cassidy

cassidy, 8 months ago to linux

I’m gonna dip my toes into volunteering as a Flatpak/Flathub developer advocate—basically, providing a human contact at a real company that can help larger apps/companies get their apps in front of Linux (and thus Steam Deck!) users.

What are some of the biggest apps you think are missing from Flathub—or for apps already there, which are the ones you’d like to see verified?

#Flatpak #Flathub #Linux #SteamDeck #OpenSource

cassidy, 10 months ago to mastodon

I’ve promised enough people this, so I had to do it! 😁

Here’s my write-up of how I added client-side Fediverse-powered comments to my Jekyll blog using the Mastodon API.

Huge props to @jwildeboer for the initial inspiration, as well as @julian and everyone who provided feedback for inspiring the design improvements.

https://cassidyjames.com/blog/fediverse-blog-comments-mastodon/

✨💬 Reply to this thread then check the blog post comments to see it in action!

#Mastodon #Jekyll #WebDevelopment #ActivityPub #design

cassidy, 8 months ago to random

WARNING, SPOILERS AHEAD. I used the content warning and an obnoxious all-caps warning, you can’t complain about me spoiling things! I will also tag everything in the thread #Ahsoka, #spoilers, and #AhsokaSpoilers as much as I can.

MUTE THIS THREAD if you don’t want to see it, and I’d recommend you also mute those hashtags for good measure. You’re in control of your destiny spoiler-exposure, here. :)

Okay… thread:

cassidy, 6 months ago to random

How do we feel about guyliner these days? 🤔

cassidy, 4 months ago to random

Welp, COVID-19 got me. Feeling pretty miserable, and reminded that American healthcare just sucks in every possible way.

Today I went to my insurance website to try to do a telehealth appointment like I have in the past, and of course it's completely different, completely broken, and says it can't confirm my insurance information. You know, the telehealth option THROUGH MY INSURANCE THAT I'M LOGGED IN WITH.

cassidy, 4 months ago to threads

I’m happy to see Threads starting to federate with Mastodon and other ActivityPub networks!

Open standards are good, and honestly, I have a ton of friends already on Instagram and Threads that would never join yet another social network, but I’d still love to keep up with them and their lives without having to use Threads. Federating via ActivityPub enables exactly that.

#Threads #Mastodon #ActivityPub #federation #Fediverse

cassidy, 8 months ago to Steamdeck

I'll keep saying it, because it keeps coming up. If you're working in the FreeDesktop, Linux, or Flatpak spaces, you need to understand this, even if you don't personally care about gaming or Steam Deck.

#SteamDeck #Flatpak #Flathub #Linux #FreeDesktop #FreeSoftware #OpenSource #FOSS #FLOSS

cassidy, 6 months ago (edited 6 months ago) to linux

Canonical has poisoned search results for many apps plus a Linux distro name. For example, Googling “Spotify elementary OS” returns an auto-generated page on the Snap Store site that requires using a terminal, installing a whole package manager as root, and missing out on details and updates in AppCenter.

elementary would point you to Flathub where you can install w/two clicks and then get AppCenter integration.

How do we feel about this?

#Linux #Ubuntu #Snap #Flatpak #Flathub #elementaryOS

cassidy, 7 months ago to apple

Reminder that Apple uses a technology literally invented in 1984 to brainwash their users into thinking anyone using a non-Apple device is poor.

This lie is rampant and reinforced by the billionaire CEO of Apple, the richest company to ever exist.

Apple intentionally makes their devices bad at communicating with other devices because it means kids without Apple devices might get bullied into giving Apple more money. Apple knows this, and plays into it.

#Apple #iPhone #iMessage #RCS #Android

cassidy, 1 month ago to GNOME

A conversation that keeps popping up in my mind since FOSDEM centers around open source projects and “AI,” and I still don’t know what I think. So let me share some thoughts here on the famously nuance-friendly Internet. 😜

During a chat w/folks from several open source organizations, someone suggested GNOME could attract funding by “sprinkling some AI on it.” Several folks laughed at the topical joke, but then realized it was in earnest. 🧵

#GNOME #OpenSource #Linux #AI #ML #OpenSourceFunding

cassidy, 15 days ago (edited 15 days ago) to fedora

TIL Fedora is packaging a web browser app I developed for elementary OS, stopped updating over three years ago, and marked as end-of-life two years ago—yet it happily shows up in Fedora 40 if you search my name. It crashes on launch, so it doesn’t even work…

WHY??

Edit: I guess the package is being EOL'd in Fedora due to it no longer building and this thread, huzzah! My recommendation to distros: don’t package random apps and then not maintain them/communicate with upstream.

#Fedora #Linux

cassidy, 6 months ago to SmartHome

My brother texted me “what smart dimmer should I get?”

Little did he know he kicked off a multi-hour chat about Matter, Thread, LAN control, Nest, Google Home, Zigbee, hubs, border routers, controllers, HomeKit, IKEA TRÅDFRI, and XKCD 927.

https://m.xkcd.com/927/

The whole industry has screwed this every chance they’ve had, and Matter—the most promising “solution”—is still a huge disappointment.

#SmartHome #Matter #Thread #HomeAssistant #HomeKit #GoogleHome #Google #Nest #MadeByGoogle

cassidy, 8 months ago (edited 8 months ago) to GNOME

I've been talking a bit with folks working on GNOME about the state of the System Monitor app and its handful of community-made alternatives, then I had a thought:

Is it a wild idea to just... not have the app?

