I don’t think you can compare a park/field to a manicured putting green. You can’t see the ground through the grass. Either way, play it if you like, to each their own.

Lawn darts was a dangerous game to begin with, so I’m not too shaken up about losing it, but I disagree that the bouncing is part of the game. No ground is perfectly even, and you can’t see imperfections from where you throw. It just creates randomness and makes it not worth playing. These aren’t issues in the other examples you cited. My opinion, obviously.

So now makers and hobbiest’s just can’t have magnets? Surely that’s an overreaction.

Not sure if you’re aware, but Duracell and probably others coat button batteries in a chemical that tastes bad in order to discourage ingestion.

I see where these regulations are coming from, but we can’t just ban away anything that could be harmful. I just recently bought a bunch of magnets like these for a using in 3D printed models. I don’t have any kids, but I do have pets and so they’re stored away in their own case and not left around. People just need to be responsible. I mean, we don’t ban bleach but you sure as hell shouldn’t drink it!

I was at a company picknic this summer and was watching people trying to play a pitiful version of Lawn Darts. The darts were weighted but would just bounce off the ground and ruin a good shot. Lawn darts, or darts of any kind, simply don’t work as a game when you take the pointy end away. I will say though, that a company outing where there’s people milling about is not a good place to play lawn darts, so I wouldn’t have used the real ones here even if you could.

Proper product packaging, like we use in medicine canisters, and perhaps an extra disclaimer/waiver on purchase is the way to go on these things IMO.

Eww, yeah that’s not cool. Was that Samsung forcing that on the phone or the carrier? I know US carries are atrocious for their uninstallable apps like that. Regardless shame on Samsung and the others for allowing it. The only apps that came on mine were Samsung apps.

Regardless, your dislike is completely justified. I really wish someone else could step up and make the phone we need. Repairable, jack/slot, small-midsize, proper updates, but I just don’t think the market is there. The iphone-ification of smartphones is basically complete, and now Microsoft is trying to do it to the desktop. In the future there’s going to be a lot of old people telling stories to their grandkids about how they used to own a computer and choose what was installed…

My very fist Android phone was a Samsung and while it had all kinds of cool features like TV out and an IR blaster, the software never got updated. I ended up installing and tinkering with custom ROMs and that led me to the Nexus line when it first launched. I stayed with Google ever since because they kept the Nexus and A series affordable, and had a much nicer clean OS with constant updates.

When they switched from Nexus to Pixel they decided they wanted to price it like an iPhone, even though it totally lacked the polish and value proposition. I stuck with my Nexus until they introduced the A series. It was affordable and new, but lacked video out, wireless charging, and thr SD card. Things the Nexus line all had. It was the beginning of the iphone-ification of Android IMO, but there were no other good options because every other vendor abandoned their phones after a year.

Now several years later things have only gotten worse. The amount of brands selling Android phone that are actually decent is like 2, maybe 3, they all are just slate designs with nothing interesting, and only a few actually give you proper updates. Samsung stands out in that crowd for having the most interesting phones and still decent support, but I agree that they are too expensive when new, and the locked bootloader sucks.

As you mentioned I’m 100% I’m just talking about Samsung’s phones here. Samsung as an entire company is one I would stay away from in most cases. I also would never buy one of their appliances and while I may have considered their TVs in the past due to them being an excellent panel manufacturer, I would think twice today.

I agree and disagree. I switched from a Pixel to an S series and I have to say I like the Samsung better.

While the Samsung UI used to be a sore spot, I think the Pixel design language shift of the past couple years is far worse. All the big colorful pills with too much whitespace… Samsung brings back a proper notification shade with lots of quick buttons, like it used to be 3 or so versions ago with a Pixel. I put my custom launcher on and basically forgot it’s Samsung.

There’s spots all over Android that have been rough that Samsung just, smooths out. It’s like they’re actually using the phone and willing to take matters into their own hands when Google isn’t, because Google is focused on AI assistants and letting everything else rot. Samsung lets you customize, whereas Pixel keeps walking you toward an iOS style experience one step at a time.

DeX, if you have a use for it, is awesome. During my lunch break at work can unplug my laptop from my dock, connect my phone, and have a personal workstation for watching videos, whatever. I also have a much better Private Folder with multiple apps. It’s like Samsung understands that with one device we need separation. Google has been saying a competitor to this is coming, but at this point it’s so far behind I’ll believe it when I see it.

Samsung doesn’t hold you hostage in format wars. My old Pixel in 20fucking23 couldn’t support external storage with anything but FAT32. That’s insane. It was screwing me up trying to easily back up a large file and that was no problem for the Samsung. Same with casting, Google is all in on Chromecast and nothing else, Samsung can CC but it can also Miracast. So now I can cast to any TV instead of only some.

Samsung’s hardware is usually better. They try new things sooner so you have a refined ultrasonic fingerprint sensor while Pixel was still doing illuminated, depending on your version the processors are better.

Now, places where Samsung sucks are obvious and you stated a few. No unlocking is bullshit. I own the phone, I should be able to unlock it. If you’re into tinkering then stay away, but Samsung’s do tend to have higher resale value, so if you want to get into ROMs then you can always sell the Samsung and grab a cheap used Pixel. Samsung kept the headphone jack and uSD around a little longer, but they’re both long gone on today’s models so that’s moot.

