Thanks for the info. I have not really tested Seedvault myself so this is all good to know.
Ironically, one of the main reasons I switched to GrapheneOS was because Google’s backups were so frustrating and I was hoping Seedvault would be more comprehensive.
What’s wrong with Seedvault?
I jumped on a lifetime deal they had a few years back. I mostly use it via the web UI and Android app, so I cannot comment on desktop or CLI client functionality.
The Android app is “okay”, but not great. Background photo sync doesn’t work consistently; I need to manually launch the app periodically to jog it. I know Android is kind of aggressive about background services, but other apps do this better so I think this is on Filen. Perhaps they should run a permanent notification to stay alive 24/7, like Syncthing does?
As with pretty much every other cloud storage app, it does not let me sync arbitrary folders/files, only photos and videos. *sigh*
It uses Android’s file provider API, so you can open and save files in most apps directly from/to Filen. However, this only seems to work for one-time use, not for apps that need to regularly open/save the same file. For example, when using Keepass2Android, you can have it store your password database on a cloud storage service. This works pretty well with Google Drive, but with Filen it loses the connection frequently because the pseudopaths the API returns are not stable over time (which makes sense, I guess, and is one more reason I want arbitrary local file sync instead). Personally, I went back to storing my Keepass database locally and then periodically backing it up rather than keeping it on live cloud storage.
It’s one of the cheapest E2EE cloud storage services I’ve seen (definitely the cheapest for me with the lifetime promo I got), and the core functionality of uploading and downloading files (and folders) works. That’s good enough for me to give it the thumbs-up.
But here’s the really funky bit. If you ask Claude how it got the correct answer of 95, it will apparently tell you, “I added the ones (6+9=15), carried the 1, then added the 10s (3+5+1=9), resulting in 95.” But that actually only reflects common answers in its training data as to how the sum might be completed, as opposed to what it actually did.
This is not surprising. LLMs are not designed to have any introspection capabilities.
Introspection could probably be tacked onto existing architectures in a few different ways, but as far as I know nobody’s done it yet. It will be interesting to see how that might change LLM behavior.
I refer you to #7 on Bruce Tognazzini’s evergreen top ten list of design bugs.
I’m not sure what the exact model is, but it’s probably from the Performa or Power Mac 5000 or 6000 series. It’s low-res so it’s hard to read, but the text next to the floppy drive says “PowerPC”, referring to the CPU family used in Macs in that era.
The screen looks like Mac OS 8. It’s so low-rest that it’s kind of hard to tell, but the menu bar at the top of the screen is clearly from Mac OS. Could be 7.5, but I’m guessing 8 since that’s what’s shown in the web browser.
I think the left screen is showing Windows. Again, super low-res, but those look like Windows 95/98’s blue window title bars and gray task bar at the bottom.
Same.
That was probably the intention. X-Files was at its height of popularity around this time (assuming 1997 by the Mac model and OS 8).
Seems insane that even after disabling all related options in the main settings GUI, there are still like two dozen things enabled in about:config.
Snapchat does not use end-to-end encryption for messages, so it doesn’t even belong in the conversation.
WhatsApp and FB Messenger are somewhat defensible choices since they at least use E2EE by default (Messenger did not until recently). However, there are a few good reasons to favor Signal:
I don’t have a Palma, but I have a Book Go 6, which looks like it has similar display tech. So I think I can answer some of your questions.
The backlight can go all the way off, to the point where it is invisible in a dark room. You can also adjust the backlight color temperature.
Typing is bad, but I’ve never spent time optimizing it. I would guess that the responsiveness on the Palma might be higher. I also never tried it in high-speed mode, which is much more responsive but has worse ghosting and generally worse image quality. For my use case (99% just reading) I don’t mind the slow response time.
It’s possible to access the normal Android settings, though I just picked up my Boox Go and I can’t actually figure out how. I know I’ve done it before somehow. The Boox settings app has a VPN section, but I don’t see DNS options. Pretty sure you can do this though.
One thing I want to point out is that the Palma is not technically a phone. It’s a wi-fi device, so it will not make calls or send SMS. You would be limited to internet-based messaging apps like Signal or Telegram. I can’t speak to how smoothly those run.
