Maybe Redis/Redict? The development on that seems pretty dead.

There are cameras and physical buttons that you might want to use on the phone, and the fold might make it nicer to hold in one orientation. Also, the limitation exists because splitting the apps across the shorter side can make very awkward layouts, at least on small phone screens - no such problem with a square. I see no reason not to have the option of both layouts no matter its physical orientation.

I've never used a foldable though, so take my opinion with a grain of salt.

Yes, that's exactly the problem - there's nothing wrong with the encryption used, but it's IMHO incorrect to call it time-based when it's "work-based" and it just so happens that the specific computer doing the encryption works at a given speed.

I don't call my laptop's FDE time-based encryption just because I picked an encryption that takes it 10 seconds to decrypt the key.

def generate_proof_of_work_key(initial_key, time_seconds):
    proof_key = initial_key
    end_time = time.time() + time_seconds
    iterations = 0
    while time.time() < end_time:
        proof_key = scrypt(proof_key, salt=b'', N=SCRYPT_N, r=SCRYPT_R, p=SCRYPT_P, key_len=SCRYPT_KEY_LEN)
        iterations += 1
    print(f"Proof-of-work iterations (save this): {iterations}")
    return proof_key


def generate_proof_of_work_key_decrypt(initial_key, iterations):
    proof_key = initial_key
    for _ in range(iterations):
        proof_key = scrypt(proof_key, salt=b'', N=SCRYPT_N, r=SCRYPT_R, p=SCRYPT_P, key_len=SCRYPT_KEY_LEN)
    return proof_key

The first function is used during the encryption process, and the while loop clearly runs until the specified time duration has elapsed. So encryption would take 5 days no matter how fast your computer is, and to decrypt it, you'd have to do the same number of iterations your computer managed to do in that time. So if you do the decryption on the same computer, you should get a similar time, but if you use a different computer that is faster at doing these operations, it will decrypt it faster.

It's a very short Python script and I'm confident I get the general idea - there's absolutely nothing related to current time in the decryption process. What they refer to as a "time lock" is just encrypting the key in a loop (so the encrypted key from one loop becomes the plain text for the next one) for the specified duration and then telling you how many iterations were done. That number then becomes a second part of the password - to decrypt, you simply provide the password and the number of iterations, nothing else matters.

Yeah, even the TLDR makes it sound more like Qualcomm is yielding to the pressure from OEMs who want to be able to offer longer updates

Oh, I tried it now and it really works. I still have mixed feelings about it, but that's definitely an improvement over how it worked at release.

Apparently it's an EU thing due to the recent DMA changes

https://www.androidpolice.com/google-pixel-launcher-change-default-search-engine/

If Microsoft got busted for giving Internet Explorer special APIs not available to other programs (which made it the best browser on Windows because of its tight integration that could not be replicated by the competition), then what business does Google have doing pretty much the same thing here?

It doesn't appear like there's any way for other search providers to hijack your nav pill and randomly pop up their own UI when you hold it, so why should Google?

You can make it use a different search engine, but that's about it. Oh, and the update that made it possible also brought a google-only circle to search gesture to older Pixels - if you switch search provider, that gesture won't be available. Edit: it worked like that on release, but apparently has been fixed since. Now circle to search works (using Google) no matter what search provider you use for the search bar.

xrandr is Xorg only, it doesn't work with Wayland. You should be able to make SDDM use your Plasma display configuration - https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/SDDM#Match_Plasma_display_configuration

No clue if that's going to fix your issues, but at least it's supposed to work with Wayland.

Right, now get a borderline computer-illiterate person to connect to your network, ensure their firewall isn't misconfigured to block all incoming traffic (with TeamViewer, this configuration would still work because the device just connects to the TV server) and open and set up a completely separate screen sharing program.

I know none of these steps are difficult if you have any idea what you're doing, but I've met plenty of people who would most likely need assistance going through the motions. Funnily enough, the best way to do it remotely would probably be to get them to install TeamViewer to then set this up for them remotely.

By the way, as far as networking goes, Tailscale does the same thing TeamViewer does, just for a VPN instead of a screen sharing application - it will try to do all the NAT punchthrough techniques and IPv6 connection and fall back on tunneling through relay servers if all else fails. It's not any more of a direct connection than TV.

So I did look more into it, and apparently the open firmware is technically compatible with PCIe cards using this chip, but doesn't provide any advantages over just wiping the firmware and letting the chip default to its built-in fallback firmware, and so the maintainer doesn't see any value in explicitly supporting it.

