I almost regret not paying in full and getting the 2 free back covers, but I don’t really bling my phones so figured I’d just opt for a place in line instead.

In my mind, these will ship in August/September. I’m basing that on literally nothing, but it feels about right. I haven’t seen a video or any promo material that didn’t look like they were holding a mock up device, so they probably don’t even have one yet.

That’s what that song was! I recognize this from an episode of The 100 but could never figure out what it was. Now I know.

Trash? None.

Clutter / work-in-progress: No comment.

Lol, touche. Also:

In order and in character:

1. [Chidi]: No, that would be highly unethical
2. [Eleanor] Of course. How else would you do it?
3. [Eleanor] Obviously they had it coming so no harm no foul.
4. [Jason] Nah, Pill-Boi said it was fine.
5. [Tahani] My heavens, no. I would never want to upset my friend Ray. Charles. Ray Charles was my friend.
6. [Jason] In Jacksonville we’re legally required to.
7. [Chidi] Given the ethical implications of restraining user freedom but also providing safety for the majority of people, we have to take into account several factors [ pulls out a blackboard, stomach ache intensifies ]…

I mean, it might if you did all 4 of those with the same post. lol. The Judge would invent “The Super Bad Place” for that.

Just seeing that is giving me a horrible flashback to Reddit and not being able to block “Superstonks”. By the time they eventually rolled out the ability to mute subs, I’d already learned there was a 1,000 user limit on the number of people you could block b/c I started blocking anyone who posted there lol.

I don’t even bother with local ports anymore. It’s just too much hassle when I switch providers, email services all seem to universally sinkhole anything originating from a residential IP even if I am able to convince them to unblock 25/TCP, and I refuse to pay extra for a static IP or upsell to business class at a massive price increase.

My ISP, while otherwise fine, still has not rolled out IPv6 yet and the DHCPv4 lease duration is short and will randomly assign a different IP rather than renewing the lease on the existing one. I don’t like relying on dynamic DNS or relying on running a daemon to update my public DNS records when my public IP changes. Been there, done that, and bought a crappy t-shirt at the gift shop.

I’ve had a VPS for close to 10 years now that is my main frontend and, through some VPN and routing trickery, allows me to have my email server on-prem but use the VPS for all inbound and outbound communication. A side effect benefit of this setup is I can run my email server from literally anywhere and from anything with an internet connection. I’ve got a copy of my email stack on a Pi Zero clone that stays in sync with my main one. During long power outages, I can start that up and run it from a hotspot with a power bank running it for almost 2 days (or indefinitely when I’m also charging the power bank from a solar panel lol).

Yep, same except being one of the first ones in the state.

The best part is it works when the power is out and doesn’t flap constantly if the electricity blips. Every cable provider I’ve ever had has failed spectacularly at maintaining the UPSs in the neighborhood nodes.

I can understand that speeds vary by area, but it’s not like it’s difficult at all to have those in a database where a web tool can return them based on your zip code. But yeah, it was like that when I signed up with Optimum (nee Suddenlink) years ago.

The other thing they do is require a truck roll for any kind of hookup. They almost got some of my business back but were so rigid that I said “the hell with it”. My fiber provider was having some growing pains and I called Optimum to reactivate my service on a lower plan to use as a backup connection (I work from home). All they needed to do was setup the account and re-authorize my modem (my hookup was still live and I had my own modem). They flat out refused to do any of that and required a tech to come “within 3-5 business days” and read the modem serial number to them to activate it. So I said hell with it, called T-Mobile, and activated my old 5G hotspot.

I would guess it’s not just Comcast. Optimum serves my area and they’ve basically been begging people to switch back since this area got fiber a few years ago.

Their offers are like $25/mo for 200/10 Mbps and no data caps. But they’re not guaranteeing the price. Seems like they’re going after the lower end of the market.

I basically say “boo hoo”. This is what actual competition looks like. Cable companies have sat on their ass and milked their infrastructure for decades (only updating the headend equipment to keep up).

Optimum cold called me once and I flat out told them if they wanted me back, they need to run fiber to my home, give me the same symmetrical speed I have now, for at least $10 less than I’m paying my fiber provider, and lock that price for at least 5 years. The rep basically kinda sighed, so I guess they’ve heard that response from more than just me.

Chee-chew-choo-cha-chooo

It’s theoretically possible under ideal conditions but probably not practical.

There is a maximum hop count of 7 which means there can be, at absolute maximum, seven nodes between the sender and recipient. The default, though, is 3 hops.

While the radios may, in theory, be able to work at the range of “a few states over” as the crow flies, terrain, structures, and line of sight would likely prohibit them from working in practice at such distances. You’d also need a reliable series of hops to reach from you to them. Again, at those distances, you’d very likely exceed the maximum hop count pretty quickly.

From what I’ve seen, large meshes are generally regional.

There’s a way to join meshes over the internet via MQTT but I haven’t messed with setting that up and in some cases it can potentially overwhelm a local mesh.

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.