Even if apps store stuff internally, and other things can’t find it, the owning app can give temp access to another app. Ie, if you click on it in the torrent software, it should be able to find the relevant media player etc and open that media player playing the file.

Not defending this though, it’s fucking stupid for them to do it that way, but just pointing out it’s not totally useless as long as they allow you to tap/open it from within their app.

I’m genuinely surprised there hasn’t been any significant effort made to make it more readable.

Quite the opposite. They’ve tried to make it better, and in turn, they’ve made it worse.

They used to have a pretty straightforward Linux file structure, and you were expected to put things in the external Pictures folder. And downloads went to the external Downloads folder. Back then, internal storage was small and SDs were large, so apps couldn’t really afford to store these things locally and the SD structure was well enough defined that it was pretty clear where pictures would go.

Now, Google has pushed against SD cards. They also started requiring more permissions for external storage. They’ve added some “documents” APIs that were supposed to make it easier to tag/find files, but it’s a tangled mess and most apps don’t touch it. And they’ve rewritten their storage model multiple times at this point. If you’re writing a new app, it’s unclear which model to even follow anymore because Google has created a giant cluster fuck of options and paradigms.

Google is actively making this problem worse and worse. I wish they had never tried to “fix” this in the first place.

IMO the thing is that people don’t care about their privacy. Sure, some people around here do, but your average person owns an Alexa, has a FB/Instagram account and constantly posts their location, uses the same password on many sites, uses TikTok, doesn’t block cookies, etc etc etc.

Most people don’t actually care. Some claim they do, but then can’t even be bothered to stop using Instagram etc because of the “inconvenience”… So do they really care?

Some companies (Apple, etc) push their products under a narrative around safety and security, and people will repeat that point as a way to justify a decision they already made, but if they actually cared, they would be doing other things too. But they don’t.

The number of us who do actually care about privacy and security is actually very small.

As mentioned in other comments, tracking logic is going to be so negligible at those sizes that it’s not even worth talking about - it’d be like 100kb at worst.

The problem is Meta is extremely inefficient in writing mobile apps. They solve many problems by just chucking libraries at them, but those libraries are “jack of all trades” type libraries. They use React which is abysmally large, and tons of their own monolithic garbage.

When you write an app from scratch, you only use the pieces you need. Meta is an absolute monolith with years and years of code that’s been added over time and it’s easier to just “copy/paste” most stuff they’ve ever written than to start over.

I’m genuinely curious - what do people find confusing about Mastodon? What could be improved?

I was a little confused by Lemmy at first, but downloading and setting up the Mastodon app seemed super simple and straightforward. I’ve never been interested in short form text content like this, and couldn’t find anything I thought was interesting on the platform, but I didn’t feel confused.

Would love to hear what people find annoying/confusing as I’d love to be able to help create content etc for anything that’s holding people up. Twitter owns too much social/mental weight for people and Meta is no better - would love to find a way to help move people towards something like the Fediverse.

Googles already been doing this for years.

Pretty sure this is root only. Normal apps don’t have access to the charge controller and I’ve never seen an app that claims to do this without root.

I don’t know why Google hasn’t put this feature directly into Android. It’s honestly one of the biggest pushes away from Pixel devices for me and it’s absolutely silly.

Honestly, this is more bad “charging hygiene” than anything else. I thought this was the case too until like 10 years ago when I learned how Li-on batteries worked, and since then, I’ve had negligible battery deterioration after 3+ year old devices.

The TLDR is don’t charge your phone past ~80% except on rare days you need the extra juice, and by extension, definitely don’t leave your phone on the charger overnight. Most people do exactly that and it absolutely murders your battery health.

If you’re on Android, AccuBattery is helpful with charge alarms and detailed info if you want to learn about it.

If you have a Samsung with the “protect battery” quick option, it’s a god send and makes this all super easy.

Foldables are the only interesting thing to have happened to smartphones in the past like 6-8 years. It’s kind of sad.

I used to think this was unlikely to happen, and didn’t like how fragmented streaming services were… And I don’t watch enough TVs/movies to justify one or more subscription services.

So I’d just buy everything on YouTube. Figured I’d only buy it once so I paid extra for the 1080p. Then they decided to stop supporting anything over 480p on browsers that aren’t Safari. Watching 480p movies is a joke.

Apparently you’re only allowed 720p/1080p on phones/tablets (lol at watching a movie that small), smart TVs (why would I own a TV with this little TV consumption) or Safari (lol Macs).

I don’t even know what to do at this point. Go back to collecting DVDs? Think I’m just done watching movies.