MSids

@MSids@lemmy.world

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Long-time iOS user considering switch to Android - Need advice on $1000 flagships⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  I was working on my Mom’s Samsung tonight and can confirm that default One UI is the worst cell phone interface experience I’ve ever had. Needing a skin or launcher is a deal breaker when devices with great OOTB experience exist.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Long-time iOS user considering switch to Android - Need advice on $1000 flagships⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  I am nearing the end of my rope with Android, I might suggest hanging on with your iPhone for another cycle. Mine is feeling more and more like just an advertisement data collection machine, and core features like speech to text and notifications have never been worse.

  I don’t own an iPhone, but got an iPad in 2024, and most of what I do on my iPad feels more refined. I was floored this morning when speaking out a comment on the iPad that the text to speech didn’t add a bunch of random periods/caps alongside half a dozen incorrect words. iOS also has basic things like consistent first party podcast, payment, and chat apps that they don’t continually switch out every few years like what Google just did (looking at you Google Podcasts, GPay in USA, and Hangouts). We’re also losing the ability to install apps from outside the walled garden that is then play store at some point soon. I’m not looking forward to learning what that means for my Retroid/Android gaming handhelds.

  If you do jump to Android, consider the Pixel 9 Pro. I hate it the least of anything I’ve tried in then Android universe. Samsung makes nice hardware but the skin they put on Android is truly terrible. If you use Microsoft work apps on your phone, you’ll appreciate being able to shut them off with one button, and your employer’s limited visibility into your phone will be further reduced to what’s installed in the work container.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨US Government Urges Total Ban of Our Most Popular Wi-Fi Router⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Microtik is the router brand that I want to love, I even looked into deploying them when I worked at a service provider. Those little things had more features than anything else, but unfortunately they had such a poor track record with vulnerabilities that they really can’t be considered.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Today's Massive AWS Outage That Took Down Your Favorite Sites Is Still Going On⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  We’re a year or so into our AWS migration, but will have a presence on prem for years to come. Broadcom has seen our last dollar, so for what remains on prem, we will be moving to a different hypervisor. I was kinda hoping that Proxmox could be the one, but it may not shake out that way.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Today's Massive AWS Outage That Took Down Your Favorite Sites Is Still Going On⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I don’t even want to hear an argument for moving back on prem with how badly Broadcom/VMware ripped our eyes out this year. 350% increase over 2 years ago, and I still have to buy the hardware, secure it in a room, power it, buy redundant Internet and networking equipment, get a backup facility, buy and test a generator/UPS, and condition the damn air. Oh then every few years we have to switch out all the hardware when it stops getting vendor support.

  At least everyone was all in the same boat today, and we all know what was broken.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Best Synology Replacement?⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I really like my Synology DS220+, and DSM 7 has given me 0 issues. Recently I wanted to upgrade to something with 2.5Gbe networking, but most of the models I was considering had this new branded drive restriction. I had seen a few comments that indicated they were considering removing this, though it was unclear if that was an upcoming hardware releases or upcoming software releases.

  I’ve heard that it is possible to migrate your existing non-Synology drives to a new NAS with drive restrictions as-is if they are already formatted from the old NAS. If you are looking to go from a two drives to four drives I’m not sure how that would work, and if a drive failed I think you would either need to replace it with Synology hardware or run the workaround script to remove the restriction.

  I won’t personally run the workaround script myself, for a few reasons. I am extremely cautious with my data, and I also don’t want to reward them right now, but im not in a rush to upgrade. I’ll wait them out until they backtrack.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Mastodon has a new plan to make money: Hosting and support services for the open social web⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Firefox is doing amazing right now. My uBlock origin on desktop and mobile Android is still working months after it stopped working in Chrome.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Google will block sideloading of unverified Android apps starting next year⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Agreed across all points. Android’s advantages after the changes go through with side loading will be choice of manufacturer and the still-deeply-flawed-but-far-superior implementation of a work profile in Android. I love being able to press one button and have all of my containerized work apps shut off. It is also quite nice that a remote wipe from M365 could be limited to the work app container rather than the entire phone.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Google will block sideloading of unverified Android apps starting next year⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  It is a tough choice, both companies are gigantic and kind of scumbags. Funny story though, I was also in the market for a new computer recently as my 10 year old Windows 10 tower was really starting to show its age. My frustrations with Windows had also peaked.

