I pay for music streaming on Tidal. I have a pretty big library of music from attempts to get away from streaming (and keep it up on Soulseek), but I use curated playlists too much to get away from streaming

There is also TempleOS, with a fork of C called Holy C built specifically for better integration with it

I got the game and some small ship bundle a year or two ago for like $20. It was a pretty fun game for the cost, but I honestly wouldn’t pay more than $30 for it. It’s buggy, runs like hot garbage even on my 3080 ti, and it’s very much a mile wide inch deep content wise from what I remember

Half right - he did battle depression his entire life, and he was diagnosed with Lewy Body Dementia and Parkinson’s not too long before committing suicide. There’s really no way to prove which one influenced his decision more, but it was likely because of both.

My life got much better after I blocked that account a few weeks ago

Lutris is awesome.
Open source games, games with their own launcher, games on steam, gog, etc are all in it. Can pick to run things natively on Linux, use proton (pick your version or just use latest), wine, or choose from others, and it does it seamlessly. For games you already have installed on steam, you don’t need to reinstall them, it finds them and makes them runnable from within lutris once you connect your steam account, you can also install games that you own on any of your connected launchers, and browse/download your undownloaded games from them

Examples for some of the stuff I have all in it now:
Catacyslm: DDA catapult launcher (free and open source game - highly recommend you try it out. Takes some getting used to, but there isn’t much you can’t do. Also, make sure you get cataclysm-tiles or use a launcher. ASCII is pure, but hard to get used to. Also, DO NOT buy it on steam.)
All of my installed steam games
Cyberpunk 2077 and the witcher 3 via gog
FFXIV (the official launcher, not steam)
Vintage story (open source but not free - highly recommend if you like open world survival crafting games with a big emphasis on survival)

When you said poe2 I thought you meant path of exile 2 and thought that I had missed the release somehow

I loved that they repeatedly tried to get him to stop talking so they could talk but he kept going, got muted, and you could still hear him continuing to talk in the background, and when he realized he was muted he got louder in the background to try to be heard by more microphones anyway

I could see the potential if they were actually correct more often than not, but LLM models are like a politician - they hallucinate and say things that are wrong or just outright lies, but do it confidently enough to make people believe them

I highly recommend Good Eats with Alton Brown - it explains why you do each step in recipes, gives some options for variations, and there are some episodes dedicated primarily to basics (knife skills, keeping knives sharp, cooking with kids, safety, etc). You don’t have to make every recipe, but it’s interesting to watch even recipes you don’t think you’ll make. Keep watching until you find something good, then you have a video of doing it with explanations, plus his website and books have step by step instructions. Watching will show you how to do a lot of techniques for different things - doing them will help you remember them.

Some of my recommendations that I still make often:

Tomato sauce - easy to make (you prep your veggies, drain tomatoes, then basically just stir a pot occasionally and stir a pan in the oven, then combine and run it through your blender/food processor), it’s good on basically everything (pasta, eggs, pizza, base for soups, etc), and keeps in the freezer for at least a year. I like to add a lot of fresh basil to mine when it’s in season. https://altonbrown.com/recipes/pantry-friendly-tomato-sauce/

Baked Mac and cheese - tasty, creamy, flavorful, and easy. Cook your pasta, shred cheese, whisk a pot while adding stuff to it and letting it form your roux (sauce base), add all your cheese, add pasta, put in a dish, add a stirred together topping, and bake. The recipe itself tells you when to add stuff so it’s not a guess or anything, the episode is good too. (If you prefer stovetop Mac and cheese, equally easy and the same episode does that too, easy to find the recipe on the website as well) https://altonbrown.com/recipes/baked-macaroni-and-cheese/

Scrambled eggs - the episode is well worth watching at least once, and the eggs turn out super fluffy and tasty. (The harissa and herbs are optional, but recommended if you already have them or want to jazz it up) https://altonbrown.com/recipes/20-second-scrambled-eggs/

Just remember, especially if you’re new to cooking or trying to get better: it’s okay to make mistakes! Don’t get upset if you mess something up, figure out what you did wrong and try again later. If you mess up your meal for the night and can’t recover it, fall back on leftovers or takeout or frozen food, but don’t give up on cooking.

Also, if cooking for a special occasion - don’t make it for the first time for the event, make it at least once beforehand as practice and to make sure the recipe itself makes sense and is good

Looks like it’s Goodreads fault since it’s their api (which they are also killing at some undetermined date), readarr is switching to openbooks which should solve a lot of the problems but it’s slow going since readarr doesn’t really have consistent contributors

The only issues I ever had were around authors having a bunch of books that weren’t released or were in different languages, that was solved by narrowing the profiles for what readarr finds which was a 2 minute task

For finding guides and videos - just search for {thing you want to setup} setup guide, there are plenty of results for almost everything. Also, I then showed links to where to setup readarr and qbittorrent.

