I've been using NetGuard for many years to block net access for apps that shouldn't need it. I haven't noticed any impact on battery life and haven't run into issues other than what one might expect (for example when it turns out that the blocked app refuses to run without network access)

Didn't know about RethinkDNS, looks neat, will give it a try sometime.

newpipe can play offline files I’m pretty sure

Don't think that this is true (unless we are talking about a fork that I am not familiar with). The FAQ has an entry on this and mentions that you need to use an external player. I use mpv and VLC.

Nice, now just another year to go while they fix it to run well on the Steamdeck.

Anno 1800

I've been eyeing the boardgame version which is also highly regarded. I guess will have to look into the original too. Always fun when hobbies intersect.

If you have an email workflow that you like then something like rss2email might be an option. You simply feed your incoming rss into your email. You'll want to auto-tag (or otherwise organize) these emails to keep them separate from regular emails. Then you use your usual email tools to organize them further.

I've been using such a setup for the past 15 years.

With Fez I feel I may have forever missed the window when I could have picked it up. It used to go on sale for $1.99 with an all time low of $0.99. Now it never gets under $4.99.

In a vacuum I'd probably just pick it up for 4.99 but knowing the pricing history I just can't do it.

I've done many hours of phonecalls on mine. Mic quality is acceptable, slightly mushy. Wind is an issue for example when riding a bike at higher speeds. Wearing a hoodie over them can block the mic too.

I've been using various Aftershokz/Shokz models for many years and well over a thousand hours. They are a great option for speech-focused contents like podcasts, audiobooks and that's what I use them for. I almost never use them for music, the lack of bass (even with earplugs) just doesn't do it for me. But I don't find any earbuds satisfactory for music either so maybe I am more picky than most.

I agree with OP about the controls. They are workable but could be much better even considering the limited inputs. I particularly hate the choice of triple-click for backwards-seek and I mess up the timing half the time. Another pet-peeve is the loud beep on play/pause that cannot be turned off. Using the phone/computer controls instead of the on-device ones avoid these issues.

As far as models I originally got the Aeropex and later on "downgraded" to the OpenMove. The audio quality is comparable between the two, the only thing you are missing with the lower end model is comfort - but that is highly subjective! I actually prefer the way the OpenMove feels.

I really wish that there was more competition in this space. The Shokz products are a bit overpriced and slow to evolve and the rest of the options I've seen seems lower quality and worse form factor. Would love to hear if anybody has found a different brand that they prefer over the Shokz models.

Yep, original is Java and uses libGDX. Slay the Spire is mentioned in the showcase.

Maybe a stickied thread with suggestions and each week pick the highest voted one that hasn't been discussed yet.

SearXNG is great at what it does but it falls into the Bing/Google/etc-frontend category since it just forwards your query to one of the search engines it has modules for. It doesn't have its own crawl and index.

I wish that was the case but sadly most of them are basically Bing or Google frontends or belong to entities that I trust even less. As far as I can tell there are very few independent crawls out there.