Apple Maps and Fastmail.

Fastmail is paid but the 1Password and disposable email address system makes it worth it for me.

I went through a period of de-googling a couple of years ago. Swapping browser, mobile os, search engine, storage, maps, music, video purchases, voice assistant and even email service was relatively simple, there are alternatives out there which do the job just as well if not better than what Google offer.

The only exception is YouTube, yea there are individual sites that occasionally offer some of the videos I want (often with a subscription attached), there are some federated systems like NewPipe which have some videos but there is no one offering remotely the quantity or quality of what you can get on YouTube for free.

As the article states, it’s basically a monopoly at this point without a viable alternative.

Arc is weird but pretty good once you get used to it.

DuckDuckGo is good if you want a minimal browser and don’t really care about extensions

Brave is OK if you want a slightly more private version of Chrome

Honestly though, just use Firefox.

They totally did that

The problem was that people weren’t really interested in any of it.

The UI was cluttered and messy to look at, none of it was as polished or natural to use as iOS or Android.

Plus there was no Google Maps, no Google Docs (and Office 365 wasn’t around to replace it), even that apps that were in the store felt pretty bad quality. I had Spotify on my iPhone and it was nearly flawless, when I switched to Windows Phone it kept cutting out or crashing or disconnecting from the mobile connection, it just wasn’t fully baked.

I’ve seen a few video games and movies that I’ve gone on to look into from YouTube ads.

90% of them are total annoying bollocks though.

It is!

I picked it up at launch and it’s improved quite a lot over the last few years, better combat and skill trees, fewer bugs, better cops, the world is beautiful and the quest design and performance animation makes Starfield feel pretty antiquated.

It’s still not perfect but I’m on my second play through and I’m still having a good time, I’m very excited to see the new stuff in Phantom Liberty too.

I’m nearly 40, been playing since the old Commodore 64 days.

I’ve always loved games, but with a wife and kids I don’t have anywhere near as much time as I used to with them, which means I think quite a lot about what I want to play in the 6 hours or so a week that I can actually do it.

I feel like I’m in a minority in that I still love much of the AAA stuff - Cyberpunk and Baldur’s Gate 3 is my jam right now, I might get Spider-Man 2 when it drops in price a bit and I have more time.

I love indie games too but I don’t always have as much time as I want to invest in them, I did get through Bombrush Cyberfunk recently and it scratched a Jet Set Radio itch that I had long forgotten about.

So yea, I still love them but it’s partly because it’s just always been my hobby.

This was it for us, kids do not give a fuck about protocol and formalities

/r/webdev and /r/formulae are the main ones I miss.

This is how I do it.

I pay for Netflix, Prime (only really for the free shipping), Disney+, Apple TV+ and Spotify, if it’s not on any of these then I’m going to pirate it.

The whole exclusivity stuff is just rubbish, I get the reasoning but if you can’t make your content easily accessible then I just don’t want to pay for it.

YSK that YouTube Premium can be bought over a VPN for a whole lot less than the regular retail price, it’s a bit fiddly to set up but I’ve got a Nigerian based family account that costs me £1.76 a month.

If you want to move them elsewhere(or even just get a csv export of them) there are apps for that.

https://freeyourmusic.com will let you pay a one time fee to do it to as many services as you want, it’s a bit slow but it’ll get there eventually.

I think I got my .fun for about £2 from names.co.uk usually price for a .com is £30.

I’ve found most weird TLDs are cheaper than classic ones, but there are some exceptions (.app and .io comes to mind)

It is very different:

• Tabs are always vertical which is better for todays ultrawide monitors
• You have the ability to pin tabs to the sidebar which means that whenever you’re on a particular site (not page!) they’re stored in the same place
• Other tabs are ephemeral, they’re open for at most the 24 hours from when you use them, then they get cleaned away
• There are separate workspaces; like swappable sidebars that you can use to - for example - keep work and personal tabs separate
• The vast majority of commands (going to a tab, getting to settings plus loads more) are access via a Stoplight like global search control
• You can “boost” a particular site and change its style sheet to be different colours - this can be handy if you’re a developer and need to be extra careful when working in a production environment.

That’s just the stuff off the top of my head, there is probably more.

Sorry, missed the Android requirement.

It has just been released for windows though

If you want something a little different, try arc it doesn’t behave like pretty much any browser I’ve used but it’s certainly a unique take on it

Honestly Apple TV+ is a pretty good service; Silo, Severance, Physical, Shrinking, Mythic Quest, For All Mankind and Invasion are all worth a watch, and that’s just the stuff I’ve seen.

I would recommend at least taking a trial for a month, there is less stuff but it’s a lot higher quality than much of the junk on Netflix.

Foundation on Apple TV+, beautiful, complicated, epic sci-fi. I’m rewatching the first season whilst the second is getting released week by week.

I wish I could wipe my memory of Severance and watch it again for the first time again.

Such an incredible show.

As a Brit this seems like such a ridiculous attitude to have.

When you go out for food you are paying for:

• Quality ingredients
• The knowledge and skill of someone to take those ingredients and make a nice meal out of them

If you’re dining in you also get:

• A nice place to sit with good lighting and a nice ambiance
• Someone to bring your food
• Someone to clean away your dirty dishes

If you are getting delivery you instead pay for someone to bring it to you.

The food itself is like 40% of what you’re paying for, the rest is just convenience and atmosphere.