psycho emoji too 🙂

I am a Divine Being : You are an Object You Have No Right To Speak In My Holy Tongue
- For real though, these machines are here in service to me, not the other way around. I'm the one calling the shots, get onboard with that or I unplug yo ass.
  
  plugs un
- https://youtu.be/PpJzSSVg6Lc
  
  that is so good. she's a great performer.
  how do you feel, Lionel?
  😗🤌
- "Divine being" and "holy tongue"... well can't get on board with that. Machines have better manners than mosr of the people I hear talking.
  
  Well considering most gods have committed an atrocity or twelve, I say this is actually just further evidence the meme is correct. Damned machines don't even know how to be petty assholes, how unholy of them.
  
  most humans do suck, but it's the principal of the matter
- About about the rice cooker playing a little melody? Is that acceptable or should I put it out back now?
  
  Max three beeps is okay.
  
  Poor rice cooker, just being happy to provide you nourishment
  
  those please me. they are permitted to stay.
- that should be a own post xD

Recently downloaded a "cast" app because Miracast doesn't work on GrapheneOS. On first launch, I got 3 consecutive full screen video ads followed by a popup to "subscribe" to their paid service. Next, another popup to rate them 5* in google play store. Note that at this point, I haven't even reached the main screen of the app... You know, to actually try it and see if it works.
Uninstalled that garbage and gave it the 1* rating it deserves.
Seriously, I'm so sick and tired of these "modern" apps which don't even have the decency to offer a good quality paid version. $8/mo for a stupid utility I use maybe a few times a year? Who tf do you think you are?
Using apps on GrapheneOS, I also get notified when they use the play integrity API... I find it insulting when apps like Reddit attempt to access that... Seriously, you're just an online forum. Why tf would you care about whether my phone is rooted or not?
- Look into fcast (its Foss)

Immediate disable of notifications and one star review for abusing notifications. I do the same thong when legitimatel services text me for marketing or surveys. Texts are meant for more urgent communication that needs almost immediate attention and it’s an abuse of trust to test people like that.
- I do the same thong when legitimatel services text me for marketing or surveys.
  It's fun that I can't decide if that's a deeply insightful yet misplaced shot at mattel for having a small role in developing a fairly common sex toy material or a series of spelling errors.
  
  'Attorney Barbie wearing a G-String' would be make a fun ai prompt though

This is why I recommend FOSS apps for base functionality like that. There's plenty folks out there, who've implemented a grocery list app as a hobby project, who don't need to try to make money off it. As such, their app can exist without ads, tracking or needy notifications.
- I recommend FOSS for absolutely everything you use if possible.
- I agree, when my wife switched to iPhone a few years back, I had trouble finding foss apps for ios. I guess not being able to sideload means most devs will want to recoup the apple development fee. I don't blame them really.
  
  I used an iPhone for a few months last year and I had such a hard time with just how much it costs for apps. Everything is a subscription and you have no options for sideloading your own app or FOSS. I tried to set my alarm to a piece of music that was released under a creative commons license and the only way to do it was to spend $1 with Apple.
- I personally use a self hosted instance of kitchen owl https://kitchenowl.org/ I really like it's simplicity and use it quite a lot and nobody has access to the data but me.
- When it comes to more complex apps, sometimes you really do get a better user experience if you just sack up and pay for a premium product.
  MyFitnessPal is balls compared to Macrofactor. Its more expensive but its better and doesnt do a damn thing I dont expressly tell it to do.

Whenever an app does that, I take away notification privileges immediately.
- Right? Like "You wanted me to notice you? Oh I noticed you now. And while I'm aware of you, let's just go ahead and take away some of your permissions...."
- 80% of the time I do this with the button that revokes all other privileges too: "uninstall"
  
  Depending on how useful the app is, that’s generally the next step.
- I uninstalled the Carl's jr app because it's notification sound was of someone taking a bite of something but exaggerated and more like what you would expect from a cartoon character. That shit made me uninstall it fast, I know I could have just disabled notifications, but my phone making that sound at me randomly when I was in the middle of something pissed me off.
  
