I've also used Startpage and DuckDuckGo, they all have their strengths
Can you develop? Why do you prefer qwant over ddg for example.
I also dropped Google search mainly for two reason. First privacy, making money with my private data and so on. Then I find Google search is less and less good, the first thing being that sponsored links are first even if they don't match well the search keywords and even not looking at sponsored links I think the results are much worse than in the past.
I now use duckduckgo and I'm happy with it but I can try something else.
On a user level I agree it's a very good feature (if configurable, not just an automatic grouping of similarly named communities). For merging post, not sure I want that, perhaps a bit too smart... Now if many users want this why not (as long as there is a setting to turn it off ;)).
Indeed this would really be a game changer feature. However I don't complain about community fragmentation, I think it's great because the communities are not really identical but share the same topic, sometimes with different tone, moderation, ...
With my Clara HD, I can upload with calibre but what I do more often is to convert epub to kobo specific one Kepubify. The reader can read regular epub but you don't have book progression, meta data etc the same as with the kepub.
Then put the result on a local web server (even possible on android if you're on the go).
I then use the built-in kobo web browser (in beta menu) to browse and download the book.
Kobo Clara HD. Pretty old now (I bought it in 2018), but it still got updates. I'm very satisfied with it (well I've not tested any other). Perhaps the only drawback if I had to change would be to have some kind of physical button to turn pages, but with the configuration options that it have it's really not necessary.
By chance, I'm doing more or less the same as you. I initially read lotr when I was ~15 yo (I'm nearly 40 now). I also read it in French those years ago but I'm rereading now the real thing in English. Loving it too.
I think you raise a very good point about explaining the problem... Even us as "smart humans" have often great difficulty to see the point while reading PM specs...
Well I seen, I even code reviewed without knowing, when I asked colleague what happened to him, he said "I used chatgpt, I'm not sure to understand what this does exactly but it works". Must confess that after code review comments, not much was left of the original stuff.
I'd like to thank you all for all your interesting comments and opinion.
I see a general trends not being too worried because of how the technology works.
The worrysome part being what capitalism and management can think but that's just an update of the old joke "A product manager is a guy that think 9 women can make a baby in 1 month". And anyway, if not that there will be something else, it's how our society is.
Now, I feel better, and I understand that my first point of view of fear about this technology and rejection of it is perhaps a very bad idea. I really need to start using it a bit in order to known this technology. I already found some useful use cases that can help me (get inspiration while naming things, generate some repetitive unit test cases, using it to help figuring out about well-known API, ...).
For notes I'm using Joplin with sync with desktop client through a nextcloud instance. Really a very nice app if you want sync with multiple devices anc user friendly interface.
For maps OsmAnd, I even pay a subscription to support the project (and have hourly updated maps which is pretty cool when I fix wood paths in openstreetmap).
I use helium314/openboard on day to day basis, but the few times I use termux or have to ssh a linux box from my phone, unexpected keyboard is really awesome.
The stand, by Stephen King