There are a lot of comments here about which launchers are “close enough” to the Nova feature set, but very few people are talking about specific features and the alternatives that support them. I really just use two, and everything else is a cherry on top that I can do without if push comes to shove.

1. Icons that open a folder if you swipe them, but launch the first app in the folder if you tap them. That way my apps all pull double-duty as both the one-tap app AND the list of alternatives I use less often.
2. Google Now integration that swipes in from the left.

Action Launcher used to be my go-to, and it’s still the best implementation of #1 because of the little indicators it adds to let you know if something is a “cover” (folder when you swipe) or “shutter” (widget when you swipe). Sadly it’s gotten rather bloated over the years and spends more time force-closing from one glitch or another than it does actually running properly. Nova was my backup because it added “covers” a few years ago and I remembered enjoying the app about a decade ago. Now what?

Good point, and we should probably tease apart that distinction between funding models and project intent/scope. For me, I’ve always seen apps like Boost, Sync, Infinity, and Jerboa as being “indie passion projects” regardless of how they pay their devs because of things like the project’s scope, the dev team size, and their community involvement. They just don’t strike me as the kind of apps you build for their “explosive growth and profit potential,” you know? So by extension, I’ve got to assume anyone who builds one is doing it because they love lemmy, wish it was better, and happen to have a little coding knowledge to do something about it. That’s a mission I can get behind.

Funding, on the other hand, is something that everyone needs but no one has actually figured out. So as long as it looks like a dev is experimenting with their options in good faith and honestly engaging with the community to figure out what’s best, I can’t really fault them for going with one model over another. I’ve got my own preference for open-source community-funded projects of course, but I’m not going to begrudge a dev for seeing it differently.

With Boost, there’s an ad-free and privacy-respecting option, and then there’s an Admob version. Those are the two most common funding methods out there, and I’m not surprised in the slightest by any dev who reaches for them as off-the-shelf answers. Lemmy has an open-source vibe, sure, but Boost started as a reddit app. Go with what you know. I might be wrong, but it doesn’t feel like the ad supported one is being built to harvest data - it’s just a drop-in advertising space like websites have used since the beginning of time. And if I’m really that concerned about it, I can pay for ad-free. Do I wish that it was open-source, patreon supported, and community built? Sure. But this ticks enough of my boxes to say “sure, why not,” and then casually watch how the conversation about funding plays out in the comments. Who knows, maybe the dev will open things up or add a donation-ware version based on feedback, and I can upvote the Lemmings who suggest it.

I guess what I’m trying to say is that the project feels genuine and in a spirit that I can support. The foundation is solid. Everything else is just details, and I’ll happily tag along for the ride as the developer, the community, and Lemmy as a platform figure out what that means.

Look, I get where you’re coming from, but there’s a difference between a $965B corporation whose sole purpose is to harvest your personal info for ads, and a solo dev who just wants to make their (and your) Lemmy browsing a bit less painful. They’re putting in a hellofa lot of time and effort into this thing, which means a hellofa lot of time not spent making money at a regular job. I’m more than happy to kick a few bucks here and there to keep something like that afloat, especially given how apps like Boost and Sync make me actually want to spend time on Lemmy. Encouraging fediverse adoption is a win for the whole ecosystem. You don’t have to use Boost, and if you do choose to install it, you don’t have to pay. There’s an inexpensive ad-free version alongside the ad-supported one for exactly that reason. But complaining about Boost because you hate “social media apps” is like yelling “Fuck Nestle” at the 12-year-old selling lemonade from their driveway. Different scale, different purpose.

It’s fine to not pay, but I’m glad that some people do support indie devs when they can. The world would be a lot bleaker without little passion projects like this dotting the landscape and filling in the gaps to help bigger projects like Lemmy take off.

My guess is that it has something to do with my YouTube Premium subscription never triggering Google’s anti-adblock software, which means the app was never flagged for a soft lock.

I use Vanced for the SponsorBlock, increased default play speed, background payback, and other assorted tweaks rather than for the ad blocking, but blocking ads will definitely jump to the top of my list if my “Google Play Family” ever stops paying for premium. At which point I guess I’ll migrate to GrayJay?

