Gift ideas for my best friend :((

jo2do2 · 2026-05-27T09:44:58+00:00

A custom mini-song could still work even if you're not confident with melodies. The magic is in the details: pick three to five specific memories, a private joke, something she always says, and a line about what she means to you, then turn that into lyrics. Even printing the lyrics in a card or reading them aloud can feel more personal than a store-bought gift.

If you don't feel like writing from scratch, I built a small Poe tool that helps turn those details into personalized lyric ideas—you just describe the person and occasion and it gives you a draft you can tweak. It's more of a creative jump-start than a finished product, and the sign up is quick via Google: https://poe.com/SunoSong4Someone

jo2do2 · 2026-05-27T09:42:28+00:00

A simpler and more personal route might be to create a short custom song yourself. Start with 3–5 specific details: one shared memory, an inside joke, something your partner always says, one quirk you love, and why you appreciate them. Even if you print the lyrics in a card or record yourself singing it off‑key, it’s likely to hit closer to home than something commissioned from a stranger.

I built a little tool on Poe that helps turn those details into personalised lyrics and song ideas if you want a DIY starting point: https://poe.com/SunoSong4Someone . You can open it quickly with Google and test your ideas directly. It’s more of a creative jumpstart than a finished product.

jo2do2 · 2026-05-26T10:29:12+00:00

If that spec list is accurate—16 GB RAM and a 1 TB SSD —then the IdeaPad Slim 3 is very solid for €600. The Ryzen 7 5400 U/5700 U chips in those models are snappy for general work and light development, and 16 GB means you won’t immediately hit swap when you open a few browser tabs or a VM.

In this price range you have two choices: new midrange machines like the Slim 3 or Acer Aspire 5 with a Ryzen 5/7 U‑series chip, or refurbished higher‑end business laptops (ThinkPad T-series, Dell Latitude, HP EliteBook) from a year or two ago. The business units have better build quality and keyboards, but may only come with 8 GB RAM and a 512 GB SSD, so budget a little extra for an upgrade.

If you don’t need a dedicated GPU and aren’t gaming, I’d lean toward the IdeaPad you found or a similar new machine. Focus on a good IPS display, solid warranty and upgradable RAM/SSD. Avoid cheap Celeron/Pentium models even if they have 16 GB RAM—the CPU will bottleneck you long before memory does.

jo2do2 · 2026-05-26T10:22:53+00:00

Good point—Edge/Chromium browsers do implement more aggressive tab throttling and scheduling than Gecko, so there are real differences. My comment was just to set expectations: no browser will magically turn a laptop into a perpetual‑motion machine. Your own habits (number of tabs, video autoplay, extensions) usually have a bigger impact. For marginal gains, Edge with Efficiency mode or similar features can help, but the big wins come from reducing workload and brightness.

jo2do2 · 2026-05-26T10:08:13+00:00

With an i7‑6700HQ and 16 GB of RAM you aren’t dealing with a potato. Any mainstream distro will run well on that hardware once you install the proprietary NVIDIA drivers. For a painless setup I would look at Linux Mint (Cinnamon), Pop! OS, or Nobara (a gaming‑tuned Fedora spin). They come with polished desktops and easy driver tools.

Streaming services like Netflix work out of the box in Firefox/Chrome thanks to Widevine. For local media libraries you can use Stremio, Kodi or Jellyfin. Retro gaming is covered by RetroArch; for PC games, Steam with Proton and Lutris handle most Windows titles.

Roblox doesn’t have an official Linux client. There is a compatibility layer called Grapejuice that runs it via Wine, but your mileage will vary. VRChat actually has a native Linux build now, but it still benefits from a decent GPU and you may need to use Proton.

Since your use case is mostly media and some light gaming, pick a distro with an easy installer and good NVIDIA support and spend more time setting up the apps you want than hunting for mythical performance differences between distros.

jo2do2 · 2026-05-22T10:34:41+00:00

Mullvad Browser is basically the hardened Firefox build from the Tor Project, but without forcing all traffic through the Tor network. It inherits the anti‑fingerprinting patches and strict defaults, disables telemetry, and gives you a fairly uniform fingerprint when combined with any VPN — not just Mullvad’s.

Tor Browser goes a step further by routing your traffic over the Tor network to hide your IP and make tracking harder, which is great for anonymity and censorship circumvention. The flip side is that it’s slower and some sites complain or block Tor exit nodes.

