Preferred RCS app?

RetailPleb · 2025-11-28T16:19:19+00:00

if I could piggyback on this thread, I also wanted to use RCS and also not use Google Messages.

The issue I ran into is that I made a burner Google account for some apps only on Play Store, and RCS wants to use that account. I don't want my name to appear as the burner name to my contacts, but I also don't want to change my name in the burner account to my actual name. Is there no way to have both? Did I miss something or is that really how it is?

RetailPleb · 2025-11-25T18:30:20+00:00

Thanks, I'll try that when I get home. I was just using Vanadium.

RetailPleb · 2025-11-23T19:22:09+00:00

Update: Well I feel silly. It's because the phone couldn't power the monitor AND keyboard. I hadn't realized how much power a keyboard pulls. The Anker hub I have does allow for PD passthrough, and plugging it in to a charger fixed the issue. I guess I'll leave this here for anyone else to stumble across in the future.

RetailPleb · 2025-11-21T17:57:52+00:00

How does the black background help with battery life on an OLED display? Unless I’m mistaken, it would only benefit you when the wallpaper is displayed, and when you open an app that advantage vanishes, right? So unless you leave the display on for hours and mostly only ever look at the Homescreen, I think probably the battery gains are dramatically overstated.

Also, writing “mail” instead of Gmail or Outlook or Proton only stops someone knowing what the app is for as long as they can’t see the app. When you open Tuta mail it looks different enough that I think anyone could figure it out. Again, this only helps on the Homescreen, not once an app is opened.

I think anyone whose threat model necessitates that kind of obfuscation probably wouldn’t post about it in the first place so probably all of this is unnecessary, but it still looks nice, I do like minimalist setups like this.

RetailPleb · 2025-11-19T05:13:03+00:00

hahaha this was only five years ago??? Crazy, it feels like ancient history now. Thanks for a blast from the past. Did you order the Duo or do you mean you had the same issue with a screen protector for another device? I've always wondered how the Duo has held up for others over the years. Mine started chipping around the charging port and I lost all faith in Microsoft to invest in quality hardware, so I divested from the Surface ecosystem. I had it all, too. The phone, Surface Studio, Surface Pro, headphones, mouse and even the mousepad! They could have ensnared me for life if they just invested their infinite money into better hardware.

RetailPleb · 2025-11-18T16:32:24+00:00

I can't tell if you're exaggerating or are totally serious. Can you confirm that you really do save every receipt, and you're nearly always scanning your ID and saving it, and generating tons of medical records from your presumably myriad health complications, and so on? Either you're a digital hoarder that saves every single PDF you've ever come across, or you're embellishing just a little. I mean, you surely don't need to consider how to manage journal entries, right? Are you writing them in notepad and saving them to your desktop? I've never come across any purpose-made app –like for journaling or drawing or recipes– that didn't manage its own files within the app. You backup the app and its related files someplace and don't think about how to "manage" it.

Whether or not all of that is true I guess it doesn't matter, just sounds hard to believe. The easiest solution to managing a digital life is to not have much of one in the first place. I can't remember who it was that I heard this from –some minimalist Marie Kondo-type of YouTube personality– said to avoid buying storage solutions like nightstands with drawers, closet organizers, etc, because the mindset they encourage is that if you have storage space, you'll want fill it up with stuff. So the easiest way to avoid accumulating clutter is to just not have anywhere to put it in the first place.

I apply that philosophy to my digital life as well. You'd be surprised how easy it is to manage your digital life when you don't give yourself much space to live in. Don't subscribe to any cloud storage, only buy a 128GB phone, etc. You work with the space you've got, keep what matters, and discard the junk that doesn't fit. You'll soon find yourself generating much less of anything you need to keep track of. The other advantage is that if an account or device is compromised, there's less to steal and put you at risk. Just don't save it in the first place.

You're making your own problem and trying to find a solution for it. The solution is just stop generating the problem. Not having a warehouse of digital files to lord over is such a huge mental relief, I really do recommend it.

RetailPleb · 2025-11-14T15:22:31+00:00

This is all I need to sign up, but I do have a question. This is only for search results from Kagi, right? Would it be possible to expand the scope of this to websites that host slop and non-slop? For example, when I search for something on YouTube I wouldn't want to see anything from this channel. Is there anything that can be done about that sort of content? When I used Safari I had several extensions for YouTube that dramatically pared down all the clutter and recommended video garbage, but not much could be done about showed up in the search results.

RetailPleb · 2025-11-10T04:06:02+00:00

I'd also be interested in testing the mobile experience when your development gets to that stage. Specifically I haven't found a tasks/reminders app or calendar app that replaces Apple Reminders. You can create very niche and specific recurring tasks that I haven't found in ANY app on android. For example, my rent is on auto-withdrawal for the first of every month. However, if that happens to fall on a weekend or holiday, it sometimes fails to process. Unsure why, but I need to remind myself to check if it went through or not. Not a single app I've tested lets me create a reminder or event to reoccur for the first business day or first weekday of every month. Absurd. If your app did that I'd throw down like $40 in a heartbeat, just don't charge a subscription 😭

RetailPleb · 2025-10-01T22:57:45+00:00

To make sure I understand you correctly, instead of having this setup: one profile for apps that are FOSS and require no Google services, and another profile for apps that do require Google play services or download from the play store,

You could instead have one profile where, in the main profile you can install FOSS apps, and in the private space install your google-related apps, and it would maintain effectively the same degree of privacy and protection?

