Handles

I wholly disagree with everything you just said, including that your friends and family by your own assessment are unable to rise above average skills. But you know them better than I do, of course 🤷

It’s free on f-droid, though? https://f-droid.org/packages/eu.siacs.conversations/

I’ve been eyeing Pico, but it doesn’t seem to be super well maintained? Do you know if it’s still active?

Perhaps your phone has extra aggressive battery saving settings that kill the background process? The official Syncthing has a setting to run as a persistent service, which always helped me.

Otherwise see if you can make system exceptions for the app to run in the background, and allow it to auto-sync. It’s been a while since I used the forked app, buy it did help me out on a device where the official didn’t work for me.

Hope this helps.

who is downvoting me and why?

You’re probably making them feel stupid, people downvote for no good reason. It’s a them problem, not a you one; everybody should check AlternativeTo before asking for recommendations.

Yeah, phone to laptop, and I recently synced all backups and files from an old phone to a new one, too. Once you have the computer setup, you can basically connect phones by reading its QR code.

If the official Syncthing Android app is giving you a hard time, maybe try Syncthing-fork? IIRC that’s only the daemon and web GUI wrapped as an app. But I’ve used the main app only for the past few years.

I’d really recommend giving Syncthing a second chance, twist a few knobs in the settings until it works. I’ve used it for years with barely a hitch.

Was my first impulse too, but looking at their app selection now, it seems kind of … inutile? Unsexy? Old?

Gotcha! Thanks for the ELI5 🙂

local-first

web app

I’m confused, which is it?

I was referring to the “just skip the hosting step” part. You may be right about Joplin but you’re wrong about the suggestion.

Great suggestion in !selfhosted@lemmy.world…

Recommending Spyglass over, say, SearxNG? Seems a bit over-reliant on Google services for my taste, but sure.

“Do I need them? No, but I nerd them, so they stay up!”

A most relevant typo 👍

Interesting, not the first recommendation I’ve had of Piefed. And in your case, choosing a platform.where you can actively contribute is …really the way it should be. Direct and active influence on tools used.

I also agree that Lemmy (largely in imitation of Reddit) skews more social than just a link aggregator, so I’m not arguing you personally are doing it wrong. Tbh it feels more like an “everything forum”, but like I said — splitting hairs. That’s engagement, too 🙂

A tool or algorithm that hides or just deprioritises empty posts would certainly be useful, maybe even as a core feature in future releases of Lemmy?

For my part, I’d like to be able to hide posts based on the source URL [cough, screenrant, cough], same as blocking users or whole instances. Little, user-level filters like that could make a big difference in the individual experience.

So, just to split hairs: Lemmy is a link aggregator, so it’s really better suited for this than Mastodon by design. BTW, please don’t make Mastodon a linkdump (I use that more than Lemmy) 🙂

Also, if you’re using a feed reader and Lemmy for news, then yes. There will be duplicates, but that is pretty much a problem in your setup, isn’t it? Can’t really fault either app for it.

All that said, I completely agree that just posting an URL without context or comment is unhelpful on any social platform. It’s always good to know what has motivated someone else to share a news item (especially in politics and other sports!).

That’s pretty cool, glad to see the fediverse is adopted (if not directly implemented) in other applications 👍

First I’ve heard of Virpus but thanks for the heads up. More than 50% packet loss does not sound like a working infrastructure, much less one that should be marketed to consumers.

Agreed. Most people online think having a personal website on their own domain is too much of a hassle, they won’t have the knowledge or time to setup a homelab server.

We need more of the nice people you mention — with the tech knowhow and surplus of time — to maintain community services as alternatives to corporate platforms. I see a few co-op services around where member-owners pay a fee to have access to cloud storage and social platforms; that is one way to ensure the basic upkeep of such a community. I’m not sure how Chatons is financed but they certainly have a wide range of libre and private offerings!