Google Pixel 7 gets sales ban in Japan, Pixel 8 and Pixel 9 also face sales ban
skuzz @ skuzz @discuss.tchncs.de Posts 0Comments 1,157Joined 2 yr. ago
skuzz @ skuzz @discuss.tchncs.de
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Appreciate it! Subscription pending.
American governmental culture fetishizes over the military as a concept in general, while calling out other nations that fetishize over their militaries as bad. Singing the national anthem about bombs bursting at sporting events like that's something to be happy or proud about. The tour of "hey it's military week, everyone dress in fatigue-adjacent colors and some random service members get paraded about" that happens every year. Rich politicians saying poignant words on solemn days thanking service members for their service, to then be whisked away by their security patrol and fleet of bulletproof vehicles to go back to their caviar swimming pools, never having had to even consider, really consider, killing a person, or losing a limb, friend's blood spattered across your face.
America is built on advertising. Unique thoughts need not apply. You're told what to buy, where to buy it, who to hate, who to love, where to live. You're never given any programs to back any of that up. Abortion is bad because it kills children, yet after those children are born, they can just die homeless with no medical care. We are to love our troops while treating them like detritus. We support them with a parade after a mission, then they're on their own. If they die on an "important" mission, well, they're heroes. That term alone, hero. America uses the word hero when we don't want to feel bad that someone volunteered their life for something we were too cowardly to do ourselves.
9/11 first responders, as another example, that Jon Stewart spent a good chunk of his life trying to make the government honor their own deal, and even now, the government is still trying to undo it. People who, of the ones that lived, are already going to have shorter more complicated lives. We don't even have the decency to let this handful of humans live as comfortable (not lavish, without pain) as they can, given what they tried to do to save so many people while buildings and airplanes are crashing down around them. We currently hate the immigrants that pick our food, clean our businesses, lose limbs in meat packing plants, so we can enjoy a $5 hunk of beef at the supermarket, while their children build our cars, so much so that we are willing to violate the Constitution to "get rid" of them in the most cruel way we can think of.
If we even actually followed through on caring about soldiers. If the VA was a temple of success, and veterans actually received proper treatment, care, housing, instead of being abandoned to die in the streets. If the government did one actual thing to back up their claims, instead of market spin. That'd still be a disappointment because we'd be a military-state, but at least it would be truthful, and people would join just the military for the promise of a good life. Instead, it is just a flimsy sham from every direction, trading souls for caviar swimming pools for the few.
About the only thing we are truly consistently good at in the USA is hate, and it has been that way for a long time.
Tried to dig around a bit, it seems a number the military doesn't keep very good or active track of. Seems to trend in the single percentages though.
As much as I like the metric system, temperature in the world is the one place where I prefer Fahrenheit. Having to care about decimal points on a thermostat just seems like trying too hard. "Oh honey, could you turn the thermostat down to 21.1C?"
You know that 100 is hot as balls. You know 0 is cold AF. 0C is 32F. That's not really that cold, I'm shoveling snow in a t-shirt. 0F is really that cold. It is almost more akin to a percent of comfort scale than a measurement of temperature.
It is an interesting thought experiment though, as anyone using a given measurement scale gets used to it over time. I've been doing dual for a while to better intuit fuzzy translations in my head without having to run a formula every time.
Just an opinion of course, and not trying to have some flagrant discussion. I'd gladly switch to Celsius if we ever finally left Freedom Units. Thus far, the only places you see it in the US is in science, medical, and pop companies selling 16.9fl oz (just shy of 500ml) beverages instead of 20, so they can milk their bubble sugar water for all the profits.
Are there recommended news subs that aren't hosted on .world?
In the context of basic communications, market share really shouldn't. Phone calls are a standard, SMS is a standard, MMS is a standard. RCS should equally be a standard, along with IMS video calling that has been in the 3GPP spec since Rel99 (that's 1999). Flip phones in the early aughts could do video calls (in Europe) way before FaceTime was a twinkle in Steve Jobs' eye. Every phone right now could do out of box voice call/video call/text/picture messaging regardless of platform, if the cellular standard bodies would grow a pair.
Problem is, companies like Apple and Google became huge, unregulated, and monocultured.
