You could probably just try this on a Steam Deck. SteamOS is just a custom atomic spin of Arch, with full KDE already installed (switch to Desktop mode), and the device is a touchscreen. I don't have mine in front of me at the moment, but I imagine Plasma Bigscreen is already in the Arch or AUR repositories.
I'm with you on that intuitive feeling of perceiving the whole screen, but I suspect something is going on for us that is closely related to human sight: just like the eye is constantly moving to account for the optic nerve blindspot and our brain seamlessly stitches things together, we're probably using our latent understanding of the functions on every part of the screen to stitch together an image/awareness-sense while our eyes actually focus on one part at a time.
When introducing non-computer people to a new application, I find it helps (or is sometimes necessary) to walk them through each part of the screen, explaining what it is for and how it relates to the others. If someone doesn't or can't retain that explanation, usually nothing will help them. But if they do/can retain it, I find even non-computer people are much quicker in noticing particular updates to the application's or OS's GUI.
The human eye only really focuses on an area about the size of one word, but moves quickly (saccades) to focus on whatever part you want to see at that moment. The rest of your vision (peripheral vision) has limited functionality to quickly guide a saccade towards any part of it, to detect changes (raisin an IRQ) and an extremely low resolution of general vision (enough to make our . You can't even read one word of text while looking at the one next to it, and if you think you can, it's because you already know what it says. Part of this effect seems to be a lower physical resolution and part of it is because your visual cortex spends its neurons interpreting the center more precisely rather than interpreting more area more loosely.
I don't think that's entirely accurate, because this can also apply to perceiving entirely new UIs you've never seen before. Familiarity helps, but I don't think it's entirely that.
I think this experience is now rare if you are computer-adept, though it was more common even just a few decades ago. But the first thing I do when I see a totally unfamiliar UI is stare at it for a bit until I think I understand the information hierarchy. And then try to verify that understanding by clicking things. Eventually I acquire that "perceiving the screen as a whole feeling", but I still suspect that it's something resembling the human vision process generally, under the hood of conscious perception.
(To be clear, obviously the process is based on human vision; the main distinction I'm making is between the need for a focused search vs a quick whole-screen glance.)
Reminds me of Lest Darkness Fall[1], a 1939 novel about an archeology professor who is transported back in time to Rome under the Ostrogoths on the eve of Belisarius' invasion to reconquer Italy for the Eastern Roman Empire under Justinian.
The hero of the novel, Martin Padway, gets his start teaching Arabic numerals to a Syrian banker in Rome, and then distilling brandy. By the end of the novel he's running a newspaper and has a semaphore telegraph network set up throughout Italy. Good fun reading.
This isn't dissimilar to deathworld 2, where a futuristic guy crashlands on a planet and has to reinvent modern technology for a mongolian style culture. I'm a big fan
There's also The Lost Regiment[1] series, about a Maine regiment from the American Civil War transported to an alien planet. They discover that medieval Russian peasants were previously transported there and now live as serfs/peasants under nomadic alien warlords (IIRC the aliens periodically cull the humans for food). The Union boys, in tremendously fun if a bit predictable style, lead a peasant rebellion against the aliens.
> Unfortunately, for decades, free software fanatics have bullied inexperienced and eager programmers, who don't know any better into believing that an actual sustainable development model that respects their work is evil and that we should all work for free and beg for donations.
Silicon Valley hype monsters have done this, sure. And so have too many open source software advocates. But all the free software advocates I've read and listened to over the years have criticized MIT- and BSD-style permissive licenses for permitting exactly the freeloading you describe.
I'm stubborn enough to use Google Maps in my web browser (signed out) and then copy/paste the actual destination address into the app for turn-by-turn directions (e.g. CoMaps, OsmAnd). It's inconvenient, but it's also one less Google app on my phone.
The Google Maps moat has always been its breadth of accurate, current business information. It is unfortunately the Yellow Pages of the Internet era.
I use simpler solution (measuring by number of taps on the screen): share place from google maps to https://f-droid.org/packages/page.ooooo.geoshare which can convert it to actual latitude/longitude which in turn can be shared to any app working with locations: OsmAnd, Organic Maps, Uber, ...
One part of me likes this solution for being faster and elegant, and I've bookmarked it to be able to recommend to friends. But another part of me is frustrated that so many everyday computer users have little-to-no awareness of basic features like cut/copy/paste on mobile, resulting in another app install as a solution.
Not trying to imply this about you in particular, just griping that the general lack of awareness about how to take advantage of what should be fundamental/foundational OS features means that whole apps get written to, in essence, duplicate those features.
If you're willing to invest in a smartwatch principally as a secure payment appliance, tap-to-pay with Garmin Pay works when configured on Graphene OS, and most Garmin Smartwatches will happily stay in airplane mode for months once configured.
AFAICT, Garmin Pay works like Apple Pay, meaning (unlike Google Pay) no network connection is required.
> I had a Pixel 6a with Graphene OS for a year before the phone started to glitch and eventually die. It ran pretty hot; sometimes it was hard to even hold the phone in my hands without burning myself.
This sounds like your phone may have been one of the Pixel 6a models with a defective battery[1]. It was a major problem for which Google pushed out an update that nerfed the battery life. There is a tool online where you can check if your particular 6a was one with a battery from the bad production batch[2].
But that unfortunately doesn't help if you are in Brazil where, as you say, Pixels aren't officially sold and import/export controls tend to make tech warranties useless in practice.
I take a number of steps to obscure my identity from advertising/surveillance networks and data brokers, and I know ultimately they'll still have profiles on me that are probably extensive.
Don't give up! Even if failure to prevent some data collection is inevitable, we can all help reduce the aggregate value of shadow profiles assembled by advertisers:
Block all ads. The bits that cross the threshold onto your networks and devices are yours to display or not. Anyone who tells you otherwise is a petty tyrant.
Help friends and family to block all ads. React to ads in their homes and on their devices the way you would to nonconsensual, graphic, violent pornography.
Keep blocking ads and tracking even though you know shadow profiles built about you continue to exist. It's only partially about confounding surveillance. It's also, and equally, about changing culture.
> Some are sourced from bandwidth sharing SDKs for games with user consent...
The notion that most people installing a game meaningfully consent to unspecified ongoing uses of their Internet connection resold to undeclared third parties gave me a good, hearty belly laugh. Especially expressed so matter-of-factly.
When a game shows an unskippable ad, the user is consciously aware of what is happening, as it is happening, and can close the program to stop watching the ad. It is in no sense comparable to what you describe.
When a third party library bundled into a game makes ongoing, commercial, surreptitious use of the user's Internet access, the vast majority of users aren't meaningfully consenting to that use of their residential IP and bandwidth because they understand neither computers nor networks well enough to meaningfully consent.
I don't doubt your bases are sufficiently covered in terms of liablities. I don't doubt that some portion of whatever EULA you have (that your users click right on past) details in eye-watering legalese that you are reselling their IP and bandwidth.
It's just... The notion that there has been any meeting of minds at all between your organization and its games' users on the matter of IP address and bandwidth resale is patently risible.
The Apps in the home row on Apple TV will have fullscreen promotions when the home row is along the bottom of the screen. If you set your home row apps with care, the fullscreen previews will not be ads (i.e. Photos will do a slideshow of your photos, Jellyfin just pulls random images from its/your own movie library metadata, etc.).
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