Jon Skeet? He’s my hero, but he hasn’t worked at MS for quite some time I believe.

I keep seeing this sentiment. Am I the only person who remembers pop up ads? Was that a fever dream? I remember those being all over the place in the late 90s and early aughts. All with geocities style colors.

I just miss when you could search for things on search engines and find what you were looking for. I miss when putting operators, quotes, and parentheses actually changed the search results.

I miss when AI wasn’t shoved into EVERYTHING. I miss when the internet was usable to be honest.

Yeah everyone talks about how cheap android phones are for the specs, but specs aren’t important if your device doesn’t even work. The market is too fragmented, and that is where Apple’s iron fisted approach shines. You will have the same experience on every iPhone, and you don’t have to worry about manufacturer, service provider, or anyone putting software on it that the average user can’t remove.

I’m not gonna pretend iPhones are perfect. They have their own issues, and I’ve recently learned that setting up parental controls requires a second Apple device (I’m certainly not going to intentional have children, so this doesn’t affect me, but it’s messed up), which definitely seems like it should be illegal. I have never had an iPhone die on me, however.

I switched to iPhone around the time honeycomb came out. I switched from Windows Mobile 6.5 on an HTC shadow that I adored. When the Google g1 came out, I switched to it immediately. It was amazing and I was so excited about the better experience than winmo.

I went through about 6 or 7 android phones over the next few years. HTC, Samsung, Motorola (the Cliq, it was fine until I was stuck on cupcake and everyone else had eclair).

I had two galaxy s 2s die in the same year. I’ve never broken a phone physically. I had an htc espresso (i really liked hardware keyboard at the time) that got capped at froyo. I naturally installed CyanogenMod on it so I could get my that sweet sweet Gingerbread animated wallpaper functionality. Then the keyboard died. By that point I could type on a touch screen fine. Nbd. Then the power button died.

Obviously my warranty wasn’t honored, as I had changed the software, despite my phone being less than a year old, and having had a hardware failure. I couldn’t reflash it because the power button didn’t work.

These aren’t even all of the failures I had. I eventually decided to go iPhone, and I’ve NEVER had an issue. I have kept my iPhones for a minimum of 3 years.

Price? I got the iPhone 15 pro for $170 (free and clear, not that rented bullshit) when I traded in my 3 year old iPhone. I’m not stupid. I’m not illiterate. I just would like my phone every now and then. I don’t use it for all the crazy shit other people do. It’s a gps with texting and sometimes calling/Lemmy usage. It works amazingly.

I’m sure Android is much better now. But why switch when what I have works and is honestly cheap. I could get a new one every two years for free if I didn’t want to own my phone. But Apple bad so I must be brain washed.

You don’t know the political affiliations of either of the people you’re insulting. I’m not going to bother replying to you, as you seem to have lost all sense of good faith.

If you cannot have a discussion without devolving into insults and inflammatory statements, you are not someone I would want as a friend, ally, or even acquaintance honestly. I suggest you seek some means of centering yourself emotionally, as I genuinely think it could be of benefit.

I hope that you have the day you deserve, and in the future can enjoy calm and rational discourse.

No, my friend. You are upset and directing your anger in the wrong direction. Their solution was simply saying you can help mitigate the problem. Not that we can fix the problem without upsetting someone’s feelings. Nobody blamed the working class. Again, you are directing your anger unreasonably at those who should be your allies. You want to lay blame, but you isolate yourself from those who appear to be agreeing with you. Seems that commenter just meant that even if you can’t completely fix it, you can do a little bit. If you can do a little bit, then why wouldn’t you?

Because it won’t fix everything is not a reason to not do all that you can. You can only control yourself, so you may as well try your best.

So your solution is to do nothing and give in? Yet YOU are the one insulting the commenter you’re replying to? Lay off the superiority and fatalism, and maybe you will see a path to helping.

Will we solve all the world’s problems? Not even a little bit. But does that mean we shouldn’t even try? I would argue that we should absolutely do our best to mitigate any damage caused by anyone, because we all share the same earth. Of course I would also argue we should all abstain from insulting each other, so maybe my opinion doesn’t matter.

A lot of services now accept physical security keys for logging in. These keys use FIDO similar to how a phone-based passkey works. You just plug the dude in and then you are good to go.

Obviously not every company works with these just yet, but a lot of major companies do. Honestly most of the big tech companies support them.

GitHub and Bitwarden are the two I’m immediately thinking of, but that’s likely because I just used my passkey for those lol.

It’s way more secure than SMS MFA, and I prefer it to a phone app because I don’t have to look at then enter a code while hoping the time doesn’t run out for that code, forcing me to wait for a new one.

I also use the autonomous ergo pro. Or 2. It’s the green one. I absolutely love how customizable it is, and it’s got some amazing lumbar support. I had a gaming chair at the start of the pandemic, and my back was in so much pain by the end of the day.

It’s much better now.

I don’t think much can compete with the Herman Miller Aeron, but if you can’t find a good used one nearby, the ergo would be my next recommendation for sure.