The only thing you need to get up and running is the OS specific guides (windows is download, run the installer, go to http://localhost:8787/ in your browser, and macos is similar. Linux is a bit of a mess, and I would recommend going the docker-compose route if you are on Linux instead) which are short and tell you every step. The reverse proxy is just a recommended guide for setting one up if you want to access it outside of your network - I don’t recommend doing it, and it’s not necessary at all (I don’t have that setup, all of my stuff is only accessible on my local network)

For finding books, use the readarr quick start guide - it goes over how to use the app, how to add authors and books to grab, etc. I also found this guide that appears to show how to do all of this including the install guide, adding authors and books, connecting to your torrent client, adding indexers, etc: https://www.rapidseedbox.com/blog/guide-to-readarr#05

You basically need 3 things: readarr, a torrent client, and a VPN.

There are plenty of step by step guides and videos for most things, especially popular tools like this. The servarr wiki has install and setup instructions for all of the core arr suite apps as well, both install guides and quick start guides: https://wiki.servarr.com/readarr

Qbittorrent (torrent client) is also easy to install on windows or Linux: https://www.qbittorrent.org/ . You’re also welcome to pick another one, I just like qbittorrent.

Vpn installs vary from vpn to vpn, but pretty much all of them should also contain step by step install instructions

Readarr + calibre makes it very convenient and easy (the rest of the arr suite is great for other forms of media too)

Well yeah, assuming you can install it on all devices you would want to use, and that it lets you use network storage, and that the app doesn’t conflict with other apps using the same network storage. A lot of apps don’t have a specific app for Android, Apple, Linux, macos, and windows because that’s a lot to build and maintain. A deployed webapp works on any device with a browser, and you don’t need to configure every device to use the same networked storage.

Control over your own data (if you mean regular program as cloud apps), or accessible on multiple devices and to different users if you mean an offline computer app

If you want a more realistic (mechanics mainly, better graphics too but still blocky) and survival focused game, vintage story is great. It’s meant to be very realistic (mechanics, not graphics) so it’s a very different play style than Minecraft.

Need storage? Make a reed basket with 8 slots and doesn’t help food preservation, or make a ceramic storage vessel with 12 slots that decreases rate of food spoilage. Manually build clay storage vessels voxel by voxel, put it in a pit kiln, cover in dry grass, sticks, and firewood and let it cook for an in-game day then you’re good to go.

Food? Better hunt, fish, and grow crops. Make soups, stews, jerky, etc - better make sure you have a cellar with sealed jars of food for the winter though. Also need to balance soil nutrients for crops to grow well.

Leather stuff? Have you to kill animals, skin them, get pelts, soak in limewater/borax and water solution in a barrel, scrape them with a knife, soak in weak tannin then strong tannin (made by soaking oak or acacia logs in barrels of water), then you finally have useable hides.

Charcoal? Have to get a bunch of logs, cut them into firewood (crafting recipe so this part is quick), make a 2x2x2 to 11x11x11 hole and fill fully with firewood, light a fire on top, cover, and wait a day. If it’s not fully covered you’re just left with a bunch of ash instead of charcoal.

Metal tools? Have to get the ore/nuggets, melt over a charcoal or hotter fire, pour into ingot mold, hammer and clip it into the desired shape, cool in water. Want to carry something hot by hand? Better have some tongs or you’ll take damage.

Trying to cook inside? Smoke can build up if you don’t have a chimney - and your fire can go out if it’s raining and the chimney is straight down.

Everything takes a lot more work than Minecraft because it’s meant to be more realistic - but there are so many mechanics that it’s a ton of fun to learn and complete stuff. My current playthrough I’m still sifting sand to get enough copper nuggets/items to make a pickaxe to mine some copper ore to make more tools, but I have a nice little stash of vegetable and meat meals stored in crocks in my hole-in-the-ground cellar/bedroom. Still need to get around to making an actual shelter and cellar, but I want a pickaxe first so I can make a nice sized cellar to preserve food through the winter.

What are you even talking about not having a choice? I agree Google is awful, but even on pixel phones you can change most aspects of it - definitely including your browser/search app and engine. Just switch to Firefox and/or use duckduckgo, or any of the other browsers and search engines that are readily available. I haven’t used chrome in years, but if you’re a chromebro I’m pretty sure it supports changing the search engine too.
If your launcher doesn’t support changing your search engine/app in a built-in search bar, throw a different browser widget up on your home screen or get a new launcher with a better app/web search widget, unless you got your phone from work or something with restrictions in place you can easily swap out your launcher for a 3rd party one. I personally use Niagara launcher and like it a lot, if you want a more traditional launcher there’s KISS (It’s also foss), and launchair

Highly recommend getting on the national do not call list https://www.donotcall.gov/ . Doesn’t stop all spam calls, but it shrunk the amount I got at least