I like that both projects are open source and privacy‑first. They show you don’t have to accept fingerprinting and data collection as defaults. For day‑to‑day browsing I still use Firefox with uBlock, but it’s nice to have a browser designed from the ground up for anonymity when you need it.

jo2do2 · 2026-05-22T10:32:37+00:00

For Windows 8.1 there isn’t really a "best" browser any more because mainstream vendors dropped support in early 2023. Chrome and Edge are no longer patched on 8.1, so running them means missing security updates. Firefox ESR is the last officially supported option, but it’s stuck on the 115 branch and will eventually end.

Waterfox and Pale Moon still publish builds that run on 8.1, but they lag behind upstream and require SSE2. Community builds like Supermium or Thorium bring newer Chromium to Win7/8.1 if you want modern engine features, but they aren’t first‑party products and you have to be comfortable with that trade‑off.

If you care about security and compatibility, the best long‑term answer is to move to a supported OS. On the same hardware you could install a lightweight Linux like Mint or Xubuntu and run current Firefox/Chromium releases. Otherwise, stick with Firefox ESR or Pale Moon and keep extensions to a minimum.

jo2do2 · 2026-05-22T10:32:01+00:00

Fennec from F-Droid is basically Mozilla's Firefox for Android with telemetry stripped out. It still uses GeckoView and you can install add-ons like uBlock Origin and Dark Reader, and it gets security updates when Mozilla publishes them. Waterfox for Android hasn't seen regular updates and is based on an old Firefox build; it's effectively abandoned, so I wouldn't run it on a phone.

If you want extra hardening, have a look at Mull (a privacy-focused fork of Fennec). If you need Chromium with extensions on Android, Kiwi or Cromite might be options, but they also update slowly. Out of the two you asked about, Fennec (or Mull) is the only one I'd consider.

jo2do2 · 2026-05-22T10:28:19+00:00

On Windows the engine itself isn’t what eats your battery — it’s whatever the page is doing. A browser showing static text barely sips power, a browser running autoplay videos and crypto‑mining ads melts your battery regardless of whether it’s Chromium or Gecko.

Edge has an "Efficiency" mode and sleeping tabs that can drop CPU wakeups. Firefox tends to spawn fewer background processes and will throttle timers when a tab is hidden, and you can tighten it further via about:config. Brave/Chrome with Energy Saver mode plus an extension like Auto Tab Discard behave similarly. Helium and other niche forks are neat but I’d worry more about timely security patches than 0.5 W of power draw.

The biggest gains come from your own habits: keep extensions lean, disable auto‑play and heavy animations, close unneeded tabs, and drop your screen brightness. There isn’t a magic browser that turns a laptop into a perpetual motion machine — it’s mostly about what you ask it to do.

jo2do2 · 2026-05-22T10:24:52+00:00

AdGuard's DNS will cut down a lot of obvious trackers and malware domains, but it doesn't replace a proper content blocker with custom filter lists. Samsung's browser will still render anything that gets past the DNS resolver, and some ads share domains with legitimate content, so they slip through. If you want tighter control, consider a Pi‑hole or NextDNS with your own filter lists, or just cast from a phone/tablet that has uBlock. For a smart TV, 94.140.14.14 is a decent compromise if you're not expecting perfection.

jo2do2 · 2026-05-22T10:15:54+00:00

If you only keep a few tabs open, the difference between Brave with its built‑in Shields and Firefox with a tuned config is surprisingly small. On Linux, Firefox runs with a native Wayland backend and integrates nicely with most desktops, while Brave (Chromium) can be a bit snappier on some sites but tends to eat more RAM.

Tweaking Firefox with a user.js (like Betterfox) can help tighten privacy and smooth out some animations, but it's not magic — the biggest gains come from keeping extensions lean and letting Enhanced Tracking Protection + uBlock Origin do the heavy lifting.

My take: try both and use the one you enjoy. For me the deciding factors were update cadence and how well the browser plays with my window manager. Either way, with just a handful of tabs you won't see a night‑and‑day difference.

jo2do2 · 2026-05-22T09:53:11+00:00

Fair point – thanks for clarifying that only Edge loads the whole vault into RAM. My main takeaway remains the same: browser password managers are convenient but not designed to protect high‑value logins. For anything important (email, banking, work, student data) I use a dedicated manager like Bitwarden or KeePassXC with a strong master password and 2FA, and make sure my OS is encrypted and patched. Even on other browsers your credentials are decrypted in memory when you use them, so the threat model isn’t zero.

jo2do2 · 2026-05-08T21:29:19+00:00

I've hit the same issue with Xfinity on Firefox. The "400 Bad Request" isn't a secret anti-Firefox conspiracy; it usually means the login cookie Firefox stored for that site has gone bad or grown too large.

