I have the Moondrop Chu 2, an awesome IEM that works really well, but the brass nozzle it has easily oxidises, especially given that I live in a relatively humid climate, so green bits keep on clogging the nozzle and need to be cleaned out. Are there any good value options (let's say under 100 ideally) that don't have a brass nozzle (or similarly corrosive materials)?

Important: I didn't create this project, I just think it works pretty well for my usecase

I do know that Betterbird, a fork of Thunderbird, has a systray icon for Linux, but I don't require the few power user features that Betterbird adds, and the developer is pretty hostile towards Thunderbird (despite their project being a very close fork of it).

On the Arch Wiki, systray-x was mentioned as an option, and it works really well! (Birdtray is another one mentioned by the Arch Wiki, but it hasn't been updated for 3 years, so I went with systray-x.) It's pretty customisable as well, it's very easy to change the icon as well as the behaviour for startup, minimising, and closing the window. It has also been packaged in the official Arch repos, which is always nice (the repos are usually more reliable + often faster than the AUR), as well as for other distro families too. It looks like there are separate versions for KDE (what I'm using) and GNOME, which is neat!

It is a little janky though. For instance, if you select startup in tray, it opens the full window before minimising to the tray. It still works quite well for me though!

edit: Forgot to mention one thing, you need to force Wayland for Thunderbird for systray-x to work on Wayland desktops!

Like the phrase "peeping tom" is used to refer to a creep trying to see somebody else using the bathroom. What on Earth did this Tom character do to become the definition of such a creep?

Why are women who do not have traditionally feminine traits sometimes called tomboys? Why Tom?

And why do people say "Bob's your uncle"? Was this Bob a super helpful and reliable guy, so much so that his name is used for the definition of something being finished and done?

And the playing card representing an aristocratic / upper class man is called Jack, who is this Jack? Why do people say a "jack of all trades", was this Jack character incredibly talented? Or is it related to the playing card, where they are good at everything but not the best (i.e. a king or queen)

I know of a few that are of religious origin, like the Achilles's heel after Greek mythology, and the bumpy bit of your throat is called Adam's apple is biblical.

It's the same design as last year, the main changes are the new chips (Wildcat Lake), so better performance and power efficiency, the backlit keyboard (which happens to use open-source ZMK firmware), and a fingerprint reader that will work OOTB on Linux!

However, it's still using the same display that has not so great colours (they are "working on it", but no schedule for when it'll be released), and memory prices make it too expensive for anybody who doesn't already have RAM and storage available. For the people upgrading from the old gen, it's kind of neat that you can just get the fingerprint reader, main board, or backlit keyboard.

It's also really neat that it will ship with Fedora OOTB, and the prebuilt is now the Sage colourway since they found that to be the most popular over grey (hooray for colourful computers!)

Why should you never invite a circuit board designer to prom?

After the first write, they will leave you on read(-only mode)

::: spoiler why? PROM is Programmable Read-Only Memory, which can be written to only once, after which it is read-only :::

What does the maintainer say when asked whether one can contribute to their permissively licensed project?

M I Teasing you? Of course you can add Apache 2!

::: spoiler why? MIT and Apache 2(.0) are both permissive open-source licenses, and they replace parts of the phrases "Am I teasing" and "a patch too".

I think you pronounce Apache like paper mache, with a shey rather than a tch, but it nearly works! :::

Why did the animated graphic end so quickly? It was in a GIFfy! (for the people who advocate for a soft G)

What did the villain say to the protagonist in a popular meme? GIF me your power! (for the people who prefer a hard G)

What do you call a Japanese style of mood boards? JPEGboards!

It uses the same chip and display as the RG34XXSP, and it looks like the only functional differences are all downsides. You don't get sticks and the screen is also a bit dimmer/less saturated, despite on paper being the same spec, and there is also less RAM. Being a newer device, it's also more expensive too.

The other differences seem to be aesthetic, the metallicy finish is neat, but the colours are not nearly as interesting as the GC purple, Pikachu yellow, or deep blue. You also have less forehead in favour of a chin as well.

It's kind of neat if you want an alternative with no sticks, but the higher price for an effectively identical product isn't great.

