I found Profiles (lucky guess), and Preferences. Might there be another word for Appearances?
On mobile it’s Profile > Preferences > Interface > Theme.
Sorry, my mistake! It’s Interface.
Blinding. I prefer Straight Dope Dark – much easier on my eyes.
I like it ok, it’s growing on me. I still feel that I haven’t scratched the surface of what it can do.
I admit that when we made the switch, I was less than thrilled. With the pandemic and figuring out working from home, I had zero interest in learning how to use the SDMB again.
That’s the thing, I never had a problem with the vB version of the dope, but over here something about it was just so much brighter. I don’t know if vB wasn’t full on white or if Discourse added a lot more white space between posts, but it was just too much. As I’ve been switching over to dark mode on various sites (Youtube, Reddit, maybe Google one of these days, and Vincent here, it is a lot easier on the eyes). However, with Google still in regular ‘white’ mode, it’s jarring to go back and forth from, say, dark mode reddit back to google. Especially at night time when the white screen is blinding.
It’s like trying to read one of those awful websites where the designer decided green text on a black background was a good idea, then going back to a ‘normal’ site and having your vision all screwed up for a minute.
Edit: Protip, if you find yourself on one of those sites with a ‘questionable’ font color, I’ve found that highlighting all the text, might not make it easier to read, but it won’t strain your eyes as much since it’ll change the color of the background and the text.
This seems to vary with the person. I find dark mode very difficult to read, and very bright pages easy to read.
Since Discourse offers both, we can both be happy (about that, anyway).
When I really want to read something, I’ve occasionally resorted to highlighting, copying, and pasting “to match style” into a text document.
Usually I just leave the site, though.
I’m not a fan, but if it’s the only way we still get to keep this thing alive, then we have to live with it.
One problem for the youngest potential users might be the fact that THE STRAIGHT DOPE is prominently displayed at the top of the screen no mater how far down you scroll. I don’t even like it myself. When I’m online, I prefer to be discreet. For a kid whose mom or dad might walk up and accuse them of wasting time on a message board instead of doing whatever, that’s a drawback.
What I miss most is Tapatalk support.
For my skin, that’s only on the front page which I don’t sit on very often. Once I’m in a forum, I only get the SD logo. I’m on Discourse - classic skin.
But isn’t that a problem for any software where the board’s name is The Straight Dope to have it prominently displayed somewhere? Most places like to let people know the name of the place to advertise it more.
This isn’t happening.
My partner had to take his old phone last time we went on a long flight, because he couldn’t listen to music and charge at the same time on the new one. Great progress there. 
You can buy a dongle to do both at the same time. But of course, that decreases the utility of the phone by making it a lot bulkier, more fragile, and easier to lose part of.
I think Apple’s vision is that everyone uses wireless headphones.
I’m only seeing the letters “SD” at the upper left when I scroll down? I mean, within a topic, which is where you’d tend to be most of the time?
And why not? It’s a better, more desirable future. The number of headphone jacks my children have broken is a source of great despair. They all use wireless headphones now.
Because wireless things are fiddly. They don’t pair right. They run out of power at inconvenient times.
I sometimes use a wireless mouse and a wireless headset. And sometimes i get fed up with them and use the wired mouse and the laptop’s built in speakers. When i fly, i bring wireless headphones, and i bring the back-up wire that came with them (that plugs into the standard jack). And it’s not that unusual for me to use the wire.
No worries, I’ll send you the bill for the 12 different headphone jacks my kids have broken 
And once that jack is broken, it’s REALLY broken. Like… forever. You don’t come back from headphone jack incidents in my experience.
But sure, tradeoffs – and it’s on battery tech and tech in general to make it work and work well. I’d rather be on the side pushing the future, though, I’ll tell ya that. I’ve had enough of the past.
I’ve never broken a headphone jack. My kids have never broken a headphone jack. Heck, my cat eats cables, but she’s never hurt a headphone jack. I have some on decades-old hardware that still work perfectly.
Every time i use my wireless headphone it takes a couple of minutes to coax it to pair with the right piece of hardware.
Granted, i have a phone and three laptops, so it’s not obvious to the poor thing…
When i was using a wireless headset for work i used the USB dongle instead of pairing it with Bluetooth, because then it’s easy to tell it, unambiguously, which device i want it to talk to. But USB A ports are not any sturdier than headphone jacks, it and they are larger.
Yes, it is. I joined this board when I was in college*. If I was looking at it while I was at home and a parent glanced over my shoulder, I get questions about why I was reading something called ‘the straight dope’. At least 'round these parts, ‘straight dope’ isn’t as common of a phrase as people make it out to me. I’d explain the concept of the board, but Murphy wouldn’t allow me to do that without there being at least one drug related topic right there on the screen.
At work, I make sure to scroll down a bit so even if people see that I’m on a message board, they can’t see which one (on my skin, I just get the SD logo when I scroll down).
*actually, long before collage. I joined way back when we were still on AOL.
I can’t even imagine how you break a headphone jack. I’ve broken plenty of USB leads, and some power leads, but the headphone jacks are still fine. Wireless headphones are muy expensive, need charging, and you have to worry about pairing them.
And why is pairing so poorly designed? I have a wireless speaker, and invariably it connects to the wrong device, and there is no way to get it to disconnect other than going through all your devices one by one, checking if it is connected and disconnecting. One of my friends often lets other people connect to his speaker, and now at parties he has to go round asking everyone if they are connected to it and if so to kindly disconnect… 
Sure, there are benefits to wireless, but there are also drawbacks and I’d like to have the choice, rather than have a phone manufacturer patronisingly tell me what to do.
Yes, wouldn’t it be nice if the wireless speaker said, “I see four nearby devices that I’ve paired to in the past. Do you want me to pair to a, b, c, d, or something new?”
But I guess then they’d need persistent memory, which they probably don’t have.
I sometimes turn off the bluetooth from all the devices I DON’T want to pair. The headphones don’t usually pair to something downstairs, but it’s happened…
Anyway, I don’t usually use a headphone for work when I WFH, since I’m not on top of anyone else here. But I recently brought home a wired headset, so that if I need to use one at home, I don’t have to muck with pairing. (And I have 3 bluetooth headsets in the house.)
I wish there was a button that said ‘forget all previous parings and wait until I send a manual request’. That would fix the problem.
I’ve also never seen the point of wireless mice and keyboards. They sit there on your desk anyway, it’s not like it’s a problem to have a wire.