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Is there any closed source android app that you wish had a good open source alternative?
  • Generally speaking I'm not opposed to sqlite. The case of a notes app is the one exception.

    If i need to make a big find and replace change, i dont need to rely on the app to have the capability or whip out a sql editor or cli tool. I just open my favorite text editor and do it. Or chain some cli tools built into the os.

    Its not even about data portability or export. Its about working with the data.

  • Is there any closed source android app that you wish had a good open source alternative?
  • Exactly. Not a huge fan of notes apps storing the data in a db.otherwise there is a lot to like about joplin. With obsidian i open my notes in codium all the time to make mass edits or fill gaps that obsidians UI cant meet, which is not possible with joplin.

    Fortunately with obsidian as long as you keep the plugins on the lighter side and keep any non-markdown content in seperate files via linking, im not too worried about having to jump ship if it ever goes bad. Worst case if a plugin dies or i have to migrate, the actual loss of data is that some plugin used json or whatever and it'd have to be converted or replaced.

    I do have hope at least that if the company folds they'll open source it, or turn a blind eye to a community reengineering effort. And what is unique about obsidian markdown and metadata will probably get community-built migration tools quickly if enough people jump ship en masse.

    But for the time being Obsidian is the best option for me and i dont feel that bad about it.

  • ChatGPT Answers Programming Questions Incorrectly 52% of the Time: Study
  • What drives me crazy about its programming responses is how awful the html it suggests is. Vast majority of its answers are inaccessible. If anything, a LLM should be able to process and reconcile the correct choices for semantic html better than a human... but it doesnt because its not trained on WIA-ARIA... its trained on random reddit and stack overflow results and packages those up in nice sounding words. And its not entirely that the training data wants to be inaccessible... a lot of it is just example code wothout any intent to be accessible anyway. Which is the problem. LLM's dont know what the context is for something presented as a minimal example vs something presented as an ideal solution, at least, not without careful training. These generalized models dont spend a lot of time on the tuned training for a particular task because that would counteract the "generalized" capabilities.

    Sure, its annoying if it doesnt give a fully formed solution of some python or js or whatever to perform a task. Sometimes it'll go way overboard (it loves to tell you to extend js object methods with slight tweaks, rather than use built in methods, for instance, which is a really bad practice but will get the job done)

    We already have a massive issue with inaccessible web sites and this tech is just pushing a bunch of people who may already be unaware of accessible html best practices to write even more inaccessible html, confidently.

    But hey, thats what capitalism is good for right? Making money on half-baked promises and screwing over the disabled. they arent profitable, anyway.

  • If it works, kill it.
  • I still use them since i got grandfathered into the pro plan (or whatever its called) without having to pay for a subscription. Not sure if i would pay for it now if i had to.

    However, still a really good service for the cost to sync podcasts across lots of devices for anyone who listens to a lot.

  • Roku has patented a way to show ads over anything you plug into your TV
  • Roku was such an easy recommendation for a long time... Non-complex UI, long support for updates, not owned by google or amazon... Far cheaper than LG and Samsung... (Not that Samsung's UI is anywhere near as easy as roku)

    But now I guess thats done. Unless an alternate firmware exists or this doesn't hit older TVs I guess I'll be looking for a new TV... Which is a shame because my current 4 year old roku TV is more than capable.

  • Portable monitor recommendations?
  • I picked up one of the ARZOPA ones and they are fine. Not the best looking, but good enough for a second monitor on the go. I used to take my ipad 9.7" with me places for this purpose and even though the image isnt as good, its way less effort to carry around.

    I wouldnt use it as a single monitor regularly, nor for gaming.

    I had to keep using the usb-c cable that came with it. Not sure if its a specific protocol that my thunderbolt 4 cables dont support or not. Minor inconvenience i havent looked into further.

  • Devs of lemmy, do you find ai chatbot helpful?
  • I tried to use Copilot but it just kept getting in the way. The advanced autofill was nice sometimes, but its not like i'm making a list of countries or some mock data that often...

    As far as generated code... especially with html/css/js frontend code it consistently output extremely inaccessible code. Which is baffling considering how straightforward the MDN, web.dev, and WCAG docs are. (Then again, LLMs cant really understand when an inaccessable pattern is used to demonstrate an onclick instead of a semantic a or to explain aria-* attributes...)

    It was so bad so often that I dont use it much for languages I'm unfamiliar with either. If it puts out garbage where i'm an expert, i dont want to be responsible for it when I have no knowledge.

    I might consider trying a LLM thats much more tuned to a single languge or purpose. I don't really see these generalized ones being popular long run, especially once the rose-tinted glasses come off.

  • Firefox Devs Working on Tab Previews
  • Power users love to bash accessibility features like this. Its a classic case of "I don't need a wheelchair ramp so i dont know why the library added one!"

    Accessibility is way more than screen readers. It's more than specific disability-minded modes. The web needs to be friendly to everyone, including people who may not know they could benefit from accessibility features. Everyone benefits from this type of work.

    There are definitely some legit feature concerns and priorities being called out here. Mozilla has left a lot to be desired of late on that front. But a power user is more than capable of jumping into settings or about:config to turn things like this off, or finding an extension to get by for now.

    Also the firefox dev team isn't tiny. This isn't blocking other work or anything in a substantial way, it's a fairly isolated piece of UI, and there's no guarantee that skipping this would change the timeline on anything else.