  I have been doing a more photo and video editing for fun, and I ended up taking a leap. I got an M4 Pro Mac mini. Mac OS is definitively better (IMO) for home use than Windows, and the M series processors are like wizardry. I liked it so much that shortly after I bought a used M2 Max MacBook Pro off of a coworker.

  Coincidentally, a few months after I got my Macs LTT also switched over first to Snapdragon-based Windows laptops and later to Macs for a 30-day challenge and they ended up staying on the Macs.

  I am an IT manager and I don’t think I would ever want to deploy Macs at scale in my workplace, though it is the only computer I look forward to using now.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Google will block sideloading of unverified Android apps starting next year⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  One personal phone. They give me a stipend. I did the two-phone game years ago and I’ll never do it again. It’s fine.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Google will block sideloading of unverified Android apps starting next year⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I’m sure we all have a different perception, but my current view is that Google sells you a phone that they need to push ads and harvest vast amounts of data from you in order to make money on the phone, and Apple somehow needs to do this less.

  Which company do you feel takes privacy more seriously? From what I understand, Google primarily makes their money from advertising.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Google will block sideloading of unverified Android apps starting next year⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I can’t do Graphene because of work. I am an IT manager, and one of our guys did graphene and had a host of issues with the work apps. I really can’t risk any issues.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Google will block sideloading of unverified Android apps starting next year⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Sorry I should have clarified. Google pay moved the payment features to Google wallet, but the biggest loss was the person-to-person payments are now gone. I never understood why they had multiple apps that did the same thing. I seem to also remember a time where there was a Google pay and gpay app that lived side by side, so there were a total of three apps when there should have been one.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Google will block sideloading of unverified Android apps starting next year⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Yes, sorry I should have clarified. The biggest loss was the person-to-person payments are now gone. I never understood why they had multiple apps that did the same thing. I seem to also remember a time where there was a Google pay and gpay app that lived side by side.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Google will block sideloading of unverified Android apps starting next year⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  The Android ecosystem has been feeling more like an invasive chaotic advertisement machine the past few years. The play store is a cesspool, the weather app switch was poorly executed, Google Podcasts went to the graveyard, and Google pay getting shut down meant I had to switch because to vomits Venmo.

  I still have Android gaming handhelds, but why wouldn’t I just get an iPhone the next time I go to replace my phone? I can’t believe I’m even saying that after being so die hard Android so for years.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Plex has paywalled my server!⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Agreed. I’ve stated it before in other threads, and I’ll say it again here, but if they asked me in 5 years to pay another $89 or whatever in continuing support for a badge on my server I’d happily do it. Plex is really good. Great UI, great apps, great external enrichments like trailers/subtitles/ratings/actor info, and Plexamp is 9.5/10 for music.

  Their biggest fault is how they communicated about the change for remote users. I did have a few family members get the email and ask if they were going to have to start paying monthly now, but they’ve never been on a free server. They should have stated more clearly than if you were on a Plex Pass server that no change is required.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Plex has paywalled my server!⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  For software I like made by people getting paid, I was happy to pay the one time fee. It’s really good, secure, and downloads are fast now.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Better music management⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I have the same setup with Picard --> mp3tag, it works very well for me. I prefer to overwrite the artist field with the album artist field for cleaner sync to my iPods with MediaMonkey (iPods handled multiple artists in the worst way imaginable).

  Picard did take some light up front tweaking to get the directory naming to albumartist\yyyy - albumname\01 songtitle.flac but it was worth it

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What are some good examples of "Where the fuck do you go" kind of games?⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  It was a while back, but I feel like I remember trying this, switching between characters and going to their various markers on the map but nothing would happen. It was long enough ago that I can’t rule out hitting a bug or missing a required side mission, but I remember not being the only person saying this.