Hell, I’m still using the original Vanced. No clue how it’s managed to escape death for all of these months, but I’m not complaining

Yes, which is why turning a hospital or refugee camp into a command post is a war crime. But it also means that attacking a hospital or refugee camp, whether they’re being used as shields for military targets or not, should also not be done lightly. Iron-clad case made beforehand that it is a military target, rigorous scrutiny of the claim evaluated by an independent body after the fact, and the military action against the target has to prioritize the civilians as much as possible. They’re people. Men, women, and children who have nothing to do with the conflict and are simply caught in the crossfire. One side showing a disregard for the life of innocents does not justify the other side doubling down on the same.

Holy whataboutism, Batman, no one is arguing that Hamas is in the right here. What are you even trying to say with this? “Hamas ‘fucks civilians’ which makes them evil… so Israel might as well join in and ‘fuck civilians’ too”?

Can’t we all just agree that no one should be “fucking civilians” for any reason, because you know, they’re civilians?

They’ll still be fucked but they’ll at least stop worrying about this particular enemy.

The difference is that “in for a penny, in for a pound” implies all options are equal as long as the objective is achieved. “Surgical strike that kills 24 civilians? Nuclear strike that kills 2,400,000? Something in between? Why bother weighing the pros and cons because we’re fucked on the world stage either way. Might as well go big.” It’s an argument designed to sidestep the very real debate over “acceptable loss” calculations and the duty to safeguard human life. No one is saying that Israel shouldn’t retaliate. No one is saying that Hamas is playing fair. What they are saying is that 10,000 dead refugees might look like Israel doesn’t care that they’re dead. Especially when Israel says they targeted refugee camps and ambulances on purpose. And when you chime in saying “fuck it, just kill 'em” to a simple plea of “maybe count the kids before killing 'em all.”

The IDF is in an impossible situation, but the answer isn’t to shut down debate, it’s to actually talk about where the line should be drawn and try to minimize civilian harm. Allow foreign aid to reach the starving children. Allow civilians to leave the city. Listen to why there’s an outcry against indiscriminate bombings. Palestinians aren’t “meat shields.” Hamas might be hiding behind them, but that doesn’t mean you have to aim straight at the “shields” and pull the trigger. They’re people, and deserve more consideration than a simple “fuck it, what’s a little genocide if the bad guy’s dead?”

I completely understand, hence making a joke about Google’s pedantic argument by referencing a satirical cartoon bureaucrat who cares more about technicalities than lived experiences.

Google argues that functionally, “blocking ads” means no ads are displayed, and functionally, paying Google’s ransom also means no ads are displayed, therefore the two are interchangeable. Whereas the rest of us can plainly see this is a debate over principles rather than outcomes, and the way something is accomplished does matter. Especially when the article we’re talking about is intentionally designed as click-bait and doesn’t list the one thing they imply will be in it: ad-subverting plugins that don’t pay Google.

Did they mean “without further ado”?

They’re technically correct. The best kind of correct. /s

edit: wow, y’all hate Futurama memes almost as much as ads 😂

I agree that intent is an important consideration. In war, combatants are obligated to be intentional with who they target. That intentionality is even codified into international law. It’s why we say that civilian casualties must be minimized whenever possible. By law, commanders must attempt to discriminate between military and civilian targets, applying force appropriately to target only those who are part of the conflict. By law, retaliation is governed by the principal of minimum force, meaning only so much force as is required to remove the threat, and no more.

When those of us outside the conflict zone are confronted with dead children on the front page, that’s the standard of “intent” we’re weighing our reactions against. For many, it’s hard to see how attacks on refugee camps were intended to spare refugees. How attacks on aid convoys and ambulances intended to spare the sick and wounded. How refusing to allow food, water, and the gasoline that hospitals need in order to operate is intended to safeguard the welfare of civilians who have been forced to drink sea water just to stay alive. Even if Hamas is using the population as human shields, it doesn’t change that the intent should be to spare those civilians in spite of Hamas’ actions. They’re fellow human beings. They deserve that bare minimum of thought. Sure, dropping an atomic bomb on Gaza City would wipe out the terrorists, but I think we’d all agree that’d be a war crime since it would also murder millions. The same logic applies here on the smaller scale (though 10,000 residents - half of them children - isn’t exactly “small scale”). That’s why it’s hard to see intention in those headlines. At least aside from the intention to do exactly what you’d expect bombing a refugee camp to do - murder refugees. The indiscriminate leveling of a region isn’t targeted, but it sure as hell looks intentional.

I desperately want to be wrong here, and like I said, I’m an outside observer from America just like you. But that’s the train of logic that I see dominating calls for a humanitarian pause over here, and it’s rather compelling.