A cats favorite flavor is usually “someone else’s”

First party software. I buy Nintendo consoles for their ip, not their power. My desktop is where I do most of my gaming, but I have an attachment to Zelda games that I don’t think will ever go away. I still have my official prima guide for links awakening dx. I have a map on the wall of twilight princess’s over world.

I don’t even like the switch for portability because it feels bulky and uncomfortable. But connected to the dock, I can forget that it’s supposed to be portable and enjoy my Zelda games. My wife also likes animal crossing, and I got her to play her first Zelda and Pokémon games in the last year, and those were games that shaped my childhood.

So I guess my answer is shared experiences and nostalgia.

My point stands that smart phones and guns comparisons are a false equivalency and should never be made.

I’m curious what you mean by the quality of learning data. People are getting smarter* on average than ever before. Young folk are more inclusive that ever before. As far as mental health goes, the general acceptance of mental health has caused an increase, and I’m not convinced social media has as much of an impact as that.

Access to mental healthcare has been hugely improved in the last two decades, and we no longer assume people are inherently bad or problematic when they have treatable mental conditions.

Either way, there’s just not enough data and understanding to make sweeping statements, and it reminds me of when rock and roll was evil, dungeons and dragons was turning kids into devil worshippers, tv made kids stupid, and video games made kids violent.

*smarter isn’t a great term here. Information and data is becoming widely available, increases knowledge and capability for every generation. IQ score are continuously going up and needing to be readjusted to keep 100 at average, but IQ is hardly a realistic measurement of… pretty much anything more than problem solving skills.

Right? Before that it was tv. Before that it was rock and roll. I was actually told to go outside more because I was READING TOO MUCH. Idk why everyone feels like their way of entertainment is better than everyone else’s. It’s so weird that we can’t let people enjoy themselves unless they do it our way.

Yeah I remember that story about those kids killing an entire school with their smartphone.

That’s definitely not a flash equivalency at all.

Remember when video games were making kids kill each other? Because when I was a kid, that’s what people were trying to ban instead of smartphones.

Surprisingly, all music purchases through apple’s store are DRM-free (now, though it wasn’t always that way. They got in early on the DRM wagon in fact until iPods stopped mattering).

My Americanism got in the way I guess. My politicians are doing their best to not enact a law that went in the ballot as a citizen led initiative and received a majority vote. So saying “America thinks this thing because some politicians did a fucked up thing” would be disingenuous.

My point was that I won’t speak for everyone in the eu, but the members of the European Parliament involved in this directed do want, have wanted, and continue to want this regulation. Saying the “eu” didn’t want this, but “well Apple” is just ridiculous, and the directive I would argue affects other products significantly more simply because of all the laptops switching to usb c. If we just go around pretending the “eu” had their hand forced by one company’s cellphone business (large or not), then we are pretending the other massive corporations are *not committing an infraction against humanity with the large amount of ewaste they are producing.

So I could have worded “the eu doesn’t want anything) better. I just didn’t want an already long post to be even longer. I wrote a book here before I had to erase it and trim it down and I still feel like it’s too long and maybe doesn’t even effectively explain my position l, so maybe I just suck at communicating.

Nope. The members of the parliament and council want things. And unlike what the previous commenter said, the vast majority of them did want to regulate this, have wanted to regulate this, and desire regulation independent of Apple’s stubborn refusal to join the 2020s (and late 2010s truthfully).

This was my point. The EU isn’t an amorphous blob, and the individuals involved with this decision do and have wanted this.

The distinction there is just that your statement about the eu NOT wanting to regulate this is incorrect. This is something the members of the eu have wanted regulation on for some time. And not because of Apple, but because of most major manufacturers.

Again, no. It’s not because Apple didn’t change their plug for their mobile devices. It’s because of every device using different chargers. Again, laptops are much worse than a single cable that hasn’t changed in a decade.

By blaming one corporation alone, you are giving every single bad actor a pass. This is how they get away with shit like this.

I’d argue notebook chargers are even MORE awful at this because they’re usually at least $50 for an off-brand and significantly more from the manufacturer.

That’s not quite accurate. The EU doesn’t want anything, but the people involved in this decision absolutely wanted to regulate this. It’s been an issue for decades at this point.

It’s also not because of “well, Apple”. This law doesn’t apply to phones alone, it’s pretty much any mobile device.

It also, and this is one of the big and important parts, requires manufacturers to offer the option to NOT have chargers included. The goal here is to reduce the MASSIVE amount of e waste generated by tablets, phones, cameras, and even (especially in my mind, as these are often not compatible even amongst single manufacturers) laptop chargers. That’s an awesome part of the rule, even if it has a larger compliance window.

Lastly, while the law itself doesn’t require USB C, the legal annex absolutely and quite explicitly DOES state that manufacturers must use USB C. There is a provision that reports must be made every 5 years or so, and consideration will be made concerning the required standards (wireless is mentioned as not being able to effectively be regulated in this way as of yet).

This is a huge win in terms of the reduction in e waste, and the option to not receive a charger is, in my opinion, one of the best parts. I have way too many USB C cables that I can’t find a place to use them all, and I’ve got them in every room.