CodenameDarlen

With Google making it more closed every year, I wonder if is it worth it. I don't want to learn it to find a job or anything, it's purely for open source development.

I've seen a few devs dropping FOSS apps due to Google decisions. Like the developer of a music player I used (Phocid):

According to him and I agree:

Because Google is essentially killing apps distributed outside of Google Play, I have lost interest in Android development and plan to switch to a different OS once my current five-year-old phone dies.

(https://github.com/TJYSunset/Phocid/issues/185)

I just found out this ROM a few months ago, they don't advertise it too much, most of the talk happens on their Telegram channels.

They provide some features from Graphene that could interest DeGooglers. Like sandboxed Play Services, even tho, very important to note, they don't advertise it as a "degoogled" or "privacy-focused" ROM, but they provide these features (some imported from Graphene):

• Storage, contacts and files scopes: trick apps so they think they have access to all files or contacts, but you chose what files and contacts apps can see.
• Option to disable sensors by default: something I learned just a few weeks ago, sensors are a allowed permission by default for all Android apps, they block it and notify you if any app try to access the sensors.
• Ask for network access before installing any app, instead of granting it automatically.
• Graphene servers for assisted GPS instead of Google servers.
• Built in integrity fix and tricky store: you don't need root to get integrity fix (one level), but you need a keybox to get other levels. I personally achieve two levels (BASIC and DEVICE) with any random public keybox.
• Spoofing features: spoof device model for games and hide apps list.
• PowerHub with many interface customization.

There are few devices officially supported (14 I guess, mostly Xiaomi), but you could build it for your device if you know how to do it and possibly bring more attention to it. All their sources are on GitHub.

[SOLVED] I kind of figured it out by doing some minimum amount of bank transfers, I concluded that the only needed domain in order to make push notifications work for my banking app is mtalk.google.com.

Not sure if it's totally right tho. It worked for me.

I found this post on /e/OS forum: https://community.e.foundation/t/what-are-mtalk-google-com-and-www-googleapis-com-serving-for/4788/5

mtalk.google.com is needed by GCM (cloud messaging). For those using adblockers it was always recommended to whitelist it (not block it), otherwise one would have problems with push messaging

[OP] I'm currently using a ROM with GrapheneOS sandboxed Play Services + DNS filter with No Google list that blocks everything from Google.

But I think it's worth the trade off of whitelist just a specific domain because I really need instant push notifications from my banking app.

But since I blocked everything I think it's not reaching Google servers to handle push notifications properly.

So if anyone could help on this I really appreciate it.

I see my bank trying to reach these domains:

• firebaselogging.googleapis.com
• firebaseinstallations.googleapis.com
• firebase-settings.crashlytics.com

(I just pause the DNS filter when I need something related to Play Services)

Reddit community is probably the worst and most toxic group of people I've ever had the displeasure of interact with on my life.

It's nearly impossible to have a serious discussion without a single rage bait comment.

I tried for the last time talking about a theory I made up, pretty serious post and a little long, then I go back to read if someone kindly tried to argue or show reason in the comments, the first comment I see is:

You don't have a theory, you have a fantasy

It's just insufferable, I don't know why I keep interacting on that shitty platform.

While it's true you see the same behavior on Lemmy sometimes, it's incomparable to Reddit. I truly hope there's not a mass migration from Reddit to Lemmy in the future or it's just the beginning of the end for Lemmy as well.

I've seen some Reddit-like toxicity here a few times but it was pretty rare overall. It's a reasonable decent place to discuss and interact with others.

Let's say some disabled person wish to play a competitive game such as CS2 or COD.

How would companies include these people to have a fair experience?

While some improvements could be made such as strong aim assistance, it'd also break the competitiveness aspect of the game for non-disabled people. Such feature would also be obviously abused. So it'd require a level of verification like an official medical report to unlock it.

Of course one option would be to delegate the accessibility to whoever is organizing a competition, but I'm talking about online games.

My point is, how could something be implemented to provide a fair experience for disabled people on online competitive games? And why no company has ever implemented something like that? At least, I've never heard of something like that.

It just occurred me out of sudden while I was playing Counter Strike, I'm not a disabled person, but while there's a lot of real life sports with exclusive rules made for those people, I don't see online e-sports following up.

This isn't a complain about the game, neither a compliment.

It's something personal I guess, not related to anything else, but myself, I think I just need to vent.

Maybe the game romanticize way too much the life in the year around 1900 and the thing is I just love the life how they portrait it. The game is extremely immersive and it's hitting me hard.

Everything is so simple, there's so much respect between people, they live camping with a simple life, everybody trying to help to survive as they can, singing at the end of nights, having profound and philosophical talking. It's such a more human focused life.

Seeing a simple life like that and comparing to the modern world makes me feel sad. Today we have cars, cities, buildings, very few vegetation, a lot of pollution, everybody is so fixed on being clean, good looking, companies rule the world, people accepting being modern slaves in exchange of a little comfort and convenience. It's truly a disappointment to me.

I'd exchange 20-30 years living in a world like RDR2 shows than 70-80 years in the modern world. That's right, I'd rather die trying to hunt for food and learning how to survive in the woods than a massive boring life doing the exact same thing every single day in front of a computer.

5h on smartphone feels way worse than 5h on PC.

I wonder if they're using my data to something or spying on me.

Because I use Firefox Sync to sync mostly my history. I don't have bookmarks, I just remember what site I want to access by its URL then I start typing and the autocomplete do the rest.

For example, to access Lemmy I just type "le" because the only site I most access and starts with "le" is "lemmy.world". Rarely I get some conflict on this approach. And it works on both my phone and desktop.

I wonder if should I change this approach to avoid Firefox Sync or I can trust on Firefox Sync.

I mean I think for the last years every time I opened Steam Charts to see popular games there it is, Rust.

I wonder why I never have seen anyone talk about this game on Reddit or Lemmy. I've seen posts related to Warframe, Marvel Rivals, CS, Arc Raiders, and many others get in Popular tab of Reddit, but never anything related to Rust.

I've been playing CSGO lately, since it came back to Steam store but problem is just the same as CS2 maybe worse, because you don't need Prime Account (I think) to surf the communities servers and the game is free.

I just left a match with 2 guys using wall and aim, we all agreed on our own team they're cheating. We end up just quitting.

I tried Delta Force too even tho the Warfare matches are filled with bots not so many cheaters, the Extraction mode is filled with cheaters.

I wonder if there is anything decent at all. I don't mind the game mode, 5v5, 32v32 or Battle Royale. Any FPS I'd be down to play it.

I'm starting to think that online play without cheaters is an utopia.

I don't know if it's related to autism, but I can't listen to music just like if it was a white noise like most people do, if I play something I get very emotional about it, my mind changes completely and when I stop listening I kind of feel bad and depressed. I wonder if it's related to autism or some kind of over-stimulation or something. I feel like any music I listen to touches my soul. And that's not good because sometimes I just want to chill but I get way too attached to the playing song.

So I'm barely listening to music lately because I'm trying to keep my emotional neutral.