It’s a good way to frame things. As an outsider, the subjectivity of the IDF’s target is why I wonder if people are choosing one term for the war over another. Some see the intentional bombing of refugee camps, ambulances, and aid convoys as targeting the civilians of Gaza in what amounts to a systematic extermination of Palestinians. The casualty numbers seem to heavily favor that interpretation. So could this be one reason for some news outlets to frame the conflict as Israel vs Gaza itself? Or is the word choice more nuanced than that, given how it seems as though the two names are being used interchangeably on both sides of the line?

I’m just not sure what we’re all arguing about any more. We all largely agree with one another, but the comments in this thread are all over the place

1. Are we trying to make an argument against the outrageous price of pre-packaged food (which we all agree have gotten out of hand)? If so, we should be comparing frozen veggie patties against their non-pre-packaged counterparts, not against beef or sandwich bread or whatever else people keep bringing up in the comments.
2. Are we trying to argue that OP is dumb for picking the most expensive options on the shelf if they’re going to complain about price? Because yeah, everyone already knows that a 70% lean turkey burger on Wonder Bread is going to be cheaper than Kobe beef on an artisanal brioche bun with truffle butter. Veggie burgers have always been expensive because they required years of R&D to make them palatable since they have to survive the freeze & thaw, sit on the shelf for months, and be viable as a boxed product (unlike our home-made versions). What’s worse, they’re still niche enough that they don’t benefit from economies of scale. It’s old news.
3. Are we trying to argue that inflation is going nuts right now (which we also already agree on)? Because if so, OP picked a dumb collection of ingredients to make that point since I doubt many people have an instinctive feel for how much Gardein used to charge. Show us the price for beef & bargain buns today, then compare that to what a burger used to cost and then we’ll talk.

My point was just that if you’re arguing the first one, then actually pick comparable ingredients for your comparison instead of beef.

Yeah, sounds like they’re just garden-variety vegetarians so it wouldn’t matter what they’re picking up as long as it’s not meat. Although to your point about meatless burgers, home-made versions often do contain egg as the binding protein.

Yes, but also this isn’t strictly a case of “convenience food makes price go up.” OP is making veggie burgers, not beef burgers, so you really should be comparing “Gardein pre-packaged veggie patties” to “black beans + brown rice + bell pepper + onion + mushroom + eggs + chili powder + cumin + bread crumbs etc” that you’ll mash into your version of a DIY veggie patty. The pre-packaged ones will still probably be more expensive, but at least you’ll be comparing apples to apples.

… which is not to say that it’s free or even affordable (despite the name), or that residents in every state have equal access, or that the government is providing the plan. The ACA is a subsidy that slightly reduces the cost of private insurance, provided that you’re poor enough to qualify and that your state chooses to accept the federal government’s help beyond a certain threshold.

Anyone with insurance. If they’re charging your insurance provider $1,400, then you’ll either see that cost passed directly on to you when you get COVID, or see it as an increase in everyone’s monthly insurance cost as they spread out what they’re paying across their whole customer base. The money’s got to come from somewhere. Granted, insurance companies will likely negotiate on the price and not pay that full amount, but it’s not exactly a good-faith negotiation if their starting offer is a 10,000% markup.

Also, 2028 is less than 5 years away and COVID is set to be a persistent staple of society like the yearly flu indefinitely. They’re basically saying that anyone who gets it while committing the heinous crime of being poor is SOL, even though it costs them almost nothing to produce and was developed using our tax dollars to start with.

Everyone here keeps talking about how the UI is amazing, so maybe this is the right place to ask: is there an FOSS office suite that has a command pallet like coding editors and GSuite do, where you can tap a hotkey and type the tool name without having to dig through menus?

Sounds like a pretty good excuse to me. The code is viewable, which speaks to the privacy and accountability crowd. He allows personal modification, which appeases the tinkerers. The only group it doesn’t benefit are the ones trying to make money off of his work by degrading the user experience with ads. Are there better licenses he could have picked to accomplish his goal? Yes. Am I going to go on a Lemmy rant over a dev’s choice of license when he’s already done so much right? Hell no. It’s a win. Take the W and uninstall later if he changes his tune, just like with any other app whether open or closed.

I do agree that true open source is better for everyone as it allows the community to truly own, improve, and evolve the app into the best version of itself. But this is the Privacy group, not the FOSS one. As far as my money is concerned, it ticks the boxes and earned my install. We’ll see where it goes from here.