Tab groups are coming but in the mean time containers work well enough for me with the added benefit that they’ll also block tracking from the sites that are within them.

https://www.popsci.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/GluePizzaAI.png?strip=all&quality=95

I feels like they either badly copy (see Gemini) or don’t think about what they’re offering (see Stadia’s busted business model) they’re content to milk the existing services they’ve already got and make them worse by cramming in more ads (see YouTube, Google’s search result pages) and they cut out or dictate the web through their monopolies (see AMP and Chrome) rather than working with other parties to make good products.

They feel like Hooli in Silicon Valley, basically the definition of a fat tech giant who doesn’t do any innovation of their own.

I feel the original Chromecast was probably the last truly great original Google product, it was simple, it was inexpensive and it worked - you just plugged it in, joined your network and you were off, there really wasn’t anything like it at the time.

I really hate what they’ve become.

Cool, now do Chrome!

I’m currently using the iOS 18 beta and - during an earlier beta (3 I think) - Screen Time was broken in that it didn’t let you change the settings or extend a session, it would just crash.

This actually made the feature useful! You could no longer just click a button to skip the warnings, you had to actually stop when the time was up. Sure it was a bit annoying but that’s the whole point.

So yea, I’ve been thinking of getting my partner to change the PIN for it so I can’t skip the warnings in the future.

It’s not a bad feature, it’s just often poorly configured and badly implemented.

I really hate the corporate IT.

I was at a job that was slowly transitioning from a medium sized company to a larger one, initially we were allowed just install and use whatever on our machines, but gradually IT started implementing policies where if we wanted to add something it had to go through a request system and usually it would be denied.

As a software developer this was just infuriating, it would hold up work, force us to use shitty software (like Chrome and Edge) and there would often be fuck ups where installing a new version of software would require removal of the old one and installation of a new one - which would trigger the approval process again.

Like - I get it - some people can’t be trusted, but we were some of the key devs for the companies product, we know what we’re doing.

I was rather happy to leave that part of the company behind when I left.

Destiny was supposed to be their “forever” game, the problem is that after 2 dozen expansions:

1. New players are extremely intimidated about joining
2. Old players dislike losing the content they’ve paid for when it’s vaulted
3. Long term players will eventually get bored of playing the same thing they’ve been playing for years

Live service games just won’t last forever like they want them to.

Something to hold onto whilst you strain for a poop

Apple Maps and Fastmail.

Fastmail is paid but the 1Password and disposable email address system makes it worth it for me.

I went through a period of de-googling a couple of years ago. Swapping browser, mobile os, search engine, storage, maps, music, video purchases, voice assistant and even email service was relatively simple, there are alternatives out there which do the job just as well if not better than what Google offer.

The only exception is YouTube, yea there are individual sites that occasionally offer some of the videos I want (often with a subscription attached), there are some federated systems like NewPipe which have some videos but there is no one offering remotely the quantity or quality of what you can get on YouTube for free.

As the article states, it’s basically a monopoly at this point without a viable alternative.

Not OP, but those people are just not my friends any more.

We had one person in our group say she wanted to delete facebook and we were all “Yea, alright then” and just moved that group to discord.

I’ve still got an account but use it way less these days since all the people I really cared about were in that group.

WhatsApp for family Discord for friends Slack for work iMessage / SMS for everyone else

Their software is very early and honestly not quite fully baked yet.

The search engine is great though!

I haven’t had this issue for a long time now, I’ve maybe done a Google search once in the last year and the results from it weren’t any better than those from DDG, plus the amount of excess shit on a Google SERP makes them utterly useless you are looking for the exact thing they’ve built a page for.

Chef or content manager?

They’re all in test flight, an online search will usually throw up their GitHub page with either a link to their lemmy communities and the TestFlight sign up page.

That was also mine, didn’t really have a clue about what it was going in (other than it had Nick Cage in) and enjoyed it pretty much all the way through, great movie!

There are a bunch of options each with their pros and cons, here’s what I’ve found so far:

Mlem

• Feels very Apollo like with things like slide to upvote and reply
• Doesn’t seem to be able to handle inline images and media (so you sometimes miss post information)
• Switching to new communities is not intuitive (you have to click the community name and type with the “Subscribed” toggle pane open)
• No guides on how Markdown works
• No message inbox

Memmy

• Has an inbox (not something I’ve seen from the others)
• Has Apollo like slide interactions
• Easy to find and switch communities
• Text is a little too small
• Found a couple of visual bugs (obviously this is all very beta!)

Liftoff

• Seems to show all the post information you could want (community it was posted too, which community that user is part of, etc)
• Feels a little bit like the official reddit app
• No Apollo like slide interactions
• Some interesting choices when trying to find communities (showing the full sidebar)
• Colours are a little constrasty
• A couple of UI bugs
• I don’t love the rounded corners on everything out of the box

Thunder

• Pretty polished
• Slide interactions are great
• Nice Markdown editor
• Not found any graphical bugs
• Some UI elements (subbing / unsubbing from a community) aren’t always clear
• Written in flutter so may not give a true “native” experience

Personally I think I’m gonna stick with Thunder for a bit, but I’m swapping daily at this point.

Given that any development on these really only kicked into gear in the last few weeks everything these devs are doing is incredible, they’ve all come a long way in such a short time!