For context, I am flashing the extended storage Vue After Free onto a drive marketed as "256GB", but it's actually a few GB short for some reason. (guide for context: https://github.com/Vuemony/vue-after-free#extended-storage-setup)

The drive I have has 234.3 GiB (~252GB), while the image of Vue After Free is 258 GiB (~256GB), so it cannot flash. Tried both KDE ISO image writer and balenaetcher. Is there any way to force the image to be written, as far as I understand, most of that 256GB is actually empty and it's only because the PS4 requires a 256GB drive to register an external drive.

The way I see it, it looks like I could either a) spoof the drive into reporting as 256GB (it's nearly there anyways), and undo that once I need to use it normally again or b) force the image to be flashed despite the storage on the drive being just short, and hoping the PS4 agrees with it given it's not exactly 256GB

edit: Attempting to use dd to write the image to the drive, if that doesn't work I'll just get a later (but slower) drive

Technically Luanti isn't a Linux-exclusive game, but it is open-source and I am running it on Linux natively (EndeavourOS, which is based on Arch!)

I have tried out Asuna and Mineclonia, two of the most popular survival games on Luanti. The screenshots are all from Asuna, as that was the one I enjoyed playing the most. Mineclonia is trying its best to replicate Minecraft, meaning you become more critical of things that are a bit different (a little like how people often complain more about Windows clone Linux distros vs ones that are doing their own thing), but I think Asuna was a more enjoyable experience because there were a lot of improvements to the gameplay over Minecraft.

For example, the 3x3 crafting grid is in your inventory in Asuna, so you don't need to bring crafting tables everywhere! There's also a built-in recipe list, and it's actually super useful as you can also see the recipes a certain item is used in when you double click, so if you selected cobblestone, it would show you the pickaxe recipe, stairs recipe, etc. Sprinting in Asuna is very speedy too, apparently it's a 100% speed increase, which is kind of insane, but it does deplete your hunger very quickly. One more thing about the UI, I also like that the tooltips of the items show you their properties (like bounciness or durability). I'm a bit puzzled by the "research" tab though, it seems to eat an item and tells me the item group (which seems like useless information unless I'm missing something? There's also a level indicator which gains xp if you feed multiple of the same item, not sure what that's about)

There's also more mobs, more blocks (especially the decorative kind, there was a lot more variants on the different types of stone for example), and lots more biomes as well. It feels like some sort of modded Minecraft where you have a bunch of new bits to explore again, and the terrain generation is more interesting as well! In my little base, I used "chrysoprase", which is a green stone, and it's a bit like deepslate or blackstone in Minecraft where you can use it in place of cobblestone in recipes, and you can make walls, bricks, etc. In fact, all the stone variants (of which there were many, including different coloured granites, the bright green chrysoprase, dark green jade, and probably lots more others I haven't discovered) can be used like this, while in Minecraft that isn't the case.

There are even plenty of new animals, in particular I love that birds spawn flying in the sky! The main hostile mobs I encountered were slimes, and there were many variants with different properties. For example, aquatic slimes have a slight glow, while poison slimes leave damaging goo on the floor. It's a bit like that colourful slime mod for Minecraft where you can get all sorts of colours of slime for your builds! I also noticed that some of the slimes stole my items, and that they drop them once I kill them (accompanied by a delightful squish animation), which is also new!

It's pretty cool how you can install mods super easily in Luanti, though Asuna already includes a lot of the mods by default. I also like that it's super easy to set up multiplayer, it's just a checkbox to host a temporary server (and I believe you can set up an always-on server as well)

There are some "missing" bits though. My main gripe is that there is no swimming in Asuna by default, making crossing water quite difficult. There is a mod that adds swimming animations, but they don't increase speed and are quite buggy as well. Additionally, there are some bugs, as chickens have repeatedly disappeared in front of me. No idea why, and it's only once I have them safe in my pen! The pathfinding of the animals is also not as good, the chickens can't go around the open fence gate door when following the seeds. You also won't get compatibility with all the existing Minecraft worlds, mods, and shaders, but that's to be expected. I play with shaders in Minecraft sometimes so that is something I miss. There is native controller support in Luanti as well, and in Java edition Minecraft, that requires a mod like Controlify!

I don't have much else to complain about though, it's simply really fun to try something new and fresh once in a while. If you have any questions, let me know!

p.s. does anyone know what the "research" thing does in Asuna? There's not much documentation on the game online (another upside for Minecraft, there is a VAST swath of information online about every little feature)

cross-posted from: https://sopuli.xyz/post/49973967

Aside from audio issues, the initial cutscene played fine, if a bit laggy on my laptop. When loaded into the game, it appears that all the textures are missing, and although the game is functionally fine (you can swing, collide with objects, hear dialogue, etc.), it's pretty unplayable as you can't see anything that isn't next to a bright light source. It looked pretty cool though, but definitely not what I want to enjoy the game (by the way, when on Earth did games exceed 100GB? That's mad!)

