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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: August 17th, 2023

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  • You can always get a new Chromecast (we were forced to as the ancient bullet proof one told us to “fuck off, I want to die”). The new one has a remote control and apps, which I always thought were missing from the minimalist Chromecast family of products. So look at us, now we have a shitty roku when all we wanted was a device that I could send things to from my phone. Needed and wanted nothing more, but I got it. My tone is muddled here, so I’ll make it clear that it’s worse than it used to be, and I’m annoyed I was forced to pay to downgrade.




  • Signal no longer requires a phone number. You can now create an account. Not sure if that helps your outlook on it, but yeah. It was a fairly recent update that this was rolled out.

    Edit: being told we still do need numbers to register. I haven’t gotten a new phone since well before the change was made, so I haven’t actually created an account and gone through the process. It looks like I misinterpreted what was going on when I read the changelog.




  • Is linked to excess deaths? Technically it could be saving lives at a population scale. I doubt that’s the case, but it could be. I’ll read the article now and find out.

    Edit: it doesn’t seem to say anything regarding “normal” auto related deaths. They’re focusing on the bullshit designation of an unfinished product as “autopilot”,and a (small) subset of specific cases that are particularly aggregious, where there were 5-10 seconds of lead time into an incident. In these cases a person who was paying attention wouldn’t have been in the accident.

    Also some clarity edits.




  • I get this sentiment, but it’d go a long way for people who have the dreaded “range anxiety”. If they want the expense of both systems, then go for it. I have a used Chevy Volt which is a PHEV, we got it a few years ago and didn’t want to commit to full electric yet. It’s my families only car and in our case it’s been bullet proof. 95% of our driving is on electric with only family visits requiring gas. It’s not a bad system for people who aren’t convinced. Different now that it’s becomming a culture war issue though.





  • For me using signal wasn’t about becoming Jason Bourne, it was about changing the threat model. I don’t have any dilusions of grandeur that I can’t be owned if I’m targeted, but you know what? My calls and texts aren’t stored with my phone company with a direct link to the Government and advertisers. That may be low hanging fruit, but that’s dealing with most of the issues the average user is going to run into. I’d suggust that the step from SMS to Signal is of greater benifit to a normal user than from signal to something more advanced. And, fwiw it’s open sourced and audited, which gives me more confidence than something like imessage or WhatsApp, despite similarities im encryption schemes.