There are also a couple proper phones (with SIM cards) with similar display tech coming out this year. See:
https://www.theverge.com/2025/1/6/24335983/tcl-60-xe-nxtpaper-e-ink-specs-ces
https://liliputing.com/the-minimal-phone-is-now-shipping-e-ink-phone-with-a-qwerty-keyboard/
Additionally, you can set Android to use an ad-blocking DNS server without apps. In Settings > Network & Internet > DNS, select “Private DNS” and set the hostname to a custom server, like base.dns.mullvad.net (Mullvad’s DNS server is free to the public, does not require a VPN subscription).
The per-app controls sound neat! I might give that a try. Google killed the ability to restrict apps’ network access years ago, specifically so ads would always work. I’ve never tried a local VPN as a workaround.
Oh huh. I didn’t know there even was a video. Perhaps my ad/tracker blockers cut it.
Just found a hands-on CNET video: https://www.cnet.com/videos/at-ces-2025-tcl-debuts-new-tcl-60-phone-with-e-ink-display/
Never used TCL’s “Nxtpaper” so not totally sure how it compares.
TCL is releasing a new phone later this year with a toggle-able e-ink mode. So you can use it with in full color when you want, and switch to e-ink when you want. It’s in a more conventional aspect ratio so apps will look more “normal”. I can say from experience with my Boox e-reader that a lot of apps do not work well in 4:3.
https://www.theverge.com/2025/1/6/24335983/tcl-60-xe-nxtpaper-e-ink-specs-ces
Might be my next phone if the CPU and software is not awful (big if).
It used to say “container-native”. They recently changed the wording, but there was no technical change.
It’s a Linux distro that runs locally, like any other. It has no particular tie-in with any cloud services. If Flatpak, Docker/Podman, Distrobox, Homebrew, etc. are “cloud” just because they involve downloading packages hosted on the internet, then I don’t know why you wouldn’t call “traditional” package managers like apt, dnf, zypper, etc. “cloud” as well. 🤷 So yeah, I feel your confusion.
The big difference compared to something like Debian or vanilla Fedora is that Bazzite is an “immutable” distro. What this means is that the OS image is monolithic and you don’t make changes directly to the system. Instead, you install apps and utilities via containers, or as a last resort you can apply a layer on top of the OS using rpm-ostree.
The only thing cloud-related about any of this is that atomic OS images and containers are more common in the server space than the desktop space.
It’s insane that this is even legal.
There’s a separate command called visudo for this purpose.
You CAN use any ol’ text editor but visudo has built-in validation specific to the sudoers file. This is helpful because sudoers syntax is unique and arcane, and errors are potentially quite harmful.
I’ve never actually tried it, but I think you could use BTRFS subvolumes to multiboot without partitioning the physical space.
And then maybe even use deduplication across subvolumes?
Weird. That used to say “container-native”, which at least makes sense – it heavily emphasizes container technologies like Flatpak, Docker/Podman, and Distrobox.
There’s no yum or dnf like on a standard Fedora system (though you can use rpm-ostree if you are desperate). As an “immutable” distro, it’s designed so that you do not install apps at the system level.
There are a handful on non-default apps I’ve used across my last 3-4 distros at least:
mpv - the best video player, period. Minimalist UI, maximalist configuration options. I’ve been using it for many years across many OSes and at this point everything else feels wrong.
Geany - My favorite GUI text editor on Linux.
Foliate - the simplest eBook reader I’ve found.
Strawberry - It’s “fine”. Honestly, I’ve never found a music player on Linux that I really liked. I keep falling back to Strawberry because it’s familiar and generally works as expected.
To elaborate on this a little, you can use Flatseal to specify which directories a Flatpak app can have access to directly. For example, in a music player that stores the path of your music library, you’d want to use Flatseal to be sure it has direct access to that folder. This is similar to GrapheneOS’s storage scopes.
Aside from that, apps can also call on a file picker that lets you choose any file/folder on your system, and flatpak then creates a virtual path to bridge to that file/folder without exposing the entire rest of the filesystem. This is nice for one-time open/save commands, but doesn’t work for apps that need persistent access to a specific directory like in the music player example. This is similar to Android’s file provider API.
I don’t recall off the top of my head what flatpak apps have access to by default. Some subset of the home folder, I think?