The article also quotes

to “cheat” the system

As if people working two jobs are stealing and not working in exchange for proper value of money.

What kind of illogical comment is that? First, you bring in Microsoft to a discussion it is not a part of; second, just because Microsoft does it wrong, it doesn’t give Apple a license to do things the convoluted way too.

I used most of the stuff you listed though I usually switched to mpv instead of VLC. On Linux, I used Strawberry for quite some time though I use foobar2000 on Windows. Deadbeef is a good lightweight alternative to that on Linux but always seems to play catch up to it’s elder cousin.

That website has always been like this. They occasionally publish articles and I sometimes visit them for curiosity but more often than not, many articles are sheer garbage.

Oh, it seems like they also started their own membership thing. Wow!

hoping for improvements

There have been improvements, just on the fronts you haven’t been looking for. Also, if I am correct, torrenting over Tor would be painfully slow compared to normally doing it or via a VPN. It is not worth the hassle.

The site is actually asking me for login now via Google or something else. In recent times, many sites like Howtogeek or MakeUseOf have kinda paywalled unless you login. It works properly with adblocker (uBlock Origin) once I login though.

Oh, I understand now, especially the second one. The only thing from Amazon’s product line worth using to me is the Prime delivery service. I can’t give two hoots about their Prime Music( which I lost respect for after it denied to run for me on any browser on Linux for some reason) or Prime Video.

IIRC, YouTube Music is also offered as a standalone service, Atleast in some countries. However, the difference b/w YouTube Premium and just the Music service comes out to be miniscule, so folks just pay for the former.

This meme has been doing the rounds for few years now. Also, I don’t remember the exact date now when Apple stopped charging for updates. I assume it has been a decent long time since they last did so. The only pain point is Windows which takes the most time to update and has basically made dual booting tougher than ever, thanks to their ever screwing of Grub configs.

Yes. Chrome OS is heavily modified(and locked down) version of Gentoo but I doubt any end users of Chrome OS want to experience vanilla Gentoo :p.

Folks who use Gentoo do out of their own choosing, not because someone recommended it. It is quite technical a distro and takes some time picking up. Void, is comparatively way easier to come to grips with than Gentoo.

Void was a great experience last time I used it. A minimal set of tools/software were installed(for some reason, I dislike ISOs/distros that fill everything from Libre Office to an FTP client in it; I will just download them if I want it), the package manager seemed pacy enough and system was fast. It is definitely one of the better distros I have tried.

Forever, no! Sure, compiling Firefox with some flags on my slow system can take ahem, time but I can install Gentoo in couple of days.

Though, in all seriousness, Gentoo takes a notch higher than Arch and unlike Arch, which has many entry level distros based on it, Gentoo has comparatively lesser. It’s fully usable but takes some initial time configuring and setting up the system exactly to the user’s requirements. The package manager is portage, I think.

Microsoft didn’t even provide a proper upgrade path for it’s users. WP7 couldn’t go to 8 and same for Windows Mobile 10.

It is quite common, in places like the Indian subcontinent. Though I really doubt Tinder will be able to make any significant dent of it’s own in this domain here.

Yesterday, I was trying to simply automate turning on/off Wifi via Tasker at a set time. Turned out Google has removed API access for this pre Android 12 only and can’t be done. If Google wants to be make an IOS clone, then it is doing very wrong, IMO.

In android 14, they still allow sideloading via stuff like F Droid or apk’s downloaded from internet? Or does the user has to confirm a prompt everytime? At the rate Google is restricting stuff, maybe some years down the line, the only way to sideload apps would be via adb.

Well, one does need to sideload two apps, a browser and then the corresponding xpi file which will install the add on.

There was/is an alternate way on Firefox Nightly, I think to create a custom add on collection which will add it to mobile Firefox normally. But yes, you are correct, only a miniscule amount of people would care to run it on Android(though it is always nice to have a workaround).

True, geographic diversity is a thing. Smaller phones like iPhone mini or Zenfone didn’t caught up in the Indian market. But, should demand exist for them, atleast some companies ought to be making them in some parts of the world. Sadly, that doesn’t seem to be happening and that presents one less choice to the customer.

Same here. Whilst torrent sites themselves are blocked, once you get the magnet link/torrent via a proxy/VPN, there is no issue. I do not think anyone has ever received a cease and desist letter from their ISPs here. But then, I think, this is the case for many countries outside of the developed world.

You see so many people asking for smaller phones in the forums and places you frequent.

They do not necessarily represent the views of the common public. I personally could do with a slightly smaller phone because the compact size allows for easier holding with single hands. But, sadly, I have not seen folks around me deciding which phone to buy based on their screen size. Neither is that a priority for them. Simply put, our Venn diagrams do not fully overlap.