Pfhortune

Joined 12 years ago

Karma

760

Submissions

184

Member since

Nov 19

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Recent submissions

Comment · 8 days ago

> open source and hobbiests do not design good products

This is opinion. In my opinion, closed products are not good products. To me, openness and freedom trump subjectively better UX any day.

> as much as they enjoy self-righteously declaring their values.

Consider that in our society and software ecosystem, this is all but required to stave off the forces that would enclose the software commons that these "self-righteous" volunteers work so hard to maintain.

Comment · 9 days ago

Makes me wonder what would have been if they had just continued on with Arc and implemented Dia features there, instead of flushing all that user goodwill down the toilet when they announced that Arc development was ending last year.

Comment · 16 days ago

There's now an entry method that just uses a profile/avatar, so that's not even needed. You just boot the console with a USB stick containing the payload, and you're off to the races.

I just started digging into hacking 360s this week, and I'm blown away by how simple it is once you cobble together some files from a few github repos...

Comment · 1 month ago

Amongst the several banks I deal with, only one uses Google's attestation framework in a way that blocks GrapheneOS.

That said, the website still works fine for that one.

Comment · 1 month ago

Is this a cynical play to gain points for the midterms, after which they'll promptly about-face?

I do wish the Dems would come out against both surveillance and datacenters, since they're heinously unpopular, but most are too cowardly to stand for anything but the most milquetoast positions...

Comment · 2 months ago

I do agree, but I am glad the option exists, in contrast with competing readers on the market. And I am very glad that it is an option that requires zero talking to activation servers or other infra.

The way they implemented this means that these Kobos can always avoid being e-waste even if Kobo disappears. Assuming they don't maliciously remove it, that is, but seeing as it was added fairly recently and is fairly obscure, I doubt they would bother doing so for current and past devices.

> And so far DIY e-reader do not seem great.

Being generous and expanding DIY to mean any "open" or "modifiable" reader, this ecosystem has actually be rapidly improving in quality and selection recently. A few new devices were announced recently, and I'm particularly interested in the new M5Stack offering since it has a frontlight and LoRA.

https://liliputing.com/lilbits-more-phone-sized-e-ink-gadget...

I wish I could recommend any Android-based readers, but the software ecosystem for them is quite poor. I would immediately purchase one if they offered a verifiably-clean AOSP or LineageOS option.

Comment · 2 months ago

https://qtekfun.com/random-stuff/bypass-kobo/

This guide is for a kobo that is already set up, but the procedure is mostly the same from step 5 onwards for a new device.

The only step that I think is missing from this guide is that you have to select a language before connecting the Kobo via USB, in my experience. Mass storage mode should work once you have picked a language.

I also did the same on a factory reset, used Libra Color, and that worked well. On that device I had to do some trickery to get the notes feature to work, which I think involved loading up some dictionary files. I can't readily find the guide I followed for that.

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Edit: I'll also note here that this setup works flawlessly with Calibre! It is detected and syncs easily!

Comment · 2 months ago

I love that Kobos can still be set up completely offline. At the setup screen you can mount the device, set a flag in the config file, unmount/reboot, and boom, it's ready for your books.

My Clara BW is my daily driver. As much as I'd like to use an open reader, their rendering and screen quality are still not quite as polished as the corpo options.

Comment · 2 months ago

Feeling like my Pixel 9 Pro was the best timed hardware buy I've made in recent years.

The 10 dropped the physical SIM slot and Google started with their device tree shenanigans that year, with little to no improvements in exchange.

I've got 16GB of RAM and 512GB in an ecosystem that shows every sign of regressing in capacities due to component price inflation.

Very interested to see what Motorola does next year, however.

Comment · 2 months ago

New tablet support is very compelling! The Pixel tablet hardware is... passable... but Graphene on something more refined would be amazing! Especially something with a keyboard cover available (no idea if Motorola does this).

Comment · 2 months ago

If you want a coin-cell powered watch with a couple of years battery-life, but still want notifications, the G-Shock GBD-200/300s have this feature: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wCq1ei5cT_8

It's not great... but it's something?

Comment · 2 months ago

GrapheneOS on a flip is my dream. I tried with the ZFlips a couple of times but Samsung's kitchen-sink approach is just not for me.