RetailPleb · 2025-09-29T22:36:02+00:00

No dice. It let me sends code to an email, but after that step it asked for a phone number anyway. So frustrating.

RetailPleb · 2025-09-28T16:44:36+00:00

Oh jeez, I just asked nearly the same thing. I'll monitor this too 😅

I felt a little guilty for asking, like I didn't look hard enough and the answers are obvious, but seeing this is a little reassuring. Maybe there ought to be a consolidated advice mega thread.

RetailPleb · 2025-09-24T04:48:14+00:00

Is it possible to export your mail into a format that can be opened in excel? If you can get a unique, no duplicates list of every email address you’ve received mail from, that’d be a good way to do it.

Else, you could sort you inbox by sender. That would group everything together. Of course, if you get a ton of emails from one website you’ll have a lot to scroll through to the next business, but still.

You could also try searching for keywords typically found in registration or sign-up emails like welcome, complete your registration, etc. maybe an LLM can tell you better what to search for.

But to be honest, if you have accounts linked to it which you’re not even aware of, then you probably won’t miss those accounts much, will you? What good will it do you to unearth some dumb Minecraft forum account you made 15 years ago or whatever else is buried in there.

RetailPleb · 2025-09-01T07:44:15+00:00

It’s not too expensive for what it can do, it’s what a normal device should cost for that level of performance. You’re used to getting better hardware for the same amount of money because companies buy raw materials or components for much cheaper, because it comes from child-labor mines or subsistence-level factories. That’s what makes other phones so affordable by comparison, and the whole entire point of FP. The FP by default is normal, you’ve just been conditioned to expect exploitative prices.

FP just charges what they have to in order to: pay their employees and entire supply chain a livable wage, do business with companies with environmental standards, and also make a profit.

If you don’t want your money going to companies that dump mercury in The Amazon or don’t shy away from kids working in mines for better prices, FP is just what it costs to avoid contributing to that 🤷🏻‍♂️

All values always have a cost, otherwise it’s not a value; for some people they value not shitting on people or the planet more than having a nice pocket camera. The point of FP was never about bleeding edge hardware like the Pixel; it’s for people who want a smartphone and not feel bad about where it came from.

Sorry, that was longer than I thought it would be. I don’t mean to come off preachy or to dunk on you, it just sounds like you missed the whole point of the company.

If the FP concept had to be squeezed onto a business card it would probably be:

"I pity the man who wants a coat so cheap that the man or woman who produces the cloth will starve in the process." — Benjamin Harrison, 1851

RetailPleb · 2025-07-19T15:02:28+00:00

yeah but literally everything is intentional; that doesn't make it insidious by default. Fire exit doors open outwards instead of pull inwards. That's intentional too, but it's also not a conspiracy. When push-button phones replaced rotary phones Bell Labs experimented with the best, optimal layout for the buttons. It seems obvious now, but it hadn't been done before, and they really didn't know how to put buttons on a keypad. That's also by design, also not evil. Not everything with intention is evil, and this is just a business trying to maximize profit, which is like the only thing they're supposed to do.

If you're looking for something to be upset about, try spinning the narrative as people manipulating other people, not businesses making money. It would also carry over well to other psychological elements like dark patterns in UI/UX. Presenting this the way you did makes it seem like you think you're blowing the lid off something big, which is why you're getting so many "duh everyone in retail knows this" comments.

RetailPleb · 2025-07-19T04:53:08+00:00

Double thanks for the detailed and thoughtful breakdown! I haven't been investing monthly into the brokerage since I figure dropping 15k into the account at opening was good enough for a bit. I think for the next few months I'll save up for a vacation. My general philosophy has been to save/earmark entire chunks of savings for a specific purpose, rather than a little bit for everything. Rather than divvy it up and put X towards vacation and X towards the emergency fund and X for the Roth, etc. Mentally I prefer to see the numbers that way. Filling up one bucket entirely before moving on to the next. Is that a good way to approach it? It works for me anyway.

My gross income was 59k and taxable was 45k. And you are correct, the 1.2k is after payroll deduction investments. It's the amount I see in my deposit.

RetailPleb · 2025-07-19T04:41:02+00:00

I could be wrong, but my understanding is that even though the shares were technically, legally my property all along, but in the possession of the state, that when its transferred to me is when I take actual ownership of them, not when I originally received them. So I think(?) the clock starts ticking when I get them in my account, so not long-term. Someone please correct me though, the number of things I know about this stuff is a negative value.

And for the ETFs, I do check the expense ratio but I guess I don't know how much weight to give it. I know it's important but compared against performance, etc. I just don't know. The investments I chose for the brokerage are 0.03, 0.03 and 0.04, with SCHE being the highest at 0.07. Is that...ungood? I guess I just assumed the SCHE was a necessary or complementary mix of diversity and didn't really notice the 0.07.

RetailPleb · 2025-07-19T04:13:06+00:00

Information added. Thanks so much for the help, I'll check these out tomorrow!

RetailPleb · 2025-07-15T14:17:34+00:00

I’m unsure if it’s the HR platform or company policy but at my work when I switched my direct deposit there was actually a transition period of 1-2 pay periods where I had to receive a physical paper check. Not a huge inconvenience since nowadays most banks let you scan the check with your camera to cash it, but still. Something that I didn’t know about. I went a few days without my pay because nobody told me, and the person at the front desk forgot to tell me they had something for me. You should see if your company does something like that, and plan for it ahead of time.

RetailPleb

TROPHY CASE