PaintedSnail

PaintedSnail , 18 days ago

I'm not saying planned obsolescence isn't a thing (because it is), but that's not the only reason. Making phones smaller, lighter, faster, and more feature-dense all mean that the phone has to be built with tighter manufacturing and operating tolerances. Faster chips are more prone to heat and vibration damage. Higher power requirements means the battery has a larger charge/discharge cycle. And unfortunately, tighter operating tolerances mean that they can fall out of those tolerances much more easily.

They get dropped, shaken, exposed to large environmental temperature swings, charged in wonky ways, exposed to hand oils and other kinds of dirt, and a slew of other evils. Older phones that didn't have such tight tolerances could handle all that better. Old Nokia phones weren't built to be indestructible, they are just such simple phones that there isn't much to break; but there's a reason people don't use them much anymore. You can still get simple feature phones, but the fact remains that they don't sell well, so not many are made, and the ones that are made don't have a lot of time and money invested in them.

Now Voyager is an extremely simple computer, made with technology that has huge tolerances, in an environment that is mostly consistent and known ahead of time so the design can deliberately account for it, had lots of testing, didn't have to take mass production into its design consideration, didn't have to make cost trade-offs, and has a dedicated engineering team to keep it going. It is still impressive that it has lasted this long, but that is more a testament to the incredible work that was and is being put into it than to the technology behind it.

PaintedSnail , 29 days ago

Because Google is Google and can't keep their own shit straight, there is a bit of confusion. "Google Pay" is going away, but "GPay" is not. You can still use the GPay app for person to person transactions. Google Wallet is used for things like tap-to-pay. Both apps link to the same underlying account.

PaintedSnail , 29 days ago

"Google Pay" app is going away, but the "GPay" app is not, and you can use that for person to person transactions. Yay Google naming conventions.

PaintedSnail , 29 days ago

Nope, you can do that with GPay, which is not the same as Google Pay, which is not the same as Google Wallet, but they all connect to the same account. Yay Google naming 😑.

PaintedSnail , 3 months ago

Focusing on the general idea of the last statement of your first paragraph, I completely disagree. I would much rather have a smart evil person in charge over an evil idiot.

A smart evil person will, at the very least, work for their own self-preservation. They can be negotiated with, even reasoned with, because they know that some give and take is required to meet their own goals.

An evil idiot will just break everything and take everyone with them if they don't get what they want simply because they don't understand what it is they are breaking.

PaintedSnail , 3 months ago

Correct. Infant botulism can result from bacteria in raw honey that is otherwise harmless to anyone with a developed immune system.