No, in a lot of ways the open Android roms keep getting better, despite every possible obstacle being thrown in their way. It’s easy to make a mature platform sound like it has “stalled”, when you’re comparing it to alternatives that are still so unusably bad that they have nowhere to go but up.

Do what you want, but get real. If you care more about making your ideals happen, maybe stop debating internet randos so feverishly, and start making pull requests.

Nothing that has or will happen can stop the parts of Android that are already open from remaining open. Yes there will be fewer choices. Yes this means alternative ROM makers will have no choice but to shoulder more of the development burden themselves. And yes this means there’s going to be significantly fewer open Android devices and new manufacturers will have to make the intentional effort to make and sell new devices that are free by design - a few of which already exist.

But no matter how many obstacles open Android has, the thing you’re ignoring is that it’s still in a far better place than mobile Linux. For a start, any device that respects rights enough to be Linux compatible will automatically be compatible with free and degoogled versions of Android as well.

What these growing problems are is a galvanizing call. Samsung, Xiaomi, and OnePlus, and Google were never our friends. Whatever their imperfections, at least Pine64, Purism, BQ, Planet Computers, Murena, Fairphone, F(x)tec, Volla, and SHIFT have sold hardware that was rights respecting by design. We need more companies or other organizations to do that, and we need to choose to buy and promote more devices like that.

And as that happens more, open Android and Linux are going to benefit equally, but there’s no getting around the fact that for now and the forseeable future, the open Android variants are still far more mature, far more feature-complete, way closer to the kind of user experience the vast majority of people expect, and far more established.

And again, probably the biggest missing thing we need there is an app marketplace that competes more directly with Google Play, that gives more devs good incentives to want to switch away from Play.

You might have better luck looking at the distros themselves. They’re not exactly great on any device yet, but there are cases where mobile Linux distros work at least equally or a little better on select Android phones than they do on dedicated Linux phones.

I get where this argument is coming from, but I don’t think there are meaningful differences in the success of gpl or other copyleft licenses, vs permissive ones (except maybe cases where someone was willing and able to enforce the gpl in court). Companies are no less capable of doing EEE with copyleft. There are also plenty of permissively licensed software projects that have gained a lot of popularity, just like some gpl ones have.

The difference in traction between Linux and BSD probably has more to do with the same kinds of forces that allowed Android to succeed and then crowd Windows phones out of the market.

While I support the continued progress of real Linux phones, have a Pinephone, and even wasted all of yesterday trying to make a working build of Armbian for retro handheld I have; I think it’s more practical to focus on open Android distributions, getting more phones out that can support multi os’s and buying those, and growing a robust app market system that can compete with Google Play.

F-Droid is almost there, but being open-source doesn’t mean something has to be free of charge. F-Droid should be extended, or possibly an additional app manager be established, that still promotes software freedom and privacy, but allows for devs to charge for their apps as well.

I’d do it, assuming my basic needs can be met. Lots of opportunity for exercise and meditation. That year would fly by.

Or a person just includes passphrase cracking tools on the database they’re working on.

I love seeing Godot games do well.

I don’t know where the entropy is at these days so I’m not sure exactly how many words are recommended at this point, but the issue with passphrases is that you have to treat each word like it’s one character. Instead of a lot of symbols, now you need a lot of words for a strong passphrase. It also has to be random assortments of words that make no sense, so passages out of any documents are not a good idea. That XKCD strip is definitely outdated because 4 words wasn’t enough even 10 years ago.

Better password practices:

1. Use Linux. I’m only half-kidding. A Linux distro will have you typing your password in far more than you ever thought you should have to, giving you much more practice with password memorization.
2. Chunk the passwords, like phone numbers. am!z - _hBg - kj47 - GEW is easier to memorize than am!z_hBgkj47GEW.
3. Use a password manager.
4. Use a password manager.

That really only addresses one kind of conception of deity, namely the mono-theistic, primarily Abrahamic variations. As one alternative, if you let go of the idea that a God or Gods must be omnipotent, then things become relatively more sensible. In polytheism for example, you have deitys who are associated with all kinds of things, some that we consider positive, and others we consider negative. These kinds of models at least tend to more accurately fit the way things actually go in life - sometimes justice prevails, sometimes it doesn’t.

Or as another model, there’s the highly dualistic Cathars. For them there was two principles, one Good, the other Evil. Their argument was essentially that God’s power was inseparable from God’s nature, and thus God is incapable of doing anything that goes against their nature to do - including any harm even to evil itself. This model is very reminiscent of the kinds of criticisms people often have of those who practice strict nonviolent ideologies - that their ways and methods lack potency, or any efficacy to adequately deal with malicious forces.

Not all models even assume God is benevolent. Most Gnostic branches outright believe that the chief deity of this universe is either blind and inept at best, or outright malevolent.

At least as far as I understand some Buddhist cosmologies, the Devas, while being powerful beings roughly equivalent to most polytheistic religions, they are neither considered to be the creators of reality or the universe, nor even have complete dominion over it, or even complete knowledge of it. They are also subject to samsara just as we are, and suffering ultimately is inherently baked into reality. An interesting quirk of some Buddhist sects is the notion that even deitys from other religions can be persuaded to follow Buddha’s teachings to follow the path out of suffering.

And then of course there are the pantheistic and panentheistic models, which stress the inseparability of deity and universe. The “we are God” groups. Why doesn’t God end the suffering and evil in the universe? Yeah, why don’t we do more?

Just wanted to give some examples to illustrate that there are a lot of religions with a lot of perspectives on what’s called the problem of evil. Want to be clear that I have no interest in changing whatever your beliefs are. I just think it’s boring and unfortunate that people usually only bring up the problem of evil when they’re using it to criticize the easy punching bag religions.

Alcohol advertising should also be banned in the same way tobacco ads are.

I mean, it’s pretty on the nose. Blue lightsabers vs red lightsabers. Meanwhile the more esoteric, wiser jedi wield green lightsabers.

Pirate anything you want, and buy from anyone you want to support.

Tim Pychyl, a specialist in procrastination, talks a bit about perfectionism. As a recovering perfectionist it was sobering to hear that it’s something that can and does ruin people’s lives. He does also talk a bit about things people can do to help it.

Beans. Not only about the most important food source, legumes are also natural nitrogen fixers for soil health.

Came in to say this. Bean chocolate!

• Battle for Wesnoth is one of my favorite turn-based strategy games.
• Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup makes a whole day disappear when I play it.
• Tales of Maj’Eyal is another, slightly more graphically rich roguelike. I haven’t played it too much, but it seems like there’s quite a lot of content to it.
• The Ur-Quan Masters… I don’t even know how to categorize it. It’s tough as nails, but the art style is rich, and the worldbuilding draws you in.

Any others I would have mentioned are already in other comments.

Part of an overall concerning trend, but as someone who decided to stop buying consoles years ago: ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Show me where any vegan has ever argued that these deaths are okay? Your argument is both a strawman and bad faith. It’s the equivalent of when people claim anticapitalists are hypocrites because they have no choice but to participate in the existing system to survive. Cheap.

Why are vegans in particular given blame for crop deaths, when it isn’t vegans who are doing the farming? We have veganic forms of agriculture that we advocate for, and practice in the case of veganic farmers and gardeners. But until that gains more traction all anyone can do is the best they can, with what they have access to - which is far less harmful and destructive than omnis.