Ce să vă zic, mă, bine ați venit? bine ați venit, rău ați nimerit. La locu’ ăsta îi zice șerpărie, de la șerpii care umblă pe-aicea. Dracu’ știe cum au ajuns…

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Cake day: June 13th, 2023

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  • Lately, I’ve been in a bunch of electric cars, including the Tesla (which was a Bolt or an Uber). I must say, I was impressed. Beyond the main purpose of saving the environment, there are plenty of other perks that they have:

    • You can barely feel and hear it. On an ICE car, you always hear the engine running and feeling the vibration of it. Even if it’s largely unnoticeable, it’s basically still there. And whenever you rev the engine, it’s getting even more noticeable. On an electric car, there’s no such thing as engine noise. It’s basically either working or not working. And when it’s working, there are fewer moving parts making this noise and shaking the car around.
    • They always come with an automatic transmission, so they’re easier to drive. I know that might not be an advantage out there in the US, since you also have ICE cars with automatic transmission, but here in the rest of the world it does make a difference, since almost all cars are manual.
    • A way better acceleration. I know some of the cars I’ve been in were basically sport cars, but I never felt like being stuck to the seat in a car before.

    I honestly don’t even know why would anyone oppose the switch, tbh. Okay, I know it takes more to fill it up than just sticking the pump in and pressing the handle, but the capacities that modern batteries have, make it feasible to just time your trips in a way that you can even charge them at home overnight or something.













  • […] and Android is worse off for it

    Hard disagree!

    The only damage the whole Nova Launcher thing does is mostly sentimental. Nowadays, there are plenty of launchers to choose from, all with some great degrees of customizability. Here are my top picks:

    • Kvaesitso - my current pick. It’s not the most flexible on this list, but I generally find more and more ways I could integrate it in my personal life. And the font pick is just great.
    • Lucid Launcher - another top pick of mine that is not relied on AOSP. Goes more like a vertical scroll than a horizontal one. Used it on my tablet for as long as it lived, almost.
    • KISS Launcher - If you want to Keep It Simple, Stupid. It’s all just a search bar. That’s it. Search for everything you need and when you’re done, you’re done.
    • Niagara Launcher - also minimalist, but more functional. Didn’t really get the hang of it just yet, not sure if I will. Kvaesitso is quite cool.
    • AIO Launcher - let’s just call it the best strike between minimalist and functional, ok?
    • Lens launcher - for when you want to be so minimalist you put all your apps on the home screen
    • ap15 launcher - same as Lens but there are only labels instead of icons
    • Total launcher - goes the opposite way. Probably the most customizable on this list. Really great once you get the hang of it.
    • Square home - if you used a Windows phone, you know what this is about. If you did not, you will know (alternative implementation, Mur)
    • Microsoft Launcher - as the name implies, it’s Microsoft’s current attempt at a phone launcher. Really useful, especially if you are invested in Microsoft’s ecosystem.
    • Plus there are plenty more others that I didn’t get to test really much, such as Smart launcher, Action launcher, hyperion etc. However, the most hyped in this thread seems to be Lawnchair. Looks like it follows Nova the closest among the open source picks.

    Really, there’s no point in worrying about this. I’m also sad to see Nova go, especially since it was that popular. But there’s that. The launcher landscape is the one I worry the less in Android.


  • I got Nova Premium on a sale and used it ever since, but I had some issues with it on an older phone with lower resources, so I switched to the default launcher (which was still cool btw, I could open the app drawer straight from the recents menu).

    After I got a new phone and went for Android 14 I discovered that the search bar in the app drawer of the default launcher opened the Google app instead of being a simple search screen with all the apps. Also, I couldn’t have themed icons in the app drawer. So I tried Nova again and it didn’t have these either.

    I took advantage of this and decided to try something that would not be based on AOSP, and Kvæsitso seems to be pretty much what I was looking for. My only problem is the fact that I cannot add more than one widget per row but that does make for a more minimalist setup tbh.