I think 4K is only available on Edge on Windows for Netflix. I never bothered with 4K since that’s above and beyond my device’s native resolution but I didn’t have too positive a experience with Netflix, IMO.

I just want to watch something in full HD without intermittent streaming or buffering. Legal streaming services including Netflix treat one like a criminal by forcing them to watch in a Web browser with constant Internet connectivity forced upon them. I can use keyboard shortcuts to increase playback speed by 0.1x each time in mpv, does Netflix allow me to do the same? No, instead it gives me a dusty experience.

I gave Vivaldi a try way back in its early days when I was on Windows. IIRC, it was bundled with lots of features even then and I think, for some weird reason, had Philips Hue Lighting support integrated (unless I am really confusing it with something other, this is multiple years old experience of mine).

I used it as my main browser for Atleast couple of months then.

I am surprised they abandoned it. It was originally launched as a macOS variant only, correct? And Mac users praised it a lot, on the Web. I thought with that level of traction they will keep going.

In contrast, there are projects that have a much lower user base though vocal (read: Pale Moon) and despite struggling with half of the available modern Web pages, those projects still keep going.

Many sites have become worse. I think stuff like Cnet, PCMag (which still has a digital magazine I think)were much better in the previous era.

I will give Zen browser a try. As for Netflix, I only used it for a one month since it’s quite expensive in my country and it crawled like anything on Firefox for Linux. I was getting consistent 720p video but not sure about full HD. Eventually I canceled it.

Opera also was a good alternative on Symbian phones right or whatever OS Nokia used before they switched to Windows Phone, I think.

I think the company behind Fairphone makes wireless earbuds as well with replaceable batteries. They are priced in the mid range segment but sadly not available worldwide.

Haven’t Spotify mods already been clamped down in one way or the other(in terms of having a trimmed down feature set)? I used to follow Balatan’s mod from Mobilism and last I saw, Atleast some stuff was server sided.

Either case, mods can only go so far. I only used Spotify Premium once for a short while before returning back to YT Music and one of the things I liked was third party clients on desktop. ncspot is a terminal based client for Spotify that rakes in one tenth of memory requirements but sadly requires Premium and I don’t think there is any way to bypass that as of now. (though of course, most users won’t even care about such a niche client)

But if someone is serious about music, then Soulseek is the way to go. It has most genres of music, usually in flac and locally stored music is any day superior to cloud.

The most egregious example is the Larsen and Toubro India Head who asked for NINETY HOUR work weeks and said that he felt sad that he couldn’t make his workers work that long legally.

Funny thing, not only the company defended him (and his crass remarks associated with it), he also earned, I think, INR 50 Crore whilst a new guy at his company will get ~5 Lakh per annum. Since 100 lakh=1crore (Yes, Indian conversion system are slightly different than million and billions), the CEO nets in 1000x that of its lowest earner. If there ever was a picture of evil, then this person is.

And you can’t even point to any specific political party as such since except for Communist Party Of India(Marxist) perhaps, none take this issue seriously. (India has a gamut of parties from regional to national level). Part of the blame does goes to the voter base as well ultimately since the reason this isn’t a topic in India’s Parliament is because outside of the urban masses (and even then for many it was secondary issue to others), others don’t see this as part and parcel of their future.

Today Weather is decent otherwise, has multiple sources as options and a clean, somewhat customizable UI. It also has a proper Wear OS app with complications support.

I honestly don’t know what Pocketcasts folks are working on. Their forum has lists of issues where the official Wear OS app lacks so many features, doesn’t sync properly and apparently can’t run fluidly on my Galaxy Watch 6 even [Like how much memory does it need? Gnome on Linux probably is more resource efficient than their Wear OS app].

I use Obtanium actually since my main mobile browser is Iceraven which isn’t on F-Droid by default. [It supports sideloading extensions that official Firefox doesn’t].

IIRC, Pano Scrobbler is free but has a premium version as well on Google Play. I scanned through their Github and as of August 2024, the dev was working on implementing payment features without Play integration [like donating to the app and then getting a key for it which will be validated against license servers]. I used to sideload Premium variant of Pano Scrobbler before from Mobilism.

Reminds me somewhat of the Pocketcasts app. It had a one time purchase option once but then switched to a subscription tier instead. Ironically, if Google Podcasts were alive and being developed, then no one would have any need for Pocketcasts since the former had desktop playback and Google would have developed a first party Wear OS app as well(like Pocketcasts).

However, as is evident, Google killed the app and YT Music is not at all built for podcasts. If it categories as a podcast app, then it is the single worst I have seen for podcasts.

Copyright warnings are fairly common in developed nations like much of western Europe and say, US right? Do they result in prosecutions as well( would it be worth it for an ISP to take an individual user to court and spend time and money on it?)

Copyright warnings are almost unknown in my country or much of the underdeveloped / developing world.

I am also on Nicotine. I just tried downloading and it is working fine. My port 2234 is closed as per Soulseek official site [though users can download from me, I think].

I tried yesterday and it was working. Is it not an issue with the client instead? Try Nicotine instead of the official Souseek client once.

I guess I will give it a try someday. I originally had a Google Play Music subscription back in the day when it had a cleaner UI(and then Google killed it). I recently switched back to YT Music since ReVanced would usually play video variants.

I don’t have much love for YT Premium since the official YouTube app is worse than NewPipe, say. Even after paying, you are shown adverts for purchasing say, merchandise from creators (that counts as an ad in my book).

I will probably give RVX a try once my current subscription ends.

RVX Music requires manual compilation, right? Also, does it properly play album version of songs? (YT Music ReVanced plays the video version of songs instead).

Editorially, it has a bias yes. But it’s non political pieces are decent. Plus the Games section isn’t too shabby.

I could be wrong, but Washington Post I once tried and I found it even worse. Guardian is slightly better.

Yes, I have been using for some time. Works like a charm on the supported websites. Can even be installed on mobile Firefox if extension sideloading is supported. (Dunno if official Firefox supports it now but the forks Iceraven and Smart Cookie Web Preview do).