Yprum

Ha, interesting question, really cool answers all around.

For me, it was many years ago when I went with a friend to visit a common friend that was studying in Vermont (we 3 are from Europe), and using the occasion we went to visit new York as well. One night we went to have a walk around Times Square and took the subway to get there. I was just standing there checking out the map to keep myself busy when this huge black guy wearing an even bigger fur coat that was sitting started talking to me and asking where I was going and if I needed help.

At first I awkwardly said that I didn't need any help, I was just looking at the map to keep busy. He insisted asking where I was going, to which I answered to have a stroll around times square. He got quite cheerful and said he was going in the same direction and he knew a shortcut. At that point I got a bit suspicious but the guy said changing the train we would get there faster, I confirmed that indeed the other train was going in that direction and he told us to follow him. Despite my suspicion as long as there was plenty of people around I decided to trust him and go with him.

After the change of train he told me he knew another trick about that station, everyone was going to the normal stairs but he told us if we go a bit further we can avoid those stairs. He took us to an escalator that took us into an exit straight at Times square.

In the meantime we started talking with him, he told us he was going that night to have a guy's night out with his friends and they were going to Atlantic City. He started telling us about his life, he was a music editor, and was married, and loved to help people visiting new York. By the time we got out into the street it felt like we were quite close friends and we stayed there a bit still talking, he was one of the nicest random people I have ever met, we took a photo together and he gave me his contact card in case I ever returned to NY (which I didn't).

I've thought about him ever since and wondered how he was doing. It's a great memory I have of such a simple random encounter.

I can't see anyone mentioning Titan A.E. man I love that movie, the mix of hand drawn animation and CGI was great for the time and I really enjoyed the world building.

The thing is that "excellent" is something they are not... Look I enjoyed the movies too, they can be quite fun. Some aspects are great, the action and stunt work is in my opinion flawless for the time. Some other things were great too and some others not so much. But in general, really they are not good movies if we try to be a bit neutral, and at the very least they can't follow the complexity of the theme from the first movie while making it look so simple like that one did. It may just be the case of standing too close to the sun, the movies as part of the trilogy just can't compare. So people have a feeling of rejection to them. And probably the one thing people find it tough to come to grips with is the fact that the first movie had great action, that helped the movie go forward, while the others just seem to have random action scenes that are just not part of the story. It's just about how they are added into the story.

But don't let that bother you, enjoy the movies, I still do, they are just not the masterpieces the first one was.

And no, its not about wanting the first one again, in essence, I wish the movies would have managed to expand the story in a refreshing way like the Animatrix did. But they just fall flat instead, simple mindless fun that kinda finish the storyline quite OK for me.

Now the fourth part... That was brilliant, a brilliant crap, but brilliant nonetheless. If my guess is not wrong, it was a great middle finger to the movie execs that wanted to squeeze more money out of the movies.

What do you mean? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Titanic_II_(film)

I can understand that some people don't want to deal with changing keyboards even if they don't want to be tracked. But you are literally here asking about keyboards. If this is not the place to talk about this then what is? Anyone interested enough to wonder about what keyboard they use should consider their privacy as the main aspect for a keyboard, as it is an app that can see everything you write, including passwords.

but the reality is most foss apps are far inferior user experiences to corporate apps

This is absolutely wrong and too often repeated as a mantra, and not because they have actually good UX, but because the corporate apps have it worse even (but they set the standard so anything that isn't like theirs is bad). From all keyboards I have tried (many, including corporate ones, closed source, etc) the closed source ones have usually the worse UX. They start better and then worsen over time. You said you like the personalisation options, but often there's less options in any closed source corporate keyboard. It took them years for gboard to actually let users have the number row always on top. I could have that in other keyboards long before gboard. Swiftkey was wonderful, but over the years it got so bloated that it lagged when used. There's unfortunately not a perfect keyboard, but through all the posts in this thread there were a lot of good recommendations that allow you to choose good customisability, respect of user privacy, and also fringe use cases not often supported. And in general, the worse options are the closed source ones.

The only real downside of Foss keyboards is that as they have more options they usually require a bit more set up time which puts many people off.

I'm currently using Heliboard, lots of customisability, Foss, good language support and a must for me, multi language support. So far I am making less typos than with many other keyboards. The downside is no swipe support right in the app, but you can get it to work too if interested using 3rd party libraries.

In the past I've been using gboard which was OK for a while but started making more and more typos and wrong corrections over time, that plus trying to degoogle myself pushed me away.

Also anysoft keyboard, pretty nice, and was quite happy with it but again started getting tired of some typos I kept making.

I am keeping an eye on futo keyboard too, which at the moment doesn't support multi language support, maybe in the future when implemented I'll try it.

I like the idea of the keyboard being offline and the LLM stuff but so far I can't see a way for multi language input. I'm guessing it's too early in the alpha state for that but I will keep an eye open for it, it is a promising project. In the meantime I'll test the heliboard others were mentioning.

Yeah he worked in Microsoft before that and when he ended in Nokia the path was quite clear what it would be. But I've had the chance to talk with many engineers that were working at Nokia back in the day and the problems didn't start because of Microsoft.

Basically Nokia had the whole management divided between symbian, maemo, and windows mobile, and as they couldn't agree on a future path all the efforts were divided. Symbian was quite a disaster at the end and it wouldn't have gone far most likely, those that wanted to continue with it didn't have a clear view of the changes coming in the mobile world.

Maemo was great, really advanced, based on Linux, and working really well, maybe too advanced even, specially for your common users back then. The whole system was constantly put down and delayed and the first devices sold wouldn't even work as a phone, only the 4th ended up with mobile connection, which didn't help at all to make it useful (wifi was not as big as it is now) and sold.

Finally there was Windows Mobile which was still starting basically then and had far less strength, but with the support of Microsoft behind it it was easier to push it out. I don't understand why it still has such support when it comes to the UI, I personally never liked it and it felt too simplistic and boring, but the more options the better I guess. Of course once Microsoft managed to plant his own guy inside Nokia they managed to favor the balance towards Win mobile and the other two were left behind more and more.

So Microsoft was a key part in what ended happening but they were not the ones that put Nokia in trouble. That was a lack of direction in the management level.

Maemo was so much better than any os coming after it... Meego was in my opinion the wrong path to take. I still miss the N900, what an amazing device it was...

The french movie Titane, the plot sounded so weird I had to watch it, and it was far crazier than I thought... Somehow not the worst I've seen but damn it made me feel uncomfortable as hell.

I recommend you to watch one of the director's earlier movies, Dogtooth, that was the best movie he has made and I'm pretty sure anyone enjoying Lobster will like that one too.

Wow thanks! Really need to try that one! Live tv is not my jam tho, I don't care much for stuff I can't choose when to watch.

Thanks a lot! I'll check what they have there!