22
submitted 4 days ago by monovergent@lemmy.ml to c/asklemmy@lemmy.ml

Some apps on my phone will pop up with a dialog containing the release notes the first launch after an update. I find myself dismissing them almost immediately since

  1. due to automatic updates, I don't go into an app aware of updates and anticipating changes
  2. I have a task in mind when opening the app and just want to get straight to it

It's not always obvious where to bring up the release notes again once they are dismissed. So I wonder, do developers include such popups with the expectation that many users will stop to read them, are most users just as hasty as I am, or both?

[-] monovergent@lemmy.ml 8 points 6 days ago

As long as you have a strong backup strategy, I would recommend full disk encryption during installation, especially if for a laptop. Peace of mind with negligible cost on modern hardware. Even accessing the encrypted disk from a live USB takes only two extra commands compared to an unencrypted disk. As long as the LUKS header doesn't corrupt, hence the need for good backups.

[-] monovergent@lemmy.ml 1 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago)

My schools in the US:

Only English for all of elementary school. Starting in middle school, students can choose to take Spanish, French, Latin or German (in descending order of popularity). A bus would take you to one particular high school in the county for Mandarin, Greek, Russian, Japanese, etc. For the advanced diploma, you needed to take 3 years of a foreign language course. The full sequence offered for Spanish, French, Latin, and German takes 6 years.

[-] monovergent@lemmy.ml 1 points 6 days ago

This is one of the mundane scripting tasks I would have my local LLM help with. I would still read through and make sure I understand the resulting script before running it.

[-] monovergent@lemmy.ml 2 points 6 days ago

Wanted to, but lacked the motivation to learn it. Was stuck on one occasion without nano, so I pulled up the vim cheat sheet on my phone.

30
submitted 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) by monovergent@lemmy.ml to c/linux@lemmy.ml

The battery tray indicators I've tried on Linux so far only seem to take the instantaneous power consumption into account. Is there one that estimates remaining battery life based on power draw over a longer time window and integrates easily with my desktop environment's tray?

[-] monovergent@lemmy.ml 85 points 2 weeks ago

Can't wait for one that'll work on Android so I can maybe root some otherwise useless old phones

[-] monovergent@lemmy.ml 39 points 3 weeks ago

There's always the risk of spying if a game requires an internet connection, no matter who published it, but unless you plan to be in China later on, there's not much that Chinese companies (or authorities, if that is of concern) can do with the data collected on you.

I suppose some company could sell that data back to a US firm in a roundabout way. Anyway, take what I say with a grain of salt since I've hardly played or looked into any games requiring an internet connection.

20
submitted 3 weeks ago by monovergent@lemmy.ml to c/degoogle@lemmy.ml

Even if I have the full address of a destination, trying to search for it in CoMaps easily takes more than 30 seconds before I can select it and have it shown on the map. Sometimes if I have a general idea of where it is, I can find it faster than search. Is this normal? Are there settings I'm overlooking that could speed it up?

30

When I first looked up psyllium husk powder as a fiber supplement, people were complaining that it made the water thick and gross. That enticed me to buy it. And when the packaging said to drink immediately after mixing lest it thicken, I instead let it sit for a good 15 minutes until my glass of water had a smoothie-like consistency. Makes me love drinking water again and also sad that I can't have it with every glass of water or else I get stopped up.

44
submitted 2 months ago by monovergent@lemmy.ml to c/privacy@lemmy.ml

When the privacy laws in the US are so weak, it seems like maintaining the effect of data removal requires paying for the data removal service indefinitely. Is it worth it regardless? Are there any cases and criteria where one should pay for data removal, more so than the average person? Interested to hear if anyone here has seen noticeable benefits, beyond the mere fact that their PII have been scrubbed from data brokers and search sites.

[-] monovergent@lemmy.ml 44 points 3 months ago

Every day I feel more justified in keeping my 1990s car running.

(I'd also like to walk or take public transit, but the infrastructure here is car dependent)

73
submitted 3 months ago by monovergent@lemmy.ml to c/asklemmy@lemmy.ml

Middle click failure plagues nearly every mouse I've owned, OEM, Logitech, wired, or wireless. I take full advantage of the middle click shortcuts like opening links in new tabs, but I don't think I'm putting it through undue stress either. As far as I can tell, I'm clicking it with the same force as I would the other mouse buttons and much less frequently than the left click.

Failure usually starts with occasional missed middle clicks, which after some point, rapidly progresses until it's failing to register more often than not. At that point, everything else will still work perfectly. No improvement even if I take it apart to clean out what little dirt had accumulated.

