OpenStars

FOSS, on whatever platform we install it onto, is indeed the ultimate goal of the human race - sharing is caring and all:-).

Did you use an emulator on the Mac first or jump directly? I need to find a good free one that works with the M-series chips.

Based on this graphic, I am a Linux fanboy... despite how I use Macs (though to ssh into Linux:-).

Oh the "connection" is well-known I thought: the cofounder of OnePlus Carl Pei left the latter company in a huff, when it decided to switch from the gorgeous buttery smooth OxygenOS to the cheap piece of crap ColorOS (not just similar to but the identical one used in the Chinese Huawei phones) and in the process started the Nothing phone company. And because OnePlus phones used to be amazing but right around the time he left they became crappy, people had high hopes for the Nothing phone company that he would bring some of the old goodness - for the tech "enthusiast" market - with him.

However, it sounds like both companies make crap phones nowadays, just like every other major phone company (except Apple phones are gorgeous and amazing, it's just that iOS makes you want to drive a nail into your brain). We are no longer capable of purchasing what we want (cheap to moderate price with a balance towards higher specs and far far lesser camera, and without bells and whistles like wireless charging, but has some like fast charging - what the "flagship killer" market used to offer!), there is only what they wish to sell us.:-(

Well OnePlus definitely jumped the shark, and it sounds like its spinoff Nothing did as well:-(.

I make certain to always press a different key every time. I use a keyboard overlay to help keep track, by punching out the key that I just pressed. What happens when I get through them all? First, I cycle through in a unique ordering - by printing off a new overlay ofc - and then when I'm through with that, I know that it's time to get a new keyboard. Btw I'm just kidding, if you couldn't tell 🤣.

YIKES!? So it's a marketing gimmick then? Not the ChatGPT, that's obviously one, but the Nothing phone itself? So sorry to hear that:-(, but at least you are spreading the word so as to help others avoid that for themselves.:-)

I do have higher hopes for the Fairphone though.

KaiOS

It looks interesting - thanks for the tip!:-)

Why not Nothing, if you don't mind my asking?

I've also thought about Fairphone as my next one.

And I've thought about an iPhone like this too - if you have adblocking via a home router or pihole or some such then why not? Piracy could be done indirectly and just play/stream from Jellyfin or some such. But my thoughts are not well enough along to be of any use to you there, just to say that your ideas don't seem crazy to me. Buttery smooth operation, actually pleasant to hold and use (not burning a hole in my hand after not even a minute of standard web browser usage as my own S22 does, probably bc of my Blokada VPN adblocker?), so long as the downsides can be mitigated.

Pixels seem to be to be entirely too imbalanced to me to include a super expensive camera that I barely use and barely any stats that I actually do (game emulators or whatever) - I really want a Nexus except they don't make those. Even OnePlus doesn't make those flagship killers anymore. I doubt they exist at all tbh.

Another idea is to get like an old OnePlus 7-ish device and just immediately replace the OS with a custom ROM. Fast charging is both good and bad - great utility but leads to heat issues later in the battery's life.

I almost just want a cheap piece of crap dumb phone at this point, so that I don't have to spend hundreds of hours researching every damn thing that the manufacturers are trying to do to me and ways to get around them without leaving (literal!) scorch marks on my hands.:-( But I also want Google Maps and maybe an Uber app in an emergency so that's what holds me back.

So with that I think I've recommended just about literally everything now in this comment... :-P

https://dubvee.org/about reportedly has it.

Community Favorites and Grouping

Communities can be favorited, added to arbitrary user-defined groups, or both. Currently, groups are only useful on desktop since they're accessed via the sidebar which is not yet accessible on mobile.

Your favorites or any of your community groups can also be combined into a custom, pseudo feed, though the implementation is still in its early phases.

I find that UI extremely confusing, but look forward to see what things continue to come out on it and also Sublinks, an alternative to the Lemmy backend.

Part of it I think is that different places in the world have varying expectations. As do different age groups. You could be talking with a 90 year old liberal woman from New York City who has been on Lemmy for years, or a 16 year old neo-nazi boy from Bangladesh where today is their first experience on any social media site ever. And then one of those two will downvote you, one will upvote you, and you are forbidden to ever know which is which (bc Lemmy does not show that information, despite it theoretically being public).

The downvote relationship is thereby inherently unequal since they know (a little about) who they chose to downvote, while you have no clue who downvoted you and can only guess at the reason(s) why. Which makes this place on social media capricious and unwelcoming, as people sling those around without bothering to offer an explanation. Kudos to [email protected] then for offering one possibility.:-)