Yeah, hopefully Patron doesn’t roll over and just removes the option to do it in iPhone. Taking away functionality will make Apple look bad, which they deserve.

Seriously, they were the poster-child of a “good” phone manufacturer. Like the “don’t be evil” version of Google, there was a time when I was comfortable recommending them. Not any more. Let’s hope they find their way.

Sad. Having used the OPX, OP6T, OP9, and briefly the OP10, I can honestly say their hardware is usually pretty good. I went to Graphene on a Pixel for the software. Software was always Oneplus’ weak point so it’s extra silly that they’re doing this. So many hobbyists have bought OP hardware and used it with software of their choice. They started co-developing their Oxygen OS with Oppo a while back and that’s when it really went to hell.

Yeehaw! Sounds like you are set for a while. If you get replaced by AI, you could sell 32 gigs and live off that for a couple of years while still being able to run a zillion tabs at once!

I feel similarly. I pretty much maxed the RAM on my DDR5 gaming/daily driving desktop before this. I wish I had also maxed the RAM on my DDR4 server, though I did acquire significant storage space and a new SSD while it was more affordable. If we see a reasonable dip in storage prices or RAM, I’m buying spare drives in the sizes I use so I can be a bit more insulated from market swings and will have spares on-site immediately if needed.

It can be hard to convince partners and family, so congrats on the success. My partner worked in IT support but is not a computer person and does not own a PC. I simply provide a family Linux computer and some hosted services to be used by anyone in the family, usually EndeavorOS with KDE. They are aware of world happenings to understand why it is important and the biggest complaint I received was that I need to apply more scaling because the text is too small. :D

With all that said, I think both our situations are anomalous, though becoming more common.

I’m aware of Stash. I wouldn’t have thought of it and that might actually be a good solution. I’ll spin up a copy and see if it’ll work. Thanks for the suggestion. :)

Or they’ll bundle it directly with the compute they want to sell you so that you dont even have the option of using your own PC and all devices on the network are 100% validated and controlled by them.

I remember a time when Skype already existed and we would still pay for long distance phone minutes to call our German relatives because they hadn’t updated their internet since the Kaiser was in charge. :-P In the last few years, their speeds are much more comparable to ours.

Great to hear. I might give it a try in a limited area, like meeting people from a new hobby or friend group, then expand from there if it works f or me. I definitely see the benefit, especially for ADHD types who might otherwise forget to call someone for 1…2…3…12 months. :-D Thank you for making a cool piece of software.

I worked for a company who always positioned themselves as way more important than they were and were hellbent on micromanaging everyone. It was all about image and corporate culture. I can play that game fairly well, but I wanted to minimize my time dealing with it. I was part of a small group of 3-5 subject matter experts who rank similarly to management, but didn’t have to manage anyone. This tended to isolate us from the McJob environment as we worked things out between ourselves and all the bottom tier managers were nice to us because they wanted us to help their employees. We were salaried and unlike most jobs which use salary to make you work more hours, here salary meant I could bend my hours more than most employees and do 4x10hrs or 4x9+4hrs and leave early every Friday. Sometimes my boss would tell us to leave early for the day or take us to lunch. Sometimes we’d go out to lunch when our counterparts from a client company were around. It was an okay gig and my direct managers were okay. Covid happened and upper management could barely stand the idea of anyone working somewhere other than their watchful eye so they try to drag us SMEs back into an mostly empty office calling us “essential workers” despite us being 100% able to do our jobs from home and fully nonessential in every meaningful way. I needed the job, so I went. Around that time we got a new manager who was supposed to straighten the place out (instead doubling down on every reason the place was shit). When I arrived at our mostly empty office I let myself into the IT closet and grabbed 4-5 monitors to build myself a monitor wall. I showed up in sweatpants. I took frequent breaks. I played Tux Kart on my phone. I played songs like “take this job and shove it” over my PC speakers while I was working. We put on techno music and remixed snippets of angry customer calls to it. (QA was vibing to the tune of our rebellion!) I raced my rolling chair up and down the isles and generally acted a fool, but not enough to get fired. Our small group of SMEs was tight knit and after a few days of acting our wage, one lady quit because she had kids and there wasn’t any childcare available yet because of Covid. Our manager basically forced her into it because he would not compromise. The governor was still telling everyone to stay home. This woman straight up rage quit telling our boss exactly where he could shove it and all of us were VERY clear with our boss that he would lose the rest of us if he didn’t shape up. Of course he knew best. The bossman was a fucking self-important narcissist and tried to call our bluff only to find himself with 0 SMEs a week or two later. I went home that night and found a new job with a friend. To top it off, I was in the process of switching roles at the first company, so when I left, I imagine they felt an extra sting of having to restart that search. Their mission was “asses in seats” and they would hire anyone to meet headcount on their contracts, so whoever replaced us may not even have known how to properly turn on a computer much less fix one. One fellow SME followed a former colleague of ours who got him plugged in elsewhere. All of us found new jobs in record time. They had been driving us too hard to really document much, so when we left I assume everything collapsed back to the level of 0-experience newbies with no guidance or product knowledge at all. The company must have burned enough people because they moved most of their activity to a new city and some of it offshore where they continue their bullshit to this day. That’s what you get when you piss off nearly every qualified individual in a market! My small team of SMEs was awesome and I would absolutely work with any of them again. The comradery was top notch.

I web searched our former boss and found him on a few job sites for “high earning professionals”. He got fired a bit after we all left and I’d like to think he’s working as a grease trap cleaner now. Then again, in America we fail up.

Looks good. I’ve considered a personal CRM for some time and have been using Obsidian a little bit. Having said that, I am open to something more tailored to the task. A question: what would it look like if someone wanted to export their data out of this tool later? Do I need to be a programmer to migrate away or is it relatively simple?

Yup, I think an ice dispenser and a fancy-schmancy high speed water tap is justifiable for most people, but I can’t think of a realistic use case for a screen that outweighs the many negatives.

I have an Pixel 8 Pro after my most recent Oneplus finally died. Having used the pixel with Graphene for a year or so now, I have to agree with you: there’s not much they could add to phones to tempt me to upgrade. I set my family’s last 3 or 4 phones next to each other and they’re practically all the exact same form factor and it’s only a minor difference in notch shape and backplate color accents that set them apart. I don’t play games other than the occasional Tux Kart race in a waiting room, so all the phones have more than enough RAM and CPU. The only reason for most people to upgrade in the current market is a hardware failure or an end-of-support event that you can’t sidestep with third party ROMS.

Yep, got rid of my last phone when the mics stopped working right, even after flashing a variety of ROMS.

When I last bought an XPS 13, there was an option for Ubuntu. I agree that many people will choose a Macbook, but the XPS line has been decent. Perhaps someday they will discover the third OS option.

To top that off, you can dip your toes in by running a live image off a USB thumb drive to check if your hardware is recognized and supported out of the box. I have used Linux for 10-15 years, but never for gaming. This year I made the final jump, the one thing I had kept windows for. I don’t play competitive games with anticheat, and everything is running great. I anticipated more bullshit, because 15 years ago, Linux was not so polished. At this point I’m fine with running Linux on elderly folks PCs. It’s finally “good enough” to do just about everything and legitimately excels at most things.

I guess that’s one way to outdo Internet Explorer.

My city still owns the utilities and the council doubles as the utility board. They’ve been trying to privatize it, but it’s very contentious. Rightly so.

My wife does this in our home. Calls and full videos are usually okay, but nobody who is not watching them wants to hear you flip through shorts. I go play Cities Skylines in my office and it keeps everyone’s peace.