How we humans allowed something as basic as communication to be put behind walled gardens is just a failure of humanity.
There is no technical reason. The carriers/cellular industry gave up on their efforts to push RCS and let Google own it all for the most part, and with it, everyone lost openness.
It's also why Samsung Messages is on a slow burn EOL. The Samsung/Google partnership had Google encourage Samsung to drop their RCS support and just push Google's app, after Google decided to sunset the openness of the messaging API. Third-party SMS apps will all slowly die. Probably also partly why Signal dropped SMS support. It was around the same time.
Android's weird changes are nothing but badness, and will likely get worse. Hopefully the open OS community can start focusing more energy behind alternative mobile OSes that aren't dependent on a corporation.
Almost! Who knew??
Non-sarcasm: Sad thing is, with almost everything this administration says, apply a 1984-esque filter to it. So crap like the "rapists, murderers, and thugs" rhetoric spewed would translate into something like, "workers, families, and refugees". Likewise, the rhetoric is often projection as well.
A full unraveling thusly would be: The administration is actually the rapists, murderers, and thugs, and they are targeting workers, families, and refugees with the Constitutional, Federal, State, and Local crimes they are committing.
Need to build an AI news filter tasked to parse all news articles on these topics so the real words are always used when they say anything. Shoot, probably a find/replace browser plugin could do it, although using an LLM would make it more dynamic.
bu-bu-but, think about how much more WHITE it will be!?!?!?! We'll finally be great! Again! (heavy /s)
At this point, do we do anything right?
I recall this meme from a year or so back with a different joke attached.
At the rate they are going, it will happen. I'm honestly surprised it has taken this long, a testament to the collective hope that it won't be necessary. The first will probably be a right-wing nutjob or agent provocateur they try to illegally kidnap, that they'll then claim is a Democrat. Already saw some footage of people in Tucson, AZ with shields and pepper balls shooting back at the ICE Treasonists.
Hit the range and train up folks. The only good Nazi is a dead Nazi. They're not taking this fucking country. (Still hoping it doesn't come to that. The violence line is a hard one to come back from. Also, this message is not to be construed as a threat of violence. Only a statement of fact. Violence should always be avoided whenever possible, until it is necessary. The world came together to stop Nazis the first time, we may very well have to do it again.)
Thus far, wrinkled-nutsack-face-worm-brain halted the education and training of future FDA employees, but the existing ones that still have a job and still care are likely trying to keep us all from dying. I don't blame them for giving up though. Already have been schooling myself on home chemistry to test food products for what I can.
Another route one can go that takes a bit of work is Obtainium. Hand-pick the apps you want to show up and feed their GitHub, F-Droid, etc. links to manage them. Since F-Droid has some issues with how they build packages, it can be used sparingly but not avoided then.
Go app by app until your dependence on the Play Store goes away. Then disable or uninstall (probably can only disable on most phones, I've seen anyway) the Play Store completely. Slow way to gain independence from crapware. You can then export your Obtainium config to a JSON file to import on future phones/other phones so you don't have to duplicate the work.
Some bonus points, the non-Play version of one app I use shrinks from 120MB to 30MB when all the Google dependencies are stripped. You also gain back functionality like full filesystem access and other things Google forces apps to remove from the Play Store flavor.
More freedom. Faster apps. Less overhead. Less Google crap. Not a big scary transition.
(b) A person commits the crime of aggravated operation without consent of the owner if the person, without the consent of the owner, knowingly takes, obtains, operates, uses or continues to operate the motor vehicle of another, and:
...
(1) The motor vehicle is not recovered within 24 hours of the time it is determined the theft occurred regardless of whether the operator is then in actual or constructive possession of the vehicle; or
(2) The motor vehicle sustains $500.00 or more in damage during the commission of the offense; or
...
(C ) Uses the motor vehicle in the commission of a felony.
(D) Causes bodily injury to another while operating or exercising control of the motor vehicle.
...
(a) A person commits the crime of kidnapping if the person:
(1) knowingly restrains another person with the intent to:
(A) hold the restrained person for ransom or reward; or
(B) use the restrained person as a shield or hostage; or
...
(E) facilitate the commission of another crime or flight thereafter; or
...
