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I’ve tried twice to make the move to VS Code and keep coming back to Emacs. I would often be overwhelmed by my obsession to tweak things (ADHD..) but switching to Doom Emacs and sticking to the standard config helped with that. Learning some Elisp to write custom functions and embracing org-mode has made it near impossible to switch to another editor now.

This looks great and I’ll definitely give it a spin when I get a chance. What I’d really like though is the ability to save the pages locally, I often revisit bookmarks from years ago only to find that the page no longer exists.

For what it’s worth I was a longtime KeepassXC user. Switched to Bitwarden to have easier shared passwords between myself and partner/family however I’m now moving back to KeepassXC. I support Bitwarden fully however the app itself is just so badly designed. The UI is dreadful (both the website and desktop app) and I find it very frustrating to use. The whole layered concept of folders and inability to have tags is a nightmare when you have a large collection of passwords. The iOS app seems to quit unexpectedly after opening as well. I’m just very underwhelmed with what I was hoping would be a nice alternative to having to sync my Keepass database everywhere.

On the KeepassXC side of things I’ve had zero issues with the app itself (using it on Linux, OSX and Windows) and I use Strongbox on iOS which is one of the very few apps I’m happy to pay for to support the developer, it’s so much more polished than Bitwarden.

Fedora on home desktop, Fedora on work Thinkpad. I’ve also got an M1 MacBook Air that I’m probably going to replace with a Framework laptop soon and run Fedora on that too. It’s just rock solid and any issues I do encounter I can easily fix myself. OSX on the other hand is an inconsistent mess that seems to get buggier with each release as of late.

I love DDG but there’s still an awful lot of weird results. Just the other day I searched for a clothing brand and the first result wasn’t their homepage but someones saved wish list (something like “?wishlistid=someuid”). It was bizarre. I don’t know enough about SEO to know if it’s down to the owners of the site or some weird DDG indexing but I’ve found a lot of weird indexing like this where you’d expect the homepage and get a very specific page instead.

Agreed. I often update (in Fedora) which causes Firefox to be restarted - never had any issues clicking the 'restart Firefox' button though which relaunches it and opens the last session, often opening dozens of older tabs without issue. Bizarre thing to complain about.

What you’re referring to is the TV license fee and you’re not obliged to pay for it at all, you can simply opt out as outlined in the various letters you’ll receive if you don’t pay for it. It’s a deeply flawed system that many disagree with, but to say the public is forced to pay it is false.

I’m intrigued, care to share more?

Exactly this. I have a big nostalgia for old school sysadmin ways of working, but just use Ansible. It’s beyond easy and can be as simple or complex as you like. I use containers on my home server (with podman) alongside a bunch of other services and it’s all just so clean and easy to maintain as a collection of roles and playbooks.

During Covid lockdown online food shopping in my area (UK) became increasingly difficult to book delivery slots as they would fill up as soon as they became available. For most people who either owned a car or lived nearby a supermarket this was probably just a mild inconvenience, however at the time I didn't have a car and the nearest store was miles away from my house. Writing a bunch of Python scripts to check for free delivery slots over several of the big supermarkets and then pinging me when one became available was a lifesaver (maybe a bit dramatic, but it helped me secure regular food deliveries without having to spend hours hitting the refresh button). I learned a lot in the process, the lengths at which some online stores go to try and deter automated scripts was quite interesting.

You’re cherry picking a subset of people there. I imagine some view it with a sort of mild indifference, but there are people who are concerned about their own privacy from both government and big tech. I generally disregard any sentence that starts with “most people..” because it usually can’t be backed up with sources.

I'd strongly recommend against a platform like Fiverr. I spent some time doing various odd DevOps and Linux jobs on there. I basically had to charge next to nothing for my services because the sheer amount of other people doing the same thing (probably to a very low standard). Despite this I thought building up my reviews would be a good way to increase my prices and still get work on there, which it was. Unfortunately the attitude of quite a large percentage of the people who hired me was just absurd. Difficult language barriers in many cases, endless disputes over deliverables, constantly changing requirements and even some cases blaming me for things completely out of my control. What I was hoping would eventually lead to a nice little side business of odd sysadmin type things just made me really stressed and frustrated and I realised why I work for a company where there's a barrier between me and the end user and their insane demands.

I have to disagree with this. I have endless issues switching the playback between my iPhone and HomePod, sometimes I’ll have to quit the app just to get the right device to play music. When I’m playing the song on my iPhone with playback on the HomePod it sometimes ‘forgets’ the HomePod is the playback device and using the controls on the iPhone to pause the song etc do nothing forcing me to use Siri to stop playback on the HomePod. Not to mention how useless Siri is when asking to play certain things (e.g. trying to play an album that has a song with the same name on it). I generally like the HomePod but the integration (and Siri in general) are massively lacking.

Infuriating is a bit of a stretch. A mild annoyance at most.

+1 for Strongbox, one of the few apps I’m happy to pay for.