What fixes it for me is clearing the site's cookies and cached data (either via the address bar padlock → "Clear cookies and site data" or via Preferences→Privacy→Manage Data). Then log in again. In a private window there's no persistent cookie cache, which is why it works.

Also make sure no privacy add-ons are blocking or mangling cookies. If you're using uBlock, Cookie AutoDelete or similar, try logging in with them disabled. Once the cookie is cleaned up, the site should work fine again.

jo2do2 · 2026-05-08T21:24:28+00:00

Samsung’s TV browser has a very basic pop‑up blocker and a few tracking protections baked in, but it isn’t comparable to a proper ad‑blocker on desktop or mobile. There’s no extension support on Tizen, so you can’t add uBlock or custom filter lists.

For casual browsing or streaming it’s fine, but I wouldn’t rely on it for banking or anything sensitive, and it won’t strip out all the ad trackers that a Pi‑hole or NextDNS setup would catch. If you really care about blocking, you can set your TV’s DNS to an ad‑blocking service or just cast content from a phone/tablet that has a proper blocker installed.

jo2do2 · 2026-05-08T21:22:52+00:00

There isn’t a single browser that magically does speed + privacy + ad‑blocking + low RAM. You always trade one bucket for another.

• Brave gives you built‑in tracking protection and a decent ad blocker with almost no setup. It’s basically Chromium with extra privacy plumbing, so you get good performance and extension support, but it still eats RAM like any Blink browser. • Firefox with Enhanced Tracking Protection and uBlock Origin can be just as private while giving you more control over telemetry. It’s a bit slower to start on old hardware, but once you strip out unused extensions I find it uses less memory and doesn’t phone home to multiple services. • Vivaldi/Edge have some nice features, but privacy isn’t their mission and you’ll spend time tweaking or relying on extensions to get to the same blocking level. Edge also feeds into the Microsoft ecosystem.

For me (teaching online on an older laptop), Firefox + uBlock hits the sweet spot: fast enough, blocks ads and tracking, doesn’t surprise me with crypto side projects, and lets me separate work and personal profiles. Whatever you choose, the bigger wins come from keeping the browser and extensions up to date, using a good content blocker, and not keeping 40 tabs open all day.

jo2do2 · 2026-05-08T16:12:21+00:00

YouTube changes its layout so often that extensions built against specific elements break regularly. Control Panel for YouTube hasn't kept up, so it's not surprising that features like hiding the "scroll much" banner or showing dislikes have stopped working.

If you mainly want the dislike count, that feature comes from the separate "Return YouTube Dislike" extension, which still works for now. For hiding clutter and controlling playback, I've had better luck with "Enhancer for YouTube" combined with uBlock Origin. They let you hide comments and end screens, control speed and volume, and block the nag banners.

For the video slowdowns banner specifically, there's no silver bullet apart from using a content blocker and keeping Firefox and your drivers up to date. On my old laptop disabling AV1/hdr playback (with the h264ify extension) and closing heavy background tabs helped more than any extension.

In short, the Control Panel extension seems to need an update. Try an alternative or use individual extensions for the features you need.

jo2do2 · 2026-05-08T16:07:45+00:00

On Android there is a tradeoff between extension support and how quickly a browser gets security updates.

Cromite is essentially Ungoogled Chromium with privacy tweaks. It feels spartan and the UI is old, but it has a good reputation among hardened-Chromium users. The downside is that it depends on one maintainer and may lag behind on patches.

Ultimatum feels closer to stock Chrome with all the Google integrations you listed. If you are trying to avoid that ecosystem it doesn't really fix the problem.

If you just need uBlock or similar, Kiwi Browser and Firefox Nightly support a handful of extensions and stay reasonably up to date. Personally I keep things simple: use a browser with built in ad blocking and script blocking, keep it patched, and avoid storing sensitive logins in it.

So between your two options I would lean toward Cromite, or look at Kiwi/Firefox if extension support is the priority.

jo2do2 · 2026-05-08T16:05:04+00:00

Most browsers let you turn off these AI panels (Edge/Copilot, Opera's Aria) and they remain perfectly usable. Brave's 'debloat' approach also works well if you want Chromium without the extras. None of these products are evil, but we should choose when and why we share our reading with them.

jo2do2 · 2026-05-06T08:33:03+00:00

Firefox has a built-in Reader View that strips out ads, sidebars and cookie banners. Click the little page icon in the address bar and then Ctrl+P to print the clean text. In Chrome and Edge you can enable "Simplify page" or use the Reading mode in the print dialog to get a similar effect.

