Was wondering this too. If they’re officially associated with the Tamriel Rebuilt mod, which is a huge and long developed project, that’s a really bad look.

Unless you want to go as far as installing a custom ROM, which may not even possible because the phone is so new, the best thing to do is don’t sign into a Google account. Sideload the Aurora Store, an F-Droid frontend like Droid-ify, and Obtanium.

The first one lets you sign in anonymously to a random proxy account to download Google play apps without needing to sign into a personal Google account. You can also sign in if you really need to for things like apps you’ve paid for and it still fuzzes some of the analytics Google collects on you, but eliminates a lot of the benefit.

The 2nd one is going to be your primary place to find open source apps or open source versions of apps that have both a Google play and an F-Droid version. For example, the media streaming app Jellyfin has both, but only the Google Play version has the ability to Cast to Chromecast devices because it requires proprietary Google code.

The last one, Obtanium, lets you download apps directly from Github/lab/codeburg/etc repositories from developers that host their apks there directly instead of relying on the stores. This bypasses some security checks that stores like F-Droid use, so it’s a little more on you to trust apps this way, but you usually get updates faster. For example, I have things like Thunder (a Lemmy client) and IronFox Browser installed through Obtanium.

To answer some of your specific questions, a lot of the pre-installed apps aren’t going to let you remove them entirely. You can disable and remove their saved data though, which is still good to do so they at least don’t suck battery. And if you ever need the app, you can re-enable it. Actually removing them requires plugging your phone into your computer and using command line android tools to remove them manually.

You should easily be able to set up mail forwarding from a Gmail account to Proton or elsewhere, but know that this eliminates some benefit, as it means that Google is still getting a copy of the email before it gets forwarded to Proton and that means they can read and obtain whatever information they want from it if they ever felt the need.

wasd enjoyers stay winning, poe1 players need not reply and further strain their wrists

Looks like he was just after whoever in the Trump admin.

"initially planning to kill Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and/or House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., a police affidavit said.

But English shifted his target to Bessent after stopping at a library in Chevy Chase, Maryland, and reading that the Senate was voting Monday on Bessent’s nomination as President Donald Trump’s Treasury chief, the document said."

I didn’t realize this until after I posted, but those sure are small. People suspect he planned to self-immolate since he was covered in hand sanitizer and mentioned suiciding by cop. But who knows.

A friend of mine who just moved for a federal role fresh out of college and hates their job and their work site. Their email was different from the article and said they don’t have to work at all while still getting paid. So they can get paid for 7 months of searching for a job somewhere else. I guess to prevent them from spreading DEI propaganda in the meantime?

The FAQ on the OPM actually says that people are not expected to work during the resignation period. But they can also just fire you at any time before September.

This is the way to go to realistically not just lose all your money, but doing otherwise is tempting when you can see people on Wallstreetbets who made hundreds of thousands of dollars off this specific event with a relatively low buy-in (which could be someone else’s entire life savings).

It’s a difference of wanting/needing money now vs. 40 years from now. Like yeah, my retirement account will be nice to have later, but if I could have 200k (or whatever amount) right now, I’d be way happier and in a better living situation for the next 40 years instead of miserable until then.

And if you’re the lucky one, that 200k can come from a single 2k bet.

Someone posted some studies on an earlier AI article that showed people’s ability to navigate based on landmarks and such was way worse if they relied on GPS. So what OP said tracks as far as skills regressing.

I don’t miss printing Mapquest directions out on paper before leaving onto a cross-state trip though.

I was half memeing. I just have my account overweighted (compared to common advice) in international/“foreign” equities versus domestic because I expect countries like China to be dominant by the time I actually retire.

Sorry old friends, but my retirement account is going to love the rebound, however long it takes. The portion invested in Chinese yuan will make up for it otherwise.

7 years here. When do I get the title of ‘Most Holy’?

Got an email from corporate today. It essentially just says “send all immigration questions directly to legal and do not provide any further information”. Very based. Very sad they had to send it at all.

Me taking the day off every time someone makes a post like this and writing “general strike” for the reason.

Thunder has been my favorite for a while. It displays emotes, but I don’t think any app has an emoji picker.

The dev added a feature I requested on their comm within like a day too.

Boss fights. I’m sure this idea isn’t original, but my friends and I always had the idea that for someone mostly interested in raiding and dungeons, you could cut out just about every other part of the MMO.

But keep classes, keep gear, and focus the game on going through tightly designed dungeons with fun mechanics. Can also have various sizes from 2, 4, 6, 8 or however many people. Add challenges, time trials, medals, modifiers.

There are games like this but none of them I know of function like an MMO with tab targeting, ability bars, etc like in WoW. Stuff like Left 4 Dead or Vermintide but with more unique boss fights.

Unfortunately, full MMOs are very expensive, time consuming, and risky to make to where even many AAA developers won’t attempt it, let alone Indies.

I think thats where our disconnect is. I’m talking about the hardware in the phone itself.

You shouldn’t have those issues because your OnePlus is a US version made for US markets, so has the proper bands/antennae to work fully on our networks and take advantage of things like 5g.

The same phones sold in China are not likely to have these to save money because they aren’t necessary.

It’s not “Chinese phones bad”, but “imported phones usually lack US-specific hardware”. OnePlus is a notable exception to this. Which is why I keep mentioning that buying from their US store is fine.

I wasn’t recommending against Chinese phones at all. And I made the mistake of assuming OP/anyone reading was in the US, when they might be from Europe or elsewhere where the phones work fine.

But you can find a lot of other people experiencing poor reception issues with imported phones. It isn’t just me.

I said I have a OnePlus 12 and its great. But it has full band support because OnePlus makes domestic versions of phones in other markets.

If you’re looking at Xiaomi anyway, look at getting a OnePlus. The 13 just came out, but the 12 and 12r are very good phones.

The 12 has all the US WiFi bands, I’m not sure about the rest. Its the best phone I’ve ever owned. The 12r has significantly more custom ROM support.

They sell them direct to US markets through their website.

But thats the main issue with importing a Chinese version of those phones or importing a Xiaomi is that your signal will be terrible when everyone else is fine. Then some carriers may have trouble activating the phone for you.

I really don’t recommend buying a phone without US carrier support or WiFi bands to save yourself a lot of trouble.

The main problem with Google is their phones are objectively worse hardware wise to just about every other brand at the same price, whereas their cameras are really good and they lean hard into AI software and are very custom ROM friendly.

Samsung doesnt explode anymore but has frequent camera issues (look for Banana gate) and is very locked down. They have excellent hardware and their expensive phones lean into the stylus.

Just about every game I’ve ever played has regional servers meaning that US players never get to interact with people from other countries, often not even English speaking Europe. There’s only a few exceptions to that like EVE Online and their large Russian communities, but even then the groups tend to self-segregate.

Things might be different if everyone was just always forced to play together.

In Fable 3, all your political decisions as a monarch come down to “Do X or Y” based on what your advisors tell you. X is either ‘do nothing’ or ‘do something reasonable as opposed to Y’ and Y is the worst thing you can think of.

For example, one decision is “what do we do with all the poor children on the streets, of which you were once a part of?” and X is OPEN A SCHOOL while Y is INSTATE CHILD LABOR FOR THE CAPITALIST WORMTONGUE FIGURE.

Much nuance.