I never actually used Twitter, but recently made accounts on Mastodon, Bluesky, and Pixelfed.

Pixelfed has been my favorite of the three so far… I’m finding that the image-based focus means my feed is mostly fun stuff, that leaves me feeling happy, not gloom and doom of news, snark, etc.

I’m not sure how long I’ll use Mastodon, but I’ve been finding hashtags and users that I’m interested in following and interacting with, and the keyword filters have allowed me to limit (but not eliminate) the depressing stuff.

Bluesky pissed me the fuck off since I couldn’t find a way to follow hashtags, only users, and the Lists thing was just not what I wanted either. Bluesky’s filter is disappointing compares to Mastodon’s too, since Mastodon allows you to hide filtered words behind a content warning or hide them completely, while Bluesky seems to only hide them completely.

About 10 years ago, I signed up for a seedbox for torrenting purposes. USD 15/month, which was roughly the same as Netflix at the time. Since then, Netflix has repeatedly raised prices, dropped content, and added ads. On the other hand, I’m still paying $15/month for that seedbox, and they’ve upgraded my storage capacity and bandwidth allotment multiple times.

I see the option for transit directions in the app, but I’ve tried a few different destinations that I’ve regularly visited via bus, and it only gave walking directions for all of them. I also tried the airport, which I usually get to via rail, and it says that subway navigation isn’t available in my region yet.

Hmm. I did find it in the OsmAnd app, but I’m very confused. I think it’s just showing me trip durations, not actual schedules, and definitely not live bus data, nor any option to find routes based on a specific departure or arrival time. For the route I tested, it gave me 4 different options, all of which list a departure time of 0:00, even though it’s early afternoon here.

Digging around the other apps I use, it looks like the live transit data that I’m used to is free to access. Is there something I need to do to get that linked up?

Anything that includes public transit routing? It doesn’t look like OSM or MapQuest include public transit, and I’m not seeing an option to use Apple Maps via the web browser on Android.

For destinations I go to regularly, I can easily pull up schedules without Google maps, but if I’m going somewhere new, Google maps greatly simplifies the process of figuring out which route(s) to take.

I got a few people to switch from SMS to Signal because they’re on iPhones, I’m on Android, and they love sending me videos that end up totally unwatchable via MMS.

the official app not working at all on my Graphene device

FWIW, I just installed Graphene on a Pixel 8a yesterday, downloaded the Signal apk from their website, and haven’t had any issues with it so far. I also learned that you can get it through Fdroid if you add the Guardian Project repository.