The base system is stable. The only instability I really had with mine was the fingerprint sensor resetting every week. It would just stop registering until you turn fingerprint detection off, reboot, and re-enroll all of your prints. The second update they pushed seems to have fixed that.

Their default launcher could use some work. I replaced Minimal Launcher with a similar one that works identically. The problem with Minimal Launcher is it is hardcoded to certain apps. I’ve de-googled mine so I don’t use Google clock or calendar. Clicking the time or date in Minimal Launcher will only take you to Google Clock or Calendar (respectively) rather than asking what app to open or trying to detect the default app for that. I submitted a bug for that a couple months ago but so far no fix.

They also seem to only update their software (launcher, quick settings, keyboard config, etc) through system updates rather than via apps. You also can’t disable any of them either.

I also haven’t heard anything more about them supporting non-Googled or third party Android builds.

The hardware is the same AFAIK but they’ve put out two three software updates since I’ve had it. One added some extra features to the eink control utility and the second fixed some really annoying bugs with the fingerprint sensor. Both also included the system security updates as well.

There was a 3rd one a few weeks ago, but I think it was just a security bump. It wasn’t announced and just showed up. There may have been some tweak to the QWERTY keyboard utility because now the annoying bar that only indicated the ALT/Shift status at the bottom is no longer there and was happy to no longer see.

I was prepared for 6, but I’m good with 8. Thanks!

Same. It would definitely be my daily driver. I’m using the Minimal Phone now but have often found that I would rather have this same form factor with a regular screen, and the Communicator seems to basically be that. I am still deciding if I want to pre-order but I’ve set a reminder to do or don’t before the window closes.

According to the support ticket I put in a week or so ago, the bootloader will be unlockable which is great news.

The only thing the specs don’t mention is how much RAM it will have.

Gonna be a bit nippley this weekend.

Several years ago, my city spruced up a whole street in the business section and made it pedestrian only. The local name for it is “Hipster Avenue” because that’s where the bookstores and artisan shops are lol. A lot of people complained at the time but it’s really popular now.

Where there used to be street parking there are outdoor spaces with patio tables, chairs/benches, and such. A popular spot is where one of the bookstores and a coffee shop are next to each other. They share their outdoor space and it seems to work well for both.

What was unexpected (except maybe to the city planners if I’m being generous) was that car traffic actually got better because they were able to take out several stoplights where that street intersected surrounding ones. This wasn’t a super busy street so a lot of the time, traffic was sitting still at the red light for basically no reason.

I’m definitely not one of those “fuck cars” people, but I am for finding a better coexistence and what they did here really works.

I mean, first layer adhesion is a problem common to more than just a specific printer and there are all kinds of tips and tricks to deal with it. The only one I tried (covering the bed in painter’s tape) didn’t pan out, and a friend was talking up the glass bed he just installed.

So instead of trying more tips and tricks like taking a glue stick to the bed surface, I went with the glass bed. I was expecting it to be like a $60 part but it was only like $15 so that worked out really well.

My Ender 3 V3 SE (I think I got all the initials in there?) has been pretty painless. The only thing I changed on it was replacing the stock magnetic bed with the glass one. I was having constant adhesion problems with the base layer and the glass bed fixed that immediately.

The other thing that (seemed to) help was switching from whatever slicer I originally used (forget which) to OrcaSlicer and just using its generic defaults for the filament and printer options. When I first started, I took the specs from the filament rolls and made profiles for each brand, but that just made my prints worse. Orca’s defaults “just work” for me and less effort on my part. Win-win lol.

My knowledge is incomplete as to what powers and restrictions you get with an amateur license, but I think the only real reason you’d want to use HAM mode in the US is if you wanted to operate on US 433 or maybe the 868 MHz block. Not sure if HAMs have access to the latter one or not, though. The 915 block is pretty permissive here for unlicensed use, so that’s usually sufficient.

Also, if a node is operating in HAM mode, it may not be able to mesh with other nodes not in HAM mode due to encryption being disabled. I could be wrong about that as I haven’t read into that specifically, but to my knowledge it tracks.

And i do free upgrades when it makes sense (tall people and passengers-of-size as a priority)

as a tall person with bad knees, i can safely say you’re doing the lord’s work.

AFAIK, you only need to use it in HAM mode if you want to use licensed frequencies, a higher power transmit (assuming the radio supports it; US 915 can transmit up to 1W/30db unlicensed and many radios can only transmit at 22db max), or to go beyond the airtime limitations (there no limitations on airtime for US 915). HAM mode also disables encryption if I recall. Also AFAIK, you’re not required to use HAM mode just because you are a licensed HAM operator.

Sources: Have read the docs but am not a licensed HAM.

Uh-oh. Guess I’ve been lying on all those “are you a robot?” captchas.

Heh, thanks. I definitely try.

I can’t even fathom what contemporary Facebook is like. I deleted it in, I think, 2009 or thereabouts, right after they changed the timeline from reverse chronological to whatever their first iteration of the engagement-based one is. I thought that sucked pretty bad, so, yeah, can’t even imagine how bad it is today.

I wish we had Lemmy Gold here because I’d award this comment.

Love when people spread the love on their last day.

At an undisclosed time in the past, I worked at a call center for a big, horrible bank. I hated it but didn’t plan on quitting until I got off of a heartbreaking call around 10 in the morning. That call/situation broke me as a person, so I knew I couldn’t work there anymore. My plan was to work until my lunch at 1:00 and then just not come back.

From 10am to 1pm, anyone who wanted an overdraft or other fee refunded got it; no questions asked. Even if they didn’t ask for it, I was like “oh, I see you have a few overdraft fees from a couple weeks ago. I’ll go ahead and refund those to you as a courtesy”.

In those 3 hours, I think I refunded close to $1200 in fees for who-knows-how-many people. That’s probably not possible now since even back then they had a primitive “AI”-like system that you had to go through to issue refunds. But it was still in beta then so we still had access to the old system to do them manually. I’m guessing that new tool got pushed to production real quick after my last day.

I’m not optimistic for a full crash (though I’d love to see it), but at some point the “introductory price” is going to be replaced by the real cost and I am optimistic some people will not want to pay it. As OP said in their post, the guy on the flight would probably keep paying it no matter how much it costs but most people, I hope, would just opt to use their brains for free instead (I said overly-optimistically and probably very naively).

Basically, like the drug dealer cliche, we’re still in the “first hit is free” phase of adoption.

If it means a bunch of people not qualified for the jobs they hold get the boot and are replaced by people who actually know what they’re doing, I consider that a net gain for society.

It’s like Malcolm says in Jurassic Park (slightly modified):

I’ll tell you the problem with the scientific power that you’re using here: it didn’t require any discipline to attain it. You read what [the chatbot shat out] and you [just copied it]. You didn’t earn the knowledge for yourselves, so you don’t take any responsibility for it. You stood on the shoulders of geniuses [whose knowledge was stolen] to accomplish something as fast as you could and before you even knew what you had you patented it and packaged it and [now you’re pretending you’re qualified].

Does “The Orville” count? I’m halfway through season 1 on a rewatch.

Remembering your vacation to Mexico.

Ref: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mexican_filter