For the laughs, look up Ford Fusion Energi [sic]. It’s a PHEV retrofit, so it has a plug, very short EV range (12 miles? - that is if you can make it run in EV mode), but the best part is the trunk - the entirety of it is taken up by the battery, with enough space for maybe a briefcase, not even a bag of groceries.

IIRC (from my coworker) Samsung had a feature where their phones could somehow emulate swiping a magnetic strip on a reader. This was ~6 years ago, so only some terminals had tap-to-pay.

I had only one app that used some obscure map API that would work only with Google Play, and crashed with MicroG. All while even Google’s own Maps worked OK.

If you can root the phone, you can do it after an install. Did it on a OnePlus that didn’t have a LineageOS image at the time. It worked fine, all apps stopped complaining about Play Services being off.

Also moz://a not too long ago

by removing access to digital content and discontinuing software support.

I really hope this gets somewhere, because then it sets the precedent to slow down the shitty cycle of modern connected technology. Sue phone manufacturers for dropping support after X years. Sue Google and Apple for relentlessly upping their OS version, dropping old API support, restricting old apps and making independent installs difficult. Sue ISPs for shutting down 2G, 3G, (and now 4G?) and making a pile of e-waste in an instant.

1. You learned something practical
2. You did work and can observe the result of your work
3. Your work is beneficial

Professional software development is now so abstracted from the real world (and other software development areas), those three are barely applicable.

Just to add, language and definitions evolve.

My security professor said that in slang of his time, a “hacker” was a skilled electronics/computer hobbyist, and the malicious person was a “cracker”.

I’ve also seen “hack” and “hacker” used as a synonym of “doing something unusual, difficult, or unexpected”, like you would see on https://hackaday.com/

IIRC no screeches and they move slower. Not sure how much that would help though since in one location, they wander in the dark, and player cannot see them without alerting them.

I played on the Switch, so no mods for me. I would lighten everything up, at least.

Oddly, the Dark Bramble didn’t bother me as much. I got a surprise once without even seeing the guy, then a jumpscare once, but generally, those guys are chill, hang out in one place, and are visible (or have a giveaway, at least).

Loved the original Outer Wilds too.

With how much effort is being put into phishing awareness and training, some people/companies still put zero effort into their communication.

Duting a lengthy process that involved an attorney, I got an email from a firstnamelastname(at)yahoo(dot)com, with no introduction, no mention of my name, a misspelled address, telling me about an appointment at another address that was… screenshotted from a website and pasted as image. Looks sketchy AF by any measure. Nope, that was a real email from a paralegal.

Filed a helpdesk ticket at work. Get a Teams message from “<FirstName> <LastName> (external)”, asking me my company machine ID in bad English. Responded with “you are helpdesk, do you not know this?”. After a few repeated requests for the ID and not answering any of my questions, I just stopped responding.

Outer Wilds: Echoes of the Eye DLC does this, unfortunately. Halfway through the story, Myst-like exploration of an abandoned location turns into horror wandering around pitch black locations with a janky lantern, being chased by creepy-looking aliens. Nope, made me stop playing. (Horror and jumpy enemies are fine if I have a weapon and can control the protagonist. But not if it’s a death cutscene at a single touch in complete darkness. It made me more uncomfortable than Dusk, or Quake, or Blood did)

As someone said a long time ago (way before the LLM craze) “bad developers love new projects, they can write terrible code, take praise and zero responsibility, then toss it to the maintenance (actual) team who has to deal with it”.

(Context: in at least 2 companies I worked at, it was a common practice to have a “development team”, usually with knowledge of latest tools and frameworks, but very little knowledge of processes or industry, and an “application team” that maintains the software long-term, and deals with the processes and users directly)

They are very generous with aliases too: 25 mailbox aliases, 50 custom domain aliases. Compare to Proton, which allows only 10 non-revocable aliases for their domains and custom domains combined.

Because it’s an obscure / niche / loophole way. Not sure if it works on later Android, for example. Or in all regions.

You can have a Google account without 2FA, but you need to create it using a factory-reset old Android phone (Android 8 or so).

In addition to cost (as everyone else said), work and worker qualifications. Working on underground lines requires special confined spaces training and certification, because it is more dangerous, could deal with not just electricity, but potentially hight temperatures, water, sewage, toxic gas, lack of oxygen, etc. There are even fewer people willing to do that compared to riding a bucket to the overhead lines.

Source: Worked for electrical utility

If you are a (younger?) immigrant in the US, you will be asked by a curious American:

1. Where are you from / what language do you speak?
2. How do you say “hello” and “goodbye” in your language?
3. How do you say “fuck you” in your language?

The second thing you want to know about my language is how to insult someone? Baffling, but happened more than once.

You gotta be really careful with this type of stuff.

Ohio passed a law that allows its current government to “clarify” the way issues are written on the ballot. Conveniently, it was done right before the vote on anti-gerrymandering. This anti-gerrymandering issue intended to select a fair cross-party committee for redrawing districts, but was re-phrased as a wordy and confusing blurb mentioning “unelected individuals” and “without accountability”. The issue did not pass. Which was the goal.

The parsed and properly displayed reactions are a QUIK feature, but it does not mean RCS is being used. You can try to install e.g. Fossify Messages and you will see the “A reacted to B” messages again.

Also, this reaction parsing does not work for all languages.

The unease of being watched while doing something (whether a job, a hobby, or a chore).