  I was never a fan of just driving around the city causing havoc, so even short amounts of time with no missions felt like eternity.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What are some good examples of "Where the fuck do you go" kind of games?⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  So many times in GTA V I had no idea how to trigger the next mission. I would probably go back to it and play through if it had some sort of indicator for how to trigger the next campaign mission.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨That's all folks, Plex is starting to charge for sharing⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  For audiobooks check out Audiobookshelf. On my NAS I run it in Container Manager (Docker) and get the image directly from the built-in repo. I check for image updates every few weeks, though only to keep compatibility with the apps, as I don’t notice new features. Very easy to set up, just make sure your folders are named correctly.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨That's all folks, Plex is starting to charge for sharing⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I’m coming up on 5 years as a Plex pass owner, so my users and I will not be impacted by this change. In five more years if they asked me nicely to pay another $89 to support the service I would. Send me some stickers and put a badge on my server. I get a lot of use out of the software/service, as do my family members.

  I will say, I am quite annoyed at the wording and audience of this email. Jellyfin is just not an option for me until there is excellent feature parity with Plex. I know they are a lot of Jellyfin fans here, in my opinion, Plex is a significantly better experience for me.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨8BitDo no longer shipping to US from China due to Trump tariffs⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I wonder what this will mean for the Analogue 3D controllers. They delayed shipment back when Analogue pushed out the shipping date.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨[deleted]⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  X.gov

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨How to easily add a backup internet connection to your home office - and why you should, A failover internet connection is a good idea if you work from home - and it's not complicated to set up.⁩ ⁨⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I can only remember one 45 minute outage caused by Comcast in 4 years at my house, before that I can’t even remember one. The rest of the time it’s been storms/power - things that would knock out other wireline providers. People shit on Comcast, but it’s plenty reliable these days. I’ll just use my phone’s hotspot and save the $4800 over 4 years.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Jellyfin is not just good... but *better* than Plex now?!⁩ ⁨⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Is there a reason that you don’t organize your music by artist\album and leverage tags? It’s been some time since I tried Jellyfin, but Plex does an excellent job of tagging (not directly written to original files) and categorizing. It’s a good experience.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Jellyfin is not just good... but *better* than Plex now?!⁩ ⁨⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  You should not be using NAT to access your Plex externally, I will explain.

  App.plex.tv and the apps use Plex services to generate a point to point connection from remote clients through your router to the server. This is important because you never need to expose a private IP to the Internet, and the authentication can be protected with something robust like a Google account which support 2FA and even phishing-resistant 2FA.

  The combination of more advanced security and secure/convenient SSO authentication are one of the biggest benefits of Plex in my opinion.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Arm ends legal efforts to terminate Qualcomm’s license⁩ ⁨⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Wasn’t it ARM doing the licensing shenanigans here? I’ve got no real skin in the game for either, but companies with IP to license seem to have become a commodity, and price themselves out of practicality. For that reason I tend to like when they lose their battles. On this one specifically, I was hoping for Qualcomm to win, but only because they’re cranking out these incredible laptop processors, showing Intel what a windows laptop on ARM can be - fast, cool, all day battery.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Ditching Spotify and YT Music⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  Plex is excellent, and even if you prefer the features or interface of Jellyfin, you should never expose any application (Plex, Jellyfin, or otherwise) directly to the Internet. This should be non-negotiable. Plex solves for external access with the mobile/desktop apps and app.plex.tv by brokering client connections into your network without a NAT/PAT on your router or firewall.

  For a music library, even a small one, tracks should have proper metadata applied to them and be stored in directories. Plex provides guidance on this here: …plex.tv/…/200265296-adding-music-media-from-fold…

  My own strategy: I deviate slightly from Plex’s file and directory naming strategy, but it works perfectly. I start with high quality music, mostly from Bandcamp and process it through Musicbrainz Picard into <ALBUMARTIST><YYYY - ALBUMNAME>\01 - TRACKNAME.FLAC. Picard sets the metadata and ensures that there is an album cover image also.

  Before moving the organized files to my Plex server, I run them through MP3Tag and overwrite any mismatched artist names with the album artist (getting rid of artist fields with 'feat xxxx artist’s). This is important for when I syncy files in Media Monkey to my iPod, since the iPod would break apart albums with multiple artists. My preference is to keep them grouped together.

  Hope this helps good luck 👍. Let me know if you want to know a decent strategy on movie backups also.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Meta has suspended several Threads and Instagram accounts that track the private jets of celebrities such as Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Kim Kardashian, and Donald Trump⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  It’s public information transmitted over airwaves and several sites exist already. Flightradar24 and adsbexchange are the two I use, though Elon and Taylor Swift are far too boring to pay attention to when you can watch refuelers and jets instead.