMA stations (from the show LOST)

Arrow, Swan, Flame, and Pearl so far :)

Edit: also funny to see there's 108 comments as of now

That would be more than capable. Retro emulation can run on very low end hardware.

But here's an ebay listing for same model that I bought earlier. It doesn't include an SSD but you can buy M.2 SSDs for very cheap which I also did. Plus they're much faster and more reliable than micro SD cards.

It's very easy to open the machine up which I liked.

RAM upgrades are cheap too but 8GB is a lot for most cases.

A lot of corporate environments use these so when they upgrade you can find them used for dirt cheap, if you don't mind some possible cosmetic defects. Mine are just stacked on a shelf and I just use them as servers for docker and whatnot.

Ya Plex vs Kodi is really more an apples and oranges comparison. Should be Plex vs Jellyfin.

That said though, I did start off with Kodi as my own media center on a Raspberry Pi, but eventually discovered Jellyfin and have really enjoyed it. Kodi is great too, but I think Jellyfin is the more refined modern streaming equivalent akin to Netflix that's fully open source unlike Plex.

This time over telnet.

telnet is an insecure protocol. Ideally you should use ssh instead but most which some modern BBS's support both. Of course if you want to dial in on legacy "authentic" hardware then SSH isn't possible.

💡You can SSH (or telnet) from your phone using Termux and it works pretty well (though admittedly not as good without full ANSI support). It doesn't use full height of screen but is still usable. BBS's could be enhanced to support that though.

Here's an example of how one looks on my phone:

ssh NEW@bbs.bottomlessabyss.net -p 2222 -c aes256-cbc

The original Sims + expansion packs. I haven't played any of the newer ones but I spent a lot of childhood playing the original with my mom and we had so much fun together.

Livin' Large was my fave expansion pack because of the servo. Such a fun game!

Sad thing is that wouldn't even be surprising. Could totally imagine an error message like: "This device is using unauthorized components not licensed for your region. Please call AppleCare for service options."

Just wish modern devices still had easily removable back covers without needing pry tools and hair dryers.

Obtanium is really good option too and can handle more than just browser updates. Pretty much any Android APK release can be setup and it supports a wide variety of different repository sources.

I wonder if Cash4Gold would take them. Lol I remember seeing this commercial as a kid.

Packt Like Sardines in a Crushd Tin Box

Might as well make it a burst of 9 presses, wait, and then 2 single presses /s

Hmm.. Wonder how AI predicting what a photo of someone should look like will compare to how they actually do. Guess it's not that different than the automatic filters phones have to make everyone look better.

Oh ya I remember wanting that one a lot! I think it was too expensive for me at the time, so ended up with the alias 2 but I envied anyone who had one of those.

Ya that would be my main complaint. Awesome app for iOS users, but Android here. Doesn't seem the Android mode works ATM but I'll keep an eye on the progress! Good efforts from devs regardless!

Yay! My first comment from Infinity! Been using Jerboa so far but great to have multiple options!

While Termux doesn't require root, my device is rooted which allows for a lot more.

A few examples:

• Using mitmproxy to capture and analyze app traffic from phone apps (automated w/ a widget shortcut to configure android proxy settings on launch and then reset back when I'm finished).
• SSHing into my servers (mosh is useful to keep connections alive if network cuts out). I have my own homescreen widgets to automatically launch for specific nodes. Also use tmux everywhere to handle multiple sessions.
• Scripting my android phone as a USB keyboard input (simulating BadUSB).
• I've implemented my own "lost phone rescue" so I have a way to remote into my device if I lose it.
• Reading man pages about a command
• Git cloning projects to examine source code when I'm feeling curious
• Running web servers for sample projects
• Managing files on device (sometimes easier with CLI)

Same! I used Infinity for Reddit without an account for a few years until the whole API controversy. The fediverse is more niche and caters more to my interests, so kinda glad that all happened tbh.

I had a flip phone up until 2012 and then got an iPhone 5, then switched to Android in 2016 with the Samsung Galaxy S7. I really liked my iPhone 5 but have stuck with Android since then.

I got my first taste of Android in 2008 though when my brother bought the T-Mobile G1!