The post has been reported, but isn’t breaking our instance rules. I’m inclined to believe OP is being dishonest with you all. At this point, I’ll leave it with the community to decide if any action should be taken.

Apologies all. That user is not representative of Aussie.Zone users. We’re generally a chill bunch.

So this entire article is a beat-up in response to a single tweet:

https://twitter.com/PalmerLuckey/status/1947027209845383279

There is no laptop. There is no potential laptop coming soon.

I’m not about to defend Google, but I think Apple are worse. Google are upfront about what they collect and let you download (takeout) or delete everything they have on you at any time you want.

Apple don’t tell you what they are collecting, don’t let you opt-out of data collection and it’s a manual process to access/delete what they have on you.

Neither company is good on their privacy fronts and to champion one over the other is silly.

My client is spending waaaaaaay more money on Microsoft Online than it ever used to on software licenses. Every single user in the business is costing 🇦🇺$30 per month alone just for their Office suite. That’s before you get to the Azure stuff. Some hosted apps cost over 🇦🇺$1k/month to host in Azure.

Before you go too strongly after Microsoft for charging so much, this is cheaper than what we used to pay for running our own SharePoint, Exchange etc farms as well as the infrastructure required to host websites/database etc. All that has been outsourced to Microsoft Online and saves significant money.

Microsoft is doing very well out of its own cloud fees and can cope with AWS, Google and all the smaller private cloud operations getting some of that action.

I am typing this comment on a Pixel 7. I have had it for nearly two years and I have never experienced these symptoms.

The only app I can think of that doesn’t load in under a second is Asphalt Legends - and that’s because the app takes a week to load on anything.

I am very satisfied with this device, and doubt I’ll be upgrading to Pixel 9. I have no reason to upgrade.

After middling success putting a modern take on simple rock beats, they renamed the band to The Wiggles and specialized on childrens entertainment.

Through a combination of record companies wanting nothing to do with them, and a willingness to tour in the wake of the World Trade Center attack when nobody else would, the new band becomes wildly successful and gets to keep all their own money and not share it with a record company.

(True Story)

So I’ve just bought a PC. I haven’t had a new computer for 12 years. The newest game I’ve played is Subnautica (and Below Zero). I’ve basically missed everything from the last 15 years.

I own a few games that I haven’t been able to play until now (Fallout 4, Star Wars Squadrons, Witcher 3, few others). Thinking I probably have enough games in my backlog to play those and maybe look at new stuff next sale.

Surely opinions on this are going to vary wildly? Lemmy is full of people installing graphene and de-googling, while I’m happy with stock Android on Pixels with a custom launcher. Samsung, Sony and Asus all have serious devotees as well.

There’s also different responses depending on what you want in a phone. Some people want smaller than 6", others must have a 3.5mm jack. Some want SD storage. The camera is vital for me, but most of my colleagues don’t really care about the camera.

How would you sift through all that for a “best” one size fits all phone?

You might like Civ IV, it’s square tiled instead of hexagon tiles. I’ve always preferred the squares.

Well, it has an all-time peak of 23 players online and an estimated owner base of fewer than 1,000. Based purely on those stats, I assume it sucks.

It has enough owners that they’d have spread the word if it were worth looking at.

If it was that big a deal for you, why would you use a phone OS by that same company?

SMS is hot garbage:

1. The first “S” stands for short. If your message is over 160 characters, you are sending multiple messages. The implementation of SMS is a hack on the carrier network in the first place, and joining multiple messages, particularly across carriers is a complication to this hack. Sure, 99.99% of messages are delivered just fine. But if the message doesn’t arrive for some reason, there’s no acknowledgement of this. The recipient just doesn’t get it.
2. SMS is easy to spoof. If I have even basic carrier access, I can send a message to your dad from your number.
3. SMS is not secure - at all.
4. I can initiate a number port on your number, and while that port request will likely fail, it’s possible that I can receive messages that were destined for you in the short term.

But sure. It works for anyone on any phone.

The neat thing about Android is that you have the choice to do that. None of us understand why you want to use sms over rcs, but we love that you can.

the days of being remotely excited by phone design are way behind us. This looks like an iPhone 4 with a pixel 6+ camera bar. Meh.

I actually love Civ IV, myself. I’m sure Leonard Nemoy is a huge part of why.

My wife, with a PhD applying for jobs 15 years ago:
“You’re stupidly over-qualified for this entry-level job, we fear that you will leave us as soon as you get a better offer.”
or
“You have the qualifications for his role, but you lack previous experience.”

It’s a bit early to say “for life”, but my cateye rechargeable lights are six years old at this point and going as strong as the day I bought them. My biggest worry at this point is that micro USB cables will start to get rare before the lights are a problem.

I’ve actually changed bikes twice in that time.

Tech is short-hand for technology.
So, technology companies and technology workers.

Huh.
You are correct - there is a message in my inbox from you. I honestly didn’t realise/see it. I’ll reply privately.

I’m doing my part! I just got my February timeline this morning. I’m actually a bit annoyed with it - I’m pretty sure most of my “driving” km here should have been “transit”. But how is Google supposed to know if I’m on a bus or in a car?