Thank you so very much!

I had no idea! Thanks for the list, I’ll check them out!

EDIT: It seems like a lot of these are Android apps. I was looking for desktop apps if I was being honest. That, and I have an iPhone.

Given the revelation that it hooks into Spotify to get playlists etc, I really wish there wasn’t that strong of a dependency on Spotify, and that I could just search for songs and start playing.

I was hoping for more YouTube music player, and less Spotify.

I have Spotify Premium which I pay for, and the desktop client is very fast and snappy to play songs. SpotTube is OK, but it isn’t as snappy as Spotify. For something that is free, that is absolutely fine, but the fact it requires Spotify for playlist etc…

I definitely get why. Spotify does playlist generation like no other, and it is the biggest platform by far. But I kind of wish I had a version that wasn’t all about the algorithms.

Also, the way you “login” to Spotify on the desktop is incredibly user un-friendly at best, and incredibly brittle at worst. Copying and pasting a cookie that Spotify uses shouldn’t be used as a way to login to any service, like, at all. And if Spotify are smart, they’ll break this functionality within a month or so using something like Fingerprint.js to identify which device the session belongs to, thus invalidating the session.

So a few weeks back it’s been officially confirmed I’m being made redundant.

I had a job interview last Friday - late stage. I’m hoping they come back with some positive news. The interview went okay. I think I did well with the Java stuff, but when I was asked about Javascript Event Loops, I was completely befuzzled.

Back at work, and we all have to act like we give a shit. Not too great, I wish I was done with the company overall.

Luckily I have another job interview next week - something to look forward too!

Overall, a pretty resounding “meh”.

I think OP is trying to say:

• There was the Reddit API catastrophe
• That led him to lemmy/ActivityPub
• Which gave him exposure to Linux
• Which he used to give Linux a shot

And he seems to be having a great time with LInux

So I have phenylketonuria, and a big part of this is being in tune with my brain and my mental/emotional/physical well-being as to try and gauge when my phenylalanine levels are high.

Since I’ve had my phenylalanine levels so low, I was able to correctly find out my levels were high.

As to catastrophising, unfortunately that is a symptom of high phe levels. I’ve been working on lowering my phe levels, and today was the first day I didn’t feel any anxiety or catastrophe despite starting something 24h support at work today for a week.

Sorry to hear about your depression. Sounds like a hell of a bump from your old job - good on you for getting the job!!

I feel a lot better today. I think part of it is writing things out and actually visualising my situation. I think another part was your reply, which helped me feel seen, so thank you.

Seeing what folks have said, I kind of feel bad griping about my own issues, but as of now I have nobody else to really talk to (or at least that’s the way it feels), so here goes:

• Work has been up and down. It has been super stressful and intense at times - especially on Mondays, and then calms down as the week goes on. It doesn’t help that we have half our team members and next week our team lead is going on holiday. And next week is going to be the start of support, where I’ll need to be available 24/7 (it’s a thing, and apparently it pays super well and also can help for a promotion)
• I bought a house in March and things are still ongoing from the sellers side despite being virtually done on my side. This wouldn’t be so stressful had it not been for the fact that I have a mortgage offer that will expire at the end of October, and given how the seller wants 4 weeks to paint their new house before I get the keys(!!!) that means I’ll need to factor the 4 weeks into the expiry and eventually consider putting my foot down and pulling out (which I don’t want to do, but interest rates have drastically changed in the UK, so I’m unlikely to have an extension or the same offer again)
• A few weeks ago I got shingles, and I had medicine for that (stress from house and work). Went over to my sisters and she started talking to me about the foot fungus she saw on my feet as well as fungal infection behind my ear. The behind-the-ear requires a shampoo, so that’s simple. The toenail fungal infection requires toenail clippings as well as blood test to check my liver. Yesterday the results came back slightly borderline for my kidneys, so I’m going to have to repeat the results (also I have to avoid alcohol and eat more fruit). At this point I can’t help but feel like my body is a Rube Goldberg machine and while it’s nice that my sister is spotting these issues, it just makes me feel slightly depressed about my body.
• The weather in the UK as well as the health issues has left me a bit house bound, and more importantly, I feel incredibly lonely.

But on the plus side:

• I have a very, very well paid job that seems to actually compensate me for the effort I put in - much, much more than my last job
• I have a genuinely very caring family that wants the best for me
• I’m lucky to live in a time when I can just write this post and several strangers will see it, even if they don’t respond. In some ways, the loneliness is much more in my head
• I already ate 3 bits of fruit yesterday and I had one before my dinner (this is actually quite a big deal for me) :D
• I’m self aware enough to spot when I’m catastrophising and (hopefully) I can make an active effort to nip it in the bud. Sometimes its easy, and other times it’s mentally exhausting.
• I’m sure there are others out there who are doing much worse with taking care of their bodies than me.
• I am not depressed yet. I may have bouts of anxiety through the day, but I think this is manageable.

That’s actually a really good point. I think, ui wise, skype and slack served a different audience. I think skype was about 1-2-1 messages and calls, whereas Slack was about chatting amongst team members.

Teams as a product feels like a really direct competitor to Slack in a way that Skype could never do (at least in the last iteration I used it in).

As for Teams, same here. In my last job I had slack and it was quite pleasant to use. Now at my new(ish) job and we are all forced to use Teams as part of the license. And I guess that is the reason behind EUs decision right there.

I think you got it the other way round - EU are upset that Microsoft used its massive customer base with Office to ship a video conferencing product like Teams for free in order to dominate that market.

I assure you, very few people would actively seek an individual Teams license. I’m very sure companies force their employees to use Teams as it’s part of the license.

Teams, especially when compared to Slack, is incredibly slow and bloated while being entirely lacklustre. Slack is lean and efficient at what it sets out to do (while being pretty expensive).

Man, I’m enjoying life since I got off Reddit, which was when they first announced the API changes. Deleted my account there and then. Same goes with Twitter.

Turns out all these places just churn dumb online drama that is so inaccessible to the general public, that I ended up being a bit withdrawn because I had all this online drama in my head and I couldn’t really talk to folks about it.

Now I’m ironically much more sociable that I’ve moved over to the fediverse. Outside of the reddit drama, conversations have been much more human. And even with the drama, I’ve learned to stop caring about such things - everything is in change, it will be okay. Companies don’t matter - people do.