It also appeals to me because it has major character and (imo) style. I’m bored of glass and metal sandwiches. Give me this!

Very, very much this. It would be one thing if smartphone design had just stagnated. But the kicker for me is that smartphone design has stagnated on a design I truly despise with the awful 2:1 aspect ratio that sucks in both portrait and landscape mode. The only “innovation” is making them even worse with stupid notches and cutouts in the screen because that’s better than a bezel. 🙄

The closest I can explain my hate for the “standard smartphone” is like if a witch cast a spell and stole my peripheral vision 10 years ago. That’s what it feels like using them; like I’m looking through a keyhole frustratedly trying to see the full picture beyond.

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.

Over half of USA’s population voted for this.

False. Just over half of the voting population voted for this guy (and not necessarily any of what he’s done for the last year).

The orange turd won with 77,302,580 votes. I don’t have the number of registered voters in 2024 handy, but using the population of 348,320,255, that’s 22% of the total population who supported this guy. And even some of that 22% is starting to sour because things have gone so far off the rails, so I’d further estimate that 19% of the population are the true die hards who will follow him to the end.

This isn’t even factoring in those who would have voted one way or the other but were ineligible to vote or didn’t bother to vote. It also doesn’t factor in the Electoral College or people who didn’t understand how the Electoral College works and threw their vote away on a 3rd party or abstained.

You’re judge and jurying us all over the actions/behavior of maybe 19% of the population. If discovered a new species of bird and 1 out of 5 were red while the other 4 were brown, we wouldn’t classify the species as red birds.

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.

Clarification: The government/administration is stirring the pot, but most/nearly all of the population is not. People need to distinguish / recognize the difference between the actions of a country’s government and those of its everyday citizens who are often powerless.

That distinction is the difference between a valid opinion and xenophobia.

Edit: Removed the example since on a second read sounded like I was trying to “say something without saying it” which wasn’t my intent. I just don’t have time to wordsmith it better right now.

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.

lemmy.ml should just be blocked by default. World, eh, should at least be split up. And I wouldn’t be surprised that a lot of the ml and hexbear folks have alts on world just to stir the pot.

I feel ya. The anti-US xenophobia has really been rising here lately and I’ve just been blocking and blocking and blocking. I’m fine and on board with criticizing what the current regime is doing, but the way they lump you (presumably?), me, and everyone together as if we all have cabinet level positions and personally signed off on each and every thing in the news is just straight-up ignorant xenophobia.

Why that gets a pass is beyond me. Moderation failures all around, IMO.

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.