I have no complaints about Lemmy, but posting on Mastodon is basically screaming into the void - I’ve been trying for more than a year, and I basically hardly ever get any reaction at all. In comparison, in the first week on Bluesky I found multiple people following me, commenting on my silly wine and cactuses posts, and in general just interacting.

Don’t get me wrong, I still prefer Mastodon technically and ethically, but it’s just so goddamned barren and dead I feel completely unmotivated to post there…

Zorin has a pro tier that costs money but it’s supposed to have the look and feel of classic Windows - maybe it’s that?

And in the next episode of “Americans voting against their best interest because they moronically believe one day soon they will be wearing the boot that they’re currently being crushed under”…

Amen. Basically this survey reads to me as “we decided to focus on AI and we need some pretty graphs to show it’s an awesome idea - please tell us why you think AI is the best thing ever!”

"A new eye-opening report (that we are not going to link, or even give you a title of, because trust us bro) has revealed something surprising about our social media platforms

Thanks, here’s hoping! I love it as a phone, but I suspect it might be another app showing the icon - there should be no way for a disabled app to do so…

Anyway, I’ll keep casually digging, maybe start disabling apps one by one to see which one is the culprit or something :)

Factory reset is out of the question - I spent way too much time installing and setting everything up after changing phones to nuke it all (because Google sucks and doesn’t allow backing all the settings and such without root, but that’s a rant for another day).

I did reboot the phone, yes, multiple times - after turning calendar notifications off, disabling the app and so on. No dice, the icon keeps coming back. Oh well, guess I’ll have to get used to it - it’s a distracting eyesore, but the phone is working fine. Maybe it fixes itself after the update to Android 15…

Thanks a bunch for all the suggestions and willingness to help - appreciate it!

That didn’t work unfortunately - my Google calendar is actually completely empty, no tasks, notifications or anything. Cleared app data, even tried force stopping and disabling the app completely (can’t fully uninstall it, since it’s system), but the darn icon is still there. Maybe I just need to learn to live with it, even though it annoys me…

That’s a great find, thanks! The problem is, I don’t actually have any tasks scheduled right now, and the icon never disappears. Disabling calendar notifications completely doesn’t hide it either, I even tried disabling the calendar app completely, and still nothing…

This clickbait title will make you (or at least me) not want to click the link because it sounds like a shitty ad!💥🔥🍄

I made a live wallpaper using an Android app called Magic Fluids (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.magicfluids) that is fully black, but creates a flame effect every time I tap the screen or slide my finger across it. Yeah, edgy and tacky AF, but it really is a pretty cool effect and I’ve been using it for years, so whatever.

Amen to that. I’m not a busy CEO of four companies, I don’t need or want an assistant, digital or otherwise. I want to read through articles and watch videos, I can scroll/fast-forward through myself if I feel like it. And while we’re at it, I don’t really need or want personalized anything - just give me ALL the search results and I’ll sort through them myself. Luddite? Maybe, but I literally cannot think of a case where this would be useful or helpful to me…

Of course he does - his mental capacity does not allow him to conceptualize the future or plan for it, or to remember the past, so he just says whatever he considers to be most advantageous to him at that very moment…

To be honest, they probably are. My pet theory is that they’re trying to do what do many politicians are doing - drive away everyone but the strongest base electorate that will stay with them no matter what they do. And then, the grift starts. I’m reasonably sure sooner rather than later they’ll start charging a subscription fee to use Windows, and people and companies will bend over and pay it…

I solved this issue by following multiple tags that interest me. People tend to tag their posts on Mastodon it seems, so discovering posts about, say, wine and cacti is as easy as following #wine #cactus #cacti #redwine #oragewine and so on and so forth - it’s working pretty good for me without an algorithm recommending stuff to me, maybe it’s worth a try?

Oh cool! I’ll need to look into that, thanks! Wonder if there’s a way to convert an existing Windows parition into this somehow, installed software and all, because that would be perfect…

Right, but you have to boot into Windows first to even get the update in the first place…

So, no booting into Windows until this is fixed then? Fine by me. Hell, might actually make me uninstall it completely and free some disk space…

I’m not from the US or in the US, but even as an impartial external observer with no horse in the game I do enjoy the recent republican panicked whining…

Same here. I was fine with W10, but the recent W11 shenanigans were the last straw, and I decided to give Linux Mint a try. Couldn’t be happier - everything is so much more snappy now. And since I game on consoles only and my crappy PC was never a gaming machine to begin with, I have zero issues - wish I switched sooner!