NewPipe is Working Again So Now My Life Can Go Back to Normal
I love you NewPipe, you beautiful YouTube front end. I didn't realize you were working again. After 3 days, I had given up checking if you were working again. That was 3 days ago.. I've been using the browser version of YouTube for 6 days now. Do normal people who arent FOSS enthusiasts just accept not having a working YouTube app for a few days every few months? Like, realistically, NewPipe is probably going to stop working again for a few more times this year - just like it did last year, and the year before that, and the year before that, ect. Who knows, it may just stop working entirely at some point. Though, it's not really NewPipe's fault. Google doesn't want people using front ends. You already can't watch mature flagged videos on it now.... and I don't mean like temporarily, I mean forever. You will never be able to watch mature videos on NewPipe ever again. You now have to use a Google account to watch mature stuff. The workarounds have been blocked. NewPipe doesn't let you link accounts. That's a feature. All of your view history, subscriptions, your playback positions, they're all saved locally. You can easily back up all of that to a file and import it onto a new installation of NewPipe. Sometimes you have turn videos down to 360p for them to load faster. Sometimes you have to wipe all of your playback positions. That's the NewPipe life, and I still love it.
Sorry, I'm trying not to link my videos to blog posts, but I seriously need to update the one I did in 2023. Mozc, my FOSS Japanese input keyboard, finally broke for good (at least for me). Fcitix5, which I switched to, no longer has Japanese support on Android. The Anthy plugin straight up isn't there anymore. There are no other FOSS Japanese keyboards. I'm using fucking Gboard with the telemetry turned off in CalyxOS's settings Google's Gboard. Soon I'll have to give up my comfy Pixel 4a for a new Pixel. Security updates that Calyx packages for their custom, privacy focused rom are going to stop being pushed. It's not their fault. Upstream security updates always eventually dry up. It sucks.
Things will gradually stop working on this phone. Forever. I hate how locked down phones are. I hate how stuff like Hallium has to be used as an in between layer for getting Linux installs to work on most phones. Pinephone, why did you have to be such a hot mess? All phones should have their hardware open and documented, and have mainline, hardware level, Linux support. I love you in theory. I'll pull you out of the drawer one of these days. Fuck Purism, though. Fucking Purism grifters and their $2000 freedom phone. There's basically like one really cool guy and a handful of others working on getting the camera app working on these mainline Linux phones. I appreciate everyone out who develops FOSS for phones. You are making a difference. You are helping humanity. The time that you are donating to develop software for the community does not go unnoticed. Thank you.
Time to chill with some background noise on NewPipe. I won't be using playlists, though. Those are actually kind of broken still. Right now I'm listening to a 20 hour recap of an online reality show. Shadi gang, yo.