  Oh right, like Cheat Engine that laughs at you.

Should definitely avoid Duolingo.
- I am visiting denmark in summer and wanted to learn some danish. I looked at duolingo, then at their privacy policy, then i threw the idea away. Babbel is better in terms of privacy but still not great. I haven‘t found an alternative product yet.
  
  Asking for a friend, do they sell your data or just (ab)use it?
  
  You should find some English Danish deck on Anki
  
  Was thinking perhaps Rosetta Stone, they're old and well-established, and while I've not read through their privacy policy on account of being dead tired at the moment, at a glance it looks digestible.
  But then I noticed that they don't do Danish.
  Though maybe we're too app focused. Denmark has some really good children's books authors, H.C. Andersen is classic, most people probably know him through his work "Den Lille Havfrue", or at least the Disnep adaptation, "The Little Mermaid." For pronunciation my favourite method is singing and mimicking. I enjoy the mouthfeel of other languages, though admittedly Danish is incredibly difficult as the sounds are so different from Swedish.
  
  I started using Dreaming Spanish which hasn't collected anything but an email and the amount of time I've spent watching videos but I'm not sure if there's an equivalent for Danish. If there is, it seems ok so far.
- I dunno, this is the kinda energy needed to keep that fucking owl dead.
  
  I kill you now
- Oh no! How will I pretend to learn a language now?
- Duolingo's crap for learning anyway

Heh, I like the "I kill you now" human mode in this. The developers don't realise we have our own antibullshit software. Evolution playing out in app survival.
Too much fuckery? Off at the wall !
Put your foot on the power switch down till it stops whirring.

It makes me a bit sad that there are people getting around that don't know how to declaw their smartphone with disabled notifications, permissions and such. It's not their fault, these things are a fucking nightmare when left to go feral.
- The thing is, at least on iPhone, is when you first install an app it’ll ask some of these questions and you can say, and should, say no for the most part:
  This app wants to track you. Allow?
  This app wants to send you notifications. Allow?
  This app wants access to your photos? Allow?
  This app wants to see your contacts. Allow?
  Etc.
- I appreciate that you stuck to the analogy
- I can do that, or I can just uninstall the app.
  
  But that's... All the apps

"You haven't set any alarms recently. Don't you find that...
Alarming??"
- Next step is the alarm app setting an alarm to remind you to set an alarm.

relevant XKCD

Modern apps out here with the confidence of a CEO and the usefulness of a broken pencil.
- Modern apps out here with the confidence of a CEO and the usefulness of a CEO

I hate that for a lot of these apps there’s no way to turn off these kinds of ad notifications without stopping the real notifications you want from the app.

Do it then. Replace the app with pen and paper. I think the app is calling your bluff.
- I just use nano for taking notes
  
  the correct answer was vim, but I’ll allow it
- pen and paper

Notebooks and pens are awesome and underrated!

Why would someone use grocery list app instead of a text editor
- Presumably the app would provide some additional functionality that is relevant to grocery lists. Like price tracking or coupons or something. IDK though I just use a text editor.
- Obsidian is on my phone and all my computers. It is sync'd between them. I keep all my shopping lists, todos, recipes, and so on in it. It never notifies me about shit. It opens instantly. Its very easy to find and edit anything I need.
  It would truly be a miracle for an app to be better at keeping lists than I am with a markdown file. And it also keeps track of a bunch of other things for me. I even had an encrypted file in it with my passwords stored, but I've sanely moved on to Keepass for that, a rare case of an app actually offering enough additional security and functionality to be worth it.
- A list with check boxes is way better than a text only list. Though genetic to-do list apps are good enough for that, assuming it's a decent to-do list app in the first place.
  
  i personally prefer simplicity. "TODO.txt" is all i need
  
  You can
  Have "Checkboxes" ✅️
  Without it actually being ❌️
  Part of the program ✅️
  
  A list with check boxes
  Material notes has that.
- I used one to manage inventory at a bar. More cost effective, single developer instead of a big corporation so I could have features added. It also never harassed me to use other products, and didn't spam me beyond letting me know when there were updates to apply.
- I don't even have a text editor on my phone. 🤷‍♂️
- I have a self hosted recipe book (Tandoor) and it has a built in grocery list. Its really nice cause I can just click a button and it adds everything I need to my grocery list.
  