One of my mice has managed to avoid this fate far longer than the others but I've just recently stopped using it due to the rubberized exterior turning all gooey and sticky. The only middle mouse buttons that seem immune to all of this are the ones on ThinkPads. Anyone else notice this or could recommend a good mouse that can stand up to a bit of middle-clicking?

19
submitted 3 months ago by monovergent@lemmy.ml to c/linux@lemmy.ml

A while ago, I set up unattended-upgrades on my Debian 13 machines. Running sudo apt updatedoesn't cross my mind now that I assume unattended-upgrades takes care of that for me, but every once in a while, I'll try installing something and get the "Unable to locate package" errors associated with outdated repositories. After being made aware of having outdated repositories and packages, I'll go and run sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade on my other machines, only to be told that all packages are up to date and unattended-upgrades did do its job there. I don't keep a record of this happening, but I also don't recall there being any pattern to which of my machines are affected and which aren't at any given time.

Where could I start hunting down the cause of this inconsistent behavior? I did double-check that I enabled it via sudo dpkg-reconfigure unattended-upgrades

47
submitted 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) by monovergent@lemmy.ml to c/linux@lemmy.ml

I could in theory upgrade the power supply to go beyond the 150W target, but then I'd also need a better chassis because it is already quite warm with my current 130W card.

Hoping to stick with AMD, but if my wishes to play around with local LLMs and image upscaling makes Nvidia a more practical choice, I can live with that compromise.

Working with a budget of 200 US, I'm fine going with a used GPU.

[-] monovergent@lemmy.ml 78 points 5 months ago

Another common mozilla L

37
submitted 6 months ago by monovergent@lemmy.ml to c/privacy@lemmy.ml

Friends and I are considering some travelling around the world, including perhaps a trip to China. There is much negative press on the state of digital privacy in China, but what exactly should I pay attention to if I do visit? If I am your typical privacy enthusiast with a GrapheneOS phone and Linux laptop, how might I prepare for the trip privacy-wise? I'd also love to hear any firsthand experience as to which concerns are myths and which ones are real.

33
submitted 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) by monovergent@lemmy.ml to c/linux@lemmy.ml

Got my hands on a Dell Latitude ON module. Turns out it's nothing more than a 2 GB flash module that fits in a mPCIe slot and is wired to the USB lanes. Shows up as /dev/sdb.

I do have a couple of old laptops that don't have a secondary SATA drive slot, but do have open mPCIe slots with USB lanes (no mSATA lanes). The Latitude ON module would allow for a dual drive system, albeit a rather crappy one. What would you put on a secondary internal drive if it were limited to 2 GB and USB protocol?

14
submitted 7 months ago by monovergent@lemmy.ml to c/privacy@lemmy.ml

For several years, I've entertained the idea of creating an online portfolio, but it's remained only an idea since I am not sure what I should put on it. What's a good way to decide what goes on the personally-identifiable portfolio and what should remain under pseudonyms?

21
submitted 7 months ago by monovergent@lemmy.ml to c/linux@lemmy.ml

In the interest of maximizing battery life, I've set up suspend-then-hibernate on my laptop. Using a discrete window manager, so I have a systemd unit that locks the screen when I close the lid. After an hour, it automatically goes into hibernation.

All is well, until I have to boot up from hibernation. I'm prompted to unlock LUKS, then I'm hit with a redundant lock screen once resumed. I've tried setting up systemd units referencing suspend-then-hibernate.target and hibernate.target, but I can't get it to kill the screen locker when resuming from hibernation only, so I don't have to type in my password twice. Is there any way to have systemd discriminate between the suspend and hibernate parts of suspend-then-hibernate?

[-] monovergent@lemmy.ml 41 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

