I think you’ve correctly identified a problem, but misidentified the solution.
It’s true that there are many redundant communities of which everyone would be better served if there were an easy way to group them together. The solution, however, is not to reduce the number of instances, but rather to provide more tools for instances to group communities together. You want communities to be spread across many instances because this maximizes user control - it’s kind of the entire point? But of course, the lack of grouping makes it very difficult to try to centralize discussion, which is important for the community to grow. This service is still a work in progress, so these kinds of things - I hope - will come in time, as both the technology and culture develops.
tl;dr: centralized control bad, centralized discussion good, the current system does a bad job of reconciling these two positions
Seems like what a lot of people want is a hybrid of Usenet and Reddit, but what we have is more like a bunch of reddits that are willing to talk to each other. Certainly better for governance and redundancy and as a kind of organic load balancing in a cash-poor ecosystem, but the "killer app" would be (optional?) persistence of communities outside of instances.
If you know what their interests and hobbies are at the moment, then get equipment and other stuff related to those. Books and craft supplies are often good ideas. A giftcard to a store they often visit is always nice. A nice mug is a good gift for many people, because it’s useful and beautiful. For kids, you can ask them what’s their favorite animal, and then get them a plushie of that animal. They’ll probably love it. Getting them a trendy toy (such as a Squishmallow rn) can also be good. If you still have no idea what someone wants, then you can get them a nice card with some cash and maybe some candy.
Not really formerly religious, but I do want to talk about this.
SCHOOLS NEED TO STOP SHOVING IT INTO MY FACE.
It’s very tiring studying in a Christian school, but there’s no choice. In my region, it’s either religious schools or bad schools.
My secondary school (equivalent to grade 7-12) is insane about Christianity. Every Friday it’s like a horror game to escape from the teachers who try to drag you to fellowship. Oh you want to go to spring camp? Half of the time in camp is spent listening to Christian talks.
Here’s another dumb policy. The school cannot do anything on Sunday due to church stuff. There was once a pretty big table tennis competition, but it was on Sunday. The school would NOT allow the responsible teacher to bring the school team to the competition just because it was Sunday, and that sparked a pretty big news within our region.
This is like YouTube adblock blocker backfiring, but for Christianity.
I think it’s a valid thing to consider. Due to the nature of the fediverse, there will always be small instances. I guess you could say their purpose is to allow Lemmy to be decentralized.
Small instances don’t prevent Lemmy from being centralized, people don’t mind if their instance defederates from an instance with 5 people. Medium-sized instances (e.g. dbzer0) prevent wrongful defederation, because people will suddenly miss a few communities / users.
The foss apps I dont agree with but a stock grapheneos setup is as basic as it gets so even a non tech person can use it. OP can even set it up for them to auto update whatever apps they use through the playstore so the grandparents dont really have to do anything
it is basic but you rum into compatibility issues every once in a while which they will not be able to figure out. And also, if you don’t agree with the Foss apps, it means you will just install the regular familiar google apps, which if you do that, does not make much of a difference if you are on GOS or stock Android
I see where you are coming from but I disagree. Using grapheneos will allow much more security and control over the device so OP can fine tune their grandparent’s device to their liking. As for not agreeing with the foss apps I really mean in this situation specifically. Foss apps often run into problems with stability (look at newpipe due to youtube) and ease of use (look at collabora) which will frustrate an older person and with grapheneos at least OP can further lockdown the proprietary apps that their grandparents would use if they do so in the first place. However, since OP stated they just want a phone that’s simple that’s why I would go with the stock grapheneos setup without adding new applications. As for compatiability, unless they are driving or banking which I doubt since they just know tha basics of a smartphone, I doubt this will be a problem since the majority of mainstream apps work. Grapheneos is meant for freedom and securiry over your device not just privacy
The problem is that other people will be unfamiliar with it. Unless OP can be the support person all the time, the grandparents may want to get help from someone else.
Keeping things stock is helpful for that, and I feel like Google Pixel is already simple enough. Just disable things like assistant during setup or in settings.
I agree to disagree it’s really not that different from vanilla especially if he does go the playstore route, so a person familiar with android can naviagate grapheneos. The only problem would be if they break their device and the thumbprint scanner would have to be recalibrated. Personally I would just keep it as the stock grapheneos setup with accessibility features turned to max. That way its a dumb smartphone
Edit: forgot to mention regardless of os add some kind of network firewall or DNS solution to block malicious/phishing domains. The elderly are often victims of scams
the same aurora store that wouldnt work for half the times and you would have to go to the google play website for an application and click on “open in app” on ur browser?
woah! you really look like the half empty glass type of person. That’s why their grandson/daugther it’s going to set it up for them. I’ve been using AuroraStore for a long time and I never had to do any of that. Still, once you have installed the apps you need, correctly, the only concurrent task is to apply updates and I never had any problems with that either.
Some older apple devices. I usually despise apple devices but their strong points usually are big screen + good camera while also being piss easy to use for non techsavvy people.
I would buy an iphone and jailbreak, remove settings apps, useless apps and make it minimalistic, but it doesnt have language pack i need so i cant use it
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