  • Firefox Devs Working on Tab Previews
  • The page title isn't necessarily visible on the web page that sets the title.

    Clicking is not always a simple task.

    I shouldn't have to leave my current page just to figure out what another tab is.

    Again, just because you feel something is useless or easily avoided doesn't mean that all internet users feel the same.

  • Firefox Devs Working on Tab Previews
  • Tooltips are a standard accessibility feature. Just because you may not find them helpful doesn't mean others do not benefit. The delay is to ensure they don't get in the way unintentionally (but still allow usage) for those who do not need the accessibility benefit at all times.

  • I finally nuked Windows
  • I've been windows-free for about 8 months as well. I'm a more casual gamer so i haven't had to venture out of steam proton yet (but i've got bottles on hand to experiment anyway) A few of the games i tend to return to every few years will definitely need bottles.

    I built a beefy system, and I was initially planning on running windows (or one of the de-microsofted builds) on a vm with pass-through GPU (shunting my linux over to the on-cpu gpu when im running it) but so far i've had no need to continue setting that up. I proactively placed all my steam games on an ntfs filesystem just in case i do in the future.

    Either way, i'm glad to have the flexibility to make windows work without dual boot, but so far it looks like i was being overly cautious. Probably cant play some games with anti-cheat right now... but i so rarely play those types of game.

  • PWAs on Android?
  • https://whatpwacando.today/ is a nice site to test things out. You should see the option to install on Firefox for android, as well as verify what features work.

    Glad it finally landed in main, I've been using nightly to install PWA's for a while. It worked fine, but having the two different browsers to juggle for initial install was a pain.

  • Firefox Sidebar Addon like Brave or Vivaldi?
  • +1

    the UI could be improved (I always end up hovering for tooltips on controls) but it works really well.

    I also like that tabs will stay in the stash by default on close, so its great for opening a bunch of reference sites really quickly without worrying about losing them

    Closest thing to the old firefox experiment from a few years back.

  • TC on open source evangelists
  • Having as many followers as he does on the fediverse right now is difficult. There aren't any tools or options to reduce the flood of notifications you get or do do any sort of sane filtering (especially on mastodon) so i totally understand why he often reacts the way he does. You cant feasibly block or de-federate when your reach is so large.

  • TC on open source evangelists
  • The political aspect is especially true. The FOSS confusion is often similar to the communism confusion, especially when it comes to small-scale things.

    Take the concept of a neighborhood garden that no one is expected to pay money into, for instance. "Wait, so the people here who like gardening don't expect me to pay or provide labor unless I'm able to? What do you mean i should take only according to my needs? What about Jimothy, he never helps but he takes way more than I do! What do you mean Jimothy contributes as he is able or in other ways? How can i trust everyone to be fair?"

    Take the money for goods/services exchange out of the equation and it can really throw people off.

  • Made the switch to KDE
  • If you know how to add a real "delete" entry that would be great.

    At least in nautilus 42 the preferences let you enable a permanent delete option in the right click menu, if that's what you are looking for.

  • Can we get more hands on Florisboard? We need a modern open source keyboard with all crucial features.
  • I've been using florisboard for a few months now. You will have typos. Auto-correct for obvious things would be nice... once you install a dictionary its not awful, but the dictionary struggles with simple typos since it isnt usually taking rhe surrounding words into context of the misspelled word. I think the only dictionary i could get installed was from libreoffice? So could just be a lack of common mobile typos in the dataset.

    Florisboard does support things i actually used from gboard like a function row up top with undo/redo, activating voice options, and a clipboard with history. It also supports things like apps that support the autofill hints similarly to how itd pop up on gboard. Of all the foss options, it was the only one that had these modern expectations, so i also think its the best bet for a gboard alternative people will actually switch to. Anysoft and openboard are way too minimal (not a bad thing, just not what an avid gboard user is looking for)

    Swipe on floris is ok. It definitely triggers when you don't want it on occasion. And the lack of autocorrect makes recovery miserable.

    I tried openboard too, but i could not get openboard to a reasonable size on the screen. Pixel 7 pro is fairly big... and i use the smallest text scaling... but even the smallest layout options put the top row out of reach of my thumbs.

  • Made the switch to KDE
  • not seeing all my open apps is weird, also not being able to open or close from the panel is weird

    The extensions that enable this are so simple too. Its a real shame its not built into the settings out of the box, even if they want that to be the default. I wish they made extensions more discoverable too, since you kinda need to know they exist in order to go get them, and easier discoverability would help people solve tbose problems faster.

    UIs need to be compact when needed. Not everyone is a child and settings are not that simple.

    I really wish these things were built in settings. Thunderbird Supernova's setting for this is a fantastic example of how much of a difference it makes. Yeah, it's a bit spacious by default. But once you drop the spacing to medium or small based on your needs and dpi, it feels great. Opinionated design done well makes for great consistency and feel, but it also needs to have some room for adjustments without needing to install stuff.

  • InitialsDiceBearhttps://github.com/dicebear/dicebearhttps://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/„Initials” (https://github.com/dicebear/dicebear) by „DiceBear”, licensed under „CC0 1.0” (https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/)D0
    d0ntpan1c @lemmy.blahaj.zone
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