Samsung (and I can see where they’re coming from) was concerned with how much control Google had over Android so they made their own first party apps for everything. This means a lot of duplicate apps. I will say that while some can’t be easily uninstalled, they can be easily ignored. I just don’t use most of them and I’m fine. They don’t really force them on you or keep changing them to the default handler or anything. I’m OK with it, but I could see some people being annoyed.

That’s about it honestly… Samsung reminds me a bit of the early Nexus era days. Lots of customization, interesting tech, and work being put into the OS. Google is just plodding along, content to lock people into an iPhone clone and sell AI. I say give them both a try. If you pick up used or a refurb you can save a fortune and easily switch if you don’t like it without losing much if anything.

I’ve been saying that Idiocracy is coming true, but that was set in 2505. Seeing how far we’ve fallen in just 45 years, there’s no way we make it 500.

Easier said than done. I havent seen a system that doesn’t eventually attract and promote power hungry people. People that like having power over others, that abuse that power, and create systems to protect themselves.

Pedophilia is a real thing, but I highly doubt all these elites suffer from it. They are simply looking for a new taste, a new experience, a way of showing off their wealth and power. I honestly don’t know how you solve a problem like this without a huge purge that holds these offenders accountable. But they are in control and we are bickering over if global warming really actually seriously exists for real this time, and throwing anyone who could be The Other under the bus.

The last 10 years have really shaken my belief in the common man, and I’m seriously doubting if we have the faculties to hold a democracy together.

I don’t want account sharing either, except theres things like Google homes where you can’t sign in with more than one account. People sharing the same account in a TV aren’t trying to, it’s just the natural way they use it.

Exactly. I see that it can happen, I am seeing it happen first hand. I still don’t understand why it’s happening.

Yeah. I use Nebula and go out of my way to watch there whenever possible. The app isn’t great, but I still recommend it.

How much do we need to pay though? Most content creators I see have their patreon around $7 CDN/mo. Add even a couple and you’re now at the cost of a streaming subscription with much more content. I would have no problem paying content creators if the fees were more reasonable, but right now I only subscribe to a couple.

Should a creator’s patreon drop in price to $1 or $2 a month, or should the viewer pay a small fee per view? What new monetization system would make sense where the consumer doesn’t have an unaffordable pile of subscriptions, but the creators still get paid a fair rate for their effort?

Are you using Linux? Do you have the right codecs installed? Firefox shouldn’t be jerky.

It may not be that way for much longer. Take a look at Amazon Sidewalk. They’re using low power, long range mesh technology so Ring Doorbells and Echos can communicate without access to the internet. That may not sound like a big deal, but the potential is huge.

If companies like Amazon/Google are able to create a “side network” they could use it to provide low bandwidth backhaul for other companies that want to get telemetry from their airgapped devices.

So, for example, you get a new Roku smart TV and don’t connect it to your Wi-Fi, but your neighbour has a Ring doorbell so it just uses that.

Mesh tech is awesome, and so is tech in general, but we are so slow at regulating it. This stuff needs to be opt in at the absolute minimum.

I’m not a big social media user myself. Lemmy is pretty much it, unless I count watching videos on YouTube social media. I still feel a lot of the points he makes in the video.

Richard Stallman is a household name to tech enthusiasts, but there’s a whole young generation that’s being brought up in a world where this stuff was already there. I’m lucky I remember not having the internet as a child and I worry about how this is effecting the people who are oblivious to it.

I can’t even follow your arguments anymore.

As a user, I want as many options as possible, but if I can get a phone that’s $100 cheaper because it doesn’t have a headphone port, I’ll definitely choose that option.

You’re the one that implied headphone jacks add cost to phones. I’m saying that they don’t, and whatever cost they do add is minuscule. The implication that any cost savings is being passed to you is laughable.

Look, they killed the jack because they could save a couple bucks of design time and get a few cubic millimeters of space, but most importantly they could softly force their users to buy wireless headphones (maybe even the ones they sell and bundle?!). The former outcomes being happy accidents in order push the latter. It’s win win for them, and lose for the customer.

They know that their price concious customers are still using wired headphone and unlikely to take them up on their bundle, so they keep including it there. The affluent ones are the ones with cash to burn and little care for this issue. I get you like BT headphones, so do I, but there’s simply no good defense for the 3.5mm removal other than shilling.

And yet headphone ports are on all the cheap phones and lacking from the high end phones. Your argument just doesn’t hold water.

I’d love for that to be the case, but without a lot more polish and the ability to run Android apps in some kind of sandbox I don’t see it happening.

No, and if it does it would be an unnoticeable amount. I’ve run custom launchers since the Nexus days. If I ever load the stock launcher it’s slow to start so that indicates it hasn’t been sitting in RAM.

There’s so many extra things you can do with custom launchers that I would have a hard time going back. One thing I like about Nova that I haven’t seen anywhere else, is folders within icons. So I can make a folder called “Messengers” and put all my different messaging apps in it. I then put Signal as the first in the folder (because I use it most) and in the folder setting select “launch first app” as the tap action and “open folder” as swipe up action. The folder then just becomes a Signal icon and works like a regular Signal icon, but if I swipe up on it, all my different messaging apps come up. Its great and I have these hidden folders for everything. My camera app is actually my gallery, picture editors, etc. My Phone app is also my contacts, meeting app, you get the picture. Keeps my home screen nice and tidy but I still have everything categorized and easy to reach.