You can contribute. File bug reports. This is the most important thing just people can do.

Relevant Xkcd

As I understand, most iphone users do have issues. I remember hearing that people with Androids in their selfies are measurably less likely to match on Tinder

Every single time I go to use Amazon, they offer me either free Prime, or like 1 week for $2. I'll never subscribe again.

I will start pronouncing bike like nike

Exactly what I did. I put Lemmy in it's place

There's openauto, which seems to be an Android Auto emulator. https://bluewavestudio.io/shop/openauto-pro-car-head-unit-solution/

PilotDrive is more interesting. New, and not as powerful, but built from the ground up. https://github.com/lamemakes/pilot-drive

I'm hosting Photoprism, now. But man, do I just barely use it. I'm not a photographer, and I always have the worst camera of anyone around me, so I'm never taking pictures. It's running, and I'm not taking it down. But it did teach me to use docker compose. I switched everything I had after that.

Matrix was one that was hard to justify. It was just too heavy. My dream has always been "use one app for all communication". I bridged Signal, Discord, and Facebook. Problem number 1 was that SMS is like impossible to set up. Problem 2 no one uses Signal except me and my wife. Problem 3 was that my Facebook got flagged for suspicious activity, and they wanted my ID to recover it. I used this as a chance to ditch Facebook, but I also ditched Matrix at this time. Signal supports SMS, so I could do more with it than Matrix. I'll probably try again down the line.

My most used service is definitely my music service, Navidrome. You might try it, it's very light. I used to keep all my files on my phone like you. And my phone had an SD slot, so storage wasn't an issue. But I couldn't listen from any of my computers, or at work. After I made the switch, I painstakingly re-'aquired' all of my music in FLAC, and have my phone set with a size limit of music to cache, as well as always downloading my favorites.

If you're at all interested in downloading your music, you could look into deemix.

Go used. Your experience used or refurbished will be much better than a new phone at that price point.

2 ago I got a OnePlus 8 Refurb from Amazon with all of it's protections for $300. It just got it's last Android update, but has a very active ROM scene, so I potentially have another 2 years out of this.

Even buying this exact phone, and I'm sure you can do better, you'll have a better experience than a new sub $200 phone. I've seen people buy new Samsung J series phones and barely be able to use them.

Just don't get a branded phone. Usually can't ROM them and they only work on the one carrier

Yeah, that's horrible. I've even met a lot of christians who really hate Catholic people.

You're the guy who's crushed by a building while Godzilla fights something else

And unfortunately, those companies have a huge leg up. They'll generally be the ones to write ads and tracking into the server. They'll get the investors money. They'll make the flashy ads they play on Facebook and TikTok.

What was fun as a kid was battling. My friend and I would hang out for a day, start a run of Pokemon emerald or diamond/pearl, and meet back the next weekend to battle

They can build an activitypub compliant app and service? They don't have to touch the open source project.

Apple has an amazing amount of influence. They could easily make the platform, and break it in an instance whenever they felt like it.

I give them the good old 'mmmhmmm, I hear ya', and move on. It shows I heard what they said, but don't care enough to respond. It's also a subtile acknowledge that I'm okay with letting them vent it out. This works in the office, anyway. YMMV at home.

Privacy is tricky. I've seen complaints that anything you post stays forever. But honestly, is that what you consider private?

Do you think it's more private to make and delete posts than to just use a VPN and an anonymous account? Having the ability to delete posts doesn't help your privacy at all. At least there's no advertisers being sold all our data.

And the chat thing really needs fixed. But for quick one-off messages, it's fine. Maybe just too exchange secured accounts

Me_irl

That's it.

I started with Photoprism, and once I got a workflow I liked, it's been hard to try anything new.

I synching my camera folder into a temp folder. I already run synching for my passwords and stuff, so getting the immich app would be a another app that's always running.

When immich adds file directory watching, I'll probably try it again