My Harman Kardon headphones and my sausage fingers don't go well sometimes - occasionally when switching off the ANC I accidentally put the headphones into pairing mode.

When this happens, a massive popup with a picture of my headphones appears on my phone screen, prompting me to connect via bluetooth, a bit like that iOS one that shows up when you hold your earpod case near the device.

Anyone aware what this popup feature is called? I'd like to ultimately switch it off - don't really like the idea of nearby bluetooth devices opening massive popups on my device, just because they're in pairing mode

I woke up this morning to an awful looking homescreen on my Android - turns out my Niagara Launcher subscription had lapsed!

I went to check the renewal prices, and they were literally 2-3x more expensive than what I was paying recently - not really excited about that.

Since my homescreen already looked like garbage, I decided may as well try Kvaesitso, a FOSS search-based launcher. I tried it in the past, but abandoned it since I would want to set up my homescreen and apply an icon pack to all the apps individually.

After several hours of setup (mainly applying the icon pack 😭), I've been using it throughout the rest of the day and I'm pretty pleased with it, it's a very smooth, polished and well thought out minimal search-focused launcher. Here's what I like and don't like so far:

Like

• Search is much more powerful: can use DuckDuckGo or any custom search engine, search app shortcuts (i.e. webpages saved as apps), as well as tagging apps - none of these are possible in Niagara
• Very, very customizable
• Supports gestures to open apps or run things, so even less apps are needed on my homescreen
• The clock looks so nice
• Cool charging animation that shows rising bubbles from the bottom of the homescreen
• Contextual media controls under the clock
• Allows full-size widgets on the homescreen, these can be hidden off-screen by default if you prefer

Meh but not dealbreakers

• Upcoming calendar events don't show up under the clock, however there is a very nice custom calendar widget included
• Contextual media app cannot be set (e.g. when bluetooth/3.5mm headphone is connected, pin music app on homescreen)

Highly recommend giving it a try if your Niagara subscription lapses, and open to trying a neat FOSS alternative!

F-Droid | GitHub

How nice of Windows to spam me with notifications when I temporarily fill my scratch disk, despite turning them off...

For me personally, trams are right up there. Aside from the main issue of sharing the roads instead of having a dedicated line, they really make it easy to get from one part of a city to another, especially for wheelchair users. They're usually as frequent as buses, but much faster. The stations are much more attractive compared to bus stops (on newer systems), and can really make an area feel much nicer IMO.

For those that have a bike, suburban and inter city rail is a strong second. The speed and ease of last mile mobility is what appeals to me the most. Recently took my bike across the country to my home city and it ended up being much faster than driving (by almost an hour) - the multimodal commute was pretty hefty, but lots of fun nonetheless.

The Retro Lite CM4 is a passion project by two modders StonedEdge and Dmcke5, inspired by the Switch. This emulation handheld is based around the Raspberry Pi CM4 and RetroPie.

While sharing a very similar look to the Switch, this thing is been built from the ground up, with a custom machined shell, PCB, and various other components. There's an optional custom dock with an integrated LCD, that can show the current game's cover art.

Personally, I think this is absolutely impressive. Hats off to these guys!

Picture grabbed from the GitHub, which is also linked below

https://github.com/StonedEdge/Retro-Lite-CM4

My old sandisk SATA ssd was starting to get really slow for some reason. The SMART data and the sandisk SSD dashboard app were saying the SSD was healthy, but its performance wasn't anywhere near what it was when brand new.

When benchmarked, it was all over the place with looong access times:

Sooo I decided to take the opportunity to upgrade the SSD to something faster - ended up grabbing a Transcend 512GB drive, with onboard DRAM

There were two problems though:

• My motherboard doesn't support NVMe (at least officially)
• My only available PCIe slot is an x1/single lane

After researching, I realised that the single PCIe lane would still give me almost 1GB/s in real world usage - even though its far from the 3GB/s the drive is rated for, it's double the speed of SATA and it's worlds apart from my Sandisk ssd lol.

Ordered an NVMe to PCIe adapter, and proceeded to chop up my PCIe slot to make it fit:

It took a while since I don't own a dremel 🤪

Once that was done, I kapton taped up the exposed metal bits on the NVMe adapter, that could short on a mobo heatsink nearby.

In it goes!! (The GPU went in after the pic lol)

After re running the benchmarks, OMG the speed difference is insane, although it's limited by that single PCIe lane.

I was caught off guard by something else though. After cloning my existing install to the new NVMe SSD, it booted right up, with the original Sandisk drive gone. My BIOS does not even recognise the NVMe drive as a disk drive, and there are no settings anywhere in there for it.

BIOS person, thank you whoever you are, you saved me needing to do more jank to get my unsupported NVMe drive working!

I am more than happy so far with the dramatic speed increase compared to the SATA drive. I can now actually shut down my desktop when I'm not using it 🥲

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.one/post/4255839

Hmmm

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.one/post/4255839

Hmmm

Specialized Como 2022 😍

Mine for a month as a part of a free ebike loan scheme im my city. The new scheme replaces our old dock-based ebike scheme which went bankrupt due to constant vandalism 😭

Loving the loaner bike so far, handling is pretty similar to my personal bike with the swept handlebar and rear pannier. The assist boosts me up hills with ease, and makes heavy shopping feel like nothing!

Wish I could own one but it's out of my price range at the moment.

Curious what alternatives to Tasker are available for Android. Slight preference to FOSS options, but any suggestions are welcome 😁

The last time I used one of these apps was almost a decade ago on my S4, kind of missing the convenience stuff I had set up back then - like adjusting the volume/opening apps/changing ringer mode when certain devices connect and disconnect, when the charger is connected etc.

Carried a minimal setup with me to get some stuff done while making the most of the weather. Wanted a bit of a break from being indoors during the daytime, since it's not mandatory for me to go in.

Internet access was really patchy at first, until dropping the mobile data from 4G down to HSPA which was much more stable. The heat was quite intense too, used the folding chair's bag to shield the laptop 😅

10/10 would recommend

An ad blocked itself from loading, wow lol.