I've been using flutter + android studio and I'm enjoying it (as much as you can while making a mobile app). Android studio is a lot but it includes android emulators which is nice to test stuff on if you don't feel like getting your phone.
You'll need to install flutter (works on windows, mac, and linux), android studio (I think vscode also works?), and you can download a sample project, open it, build it, and run it. It's a great way to see how it works. Then you can create your own project and go from there. Flutter has a lot of packages which I would recommend at looking through (if your app is simple you might not need any of these though).
Once you build and run the app on your android phone, it's there and you can use it. You don't need to upload it to google play or anything else (unless you want to share it).
god I remember that one fucking me up. that game made me cry so much
I think some comment bots are nice, like the TLDR / summarization bot, reminder bot, youtube piped links, maybe one that replaces an amp link with the original? But these bots should be labeled as bots in settings so users have the option to toggle off seeing them.
I don't like having bots post posts though, I've seen some in other instances and there's not much discussion happening in the comments a lot of the time.
Programming. I love making small command line programs in python or automating something. Someday I want to make a music desktop app that syncs songs to my phone.
Hot swappable mechanical keyboards. It can be pricey but there's hot swappable keyboards on amazon for cheap, and you can get your own keycaps and switches to create a keyboard that you are really happy with. I love being able to tinker around with my keyboards and swap things out if I don't like them.
Making a "second brain" or personal wiki. I love taking lots of notes (recipes I like, about what I learned, how to fix a software problem, etc) so I can find things easier in the future. I use Obsidian for this, it's really fun.
Lock picking. I got into this for a bit, bought some lock picks and bad padlocks. I watched a lot of LockPickingLawyer's videos and thought it looked fun so I tried it. I was bad at it, it's a lot of feeling when the pins move and stop. It takes a lot of patience but it's really fun.
Making edits to Open Street Map. If you see something wrong, you can go edit it if you make an account and use a map editor.
Raspberry Pi self hosting. I think they are hard to find right now, but it's cool to have a small computer running Raspberry Pi OS (linux) where you can install pretty much anything on it. I run Pi-Hole on mine and it blocks so many ad and tracker domains it's insane.
Making a game. I'm slowly trying to learn blender and unreal engine to make a game. I think it will be fun but also a nightmare.
I take notes in markdown using Obsidian. I tend to forget things that have happened (or when they happened) unless I am reminded of it, so I keep a daily journal. I also save any good recipes, how I fixed a programming bug or a software issue, just anything I learn that I want to save, or any ideas that I want to remember for later.
I can also quickly search my notes and it's like a mini personal search engine, it's amazing.
I used to write my journal in a private wordpress blog hosted on my computer, and I had so many random text files in so many different folders I could never find them when I needed them, so I'm really happy this program exists 😭
I like writing in markdown so I use Hugo, and when I do a git push it gets sent to github pages (which is free as long as the repo and website is public!) There's a lot of themes so you don't have to tinker around much if you don't want to. But it's pretty easy to make some css changes / additions.
I've been writing notes about how to do certain things in some programming languages, how to do certain things on the command line, etc. and I have all this in Obsidian for my own reference. I started a blog a few months back (a static website generator) and I don't expect many people to come across it as the things I write about are pretty niche. But it's something that I can put time into now so when future me needs to reference something, it's just there (rather than haphazard notes that I will need to piece together).
I use obsidian too! while it's not open source, there's so many community plugins and all your notes are stored on your computer in markdown, so you have complete control over your notes (you aren't locked in to using obsidian). I sync my notes with OneDrive, then I use the OneSync mobile app to get my notes synced onto my phone.
something similar to obsidian is logseq, it's open source but it's more geared towards bullet point notes. I used it a bit and it didn't make sense for me (I was mostly journaling, but it looks very promising if you take notes in a bullet point format!)
damn that's really rough. do you know how to use git? might be helpful to have your scripts on a private gitlab or github project just in case
My Time at Portia (farming / exploring), Coral Island (farming / exploring), Monster Sanctuary (catching monsters / exploring), and Travellers Rest (manage a bar, and there's co-op) are so good.
Super Blood Hockey. 80% off, about $3 USD.
It's a very well made pixel art game where you play hockey and you can beat up the other team. There's a franchise mode as well, so you'll want to balance how much fighting you do so your players don't get too hurt. There's local co-op so you can play against friends (or use steam remote play together).
PlateUp!. 40% off, about $11 USD.
Similar to Overcooked but you need to manage your restaurant and make sure you don't fail a single order. It's a rouge-lite, and you can move everything around in your restaurant and you kind of manage the menu as the days go on, but you get a choice whether to add option A or B, so it slowly gets more complicated. Very fun with friends, steam remote play together works here as well.
Bone's Cafe. 30% off, about $11 USD.
Similar to Overcooked and PlateUp!, but I feel like it's more geared towards single player (but there's local co-op as well). You have to manage your restaurant and menu (can make it as easy or complex as you'd like), while also maybe killing customers to harvest them for ingredients :) You can spawn in helpers and you can show them a repetitive task to do and they will do it.
The most recent jerboa version doesn't work with lemmy version 17 anymore (which beehaw is on). I had the error and crash happen too. You could download a previous version off their github and it should work with v17 instances (but probably not v18).
But I'd recommend liftoff, it was recently added to the play store and it's actively being worked on! It's the app I use and I've been enjoying it so far.
I think it's going to be a war between google and the developers of ad blockers (kind of like twitch and how they are fighting ad blockers too). And isn't chrome removing ad blockers in their extension manifest v3?
I guess if the worst happens, google could require everyone to have an account with a valid phone number to view videos and ban anyone using an ad blocker. But then there will be plugins made to mute ads automatically. There will always be a way around it.