Now the question is whether you consider the proprietary fallback firmware to be acceptable to run - this might sound weird, but for example FSF has explicitly made exceptions for devices with built-in firmware to be able to qualify for the Respects Your Freedom certification, so if your view aligns with theirs, you might consider this to be completely OK. If not, the free firmware appears to have a similar feature set, you'll just have to jump through more hoops.

Also do note that both the fallback firmware and the free firmware are missing many features of the proprietary firmware, so make sure to check it's not missing anything you need (wake on LAN, Jumbo frames and PXE boot seem like the most notable missing features to me).

More info on support for various PCIe cards

Convenience (after you install it, all you have to do is enter the code and you're connected, no other setup required), familiarity (it's the default name people will think of or find if they want remote access - that alone means they can get away with pushing their users slightly more) and - IMHO most importantly - connectivity: if two computers can connect to the TeamViewer servers, they will be able to connect to each other.

That's huge in the world of broken Internet where peer to peer networking feels like rocket science - pretty much every consumer device will be sitting behind a NAT, which means "just connecting" is not possible. You can set up port forwarding (either manually or automatically using UPnP, which is its own bag of problems), or you can use IPv6 (which appears to be currently available to roughly 40% users globally; to use it, both sides need to have functional IPv6), or you can try various NAT traversal techniques (which only work with certain kinds of NAT and always require a coordinating server to pull off - this is one of the functions provided by TeamViewer servers). Oh, and if you're behind CGNAT (a kind of NAT used by internet providers; apparently it's moderately common), then neither port forwarding or NAT traversal are possible. So if both sides are behind CGNAT and at least one doesn't have IPv6, establishing a direct link is impossible.

With a relay server (like TeamViewer provides), you don't have to worry about being unable to connect - it will try to get you a direct link, but if that fails, it will just act as a tunnel and pass the data between both devices.

Sure, you can self host all this, but that takes time and effort to do right. And if your ISP happens to use CGNAT, that means renting a VPS because you can't host it at home. With TeamViewer, you're paying for someone else to worry about all that (and pay for the servers that coordinate NAT traversal and relay data, and their internet bandwidth, neither of which is free).

It's less about the computer and more about the card itself - Talos II and Blackbird both use the BCM5719 chip for their integrated NICs. Basically, you're flashing part of the motherboard with this firmware. A PCIe card built around the same chip might connect the interfaces in a different way, and firmware doesn't generally have a way of poking around to find out how everything's set up from the hardware side of things - it needs to just know this, and that's why there are separate firmware builds for different hardware.

If you flash one of these files to that card, it might just so happen to work perfectly, but it most likely won't. You would need to figure out how it's wired up and modify the firmware with that knowledge. And then you could use the modified open firmware with that specific card model on any computer that supports the proprietary firmware, because IIUC this is meant to be functionally identical.

So in short, no, you cannot currently use this open firmware on any computer other than Talos II and Blackbird, but for slightly different reason than you might think.

Also, the Arch repos are pretty much just an "AUR with binaries" - they contain the same PKGBUILD files used by AUR packages, because that's how Arch packages are built. So you can just download an Arch package PKGBUILD, modify it however you wish, and then build and install it.

If it is an Arch-based distro (sorry, I don't recognize the package manager), then this might just be the recent Wine update that made it 700 MB smaller (which would mean the rest of your system grew 300 MB)

I made a post here about it: this one

Btw, is there a way to link to a post in a way that resolves on everyone's separate instance instead of hard coding it to my instance?

Haha I didn't even notice it. But you made me realize how incredibly inconsistent the feedback "button" is in the used-to-be-AOSP apps

• Clock has it in the three dot menu on the main screen AND in the three dot menu in settings
• Phone only has it in the main three dot menu, but it's completely missing from settings (oh and the Settings->Accessibility screen ignores Material You colors for some reason)
• Contacts has a decoy three dots menu that only contains Select and Select all buttons, the feedback option is hiding in the account switcher (and is once again missing from settings)
• Messages once again hides the feedback button in the account switcher, but it doesn't have a three dots menu so it makes sense. No feedback in settings
• Calculator has it in the three dots menu and doesn't have any further settings
• and finally, Camera: tap the quick settings button, tap More settings, scroll to the bottom and boom, the feedback button.

I know this is completely useless information, but I was curious and thought it would be a shame to just forget my findings 5 minutes later

Can confirm, it's there in the stock Pixel ROM

Yeah, but that's the RPG where you carry a baby on your chest. Clearly a very different kind of game, silly.