It amounts to the same thing, though. Whether you got a few months pay to carry you through or not you still lost your income, and there’s no guarantee you’ll ever find a job that matches it in pay, benefits, etc.

There never was a chance.

Generally when companies like this are bought it isn’t to acquire the talent. That’s legitimately what needs to be taken into account when it comes to things like antitrust. You want to buy out this company, are you buying it because you want their talent to join with yours to make something better? Cool. We’ll let you do that provided you do it today fair and competitive manner.

Any other reason for wanting to buy this company is going to need to be pretty heavily scrutinized.

The technology was created to replace voice actors. That’s the actual purpose. Its very existence hurts their profession and benefits studios. You can not be a studio, use this technology, and claim to care about ethics, anymore than Amazon can claim to care about the workers as it invests in the machines to replace them.

No one is holding a gun to their head forcing them to us AI. They made a choice. There is no “ethical” way to cripple the livelihood of working class people for the benefit of your business. Just stop using the word.

It doesn’t matter if you compensate or get their approval, because the fact is the existence of the technology in the industry effectively compels all voice actors to agree to let it use their voice, or they can’t get work. It becomes a false choice.

If there was no financial benefit, if it truly made no difference in how much a studio pays in labor or the amount the artists make, there would be no reason for studios to want to use it.

I bought Remake on launch day. Haven’t bought Rebirth yet. Not because I’m not interested, I’m very excited for it. It was mostly just because I don’t have a PlayStation 5 yet. And money’s been pretty tight for the last year or so.

Yes, nothing is exactly like Nova. But lots of other stuff is good too.

Then they aren’t good alternatives, they’re passable.

Seems crazy to me that the software that’s owned by an analytics company is also the one focused on giving the user the most customization options. None of the FOSS alternatives have the same mentality as Nova. They’re all focused more on minimalism, or evoking Pixel, or pushing a specific niche type of interface of their own design. None of them provide anywhere near as many tools to the user.

If I have to use a closed source app provided by an analytics company just to get a launcher that actually empowers the user, so be it. Maybe more of the FOSS alternatives could start taking note of why Nova is the most popular.

I think they’re talking about Nova.

It is significantly less than Nova. People keep suggesting it but it’s not a true replacement for those that were actually using Nova to its full potential. They’re frankly isn’t a replacement right now that goes all out on providing users customization options. That’s not in vogue anymore, apparently.

Agreed. Lawnchair was highly recommended, and when I tried it, I realized it’s recommended by people who were never actually utilizing Nova’s full potential. It’s basically just pixel launcher with more bells and whistles, and that’s not what I want. I use Nova because I wanted to make my own launcher that looked and worked exactly the way I wanted it to, not just be pixel launcher with some minor customizations.

People care about organizing their interfaces more than you, is that hard to understand?

The chances of some data being leaked is always possible but I’ll roll the dice if it means getting to keep using a launcher that’s not god awful or pixel-based until some other launchers become more mature.

If we’re were talking financial information or something, sure, the chance of leaks is a huge problem, but some usage analytics leaking is more annoying than anything else.

You didn’t have to yet.

Nova Launcher 7.0.57 is clean. It’s Nova 8 you want to avoid. Find an APK of 7.0.57 and it’ll work alongside the Prime app.

+1 for Tracker Control, though I will say updates are pretty slow. I’ve noticed a few things making it through every now and again.

You can stay on Nova 7, it’s not going to stop working. Nova 8 is what you want to avoid, so you just can’t let it update to a new version that will have all of the bullshit put in.

Obviously that’s not a permanent solution but there’s no reason to throw away Nova 7 right now if it’s works for you.

The last clean version was Nova 7.0.57

Install that APK, redownload the Nova prime app from Play store, they work together fine.

The last setting is called gestures. If you have navigation buttons enabled instead of nav gestures (see above) you could bind the home button to open the app drawer.

That would mean unbinding it from another feature. It feels kind of ridiculous that I have to devote my home button to something that should just be tappable on screen if three button navigation is being used.

Yeah I tried it too and that’s a major no go right there. The fact it’s based off pixel launcher is killing my interest out of the gate, but I at least hoped that it would provide the same degree of customization options and tools as Nova. Doesn’t look like it, and no ability to call the app drawer without swiping.