I am running the game with Steam + Proton Experimental, with "SteamDeck=1 %command%" as launch arguments (it was a fix online that enabled the game to run in the first place!).

My laptop has an Intel i7-1360p with Intel Iris Xe graphics, no dGPU. So, potato performance.

some more screenshots:

The problem is that my iGPU simply doesn't have enough memory to load the textures

Aside from audio issues, the initial cutscene played fine, if a bit laggy on my laptop. When loaded into the game, it appears that all the textures are missing, and although the game is functionally fine (you can swing, collide with objects, hear dialogue, etc.), it's pretty unplayable as you can't see anything that isn't next to a bright light source. It looked pretty cool though, but definitely not what I want to enjoy the game (by the way, when on Earth did games exceed 100GB? That's mad!)

I am running the game with Steam + Proton Experimental, with "SteamDeck=1 %command%" as launch arguments (it was a fix online that enabled the game to run in the first place!).

My laptop has an Intel i7-1360p with Intel Iris Xe graphics, no dGPU. So, potato performance.

some more screenshots:

edit: The problem is that my iGPU simply doesn't have enough memory to load the textures. Thanks, everyone!

Fairphone: repairable and modular, microSD expansion slot, support custom ROMs well, mobile Linux support is great, BUT no audio jack

Their Fairbuds XL are pretty good value with easily replaceable batteries

Sony Xperia: good custom ROM support, excellent cameras, audio jack + microSD card slot, BUT flagship "1" series is very expensive

Google Pixels: plenty of custom ROMs, including GrapheneOS, BUT poor battery life, overheating issues, not great value

Get Pixels used! You'll save money and will avoid financing Google!

Shiftphone and Volla: both have excellent custom ROM support and are unique devices BUT generally poor value purely based on the hardware specs

Shiftphone is repairable and modular, like the Fairphone, while Volla treats mobile Linux as a first-class citizen, so they are about equal footing in my opinion

HMD: Decently repairable, relatively affordable, BUT not the best custom ROM support, mostly unremarkable

(I do not recommend devices below this point for most people)

Motorola: headphone jack, usually very cheap, BUT not the best custom ROM support, mostly unremarkable

Motorola is only this high because of the headphone jack

Nothing: gimmicky while being less repairable, forcing AI into their devices (e.g. "Spaces" button that cannot be remapped, LLM-generated widgets), poor custom ROM support in their newer devices

Vivo and Xiaomi: best cameras (big sensors and extensive software processing), excellent battery life, BUT poor software experience with few devices supporting custom ROMs

Xiaomi has the advantage of a wider hardware selection across all price ranges

I have personally experience with the struggles of OriginOS (Vivo's spin), I would not recommend it. It is tolerable, but incredibly annoying and quite bloated too

Oppo: excellent cameras, great battery life, BUT poor software experience, poor custom ROM support

Redmagic: gaming phone, large battery, BUT poor software experience, not great if you want a regular phone

Samsung: OneUI is nearly as bad as the likes of HyperOS, lacking hardware, poor value, no custom ROM support

Asus: they suck in seemingly every category, poor software support

Some of their older small phones could be saved by custom ROMs though, but they are harder to find!

If you want to run a Chinese OEM device for the cool hardware, I would recommend a custom launcher (like Kvaesitso or Lawnchair) and the use of ADB to remove all the unnecessary bloatware. You could do something similar with Samsung devices too (you don't get good hardware on Samsung so I would avoid buying a new one, but if it's what you got, try to make it a bit nicer by debloating it!)

One more thing: if you are interested in emulation, you are better off getting a device with a Snapdragon chip since those have the best custom driver support. Many of the Chinese OEMs use Mediatek chipsets, and Samsung infamously puts the Exynos chip on most of their devices. Pixels use the Tensor chipset, but if you are getting a Pixel you probably aren't doing anything high performance anyways haha. My (Vivo) phone has a Mediatek chipset, which is more than powerful enough, but it can't do Switch emulation because of graphics driver issues. 3DS played fine though

LTT is incredibly corporate (+ a private jet??), Mrwhosetheboss is super AI-pilled (generated "hand painted" wallpaper of him and wife? Really?), Marques has his own controversies (e.g. exceeding highway speeds in a school zone, wallpaper app cashgrab, etc. + he does not seem to have any concept of value or budget), Gamers Nexus has their own problems (e.g. they claimed how Matrix could be Israeli spyware, with the source being a poorly received Reddit comment), etc.

