jqubed

jqubed , 4 months ago

Wait, what other countries had Monday as a holiday and what do they call it? I know the U.S. was Presidents’ Day and Canada was Family Day.

jqubed , 4 months ago

It’s straight up a plot line from Friends and I don’t understand why this is happening

jqubed , 4 months ago

It’s been a long time since I had cable but at the time I bought a modem because I could get a really good one and not paying the cable company’s rental fee for a modem, it paid for itself in about a year or so. I seem to remember that the cable company still took control of updating firmware and such on it, though, to maintain compatibility. So I don’t know if it buys you much from a security standpoint, but that’s also an area where I have no expertise.

jqubed , 4 months ago

Was it like this?

get smart

jqubed , 4 months ago

I think the bigger problem is why is the phone system configured in such a way that anyone can just claim to be calling from a number they don’t own? There should be some sort of authentication protocol built into the system to prove the person calling actually is from that number. Then it would be easier to charge someone for violating the Do Not Call registry. Once I had a call that Google identified as being a small local bakery, but on the other end was someone trying to sell me an extended warranty for my car. I’m sure the scammer’s software just picks random numbers, and it hurts legitimate phone users in the process.

jqubed , 4 months ago

This looks interesting; is anyone here using it?

jqubed , 4 months ago

Does anybody remember when Twitter ran basically exclusively over SMS?

jqubed , 4 months ago

If I’m reading this correctly, are they basically just reselling the Onerep service ($14.95/monthly or $99.96/annually) for $8.99/month?

jqubed , 4 months ago

Years ago when my brother lived with me he started ripping DVDs and Blu-rays and running a Plex server that pulled them from a NAS. It worked great on the Xbox in the house. When I got married and he moved out it didn’t work as well, but that probably had more to do with his network connection than anything else. Haven’t even tried in years though.

jqubed , 5 months ago

I think a lot of American planners expect the next war to be against China more than Russia, most likely as part of efforts to reclaim Taiwan militarily. Whether that actually happens or not, China seems to be trying to build a military that can win against the U.S., either by matching strengths or some more asymmetric means. I think I saw a story recently that China was constructing mockups of American navy ships in a desert that seem to be for war gaming, as an example.

jqubed , 5 months ago

Lockheed left the commercial market after the L-1011 didn’t sell as well as they’d forecast, and Boeing merged with McDonnell-Douglas in the 1990s. It was supposed to be a merger of equals, but the finance people at McDonnell-Douglas ran the show and won the merger over the engineers who ran Boeing.

jqubed , 5 months ago

One interesting side note from the Article: Kayak now has filters for aircraft on the route and has updated it so you can distinguish between the 737 Max-8 and Max-9

jqubed , 5 months ago

I’ve been trying DuckDuckGo recently and already started seeing some better results. I’m not ready to change my default search engine yet, but if it keeps up I could see that happening sooner than later.

jqubed , 5 months ago

Maybe so people know to buy a cartridge so it’s on hand before the one runs out, so you’re not having to run to the office supply store in the middle of an important print job? But that’s more of a convenience thing, not necessary.

jqubed , 5 months ago

I would buy from a company that knows how to build cars already so the difference is mostly a new power train, not an entirely new product. That’s not to say Tesla, Lucid, or Rivian can’t build a good product, but there are more unknowns with them. As with any car, be careful buying the first model year.

jqubed , 5 months ago

Was it?

It's not clear if a warrant was sought or obtained, and police did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

I really don’t know what to think of it overall. Obviously I’m happy they were able to eventually identify and convict someone who raped and murdered a child. The way they went about the large sweep was deceptive, but if there’s a warrant and supervision and protections in place for the innocent people who had no connection to the crime maybe it’s okay. I know I’d be feeling deceived and probably a little violated if I was one of the innocent people who was caught in the sweep, though.

jqubed , 5 months ago

Weirdly this was the biggest reason I switched from Android to iPhone. I’d used Android since the OG Motorola Droid, and pretty much upgraded every two years as soon as the contract allowed because after two years the phone would be buggy and unresponsive. Then I got a Google Pixel 2 and it was the first phone I’d had where it was still fine after two years, so I kept it. Even after 3 years it was still fine and I had no reason to upgrade, except it stopped receiving security fixes. My wife’s ex-husband is a professional hacker and his default mode is extortion, so trying to keep things up to date on security is important. Still, I was pretty disappointed that I was being pushed into buying a new phone for no reason other than Qualcomm and Google not wanting to support it.

Around the same time we had to get my stepdaughter’s iPhone repaired. It struck me that here she was using an iPhone 6 that was 6 years old at the time but still had parts available and was still getting software updates from the manufacturer. It didn’t have all the latest and greatest hardware but it was still perfectly functional and there was no need to upgrade unless we wanted to. As expensive as phones were getting, it felt harder and harder to justify buying something that was starting to cost $6-800 new and then have to do it again 2-3 years later. Was it ideal switching? No, and there were things I missed from Android, although they’ve slowly caught up (Apple finally added support to change the default notification sound just last year), but it works and at least I feel like I’m not wasting money on hardware that’s designed to break and go to a landfill in two years.

jqubed , 5 months ago

There’s certainly some trade-offs, although really not as much as I expected. Overall a lot of the software seems better on the iPhone than what I had on Android (except for most Google apps), so it hasn’t mattered as much as I would’ve thought. Everyone has to figure out their own pros and cons, but the longevity of Apple phones and what that means for a consumer I think is unappreciated.

jqubed , 5 months ago

The then-Senior Director of Safety and Security for eBay got an almost 5 year prison sentence, and it seems he reported directly to the CEO. That sounds like management to me!

jqubed , 5 months ago

The things the employees were convicted of doing are wild! If I’d read it in a book or saw it in a movie I’d call it ridiculous and unbelievable!