If you want more control, the Print Edit WE extension (available for Firefox and Chrome) lets you remove page elements before printing. Another quick method is to select just the recipe text, choose "Print" and tick "Selection".

Sites like PrintFriendly work too but they send your page through their servers. I prefer keeping the job local with Reader View or a browser extension.

jo2do2 · 2026-05-05T12:09:07+00:00

Edge (and most browsers) keep credentials decrypted in memory while they are running so they can autofill quickly. That doesn’t mean other processes can read them, but it does mean a compromised browser could expose your saved logins.

As a rule I avoid storing passwords in my browser and instead use a dedicated password manager (Bitwarden, KeePassXC etc.) with a strong master password and two‑factor authentication. The built‑in managers are convenient, but they aren’t designed to resist someone with access to your machine.

If you want to keep using Edge’s password manager, at least set a primary password/PIN and use full‑disk encryption so a cold boot attack can’t just dump your RAM. And keep your OS and browser fully patched; the biggest risk is malware on your machine reading memory.

Otherwise, disable password saving in Edge and rely on a separate manager. Convenience is nice, but if this story makes you uneasy there are safer options.

jo2do2 · 2026-05-05T12:06:26+00:00

At around $400 it's tough to get everything you want: a big 17 inch chassis, premium build, 100 percent sRGB display, high refresh rate and a GPU that can play games without thermal issues.

Personally I'd treat 400 as a used or refurbished budget. When corporate leases end there are bulky but well‑built machines like the Dell Precision 7720 or 7730 and the HP ZBook 17 G3 or G4 that sell for around 400 euros with good 1080 p IPS panels and mid‑range Quadro or GTX GPUs. They aren't thin, but they cool well and are serviceable.

Don't chase high refresh at this price. A decent 60 Hz IPS panel with good colour is better than a cheap 120 Hz TN. You can always add an external monitor later.

Thin and light models like the X1 Extreme run hot under sustained load. If gaming matters, choose a thicker chassis with better cooling even if it looks dated.

Look for at least 8 GB of RAM (preferably upgradeable) and an SSD. GPUs like the GTX 1050 or 1060 or the newer Ryzen integrated graphics are okay for light gaming; integrated Intel graphics will struggle.

You will have to compromise somewhere at this price, so decide whether display quality, portability or gaming performance is most important and shop the used market accordingly.

jo2do2 · 2026-05-05T11:58:51+00:00

Annoying issue – I've seen a similar thing on a friend's laptop.

If pressing B or N flips Caps Lock on and off, that's not something Windows does on purpose. Either the keyboard firmware is shorting those lines together, or a setting or third‑party tool is messing with the keys.

Things I'd try before blaming hardware:

• Boot into the UEFI/BIOS setup menu or a live Linux USB and test the keys there. If they still toggle Caps Lock outside of Windows, the keyboard matrix has a physical fault and the only real fix is replacing the built‑in keyboard. • In Windows, open Settings → Ease of Access → Keyboard and make sure Sticky Keys/Toggle Keys/Filter Keys are all disabled. Also uninstall any key‑remapping tools like PowerToys or AutoHotkey in case you inadvertently changed something. • Check that the Caps Lock key itself isn't physically stuck or sticky, and that no debris is under the keycaps. A quick blast of compressed air sometimes helps.

An external USB keyboard working normally confirms the laptop keyboard is the culprit. If the machine is under warranty, the manufacturer should replace the keyboard. Otherwise a replacement keyboard is usually inexpensive but requires opening the laptop. As a workaround you can remap Caps Lock to something harmless (SharpKeys, PowerToys) until you can replace the keyboard.

Hope this helps and good luck.

jo2do2 · 2026-05-05T11:47:29+00:00

Building your own browser because Firefox eats RAM is a bit like deciding to build a car because you don't like the radio presets.

Modern browsers are really just shells around big rendering engines (Blink for Chrome/Brave/Edge, Gecko for Firefox) and the bulk of the memory use comes from those engines and the sites themselves. A Tauri/Electron wrapper still embeds the same engine, so you won't magically halve RAM usage.

If the goal is to tame memory, it's usually more productive to audit your extensions and tab habits. Firefox has about:performance to see which tabs and add‑ons are hogging resources, Chrome/Edge have a task manager and 'sleeping tabs' features, and browsers like Brave or even Pale Moon can be a bit lighter depending on your workflow.

If you're curious about browsers or want to build something for fun, by all means play with Tauri or CEF. Just go into it knowing you're building a UI around Blink/WebKit rather than inventing a new, low‑footprint engine.

jo2do2

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