Wendell from Level1Techs is still quite good and relatively out of controversy, perhaps because he doesn't target a general audience like the above? Veronica Explains (Linux and adjacent topics) and Jeff Geerling (primarily self-hosting and networking bits) are also great in their niches. Salem Techspurts (the greatest technician to ever live) and Hugh Jeffreys both cover topics relating to right to repair and they make interesting videos around vintage electronics as well!

Are there any other good tech creators that are not super corporate, not AI-pilled, and outside of controversy?

As for me, mine are:

Sandshrew line, Lapras, and Cubone line (Kanto)

Cyndaquil line, Mareep line, and Wooper line (Johto)

Mudkip line, Metagross line, Aggron line, and Flygon line (Hoenn)

Turtwig line (best starter!), Piplup line, and the Gastrodon line (Sinnoh)

Oshawott line, Roggenrola line, Scolipede line, Reuniclus line, Litwick line, and the Golurk line (Unova)

Espurr line, Flabebe + Floette (not Florges), and the Chespin line (Kalos)

Rowlet line, Lurantis line, Marshadow, Poipole line, and the Alolan forms of the Sandshrew line (ice steel is such a cool typing!) and Marowak (fire stick!) (Alola)

The Meltan line is also very cute, Gen 7 but technically not Alola

Falinks, Corviknight line, Snom, and Copperajah line (Galar)

Best legendary is definitely Kyogre, because whales are cool. Marshadow is second though. Volcarona isn't legendary but would be the top pick if it was. Best starter is Turtwig, followed by Mudkip and Rowlet.

There are 193 UN recognised countries, two UN observer states (the Vatican and the Palestinian Authority), and plenty of partially recognised or disputed countries. But what if there was more?

Leaving aside factors like natural resources, stability, population, etc., what countries do you want to exist, simply because it would be pretty neat? Joke answers are acceptable and encouraged.

There is a surprising number of gems in F-Droid. Simon Taltham's Puzzles is excellent, as is Breakout 71. Shattered Pixel Dungeon is fun too, and of course I live emulating games with Retroarch. Lichess is neat and has a lovely Android client if you play chess.

Any other good games on F-Droid?

Alphabetical order?

Asus produce the "Zenfone" line, which used to make sub 6" devices but those have unfortunately been discontinued in favour of the more profitable big screen devices (and not even good ones at that). They also have their ROG line, which are large gaming phones that are now pretty much rebranded Zenfones with a gimmicky LED matrix on the back. I would avoid them, as software support for the smaller phones has ended and their big ones aren't really worth it. And Asus's support is notably jot great, speaking from experience with an Asus laptop.

Fairphone is aiming to produce devices that are repairable and modular, and most of the major parts are easily replaceable with simple screwdriver. They are also working towards using more ethically sourced materials in their devices, which is pretty cool of them! They have good custom ROM support, and many of their devices can even run mobile Linux! Still a little miffed about the lack of a headphone jack though, but at least the wireless headphones they sell have replaceable batteries

HMD makes phones as well, mostly budget to midtier devices, but many of them are pretty repairable as well!

Motorola makes some neat lower end devices, and often times they retain SD card support and the headphone jack, but they are pretty unremarkable otherwise, as it looks like a lot of their budget is going towards licensing Pantone colourways. They have announced a collaboration with GrapheneOS though for a (currently) unreleased device, so maybe that will be something to consider in the future?

Nothing has some cool designs that are a bit hut or miss, but unfortunately, they usually aren't as repairable, are super AI-pilled (LLM generated apps and an AI button that can't be remapped? Really?), and their recent devices don't support custom firmwares, despite their claim to being open to the community.

OnePlus is usually pretty good, but their recent OP15 kind of dropped the ball, becoming an iPhone clone with a giant battery. The OP13 is still really good though, and it has excellent cameras and battery life too. Plus, custom ROM support! One more thing, the OP6 is old but still a neat device if you want to try out something like postmarketOS. That OLED screen still looks great!

