My wife always gives me shit for trying to use this. Any job that involves communicating things like names or worse, random strings of letters, should train their staff to use it. Remember that part of the design was specifically to make it easier for people with English as a second language(or not at all) to still recognize the letters over potentially unreliable radio.

USB-A, USB-B, USB-B Superspeed, mini-USB, micro-USB, micro-USB-Super Speed. Some of those also presented the issue of not having a simple visual indication of whether it was USB 1, 2, or 3. At least with USB-C, the cables should all work, even if you get slower speeds, whereas a USB-B-3 connector wouldn’t fit a USB-B-2 port at all.

The solution to the USB-C mystery cable is to just get a pile of Thunderbolt cables and then you can be sure it’ll handle whatever the attached devices do.

Colloquially, most people use “day” to mean how long it takes the sun to get to the same place in the sky. Solar day vs sidereal day, the difference is only about 4 minutes on Earth, but can be much greater elsewhere. Venus’ solar day is about 117 Earth days, so you would see a couple sunrises/sunsets each Venusian year.

I used to do that about 10-15 years ago. I think the subsidies got to be not as good around the same time that phone prices rose sharply. Whereas you might have previously paid $200, and gotten a $500 subsidy for a $700 MSRP phone, now that $500 off a $1000+ MSRP doesn’t seem like as good a deal. I think they also widened the pricing gap between the prepaid and post paid plans, and/or started offering “discounts” for BYOD plans. Seems like the last couple upgrades the cheapest option for me now is to just buy the phone outright and then find a cheap plan.

For anyone in Saskatchewan, check out LUM mobile. It’s a Sasktel run MVNO that actually has a unique pricing structure that’s pretty competitive.

Good point on the ecosystem. I’m a bit of an odd one out in that I started using Mac for OS X, and then started getting all the other Apple stuff because of my experience there. Oddly enough I don’t think MacOS offers that much more for day to day usage than I get from Windows. With BootCamp I’m probably 50/50 MacOS/Windows, depending what specific software I feel works best/is available on either platform. I can’t imagine using any other platform for all the other gadgets though; Apple Watch, Apple TV, iPhone all feel generations ahead of the competition and that integration is probably what’s going to keep me anchored on MacOS too. Honourable mention for my UnRaid box that handles a lot of my background things like backups and media storage/service. Sometimes I like things that I can tinker with, and some I need to just work. Apple does a great job on the things I need to be reliable.

iPhone 12 mini, latest OS. I am a little worried about the whole App Store policies thing, but I also think Apple gets enough things right that I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt until they actually do something stupid. I’m hoping they’ll come back to something comparable to the mini form factor again. I’ve always preferred the smaller sized phones with the idea that I’ll just move to a computer or tablet if I need something bigger. I don’t want to carry a larger phone all day.

Interesting to see so many Android comments. I think it goes to show the demographics of people that are using Lemmy compared to other platforms.

I remember when there was a whole bunch of competing IM platforms, and apps like Adium and Trillian that would let a person manage multiple platforms in one app. I also remember being ahead of the curve and leaving that client running 24/7 so people could message me whenever and I would get it when I got home. Too far ahead though, mostly because IM wasn’t ubiquitous enough so there was like 3 people that I’d actually interact with regularly. Then IM kind of disappeared when text messaging took off, and finally came back when smartphones meant you could get those IMs anywhere.

Same. I might stick around both for a while and see how it goes since I see big benefits and big drawbacks on both platforms. Same idea as why I use Plex instead of Jellyfin in that as much as I want to support open source projects, and am willing to pay a moderate amount to do that, the commercial platforms usually just have a better finish and feature set, as well as a simpler interface for people that don’t live in the tech world.

That said, there’s maybe a dozen subreddits that I really care about, so if those communities came over I’d probably follow. Most of those aren’t populated by the kinds of tech enthusiasts that are looking for an open-source/distributed/etc. model, they’re people that just want to be able to talk about their niche hobbies or connect with others in their industry, regardless of what the back-end looks like. Honestly, I’d even be okay paying a reasonable amount to stick with Reddit(as it was last month, maybe not as it is today), it sounds like they just need to be more open to finding a solution that’s reasonable for the third party app developers instead of just laying down the hammer and them plugging their ears. Problem there though is I suspect the people that I like to engage with on Reddit aren’t the ones making a big impact on Reddit’s revenue. I suspect Reddit can go ahead and lose those high engagement users and still make bank on ad impressions from front-page lurkers, and that’s why they’re not looking to play ball.