I've noticed that my phone's home screens have become a bit cluttered and figured it's about time to clean it up. So I tried searching online and found tons of recommendations and suggestions, but figured I would ask users here if anyone has any tips for productivity or efficiency, or just something that works for you. Might give me some good ideas to try out, and hopefully can benefit anyone else reading this thread.

Do you have tons of home screens or just one with a ton of folders? Do you use many widgets or not at all? Do you organize apps by how frequently you use them? Or how similar the apps are to each other? By color of the app icon? Or something else entirely?

Seriously, any help/suggestions/ideas would be appreciated.

It’s been a few weeks now since the release of iOS 17.4, which

[…] provides new options for app marketplaces, web browsers and payments for residents of the European Union. […]

Now, don’t get me wrong, I am a firm believer in the underlying regulation to it, and have been ever since the possibility of this becoming a reality was in the Brussels air. But so far, I haven’t really been able to come up with a truly practical use case.

Furthermore, I haven’t seen any marketing for an Epic Store, Meta Store, or similar “app marketplaces”, but this may be attributed to the still rather… wobbly legal situation surrounding, notably, still having to direct payments to Apple while not using their store for app distribution. I don’t think there has been any follow-up from Apple (or the EU) that retracts these conditions.

So: Have any fellow EU resident ~tech’ies done anything fun or interesting with this new freedom yet?

To those not affected by this regulation, what would you like to “sideload”, or are perhaps already sideloading on Android?

Do any of you think big companies will move their entire palette onto an alternative store anytime soon, e.g. Facebook and sister products? To be honest, I doubt this will happen, otherwise it would’ve long occurred on the Google Play Store as well.

My ideas were:

• I’ve thought about trying to install Minecraft (the full version, probably using Pojav), or a game of similar caliber, on my phone just for fun and to see how well the iPhone GPU really fares against a “real” game, but didn’t find the time yet for looking into it.
• Also personally, I’d love to see a real “root-capable” shell on iOS, but I don’t think that will ever be a thing irrespective of how much sideloading Apple is forced to allow into their OS.

Since I know quite a few tilderinos use Kagi (far higher percentage than the standard population) I figured this might interest some of you.

Kagi pushed out a new Dark theme that is not dark. It's possibly even worse than Googles non-dark official Dark mode.

Here is a CSS fix you can throw in your custom css section in settings that I whipped up for some people in the Discord, should be useful.

    :root {  
  --custom-bg-color: #090c10;

  --search-result-gap: 20px;
  --search-result-gap-mobile: 10px;
  --app-bg: var(--custom-bg-color);
  --search-result-title: #fff;
  --primary-visited: #aaa;
  /*! --quick-search-bg: #000; */
  --color-search-input: var(--custom-bg-color);
  --result-item-title-border: rgba(255,255,255,0.25);
  --search-result-date-bg: rgba(255,255,255,0.15);
}

.__sri-time {
  font-size: 12px;
  border-radius: 2px;
  margin-right: 3px
}

.__sri-desc {
  padding-top: 3px;
}

.__sri-title {
  margin-bottom: 5px;
}

.__sri-url .__sri_url_path_box {
  margin-top: 0px;
}

@media screen and (max-width: 1300px) {
  .search-result, .sri-group {
    padding-top: 0px !important;
    padding-bottom: 0px !important;
    margin-bottom: var(--search-result-gap-mobile) !important;
  }
}  

This fixes the colors, padding, and some other general weirdness they introduced. They also don't follow their own variable specs so I introduced two new ones in there so you can modify to your liking (namely padding between links on mobile and desktop).

This is a question I eventually ask about every social media site I use(d). I like Tildes, and the discussions here are much more constructive than any other place I've seen, however I've seen it to be true even here. When one doesn't curate their feed, and use the default home page, the negative topics seems to dominate. I'm talking about the topics that talk about problems and what's wrong with something, often with titles implying the awfulness or emergency of such a problem. I think I don't need to elaborate on how this is much more prevalent and extreme on other sites. But nevertheless, it's a recurring pattern even here.

I know the argument that goes that humans are problem-fixing machines, and that there are psychological incentives to focus on problems. However, this seems overly reductive and lacking in explanatory power to me. Outside of internet, this is not a phenomenon I've experienced with people, unless they were mentally going through something very rough. Otherwise, people generally seem to talk about neutral or positive issues. And even while talking about negative issues, the tone often isn't grim, and doesn't leave a depressive aftertaste.