  Paprika recipe manager seems like an equivalent, and it's not subscription based. Just a one time purchase per OS
- A charitable interpretation is because a list-making app can provide richer functionality than a basic text document by allowing you to check things off as you pick them up.
  A grocery-specific list app could be even more tailored. It could, for example, automatically group items you add by produce type (fresh, tinned, frozen) or allow you to define a template for common items you want to purchase on every shop.
  A less charitable interpretation is that some people don't tend to think "what tool is appropriate to solve this problem?" and look at what they already have installed, but instead present the problem and expect a solution will be delivered. So people go on the app store and type "grocery list" and just install whatever comes up. The same happens for every other life problem they want to solve, which is why these people have 200 hyper-specific apps on their phones.
  Some people will fall into group A, and some into group B.
  Personally I use Joplin for all my note-taking and listing needs. It's a pretty basic markdown editor but is cross-platform and has custom backends for storage, so my notes can be stored privately and synced to all my devices. Markdown is obviously less featureful than a proprietary app format but is portable, and you can easily export all your data without being tied forever to Joplin if circumstances change. I would recommend it if you need a notes app.
- My girlfriend and I share lists on ours, she can add things and I can see them for when I go to the store. In theory cause she usually has to tell me.about it first so I remember to look at it. Makes Xmas food shopping much simpler. I suppose there is a text sharing one but so far 'ourgroceries' ( think that's right) only bugs me to buy the full app when I use it, but otherwise no biggie. Plus you can disable notifications from apps anyways, least I thought so, cause I probably had one from there and said nope, don't care. Maybe it tells you when someone else put something there if they are on, oh well if I'm missing them too cause we talk still heh.

🙂
- "I have been a good bing" is engraved into my mind forever

"A new generation of Sirius Cybernetics Corporation robots and computers with the new GPP feature"
"GPP, what's that?"
"It says 'Genuine People Personalities'."
"Sounds ghastly"

I'm sorry, what? A regular smiley face is "psycho"?
- It’s the unblinking eyes. Definitely a serial killer.
- look into it's eyes, is it happy? annoyed? about to jump you? 🙂
  
  Yes.

I would immediately uninstall and leave a shitty one star review, that's one action you can take that will almost certainly be read by someone at the company.

Duolingo! Screw that app. Has anyone ever learned to speak a language by just using duolingo?
- My streak is the only thing keeping me going
  Send help, the owl has my family
  
  So as someone who used the app daily for 5,09315068 years, do you feel you learned a new skills or has it only given you the feeling of not wasting all your time in unproductive apps?
- I've been using it for years, but only for ~10 minutes a day. Obviously it can't teach you to speak it, but to read and write? Absolutely. The secret is to NEVER install the app. My philosophy is that if it has a website then everything should be doable via the website, and I won't install the app.
  NOTHING should urge you to install their app, unless it actually cannot function properly on a, say, desktop PC. In case of a trekking and hiking app, I understand it only works properly knowing your location (I would still be terribly paranoid about what else it does with my location info, apart from recommending paths and whatnot). But other than that, I always assume that when something could be perfectly done via a website and they still push their app, they just want to sell your data.
  And believe me, using Duolingo via the website is definitely less frustrating than having the app.
  
