I’m currently in Asia and – in this country at least – you are basically required to have a smart phone to do anything. Credit cards don’t exist. And they use QR payments for most things. So that implies a camera and a banking app (for your bank). Many places don’t accept cash anymore (!) - I don’t really get how they can do that because not everyone has a smart phone (poor people (obviously) & tourists (not even allowed to get bank accounts here) come immediately to mind — of which there are millions of both). I think so far it’s not a big deal because these people just spend their money elsewhere, but I worry this will become entrenched.

Anyway, I tried “dumb phoning” my iPhone and there’s just way too many things I rely on daily that require a smart phone: paying by QR code, banking, international banking, translating, navigation, ride booking, accommodation booking, messaging on iMessage, Line, Messenger (almost everyone in this country uses the last 2). When travelling in a foreign country, these things aren’t really optional. If I can’t pay for a bus ticket or food, I could be really screwed.

Now you might say some of things in my list are doable without apps; like accommodation booking… sure. But even if you find a place old skool style, how do you contact them? Most don’t have web pages, they use Facebook pages. And the contact info is usually a Line or Messenger id. Even if somehow you managed to find a phone number, they are unlikely to speak English. I’m old enough to remember travelling before the internet and honestly it was great and worked well, but that was because everyone was on the same footing. We’ve lost that and I actually think it’s much more difficult now.

I’ve gotten rid of most social media (except fediverse) which has helped my screen time a lot, but I think going back to a feature phone is, unfortunately, impossible here. I do hope that they see how economically unfair requiring a smart phone is though and at least pass some laws that require shops to take cash payments (last I heard these laws did exist in the West).

The Orange TACO demonstrating why the only way to deal with America for the next 4 years is to completely ignore them and work with the rest of the world for trade. Trump doesn’t honor the trade deals that HE negotiated (Canada and Mexico, for example) and has no problem throwing out the any deal when someone whispers in his ear about some new thing. Negotiating is utterly pointless. He is the boy who cried wolf and clearly there is no wolf at all. Why should the world care if America wants Americans to spend 200% more for magnets? Or oil? Or electricity? Coffee? Cars? Groceries? Etc… etc… etc. They voted for this. Let them suffer. The rest of the world will be just fine. This is the path Canada is taking and the rest of the world needs to wake up and cooperate — without the USA.

Thailand literally told them (publicly) that they don’t need their help… and then he tries to take the credit anyway. He truly is the biggest loser.

While this is obviously true now, in hindsight, it’s certainly not fair. The entire western world put all of their eggs in the USA basket… why? Because after WWII there was a real sense that the USA was trustable. That they would work toward freedom, democracy, and (importantly) expanding markets in the world. The USA made the basket and the rest of the world piled in their eggs. Despite plenty of evidence to the contrary (Panama, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, etc all), the world continued to believe the lie that America was happy promulgating. Nobody reasonable believed America would take a hard right turn to fascism and voluntarily elect a leader that would throw the basket — the basket they made to always favour America — in the trash. But here we are. Yes, the world never should have agreed to America putting itself at the top of the pile. But we did and now the world is busy re-orienting without America. I think that’s for the better, but then again I’m not American. I think Americans are in for a rude awakening when the Trump policies actually come home to roost… of course he’ll be gone by then and they’ll just blame whatever democrat inherits the burning hulk of America that he leaves behind.

I tried watching a 30 minute video on YouTube the other day and it injected ads every 1 minute for the entire video. Fuck Google. Fuck YouTube. Fuck Alphabet.

Back in the day, I had one of the fm transmitters wired into the antenna with a ground loop isolator from radio shack (!) and I tapped a power lead so it would also charge my iPod while in use (and automatically turn off the power when the car was off). Honestly, it was awesome. CD quality sound. If I remember correctly Belkin made the transmitter.

Actually, I would say you sound more like the cave person in this discussion. “Sounds great, let’s do it” is not a reasoned nor analytical approach.

Is it possible to build it? Maybe. Perhaps even probably. Does it make sense to build it? That’s a much better question. Overwhelmingly, the scientific response, since Regan first proposed it, has been “No”.

The biggest problem is the “plus 1” problem. Say you have an array of 100 killer satellites, each with an intercepting missile. Well an adversary can see all 100 satellites, and simply has to launch 101 ICBMs — or 100 cheap “dummy” missiles and 1 real one. It only takes 1 getting through to vaporize an entire city. The killer satellites would likely be a billion dollars or more each, and they are rendered completely useless by a relatively inexpensive fake missile — mostly costing just the price of fuel. You can’t take the chance that any launched missiles are not real, so you must intercept all of them. No matter how many killer satellites you have, it will be trivial to swamp them with cheap fakes and have a few real ones hidden in the volley. Inevitably some of the real ones will get through.

There’s another huge problem someone else alluded to — such a satellite system would be trivial to completely destroy before even launching any ICBMs. The most likely deployment would be LEO (low earth orbit). Destroying any satellite (either from another satellite or from a ground based launch) would send debris out in every direction. That debris would then collide with other satellites, starting a chain reaction that would likely take out most of the satellites in LEO trajectories around earth (including things like starlink, etc).

There are tonnes of other problems with Star Wars/Golden Dome/Iron Dome but just these 2, I think, make it a complete non-starter with our current technology.

I get how seductive the idea is. And one day, perhaps with high energy lasers and technology we clearly are decades away from today, then it might be possible. Spending 100+ BILLION dollars on this today is simple a pipe dream — or the greatest scam in history (more likely).

“Ever since nuclear-armed intercontinental-range missiles were deployed in the 1950s, the United States (and its potential adversaries) have been vulnerable to nuclear attack. This is very unnerving, and has caused our leaders to search for some kind of technical fix that would change this situation by making it possible for us to defend ourselves against such an attack. Fixing this situation is also very appealing to the public. As a consequence, new systems for defending against ICBMs have been proposed again and again, and about half a dozen have been built, costing large amounts of money, in the hope that a technical fix could be found that would make us safe. But none of these efforts have been successful, because the difficulty of defending against nuclear-armed ICBMs is so great.”

https://www.404media.co/scientists-explain-why-trumps-175-billion-golden-dome-is-a-fantasy/

THIS IS WHY TARIFFS NEVER WORK. In the long term tariffs actually encourage manufacturing to leave the country charging tariffs, not move manufacturing there. It’s much cheaper to pay the tariffs once, on the final product, than to pay the tariffs on every part that is required moving back and forth across an “imaginary line” (border in Trump-speak).

None of Trump’s tariff bolstering hurts Apple at all. They are a global company and can easily adjust around the asinine policies of America for a few years. Americans will get sick of paying a minimum of 25% more for EVERYTHING, while the rest of the world continues on as if nothing happened. Eventually Americans will see that the rest of the world has all the nice things and they’ve become a self imposed Soviet-era block country that has nothing and has to line up for toilet paper, and they’ll be right pissed. Until then, enjoy your delusion. 👏

First off, this isn’t Apple Intelligence… it’s Siri. Secondly, “What’s the temperature in here?” — were you trying to get the temperature inside your home? Do you have homekit enabled temperature sensors in your home? Because, if not, then I can’t really fault Siri for being confused. Granted Kyiv seems like a pretty random answer. Maybe try “what’s the temperature outside?”

Thanks for this link but your username also makes this pretty sus. 😜

Session is an alternative that does not require, or request, your phone number (or any other identifying information). Honestly, I have no idea why Signal got popular and Sessions did not. As soon as Signal asked for my phone number that set off alarm bells for me and I’ve never really trusted it since.