My elementary school in Utah, we also called them portables. Ah the memories!

Happy to be part of the top 1% in this case.

No, I setup a MacOS VM on my home Linux server using docker-osx which runs a bluebubbles server. It doesn’t use Matrix.

This is cool but I’m happy self hosting bluebubbles.

The weight issue is why I’m looking forward to (hopefully) seeing the Aptera make it to production. Being super aerodynamic and lighter weight so that it can charge up to 40 miles a day on solar alone. Lithium batteries would be better suited for this form factor.

I installed nameless on my 8t. It works well but Google Pay breaks occasionally with a “Device doesn’t meet security requirements”. On both instances, was able to fix with using a play integrity module but kinda annoying knowing it may not always be reliable.

Might regret it but I just ordered an S23 after trying it out at BestBuy. I saw that Samsung had a Black Friday deal for $200 off with trade-in of an old device. I have an old Galaxy S7 just sitting in a drawer and was amazed to see it on the list of accepted devices.

I’ve really been wanting a smaller phone as my OnePlus 8T gets really uncomfortable to hold after a while. Love everything about it except the size.

I also looked at the Pixel 8 but the S23 felt like the better choice with less compromises. Pixel 8 Pro is even bigger than my 8t, so no-go there.

Really wish the S23 was rootable (in US at least). That’s prob the biggest drawback for me. Will see if I can live without that.

Yes, you should support open source when possible if the project(s) you use are beneficial to you! Your dollars are far more valuable to help out a small team of independent volunteers vs multi-billion dollar corporations that really don’t need it.

If you can’t donate money, donate your time / skills or do both! Make the world of software a better place, one small contribution at a time!

Might as well make it a burst of 9 presses, wait, and then 2 single presses /s

The original Sims + expansion packs. I haven’t played any of the newer ones but I spent a lot of childhood playing the original with my mom and we had so much fun together.

Livin’ Large was my fave expansion pack because of the servo. Such a fun game!

For the technically skilled, there is BlueBubbles to get iMessage on Android. I set this up recently and it works quite well. I’m running a MacOS Ventura virtual machine using docker-osx on one of my personal servers and pretty much all iMessage functionality is available. I modified the Android (flutter) project locally to get my own push notifications working using my self-hosted ntfy instance as a UnifiedPush provider instead of needing to use Firebase.

There is also Beeper which bridges iMessage and many other chat services in one app, but I wanted something fully open source that I can manage myself, plus I think there’s still a wait-list and I didn’t want to hand over my Apple ID to a third party.

It’s hard trying to convince people (esp. iPhone users) to use a cross platform solution because they perceive us Android users as the problem and they know iMesssge just works. And for the non- technical, that’s understandable even if frustrating. So as a software engineer, I am the one making accomodations so they can still use iMessage. But it also made for a fun project for me to learn about.

Ya Plex vs Kodi is really more an apples and oranges comparison. Should be Plex vs Jellyfin.

That said though, I did start off with Kodi as my own media center on a Raspberry Pi, but eventually discovered Jellyfin and have really enjoyed it. Kodi is great too, but I think Jellyfin is the more refined modern streaming equivalent akin to Netflix that’s fully open source unlike Plex.

Butter. Kerrygold is simply the best.

I used to use Brave, then used Bromite but that got abandoned. I think there’s another fork of it, but ultimately I just use Firefox which has worked better for me overall.

Browsers are a big attack vector for exploits and security is very important. Firefox releases patches regularly and I don’t have to worry about it being abandoned like some others. I disabled whatever telemetry / sponsored stuff they have enabled by default and feel it’s a good balance of security & privacy + doesn’t have the DRM crap chromium is trying to add.

Their extension support is nice too.

Dang had no idea this was a thing, but this looks very useful! I’ve been meaning to troubleshoot slow startup on one of my servers.

Ugh, why must the Pro be so much larger than the regular Pixel 8? I really would prefer an 8 Pro with a smaller size.

I’ve been wanting something smaller than my OnePlus 8T, but the 8 Pro is even bigger.

PiHole with the Star Trek web UI theme. I think it looks pretty nice and has worked well for me.

That would be more than capable. Retro emulation can run on very low end hardware.

But here’s an ebay listing for same model that I bought earlier. It doesn’t include an SSD but you can buy M.2 SSDs for very cheap which I also did. Plus they’re much faster and more reliable than micro SD cards.

It’s very easy to open the machine up which I liked.

RAM upgrades are cheap too but 8GB is a lot for most cases.

A lot of corporate environments use these so when they upgrade you can find them used for dirt cheap, if you don’t mind some possible cosmetic defects. Mine are just stacked on a shelf and I just use them as servers for docker and whatnot.

While I love Raspberry Pis and have a few older ones, it’s a shame that the latest ones were very hard to come by and far exceeded the $35 price point.

I was looking to upgrade to a Pi 4 a while back but prices were outrageous or it was sold out completely. I eventually discovered tiny form factor PCs.

I bought some used Lenovo Tiny ThinkCentres (which are about 10x more powerful than a Pi 4), off eBay for ~ $70. I upgraded the Ram and SSDs and they are quite capable, low power units!

So to anyone looking for a low power computer to run Linux, consider buying used off eBay. You can get some pretty good deals on used hardware that’s more capable.

Earlier ThinkPads had the best keyboards IMO. I also really liked using the track point over a trackpad.

First one I had was a T61 and loved it. Later on had to get a newer one for school, a W541 but didn’t enjoy the feel of it as much.