Oppo has a lot of great devices, their flagships have recently received high praise and their midrange devices are excellent too. ColorOS isn't the best though, it looks to be about on oar with Samsung in terms of bloat (but not as bad as Xiaomi or Vivo)

Pixels have poor performance for the money, they overheat, have terrible battery life, and decent cameras. Their redeeming quality is that, at least up to the Pixel 10 series, they support GrapheneOS, as well as many alternate spins of Android, which is awesome! Most other modern phones don't support any kind of alternative ROM.

Redmagic makes some interesting gaming phones that seem to be more focused than the ROG ones, with no camera bump, massive batteries, and an under-display selfie camera, while being relatively good value for the performance you get. If you're into gaming phones, Redmagic is probably what you want to look for.

Samsung is a bit stale and their stock software is as bloated as many of the Chinese manufacturers (though certainly not the worst), and none of their recent devices support custom ROMs. They make a bazillion different models though, many of them are good value, but others, not so much.

Shiftphone is similar to Fairphone where they emphasise right to repair, but they go a step further with a universal battery between all their devices as well as physical kill switches for the cameras and microphone. The hardware is not as mature and custom ROM support is not as developed, but in the future they could give Fairphone some competition!

Sony is the one of the only brands to continue rocking headphone jacks and microSD expansion support in their devices, and they aren't afraid of a slight forehead or chin (that is, they have front speakers with no camera cutout). Their main cameras are quite good and have optical zoom as well in their highest end models, and they have pretty good support by LineageOS (including a lot of the Xperia 1 devices as well as the cheaper 10 VII). Their flagship models are very expensive though, so either go used for an older 1 series or get the 10 VII.

Volla makes some interesting phones that try to be more minimal, and you can get Ubuntu Touch on them too! If you're into that sort of thing, they could be worth checking out.

Vivo has excellent cameras for the price, and the rest of the hardware is nice too, particularly battery life. But OriginOS is very nagging and not fun to use at all, as somebody with a Vivo device. It's usable once you install something like a custom launcher, but the "security scan" app pop ups are infuriating!

Xiaomi is the Samsung of China, they make a bazillion different phones and plenty more other tech stuff too (vacuum cleaners, smart home stuff, TVs, supercar EVs, all sorts), and as for the phones, most of them are very good value for what you get, whether it's a flagship Xiaomi or a more budget Redmi / Poco device. However, particularly in the lower end market, the software is often filled with advertisements and such. It looks like their flagship phones don't have that anymore though. And like Samsung, their modern hardware doesn't support custom ROMs unfortunately.

Hi all, I would like to find a (local) Markdown editor that has both a live editor and can also open folders of MD files like a code editor. Currently, I am using Markor, which is awesome and works just like your normal code editor, but there is no live editing.

I would prefer if the app was customisable too, like how Markor lets you change the toolbar items. Additional functionality like Markor's to-do list feature is not necessary.

Obsidian is pretty neat but is not FOSS and creates "vaults" for your notes, making them less portable (I'd rather have something that can just opens any folder of MD files)

Joplin is a really nice program too with live editing, but again, it doesn't really work like Markor where you can open any sort of folder

Often, we call the stages of a star its "life cycle", and I've been thinking about this for a bit.

Stars meet many of the requirements for living organisms: they can consume matter, they can react to stimuli (sort of, does gravity count? e.g. binary systems), they can reproduce (they expel gas clouds on death that can eventually create new stars), they can grow and change size over their lifespan, and they maintain equilibrium (between gravity and radiation pressure from fusion)

What stops stars from being considered living objects?

edit: as it turns out, the formation of new stars after death doesn't really count as reproduction, and gravity shouldn't count as stimuli (a rock experiences gravity too, but it doesn't react to stimuli)

Which do you think would be more important when going to a new place: being able to understand and speak the language like a native, knowing the customs and practices of the place, or understanding the streets like somebody who has lived there for decades?

edit: as somebody described it, it's language vs customs vs lay of the land

Both the U.S. and (the People's Republic of) China are trying to establish the first lunar outposts, and it is possible that we will see lunar colonies within our lifetimes. When that happens, do you think there will be a movement towards independence, just as the colonies of Britain, France, Spain, etc. vyed for freedom? Would this be peaceful or violent, and how would either work? How realistic is an independent lunar nation, given the hostile living conditions? What would lunar culture look like? Would it be a mix of American and Chinese culture, or something new entirely?

Or do you think the Moon and other bodies in our Solar System will become internationally run (and protected) areas, a bit like how Antarctica is on Earth?