Even on the internet, in smaller spaces and more closed spaces, like chatting servers, this doesn't seem to hold true. Sure, there are politically-oriented, and therefore problem-oriented spaces even there, but most spaces don't seem to be that way. Back when I used Facebook too, while the posts were vain, most of my friends and acquaintances were just interested in sharing and commenting on social lives.

So I think this is a problem that is more endemic to "open" social media sites, with easily accessible and open-to-public spaces, rather than applying to the whole humanity or even every internet space. Its one of my biggest head scratchers about social media sites. So far I couldn't find a satisfactory explanation in the literature either. Doesn't mean there isn't, but I haven't stumbled upon such.

So, I'm interested in your opinions: Why do negative topics dominate on open social media sites, even here, unless curated against? Why is this such a strong recurring pattern for sites structured like this, while it's not in other online and physical spaces and interections I mentioned?

I'm not talking about the unsubscribe button that is at the bottom of an email that takes you to the sender's website to unsubscribe. I'm talking about the button that occasionally shows up in outlook or apple mail that is delivered by the application.

I have clicked unsubscribe using the built in unsubscribe button in outlook and apple mail, only to receive more junk mail from that origin later that day. These buttons don't seem to do anything. What are they doing behind the scenes that is supposed to be getting you off mailing lists?

This behaviour is thankfully not common on tildes? But like, I understand that if they try to pass off as their own argument. But what with the preface "I ask ChatGPT" and then end with "I don't know enough about topic" or "What do you think". What do they think how that contribute to the discussion? If OP want to ask ChatGPT-like answer, they can just log on and do it right there and then. And they clearly know the stigma and drawback of it (at least I hope so), but still believe it has enough factual information in the answer despite having little or no knowledge of the topic in question (Otherwise they will edit the output or outright just provide it).

(Sorry, if this come out not clearly, I am not very good as convey my idea, even in my native language)

I've seen a lot of posts about email providers, but what about email clients?

What email client have you been using? What makes it work better for you than the default client? Does it have any notable features that you didn't know you needed?

This is an off-the-cuff, stream-of-consciousness post, so IDK how much sense it'll make.

This idea of quitting the Internet is not new for me, but it's also never been a serious, "consider-the-pros-v-cons" plan, either. Just a kind of knee-jerk reaction to seeing things online that remind me (more and more often, these days) that the 'Net is not what I hoped-and-wanted it to be, and it is becoming less like it, daily.

But in recent months, for me, I find myself thinking about it more, more often, and more seriously.

For a bit of context, I am a software developer (I guess), 20+ years in the field, more back-end than front-end, but quite a lot of web development, too. And I've been burned out in my field for the last several years, working occasionally, but mostly just living off of savings ... watching them dwindle, while I try to figure out what else to do with my life.

I also think there is some kind of burgeoning groundswell towards some similar ideas ... many people becoming more and more disgusted with what corporations and governments have done and are doing to it, trying to find some way to walk away from it w/o completely severing themselves from the modern world. The latest generation of AI and the new magic word, "enshittification" are certainly making more people realize that the 'Net is not headed in a good direction.

I could so easily go into a long-winded rant about "this isn't the Internet we were promised", and yada ... but whatever. It is what it is, and many people are happy with it, and many, many more are just quietly resigned to it being a necessary part of life.

For many, many years, I have explored online alternatives, the dark web, assorted distributed-network ideals like Hyperborea and IPFS. I keep seeing potentials, but nothing that ever coalesces.

Again, just stream-of-consciousness here ... anyone else ever find themselves seriously considering this, or something similarly drastic?

Hesitating between posting this as a comment or a topic but here we are.

While reading this Tildes post (and the blog post) about tiny undervalued hardware, a curiosity sparked in my head.

How do you organize and store your cables, tiny hardware, and other stuff? Mine are like a bunch of rat tails tangled up inside a plastic box.

I live in a small apartment (for now) and would like to hear your thoughts. And recommendations.

We don’t have to limit ourselves to just wires and cables. For example, I also have old phones, external CD players, etc.

Bonus points if it’s portable and you could travel with your “tiny hardware”.