Of course

  • Accrescent: Store ~~run~~ (edit: advocated) by the GrapheneOS team for third-party apps
  • Aegis: 2FA TOTP code generator
  • AirGuard: Scans for persistent AirTags in the vicinity, notifies if I may be victim to AirTag tracking
  • AntennaPod: Podcast manager, also supports importing local folders of podcasts
  • AudioMonitor: Measure sound level
  • Binary Eye: Support for many types of 1D and 2D barcodes
  • ByeDPI: routes internet traffic through the DNS port to bypass certain types of filtering
  • Canvass: doodle app, useful for mid-conversation diagrams and clarifying things visually in the absence of pen and paper
  • ClassiCube: Minecraft Classic clone
  • Conversations: XMPP client
  • Editor: raw text editor
  • Elementary: periodic table
  • SimpleEmail: minimalist e-mail app that does not automatically fetch linked images. Refereshes in the background every 15 minutes and sends notifications without need for Play Services or equivalent
  • FakeStandby: for edge cases when I want something to keep running in the foreground, but don't want to keep the screen on
  • Feeder: RSS client
  • Fintunes: Jellyfin client optimized for music
  • FlorisBoard: customizable keyboard
  • Fruity Game: Suika but with MS-Paint art style
  • Graph 89: Graphing calculator emulator
  • Invizible: Tor and DNS client
  • Kiwix: Offline Wikipedia (you can download just the parts useful to you, e.g. medical articles without storage-hungry media files)
  • Lemuroid: GBA emulator
  • LocalSend: instant P2P filesharing over WLAN
  • Markor: notes app with markdown
  • Material Files: files app with SMB share support and various handy features
  • Molly: Alternative Signal client
  • Fossify Messages: I use it over the default messages app since it is easy to block numbers by pattern
  • Notally: notes app with nice checklists
  • Open Camera: as easy to use as the regular camera, but with a bunch more features below the surface
  • OpenContacts: saves contacts as individual .vcf files to a directory for easy backup and allows dropping unknown callers without bothering me with a notification
  • Organic Maps to be replaced with CoMaps later
  • OSS Document Scanner: best FOSS scanning app I've found so far. Includes auto-cropping (given enough contrast) and adjustable B&W filter to eliminate off-white background colors.
  • phyphox: view output of sensors like the barometer, magnetometer, accelerometer, etc.
  • PipePipe: NewPipe but better (except for the occasional memory leakage)
  • QDict & QuickDic: offline dictionaries and bilingual wordbooks
  • RadioDroid: IP radio client. Can tune in to international news, music, sports broadcasts
  • RHVoice: TTS app
  • RiMusic: NewPipe, but for ~~Spotify, etc.~~ YT Music
  • SecScanQR: QR scanner and generator with history, useful to save QR addresses for later use since I don't want to fill out forms or read documents on my phone
  • SuperTuxKart: the only [edit: other] game on my phone
  • Symphony: Music app with a slick UI
  • Trail Sense: Compass with various goodies useful for outdoor activities
  • Breezy Weather: weather app and homescreen widget with a slick UI
  • MicroMathematics: Math engine, but I never learned how to use it
[-] monovergent@lemmy.ml 37 points 9 months ago

Until substantially more people join the fight for privacy or something else fundamentally changes, I think there is a very real possibility of Google completely clamping down on Android while governments and workplaces mandate apps that only run on phones with all of Google or Apple's bells and whistles.

But the folks at GrapheneOS, Calyx, and Murena seem to be a devoted and resourceful bunch, so I am hopeful that they can give something for us to work with, even if Google pulls the plug, whether it's a fork of Android or rebasing to mobile Linux.

If that all falls through, I'll look for whichever phone supports Linux best and eventually move everything over. The vast majority of the apps I use regularly on my GrapheneOS phone aren't very demanding and have a decent alternative on Linux. And whatever apps are forced on me by other people will reside on a dedicated Android phone, ideally with a removable battery.

For this year, I'd still recommend a secondhand or reseller Pixel with GrapheneOS. Everything just works on it.

[-] monovergent@lemmy.ml 44 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

Up until 95, Windows was mostly a desktop environment for DOS. From 95 to ME, Windows was an OS that used DOS as its bootloader and compatibility layer. Not sure how to put it, but it was simplistic and fundamentally different from Linux.

The thing with NT-based Windows (including modern editions) is that the underlying system is joined at the hip with the GUI. Whereas Linux with your choice of coreutils is a perfectly capable OS without the GUI, many features of Windows are only accessible through the GUI.

Given enough time and resources, pretty much anything exclusive to Windows could be ported to Linux and vice versa. A lot of the difference just comes down to history and the ensuing conventions, workflows, and file hierarchies.

Even if we stripped out all the cruft and spaghetti code from Windows, there would be lots of nasty idiosyncrasies in its design, informed by its OS/2 and VMS (see Dave Cutler) heritage, profit maximization, revolving door of devs and interns, and years of bending over backwards to accommodate legacy programs.

[-] monovergent@lemmy.ml 39 points 2 years ago

A few years ago, when I cared little about my privacy, I would fancy buying a new car. Thanks to privacy concerns, I became proud to have my old car, which also happens to be highly repairable.

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monovergent

joined 2 years ago