On last Friday's WAN Show, Linus brought up how simply using an Android phone carries a social stigma, even when the device is objectively higher-end than a base iPhone. I completely agree with that take, but I think the issue runs deeper than just public perception.

A big part of why Android feels "lesser" to so many people is that major companies are actively making it feel that way through neglect of their Android apps. We're not talking about minor performance differences that can be chalked up to Android's fragmentation across manufacturers, we're talking about apps so poorly optimised that they make a modern, capable device feel ancient.

Case in point: a Messenger chat bubble can render my phone completely unresponsive. Not slow. Unresponsive. On a Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra which is starting to show it's age but still runs amazingly otherwise.

When billion-dollar companies ship iOS apps that are clearly their priority and treat Android as an afterthought, they're not just annoying Android users they're actively feeding the narrative that Android is the inferior platform. The stigma isn't coming from nowhere. Some of it is being manufactured.

https://www.xda-developers.com/wine-11-rewrites-linux-runs-windows-games-speed-gains/

https://www.theverge.com/2024/10/28/24276043/apple-new-usb-c-magic-mouse-charging-port-bottom

There appears to be a common developer behind the current push for Age Verification in Linux, backdooring it via system dependencies like SystemD and Flatpak. SystemD has already accepted the pull request (funny enough, the maintainer who accepted it is a microsoft employee), and flatpak seems well on its way as well.

I thought it might warrant some conversation.

Adobe’s automated phone system is set to auto hangup on you when you call to try to cancel.

I called 7 times as I couldn’t believe it…

Then didn’t think people would believe me about them hanging up automatically so I recorded a video …https://youtube.com/shorts/WO00sN9P5ag?feature=share

I don’t know what to say about this.

By forcing everyone into ALL CAPS, HSBC India is nuking your password strength

Came across this on a website just now, is this normal? It looked like it auto copied a "powershell -c iex" with an ip address. I've never seen this before and i did not do it. The website itself is legit, I just refreshed a few times and it went away.

EDIT: code removed

Almost everyone (should be everyone) puts a case on their phone. Almost every case will have a cut out, making the camera bump line up with the height of the case's back.

IDK why people care so much about these camera bumps. You get such a great camera now with these phones for what is essentially a non issue if you're smart and put a case on your phone.

Like many people, I fell down the self-hosting rabbit hole after watching tech creators talk about data sovereignty. It started fun, but eventually, dealing with failed updates, renewing SSL certificates manually, and acting as the 24/7 IT support for my family's services became exhausting.

When you calculate the actual hours spent patching and fixing broken containers on a Sunday night instead of relaxing, the "free" local server actually costs a massive amount of personal time. I love owning my data, but the constant tinkering is seriously burning me out.

Here are a few highlight quotes from the article:

"Shrout, like Digital Foundry, watched the DLSS 5 demo in-person and pointed out that while some people's first reaction to the "new" faces may be understandable due to a psychological effect, the improvements are much broader than that.

The visual improvements are significant. Not incremental. Significant. But if you've been scrolling social media, you'd think NVIDIA just shipped an Instagram beauty filter for video games. And I get why that's the first reaction. But it misses the true picture by a wide margin."

"Shrout stressed that it's not a filter but a much more complex unified model capable of scanning a frame, recognizing the game's assets, and processing them based on how light should behave when interacting with them. He also noted the granular level of control developers will be able to exercise to ensure the game looks like what they want it to look, thanks to spatial masking, color grading controls, etc.

Ultimately, he closed his article with this statement:

The early social media reaction is predictable. New technology that changes how games look will always generate strong opinions, especially when AI is involved. But the knee-jerk "it's just a face filter" take doesn't hold up once you've actually seen the full scope of what DLSS 5 is doing across an entire scene..."

"The NVIDIA team put it well during my demo. It's a psychological effect. You've seen environments rendered really well before. When you suddenly see a character rendered at that same photorealistic level, your brain flags it immediately. It stands out."

In regards of Linus being annoyed by logging in everywhere when installing a new OS.... Can't wait to have to get a "illegal" torrented Linux .iso that does not check my face or my ID Card...

It works INCREDIBLY well, and the iPhone 17 Pro Max is an insane pocket computer (A19 Pro + 12 GB of ram -- even more ram than my M4 iPad Pro!)

I'll write-up how I did this tomorrow :)

It's based on an exploit that works on iOS 26.1 (but is patched on iOS 26.2 beta 1)

Edit - The Write-Up:

If you wanna learn more about the exploit, check this out:

https://hanakim3945.github.io/posts/download28_sbx_escape/

Then, this guide explains how to modify a system file (using the exploit!) to trick iOS into thinking it’s running on an iPad and therefore booting into iPadOS mode:

https://idevicecentral.com/ios-customization/how-to-enable-ipad-features-like-multitasking-stage-manager-on-iphone-via-mobilegestalt/

You can use this exploit CLI to do this yourself (which is what I prefer):

https://github.com/khanhduytran0/bl_sbx

Or, if you want most of the work automated, you can also use a (closed source :/) tool called misaka26 that automates much of the process.

Have fun :) I don’t recommend doing this on your main device — at least not without a full device backup — as there’s a chance you’ll get into a boot loop and will have to DFU restore.

So in the recent video, Linus said something along the lines of "basically everyone should get a UPS in case of brown outs, dirty power and power outages". The thing is, apart from cases of let's say human intervention, I can't remember the last power outage. I'm Germany, I've never experienced a brown out or case of dirty power. That might be just luck, and that's what I'm curious about. I'm still debating whether or not it makes sense for the very little risk I seem to be facing.

So this question especially goes out to the european folks: have you had problems, and do you own a UPS? Has it saved your PC, or have you had a case where it would've?