Xirup

I guess there is no need to introduce what a Degoogled phone is (or a custom ROM without google services, like GrapheneOS is) and the Aurora Store is basically said in a crude way the Google Playstore but without the need to log in to your Google account, quite useful in my opinion.

At first, what really concerns me is to run the risk of violating Google's TOS by logging in with my Google account on the Aurora Store to access my purchased apps, but at the same time I think, since Android is Google's operating system, can't they also retaliate against people using a modified version of their OS? And I know that sounds especially stupid when your phone is your phone and not Google's, but we all know how companies like Google work.

I don't use Google services on my device, but I do use it as a secondary email that I don't want to lose, hence the question, I know I can create another email but I don't want to have so many email accounts.

I know this is not a Christian community, but I recently discovered Tachiyomi looking for alternatives to Saikou and a good alternative to read manga (which I don't do much, but it makes me curious) is Tachiyomi and although installing extensions is really simple the vast majority have NSFW content (or hentai?) and Jesus, I want to look for Pokemon manga and if I install extensions randomly I end up finding things I'd rather not have seen before, and many SFW extensions "don't work" or give an error that something went wrong.

I've had a humble A10s for several years that has worked well for me but I want to replace it with something a little better and I don't want to go broke either, and besides, I want to emulate some simple Switch games like Hollow Knight, so I've been researching different devices in the $150 to $300 price range and although there are many interesting used devices in that price range (Like the P30 Pro) the one that catches my eye the most is the A71 because it has a Snapdragon 730, an AMOLED screen and between 6 and 8GB of RAM with a 64MP camera and a 1080x2400 display and can be upgraded to Android 13.

Maybe I'm a bit outdated because I don't know much about the phone market, but from what little I know it seems to me that it's a very good device and definitely an upgrade to my current device.

So my question: Why in general is this device so cheap? Is there something wrong with it? I mean, even on Ebay it has pretty acceptable prices when used phones with worse hardware cost more.

And, does anyone know if I can really emulate Switch on it? Either with Strato (Skyline fork) or with Yuzu. From what I've read in some forums and seen in some Youtube videos, it is in theory supposedly able to run Warzone and Fortnite, and even emulate some Switch titles like Smash Bros and having a Snapdragon (which I've read is the best option to emulate) does not have problems of emulation incompatibilities as other processors.

Despite I more or less handle myself in the PC world, I am a complete ignorant when it comes to Android, and in my country for some reason the Xioami Note 12 have a very good (I've never had a Xiaomi device) and I would like someone to help me decide if it is a good purchase or not in my case, and even better if someone can give me details that I am not taking into account, and I say this because according to some forums and comments I read, depending on the processor of the device sometimes Yuzu does not run and sometimes Skyline either. And also in many comparisons that I found people in the comments for reasons I do not understand defines the power of the device according to the amount of storage it have, as they say "The 128GB version of the Xiaomi Note 12 is worse than the 256GB version", does that make sense?

As I mentioned, I'm really lost on how to decide a good purchase of a device, the most logical is to look for generic comparisons but it's a bit more complex than PC, or so it seems to me.

For example, in my country they have the Xiaomi Note 12 (128GB 8GB, Snapdragon 685 6nm) at the same price as the Xiaomi Redmi 12 (256Gb 8Gb RAM, MediaTek Helio G88) and I do not see any sense that they cost the same because according to what I researched the Xiaomi Note 12 has a better CPU, then the price difference with the Xiaomi Redmi 12 is compensated with double the storage?

I want to clarify that I have no expectations of playing BOTW at 4K or any of the latest Pokemon, my expectations are to play quiet things like Celeste or Hollow Knight or some rogueslike, do you think any of these devices are able to emulate Switch with a playable experience?

Edit: Something I forgot to mention, why some models say 6GB+4 RAM or 4GB+6, etc. What does that mean?

Thanks!

After using Nextcloud for a year and having a wonderful experience I'm not quite convinced, and it's not Nextcloud's fault, it's because I feel like I'm putting all the eggs in one basket (my notes, my ToDos, my calendars, my contacts, etc).

First of all, this feeling of putting all the eggs in the same basket came when one day I needed to access my Keepass database that was synchronized by Nextcloud to make a payment, and the problem is that I had the bad luck that for some reason the Nextcloud provider had their servers down at that time, so I had a bad experience because the database never charged and I could not make the payment (And it was a bank transfer, so it was necessary to make the payment immediately), and I really understand that neither Nextcloud nor Keepass were at all to blame in this case, it was my fault for depending on a Nextcloud provider but that really made me think again and since that day I have been migrating all my services that I used in Nextcloud to other open source services, for example, I changed Joplin for Notesnook and Keepass for Bitwarden, but I have not found an alternative to Nextcloud's ToDo, the closest is Vikunja which in my opinion is very expensive ($40).

I would gladly self-host my own Nextcloud instance and that's it, now everything depends on me, but I really don't have the time nor the knowledge to take care of a Nextcloud instance at the moment, and besides, I want to clarify that I am not naive, just stupid, since I had my Keepass database synchronized locally on my device with FolderSync but the pressure and the stress of the moment made me forget it.

Thank you!

Personally I have the feeling that Killswitch was designed specifically for the Redacted map as it really is the only map of all that feels fun. In the other larger maps I have the feeling that the area is so open that everyone is lost and doesn’t know what to do, and once a team manages to take a point it is impossible to make them not take the others because they are all close to each other, and the opposing team is at a complete disadvantage.