Frankly any app that pushes gestures as the default navigation method without respecting people that just want to use buttons and taps, I can’t say I’m interested.

Guess I’m sticking with Nova 7 until it just stops working.

You can download the APK of Nova 7, which was the last version before the buyout. It’s perfectly clean.

Just don’t update it.

Plan to just keep using it myself until it’s no longer viable, at which point I’ll look for a launcher that hopefully reached feature parity.

Oh I know, I’m still on Motorola because they have unlockable bootloaders and SD card slots. But in recent years they’ve started taking them out of some of their mid-range models.

Point is there should be more options. Removing the SD card slot is just a bullshit way to push cloud storage.

I know, and I do, but the point is choices shouldn’t be so limited. They should be standard.

Now can we please get them back in phones?

Firstly, check if certain apps you use from Google Play are on there too. Some, like Bitwarden, Wikipedia, or Jellyfin, are on fdroid too without Google’s bullshit. Some even have functionality on fdroid that they’re not allowed to have on the Play store.

After that, the Fossify suite of simple apps are very basic, no bullshit, non-Google system apps. Gallery in particular is popular.

If you like Sid Meiers Civilization, search for Unciv.

NewPipe for ad-free YouTube.

TrackerControl will let you block ads system wide. It’s kinda touchy and takes some finagling, though.

They say that, but I’ll believe it when I see the implementation.

It’s still going to artificially inflate Edge’s numbers from tech illiterate users that don’t know how to change it. There’s a significant number of users out there that will put up with Microsoft shitting down their throat before bothering to expend the few minutes it would take to learn how to change the settings themselves. The few that do try to figure it out will find Edge directing them to Bing which will make every effort to convince them not to do it. Meanwhile, Edge will steal all their bookmarks and tabs from Chrome, in order to further encourage users to just give up and use Edge.

It’s all calculated “dark patterns” shit, and it works. Microsoft counts on these people being so easy to corral.

And you can bet your ass after they implement this, they will push an update that “accidentally” resets the default back to Edge for everyone. Just to “clear the board”.

it stops malware from doing it

There are many different ways to prevent that apart from straight up removing the functionality. Another tactic Microsoft uses is trying to convince you there is only ever one way to secure the system and they “have no choice” if they want to keep their users safe.

It’s like saying the only way to keep a plane from being hi-jacked is to handcuff every passenger to their chair. It’s bullshit.

Forcing people to migrate to a worse version of their platform.

A worse version they’re paying for.

Thankfully Microsoft said they’re supporting classic Outlook through 2029. Otherwise pushing New Outlook as it exists now, without reducing the license price accordingly, would be almost straight up robbery.

But I have a sneaking suspicion that in the years to come they’re going to start removing access to classic Outlook from more of the 365 licensing options. You already can’t use it on F3 and some others, eventually they’ll pull it from everything expect the higher tiers as a way of forcing companies to move.

And you can bet your ass they’ll warn them sternly about 3rd party mail clients. Those “security risks” will keep them from seeking any alternatives, even if they’re completely safe.

Too many “I like to tinker more than I like my software to work” options

I fail to see how this is a problem. What are you suggesting here? Eliminate all those options so it looks nicer?

Legitimately, what makes New Outlook so fucking awful is that they did exactly this. They cut out half of the actual usability, options, and functionality of Outlook to make a “clean, lightweight experience”. And it’s objectively terrible as a replacement.

This sentiment that software needs to get dumber because people can’t stand having to look at a bunch of options can seriously die in a fire.

New Outlook is a web app in disguise and unlikely to full support local files like that. It doesn’t even support .PST.

Microsoft doesn’t want you managing email on the computer anymore, they want you to only be thinking about it as an aspect of the cloud.

To be fair, classic Teams is being killed in 10 days.

To be even fairer, there was no need for New Teams apart from Microsoft’s increasing desire to make everything a fucking web app.

i bet jobs could’ve yelled at spez about the API changes and gotten him to relent

Why would Jobs care? Reddit’s app goes through the app store, Apple gets a cut of any premium users buy on it.