18 U.S. Code § 2119 - Motor vehicles
Whoever, with the intent to cause death or serious bodily harm [1] takes a motor vehicle that has been transported, shipped, or received in interstate or foreign commerce from the person or presence of another by force and violence or by intimidation, or attempts to do so, shall—
(1) be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than 15 years, or both,
(2) if serious bodily injury (as defined in section 1365 of this title, including any conduct that, if the conduct occurred in the special maritime and territorial jurisdiction of the United States, would violate section 2241 or 2242 of this title) results, be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than 25 years, or both, and
18 U.S. Code § 1201 - Kidnapping
(a) Whoever unlawfully seizes, confines, inveigles, decoys, kidnaps, abducts, or carries away and holds for ransom or reward or otherwise any person, except in the case of a minor by the parent thereof, when—
(1) the person is willfully transported in interstate or foreign commerce, regardless of whether the person was alive when transported across a State boundary, or the offender travels in interstate or foreign commerce or uses the mail or any means, facility, or instrumentality of interstate or foreign commerce in committing or in furtherance of the commission of the offense;
(2) any such act against the person is done within the special maritime and territorial jurisdiction of the United States;
(3) any such act against the person is done within the special aircraft jurisdiction of the United States as defined in section 46501 of title 49;
...
shall be punished by imprisonment for any term of years or for life and, if the death of any person results, shall be punished by death or life imprisonment.
...
(c ) If two or more persons conspire to violate this section and one or more of such persons do any overt act to effect the object of the conspiracy, each shall be punished by imprisonment for any term of years or for life.
(d) Whoever attempts to violate subsection (a) shall be punished by imprisonment for not more than twenty years.
...
These are crimes, people.
That was always the plan here. Stock up, cut unnecessary spending, stop spending. Who in America wouldn't be doing this right now? They're trying to rob everyone blind. Best way to fight it as a mere citizen of a stupid nation is to not participate in their games, and protest, of course.
We can cut consumerism from our lives in the US with minimal effort. All those in the Federal government and billionaire class want from us is our money, they don't care about our lives, they just want to kill, deport, or destroy us. So, why give them any more money? (Still shop and support local business, don't cripple your life, don't live on only ramen noodles, don't skip medical care, just, shrink that footprint.)
Live minimal. Live free.
First, they are probably actually participating in this annual training exercise: https://www.europeafrica.army.mil/Defender/
They have to run transponders over the US so that commercial aircraft know their position and don't collide. Once they leave our airspace, (or in special circumstances where the airspace is cleared) they will run without. These are just basically civilian transponders they run to "be polite" - they are also filtered by most flight tracking sites. Some (such as the one pictured) allow one to look at the raw data (and likewise you can run an SDR transponder receiver yourself at home to see what aircraft are over you.)
Sometimes they will bluff the transponder value and say things like, "hey I'm a Cessna going 400 knots" but most of the time they just say who they are.
Fun fact! The transponders don't work over the oceans anyway, since there's nobody on the surface to pick them up, you're basically a ghost once you leave land, (surrounding aircraft can see each other, however) think about that during your next trans-ocean flight. They increasingly have satellite Internet these days to have some form of comms, though.
Not to post a ref from that other site, but all the mobile nerds have yet to migrate. It's a Schok Volt SV69 5G likely, rebranded. Retail $149. US company, Chinese fab. They'll probably call it "made in the USA" for putting a plastic gold shell on it stateside.
The backing carrier is T-Mobile, although it seems the backing MVNO provider is Liberty Wireless, which is a T-Mobile MVNO. (Virtual cell carrier powered by the backing network.) T-Mobile allowed Liberty, and via that, this one.
For US-ians, it would be worth considering a carrier that isn't based on T-Mobile the next time people are looking for cell plans. (In addition, T-Mobile is in bed with Muskrat Starlink for their mediocre sat-to-cell service, and also T-Mobile leveraged Mango's first term to buy their way ahead of the competition in 5G spectrum.)
Bold of you to assume the Federal government still follows the law.
Especially when it involves modems. Qualcomm had a vice grip on them for so long, and still mostly does, so there's little competition, and no good competition. They make great modems, but they're also a US military contractor and can't truly be trusted. Competition, is also generally good.