  I will never forgive Apple for fucking over the open web. When the iPhone launched it was web-only. You could 'install' web apps, and any device APIs - accelerated graphics, hardware sensors, location, offline storage, intents, contacts lists, push notifications - were user-selected and presented as standard JavaScript interfaces. One app, literally every platform, and iPhone was there first. It was in a period where every platform was rushing to support web applications with high-performance browser engines and Apple looked like they were going to do for websites-as-applications what they had done for USB ten years earlier: recognise it as the best way forward and push it hard, compatibility be damned.
  Then the iPhone started selling well and they got fucking dollar signs in their eyes, realising how much money there was to be made forcing everyone to develop on their platform, in their language, for thier devices. Apps, distribution channels, operating system, services, devices, development, all of it on their terms and on thier platforms. The second they became mainstream they started locking everyone into their vertical ecosystem and wringing as much cash out as they could, exposing their hipocracy and showing that they were as anti-competetive and destructive as Microsoft at their 1990s worst.
  In 1980, a large number of experts in business and general tech predicted that by 1990 most written communications would be fully electronic, something akin to email. What they didn't predict was the appearance of the fax machine, which was novel enough to be exciting but simple enough to be understood, and people flocked to it. As a result, electronic communication was stalled for about twenty years. I have no doubt that at some point in the future, Apps will be seen the same way but I think it will take a lot longer to get there.
- Ja. Ich habe Deutsch gelernt. Kaffee mit Milch, bitte.
- The content on duolingo is pretty bad, in general. There are much better apps out there like Language Drops and Rosetta Stone - but they aren't free.
  
  Drops is free if you get the kids version. No ads and you can reset your allowance for free just by pressing the timer. It has less vocab though. Also be careful because their translations aren't always accurate (it gave the word for a stuffed animal, as in taxidermy, for cuddly toy in European Portuguese. I reported it several years ago and it's still not fixed) and they translate "how much" differently in different languages (eg in Arabic it translates to how much quantity, but in Portuguese and French, how much price). So I had a lot of fun thinking I was asking how much I need to pay for a bag of potatoes and the man kept telling me 500g.
  I haven't used duolingo since they brought in that stupid crown system years ago. I got my 600 day streak and then stopped using it. I heard it's even worse now. It was a good starting point, but you'll quickly have to supplement. Pre-crowns, duolingo was pretty good. Memrise was much better, but they've overhauled that now too. Also I dislike that duolingo has time for fictional languages, but refuses to do real languages like European PT, British English, etc.
  
  I've been using Busuu and it's really good. Its really aggressive about asking you to buy the premium version but it has all the functionality you need in the free version so you just gotta ignore it.

There are like three things total that I allow to send me notifications. This is a skill issue
- Are we one of them? 🥺

Mine was worse than that. It straight up added products to my list.
- that is insane, i would obliterate an app that did something like that
  
  I did. I switched to a different one but unfortunately, it's not as good at coordinating between my wife's phone and mine, which is the reason we don't use a scrap piece of paper.

psycho emoji?
- You are a really nice lemmy user and I am really grateful I get to send you this emoji 🙂.
- 🤪
- Nothing beats "Crying With Laughter And Staring Eyes".

Same vibes but serious. I give a 1 star and uninstall if an ad-supported application sends useless notifications.

Shit like this is why the only thing that can ping me is a text

This is what you get when you download an app that can be completely replaced by any scrap of paper.

Idiots, savages, idiots!

tape measuring app trying to charge my poor dad TEN DOLLARS PER WEEK. To measure with his phone camera.

Why do you need an app....... for groceries?
- I used to put stuff in my grocery list app as soon as I run out. Now I do the same with my grocery store's curbside pickup app, and checkout whenever I feel like going over there.
  Keeping running lists is one of the most useful bits about having a computer in your pocket, IMHO. I don't understand how this is a question. If you have a different process, that's fine, but it's an odd thing to quibble about.
  
  I feel like the point they are making is, is you could just use the notepad, you don’t NEED a specific app.
- One good reason is if you use something that can be synced with other members of your family, so if one of us has time to stop while on the way home from somewhere, everyone already knows what is needed without having to ask.
- Because I'm 1000% more likely to lose a paper list than my phone containing my list.
  
  I make a list on a white board and take a picture of it in my phone.... you can now call your grocery list if you lose it

My tablet decided it was going to send me reminders that my exorbitant phone or cable bill was due, and it took a lot of figuring to turn that shit off. I know when you rob me blind, Bell Canada, you also email me.

That's just the normal smile emoji
- 🙂