dRLY

I have been daily driving Zen and aside from some random issues here and there when they mess with the UI (which is to be expected with a beta). It kind of reminds me of how cool Firefox felt back in the day coming from IE. Has been fun to see real progress and effort to try weird things that are local to the browser. Not trying to acquire costly extra services/products that take resources away from the browser. I just really wish Mozilla would have (or even start) allowing people to donate towards just the browser.

Some of the extra stuff they have have the option to directly support. The browser is still worth being a real option that isn't just some Chromium-based BS. Yet they keep trying to divert money to everything but it. I hope that the major forks of FF start tying to prepare for going forward in the main code without Mozilla when/if the time comes. This new IE that is Chrome/Chromium can't be allowed to keep going and dictating what is and isn't allowed.

I also have LibreWolf and Mullvad (along with tor) and like them for the efforts in privacy and security. But are too restrictive for daily use for me. Mostly use them only with VPN when finding torrents and other stuff that I don't want to be tied to an account/syncing (not just NSFW but searching and looking into political or questionable topics). Very happy to have options no matter what.

Long rant below, but the real TL;DR is that you are very correct. lol

Length of years supported and general ability to get official repairs (non-sense of breaking random features if using unofficial parts aside) has been a no-brainier for going iPhone. I haven't owned one myself due to using third-party app stores and side loading. But it would have been great to have phones last longer with updates and general feel of still doing everything I need without devices showing their age so badly.

That being said, Samsung has done so much better than they used to. I have used HTC Evo, Galaxy S3, S6, S8+, S20+, S23 Ultra, and now have a S24 Ultra (only got it because damage coverage ended up giving store credit due to system that would normally replaced the S23 Ultra with another one was messed up). Starting with the S20+ the devices have been doing much better in the "showing their age" aspect (the S20+ was so OP with 12GB of RAM and the 120Hz display that I still like messing with it).

They stopped with major OS upgrades and was the main reason for the S23 Ultra as I thought it wouldn't get anymore updates. To my surprise it was still getting security updates at least through last year. If I hadn't been forced to "upgrade" to the 24 Ultra, I was planning to not even consider upgrading until maybe next year or the year after. Kind of got to feel like having an iPhone. It has been great to see at least longer term security upgrades than in years past.

Samsung still sucks with regards to their tablets though. Been happy with my Galaxy Tab S8+ hardware wise. But no idea how many OS upgrades it will get. My Pixel Tab will likely get more (which is awesome), but it will likely "show its age" sooner mostly because the 60Hz LCD display (AMOLED with high refresh rates really help make aging hardware feel nice to use). iPads will keep being the much better long term "value" for recommending to people that ask me what they should get.

I wish there were some kind of law passed that required OEMs to allow independent ROMs to be officially supported. Without tripping e-fuses after some amount of time that the OEMs stop providing OS or security updates. Kind of like how cell carriers send provider unlocks after certain time periods/after fully paying off the device if paying monthly. Would love to not have to do so many steps while risking being flagged by apps as not trusted due to root. E-waste is getting out of control as it is, and custom ROMs are really held back by virtue of the above and full driver support.

lol thanks. It must have somehow kept the quote format from another reply I made.

The next guy will likely have better/different ideas on how to do things. The extra fucked up part comes when the "new guys" purge all the people and systems that were already working and proven end up just circling around to more or less the old things. While of course acting like it was all their "ideas" after spending more money than was ever needed. The workers get fucked and the undervalued knowledge is lost (and the new workers also get fucked by being underpaid and overworked themselves). So fucking done with how much the wasteful executives giving themselves bonuses and keep cutting more and more corners.

Not a player of the SSB games. But I would love a straight clone of Double Dash keeping the specific physics of things and simple kart choices like they had. The love of the way things worked and feel for that are on par with how SSDM fans love that game!

Thanks for sharing!

Was kind of mind blowing moment when I was old enough to pay attention to the main underlying plot line of Who Framed Rodger Rabbit being about killing off public transport for cars. Like it is very clearly stated throughout the movie, but as a child it just went over my head. Not like I didn't pay attention to when it was being talked about, just not able to appreciate the meaning. I also am from a more rural area, so things like public transportation were not something I interacted with outside of seeing it on TV shows and movies.

For real. Given how many of the "attractive" cases are becoming very modular/config swappable, It would be cool to see even an add-on option for them that allows changing the faceplate and mount points for a 5.24in bay. Not expecting to see all the "fish tank" cases do this, but some could make it work. Maybe ones that are wide dual chamber ones with metal plate space could have a vertical option.

I got an internal BDXL drive and flashed firmware to make sure I can rip the 4K discs I started getting as part of physical bundles. Still need to start getting NAS drives to be ready for when my main PC stops being my daily driver+Plex Server before I had to get a new TV that could view them (still don't have a dedicated player and annoyed the PS4 Pro didn't ship with 4K playback). For now I can at least hook my PC to the TV if I really want to watch a disc.

Maybe the US should take back the US members of ISIS that have been left (along with the people from the other nations that joined ISIS) for the Kurds to keep.

Same, was sad to see it wasn't getting updated. Even wanted to donate to it, but the links all just went in a circle. Was hoping that someone might fork it into something active again.

I also see a lot of people that come in to have their PC's fixed because of "viruses" that I am able to make go away by just turning off browser notifications. Which I also just install uBO or uBO Lite on almost 100% of browsers on PCs I work on (even if not related to the task at hand). Also I disable lots of the notifications for browsers and other programs in the Windows 10 and 11 notification settings.

Though I have been seeing an uptick of fucked up malware browser extensions that set themselves as "Your organization" policies that are getting harder to remove. In most of those cases I have found that they replace the shortcuts for the browsers to first launch shit from a self-reinstalling location in the root of C drive and/or in AppData. Shit is very frustrating. Mac OS also has some motherfuckers of hijackers that are even worse to get rid of.

Aside from those, the really fucked notifications come from the AV programs that can't stop themselves from freaking out users. Like even if the user has for some reason paid for every single up-sell because of those notifications. They still show them shit like "You MIGHT be infected." Though seeing those things have been great for me to point out how the user should actually cancel their subs since at that point it is just scare tactics and adware (which slows shit down).