• 12 Posts
  • 73 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 10th, 2023

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  • I refused to give up my headphone jack, so for my latest phone I switched to the Moto 5g Stylus

    It’s an OK phone. It often has performance issues, but the battery life is massive and I expanded to storage to nearly 500Gb. The phone is long though - they increased the screen size and avoided increasing the width, so it’s just comically tall. That’s good for scenarios when you want to see more of the screen while keeping the keyboard out and for split screen apps and games, but mostly it’s a burden because you can’t effectively use the phone one handed. For its price, I’d say it’s probably worth at least a year or two of service, but I find myself wanting more power again like the Pixel 3a (my last phone).

    I’m interested in a couple of the phones they listed in the article, but definitely will have to double check performance in the future. It’s the most annoying part of this phone

    Oh one pro tip for the 5g stylus - the camera is good, but only when using their “Ultra-rez” mode instead of the default mode, and the preview looks a lot worse than the actual picture. The picture will preview as blurry and pixelated while you’re taking it, but once processed it will look great



  • Yeah the post is an interesting question because the “official” app isn’t as polished as you might expect it to be.

    Lemmy apps are interesting in that they are all so different that you need to just try a few and find one you like.

    Me personally, I like Sync, but I’ve also tried Thunder, Jerboa, and Liftoff. Each has their pros and cons, and you’ve just got to try them out and can’t really rely on “most official” as a good metric







  • We do somewhere between 72 and 76. But at night in the peak of summer we’ll bump it down to 70. Our bedroom is on the top floor and can often be several degrees hotter than the lower floor where the thermostat is, so for a few weeks in the summer we have to really crank it.

    I’m told we should look into a vent fan to help distribute the air better but I haven’t taken the time to put in the effort yet, I’m sad to say




  • Everyone outside of the U.S. almost assuredly still has SMS capabilities, it’s just not common utilized because everyone is already on WhatsApp or Telegram. It’s where their friends are, locking them into the ecosystem, which is exactly what I just said. And I would be willing to wager the only reason WhatsApp really got huge was because SMS hasn’t always been free to use and may still not be free in some countries and with some plans.

    Telegram, Signal and WhatsApp are fine, as for privacy how exactly are SMS better?

    I wasn’t speaking to privacy specifically, but where all your friends are.

    If you want privacy, then you shouldn’t be using Facebook Messenger or WhatsApp anyway, considering both are owned by Meta and their privacy track record is shaky at best.

    Signal is a great choice, but we get back to the main point where not everyone is on Signal, and once you are on Signal you’re locked in to using Signal and must have their app to participate in the conversation.

    My point wasn’t that SMS is better, but it’s simpler and more widely available and doesn’t require a standalone application to use.

    Ideally we would use an open standard like the Matrix standard to communicate, that way you can download whatever application you want and have all the privacy you could ever desire, but not have to download some random messaging application just to catch up from Gary from primary school




  • It sounds like a too good to be true situation. Definitely an interesting concept though. Sounds like they use remote servers to connect to the third-party apps using your credentials and then transcribe the messages using the Matrix protocol to the app. Source here and snippet below

    Beeper consists of two main components:

    • A client app that runs on your devices.
    • A web service run by Beeper.

    … Beeper’s web service consists of a Matrix homeserver and infrastructure to run open source bridges that connect to 15 different chat networks.

    Currently free but also will be a Plus version eventually rolling out, according to the FAQ

    For now, everyone has access to all the features of Beeper Plus for free. At some point in 2023, we will begin charging $5-10 per month for Beeper Plus.

    Also, no humor is lost on the fact that it is dangerously close to Wuph from The Office…