Wait wait, put away your pitchforks! We could do something better!

What if the reasons people actually use System Monitor were just exposed more contextually in the OS, for everyone? 🤔

For example...

#GNOME #GNOMEdesign

cassidy, 2 months ago (edited 2 months ago) to apple

Do you believe that Apple protects user privacy, especially more meaningfully than other companies or tech products?

#Apple #privacy #iPhone #iOS

cassidy, 6 months ago to mastodon

Wow. I just discovered @phanpy and love it! It's a very clean, opinionated Mastodon web client that runs entirely from a static site, meaning you can trivially self-host it.

I just threw it up at https://phanpy.blaede.family with GitHub Pages in about five minutes (https://github.com/cassidyjames/phanpy/blob/b9557b528015cfa518385a8399a320b4f1ecab37/.github/workflows/build-and-deploy.yml).

I'd love to see how an instance could self-host this as a sort of "alt" UI with the default server pre-selected and stuff, maybe just allowing registered users on that instance to log in. 🤔

#Mastodon #Phanpy

cassidy, 9 months ago (edited 9 months ago) to random

I am continually amazed at how trash Google's "desktop" type platforms are.

Android has matured as a phone OS, and has a lot of really clever and technically-impressive ideas. The overall experience is sound and on par with iOS in most respects. It has a vision for how phones should work.

ChromeOS feels like this mis-mash of UI ideas and features with zero cohesive vision. It's a browser plus some mediocre desktop stuff plus some terrible Android stuff, oh, and poorly-integrated Linux apps!

cassidy, 3 months ago to GNOME

What if GNOME.org was a bit more modern? 🤔

#GNOME #GNOMEdesign #design #WebDesign

cassidy, 9 months ago to GNOME

A challenge proposed by @jjardon for #GUADEC2024 in Denver: we try to go the whole week using only GNOME for our phones. No iPhone, no Android, just GNOME OS or postmarketOS or whatever with GNOME on top.

Navigate with Maps, wake up with Clocks, share our adventures with Snapshot and Tuba, communicate with Fractal, etc.

Think that sounds impossible today? We have one year to get things into shape before then! 😅

#GNOME #GUADEC2023 #Linux #LinuxMobile #OpenSource

cassidy, 8 months ago (edited 8 months ago) to Starwars

Alright Star Wars peeps, I’m going to pin this thread of my non-spoiler-y Ahsoka thoughts. You can look here for my latest thoughts over the next seven weeks. :)

I’ll post a separate content-warned thread with spoilers.

And if you want to join me in watching it each week, check out my site! We synchronize our viewing and chat along on Discord.

https://cassidyjames.com/starwars/ahsoka

Thread to follow… and feel free to mute the thread if you’re not interested.

#Ahsoka #StarWars #NoSpoilers #AhsokaWatchAlong

cassidy, 6 months ago to security

People building apps and web services: I feel like we need to talk about two-factor authentication terminology.

Here are some of the things I always think and then realized I've never written down. 🧵

#security #ux #UXCopywriting #copywriting #UXDesign

cassidy, 5 months ago to android

I feel like I post this every few months, but: is there a launcher for #Android AS CLOSE AS POSSIBLE to the latest #Pixel Launcher, but lets me use a different search engine?

I love the stock launcher:

• At a Glance
• Combined app/web search
• Very little customizability because good defaults
• Smooth animations/integration w/Recents
• Ability to turn off Google Discover feed
• Simple gestures (⬇️ notifications, ⬆️ all apps)

ALL I want is #DuckDuckGo instead of #Google

#TeamPixel #MadeByGoogle

cassidy, 9 months ago (edited 9 months ago) to random

Does anyone have experience with the Mastodon API and want to answer what I hope is a pretty straightforward question?

I'm using the status context API endpoint to grab replies to a status (to display as comments on my website!). However, it appears to be limiting the number of statuses returned.

According to the docs, I expected a Link header in the response to fetch more statuses, but I'm not getting that header.

Am I missing something? Is there a different endpoint I should be hitting?

cassidy, 4 months ago to random

Pretty wild to me that the mobile platform that has majority market share in the US, doesn’t allow users to install apps from outside of their own tightly-controlled store, requires all purchases to be served through that store with a platform fee, doesn’t allow users to sideload their own apps, doesn’t allow entire categories of apps like browser engines and game streaming, and doesn’t even allow users to set their own preferred apps in many cases is not a monopoly… but Android somehow is??

cassidy, 9 months ago to random

Finding it really hard to not just be in total defeat regarding the future for my kids. Between the climate and human rights, it makes everything else just feel pointless. Like, what are we even doing?

cassidy, 1 month ago (edited 1 month ago) to Steamdeck

A top-10 ISV has asked if Flathub can provide how many installs of their app are coming from Steam Deck users.

Today, we can’t—we’d need a change in Flatpak itself to add the OS name/version to the user-agent sent along with install/update transactions. The best we may be able to do today is see the exact versions of OSTree and Flatpak that are included in SteamOS, check if those are relatively unique, and provide a rough estimate based on that.

#Flathub #Flatpak #SteamDeck #SteamOS #Linux