And why would Spez relent to Jobs? Everything Spez is doing is to get maximum payout from the IPO and then cash out. He doesn’t give a shit about the actual site anymore.

Not to suggest you don’t deserve to be paid more, but it feels like the issue would more be that the people paying for the site aren’t instructing the people that develop it to make these accommodations.

Because I know plenty of devs that just straight up don’t give a shit about accommodating low-end devices, regardless of what they’re paid. It’s like a point of pride almost.

Hell, that’s the energy of the DontKillMyApp people: they just straight up think their app should use as many resources as it likes as long as it likes, and they shouldn’t have to be considerate in development. Strain on device be damned.

I’ve seen some that straight up admit they don’t even think the user should be able to kill an app process.

which only pixel phones provide (at least in terms of mainstream phones)

Mainstream phones? Pixel is a smaller market share than Motorola, and Motorola has unlockable bootloaders, and lineage supports a fair number of them.

The whole issue revolves around the fact Google is presuming a device is compromised or being used for illicit shit simply because root access is possible. If they put in effort to detect/prevent the actual problems they’re concerned about, this wouldn’t be as big a deal. This broad punishment for simply having root access is lazy and ridiculous.

It’s like if Windows apps just stopped working if they detected a local admin account. It’s patently absurd to assume the ability to access anything means the device is inherently “unsafe”.

For now. Google’s recent patterns would seem to indicate the future trajectory of Android to become even more hobbled.

I doubt it will ever be as closed as iPhone but there’s a point where the door is technically still open, just not in a way that really means much.

Who cares if it’s necessary? If people want to do it, they should be able to, without punishment.

When you root, you’re creating more flags for apps to detect, so you have to put in more effort to hide them all. That means a greater likelihood of something being detected if you missed it. It’s a trade off. You do have to learn a bit about what you’re doing and do some trial and error.

But the greater point is, if banking apps and wallet are important to you on that specific phone, you can either root and put in the effort to make it work, root and just do all that stuff from a browser, or not root at all.

Yeah, it’s annoying, but it isn’t the fault of Magisk or the rooting community, it’s Google and your banks fault for actively punishing you for using your own device the way you like.

Personally, I have two phones now. My main one is rooted, and if I need an app that breaks on root, I pull out the “clean” one (my old phone after factory reset). Use a hotspot if mobile.

Yeah, that was their point.

More likely he just doesn’t feel like maintaining it anymore now that he can’t make money off it. Seems like something he’d do.

Drastic has been around for a long time, and for a good while, it was the best supported one on Android. It was definitely worth the flat, one time $5 charge that I paid like 10 years ago.

Really, that’s the ideal: flat, reasonable charge for lifetime use of the software that is still getting updates a decade later.

But realistically speaking, the dev hasn’t actually done much work on it in the last few years beyond bug fixing (not that there’s much left to add in the first place). The price wasn’t terrible but the insistence on the keeping it paid hurt the ability to sideload it when you needed to. It should have been free a long time ago, especially after it got so much competition.

It’d be cool if, ya know, digital releases came with transferable, irrevocable licenses, and the freedom to create your own physical backups for your games without needing to “check in”.

But we won’t get that. We’ll never even get close to that.

So in lieu of that, we have to stick with the discs, because that’s the last distribution method where there were proper consumer protections in place.

We’re stuck with this dated format and it’s low storage space because these businesses have utterly refused to provide us the same benefits in the digital space as we got from the discs, and the trade-off for the convenience is unacceptable.

Meanwhile the custom features that I used to want became mostly standard within Android.

See, I’m the opposite.

I never used to flash ROMs or root my phone until Android 11. I won’t tolerate a device that tells me what I can and can’t access in the file explorer when I was previously able to. I won’t accept an Android OS that removes features I used and puts up barriers. And there are many things LineageOS let’s me do that stock won’t. Settings that get hidden and functions that get removed.

File explorer mostly.

LineageOS has needed exactly zero tinkering from me on the last three phones I’ve had.

I hear this all the time from people: “I used to root/flash and it was a hassle so I stopped.” And yet they still talk about it as if they’re doing it now.

What you remember is not how it currently is. Graphene and Lineage are stable ROMs. It’s not this nightmare people keep claiming it is