One thing that I would really change the way that I don’t like at all is that it’s basically a Rush mode but with an optional goal (forges, where IAs are created) for support, but that’s it, in my opinion there should be two forges so that both teams can have IAs so that in my opinion it would be more fun, and that between them they kill themselves, not only infantry. And I would add that forges should be dynamic and change position once the IAs are exhausted, not generate infinitely.

Apart from that, the mode is fine but about 10 games 9 have felt as I described, boring, empty and repetitive, and one felt extremely fun, but that’s just my opinion.

And about the new camera... Well, I don’t care, I just honestly don’t like that the "My squad" screen and the "Best squad" screen are now the same but well, those are just details.

And what is your opinion and what would you change?

I intend to share with my friends (or have my replays stored somewhere easily accessible) but I refuse to use Youtube and I can't self-host a Peertube instance just for this purpose at the moment.

Does anyone know of an instance where I can just upload occasional videos without limits? I know storage is expensive and I don't want to abuse it either, but there must be some instances that allow this.

I created this image (and rescale the AW image) simply to compare them side by side, but I find it funny that now that Battlefield has been doing so well (luckily, I love this saga and BF2042 has a special place in my heart) they will just release some skins extremely similar to the Advance Warfare exoskeletons, and just an event that looks like (but is not) zombie mode.

I know that these exoskeletons exist in reality and it's not that Activision created them, I just wanted to mention it because I am am amused by the coincidence. I know that these events are not created from one day to another and because they are doing well they are not going to say "Let's copy COD".

Hi, to learn how to use QStackedWindow from PyQt6 I was watching at this video but following the tutorial and trying to run the code I get the error in the title, does anyone know why?

I want to clarify, the tutorial is for PyQt5 and I use PyQt6 but I made some modifications to the code to adjust it to PyQt6, unfortunately I had to do that because I did not find any tutorial to learn QtStackedWidget in PyQt6.

Recently I remember someone had made a post asking about apps that "unlock special things" on android, and this post is for all of you who want to unlock your android device to the max!

I wanted to share the link to the repository for each app but besides I'm tired of writing, there are apps that have migrated to Gitlab (like Droid-rec) and then back to Github and I really can't find the link to their repository and I really don't want to create a mess of missing links that don't work and apps without links to their repositories! If someone has time and manages to find the repository of each app please add it in the comments and I would really appreciate it. If you have Droid-ify make sure to enable Izzy's repository and you will be able to see absolutely every single app in this list.

AutoMute: Have you ever been sent a moaning video or opened a noisy video/audio and forgot you had left the multimedia audio on max by mistake? AutoMute allows you to mute your device's multimedia audio after a certain amount of time, and has different settings to customize.

Droid-Rec: Droid-Rec is undoubtedly the best app to record your screen on android, besides being considerably customizable it has the great feature of being able to record the internal audio of your device, unlike other apps that you need to use the microphone of your device for that and the audio ends up being disgusting.

Coffe: Have you ever needed to keep your screen on for a while but going to your system settings is a pain? Coffe allows you to change the automatic timeout of your screen with a single click from the tray (the buttons that appear where the notifications are) of your device, you can even make it never turn off at all.

RethinkDNS: RethinkDNS is an app that works as a VPN to provide a system level firewall (meaning that if an app has ads and you have the filter to remove ads, you may not see them anymore). Besides having functionalities to work as a proxy and a DNS changer, RethinkDNS has the absolutely great function to see the logs or pings of each app by IP, absolutely useful if you suspect that an app is doing something weird, and you can even cut its access to the internet in one tap.

OpenContacts: This app is an app that may not really fit in this list but it has a functionality that I'm sure many will love! Have you ever wanted to send a message to someone on Whatsapp or Telegram without having to add them to your contacts? OpenContacts is simply an app to manage and make calls but it also allows you to open phone numbers in Whatsapp or Telegram without adding a number to your contacts!

Termux: A simple shell for Android, basically a terminal emulator to execute commands. For me it is especially useful in different scenarios, for example, using ffmpeg to edit a video or using yt-dlp to download videos without needing a GUI.

URLCheck: URLCheck is an extremely useful app that opens automatically when you open a link, it allows you to shorten links or skip link shorteners, detect dangerous sites (you need a VirusTotal account) and even redirect your links to privacy related front-ends, like Piped.

Shizuku: Shizuku can be defined as a kind of "root" that uses the Android debugger mode to use adb commands without any kind of modification to your phone!

(IMPORTANT: To use some apps from the list below you need to have Shizuku or adb)

Droid-ify: With Shizuku active, Droid-ify (an F-Droid client, note that this one doesn't need Shizuku) allows you to activate the "Shizuku Installer" which allows you to update apps in the background or install them without interaction, just press "Install" and that's it, just like in the Playstore.

Canta: Canta is a special program in my opinion. Canta allows you to uninstall any app from your OS and gives you labels telling you if it is recommended to uninstall it or not, and also most apps have a description about why it is recommended to uninstall it. In my special case using a Samsung device I got rid of all Samsung bloatware and I can swear that my device is at least 30% faster overall.

aShell: aShell is an app that allows you to launch adb commands directly from your phone without the need to connect it to a PC, very convenient in my opinion.

LogFox: Have you ever had an app that crashes indescribably and you don't know why? LogFox allows you to save and record the logs of your whole system, including the apps you have installed and you can even set filters to save logs about a specific app and share it with its developer (you don't need Shizuku either, but you need adb and with aShell you can access it).

SystemUI Tuner: This app is an absolute gem that I never heard anyone talk about! It allows you to customize parameters of your android that your manufacturer doesn't let you, for example and for me the coolest: Move apps to SD memory.

SaverTuner: This app allows you to customize the battery saving mode of your device with different saving modes that really save a LOT of battery.

(Like logfox, you need an adb command for this app)