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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 10th, 2023

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  • Israel cares a whole lot about its hostages. Evidence for that are the prices they were willing to pay in the past.

    But sure, let’s go with your logic. Why can’t Israel just go carpet-bombing the crowded part in the south of the Gaza strip that all the refugees fled to? It would be a very effective way to eradicate them all. They are so crowded in such a small area that it’s possible to kill a couple hundred thousands in a single day. Wow, Israel has a lot to learn on how to ethnically cleanse a region.


  • This is simply not true.

    There were talks about up to 15 hostages, of 239 in demand for 4 days of ceasefire. Hamas needs this ceasefire desperately to regroup and assess the damages. The chaos now serves Israel well and apparently it puts much more pressure on Hamas. The ground invasion proves very effective. Maybe as Hamas becomes more desperate the “price” for the hostages will drop. Alternatively, if Israel will allow them to regroup, the war will take significantly more time because it will be much harder to eradicate them. Maybe the Israelis know where the hostages are held and after a ceasefire the hostages will be transferred to a different hideout, or smuggled via the tunnels to Egypt and from there to who knows where.


  • It’s intentional. They’d like to drop features to cut on design and manufacture costs, while taking out features most of the target audience doesn’t really care about. Some of these are just greedy. Phones used to rely on microSD expansion, but once you drop this option you could charge for additional space much more than what the equivalent microSD card would cost. You can also stop shipping phones with chargers because most people have them anyway. This is pure profit as the customer is paying the same price, but doesn’t get a charger.

    As for other features, they probably dropped them because people just didn’t care enough.

    It seems to be incredibly difficult to design a phone from scratch, and that’s why we only see a handful of manufacturers, with the small endeavors being able to make something that looks obsolete by the time it rolls out and even then it takes a few months to overcome all the bugs and glitches. Fairphone is the closest we’ve got, but it’s still far off and strays further with each generation.


  • There are gaming phones, phones with crazy cameras, and iPhones where the lack of features is a feature. What I wish to have is a phone with as many features and functionality as possible.

    That includes (but not limited to): IR blaster Headphone jack MicroSD card slot FM Radio RGB Notification/Status LED

    Rather than a slim phone with a glossy finish that will pick up scratches right away unless wrapped in a phone case, the outer cover of the phone should be rugged and replaceable. Like with old Nokia phones. I don’t care about few extra grams, or another millimeter of thickness. And I’m sure I’m not the only one.

    I was hopeful about the Fairphone at first, but they started removing features as well.


  • Facebook kind of died and used the momentum it had to reinvent itself. Back in the day I used to see updates from my friends, and I used to interact with them. I stopped using Facebook at some point a few years ago and recently got back to it. I use Marketplace, and in my country people with the same hobby as me seem to interact over Facebook more than anything else. Younger people rarely upload except for a few very active outliers. Most of the content is these clickbaity short videos of 5-minute crafts or live-feeding frogs to slightly larger frogs because Facebook thinks I’m into it for some reason. They just made an addictive never-ending stream of content.


  • I really liked the times when features were added and not killed off.

    10 years ago you could purchase a flagship phone with IR blaster for controlling whatever you couldn’t find a remote for, or trolling people in public spaces by turning off their TVs. Cloud storage wasn’t as popular, but if your phone died, the images were safe on the micrSD card. Bluetooth headsets were a thing, but you could always just use a cheap pair of headphones to stick in the headphone jack. People who desired it could install a custom ROM with all kinds of optimizations and less bloat. It used to be a lot more popular back then. Other than cameras, battery life, and reversible and more robust USB-C connectors, there isn’t much innovation. I used to feel like I owned my device much more back then. Now I only use the stock ROM, can either use wireless headphones or ones that use the charging port. I can’t insert a microSD, or test new features for Android ported from other devices by someone on XDA Developers. I’m not using the phone the way I want, but the way the companies who made it decided on.






  • Want to replace the battery on your 2 years old smartphone that is perfectly good, but the battery doesn’t last as long?

    Just grab a heat gun and melt the glue around the screen. With a suction cup, pull the screen apart and pry around the perimeter to separate the screen. This might end up in your display cracking if you apply too much force. After the screen is successfully separated unscrew a large number of screws of all shapes and sizes and make sure not to mix them when you put them back together after you’re done. Carefully disconnect the tiny flat cable connectors. Then you need to separate the battery itself. It has two pull tabs that makes a satisfying noise when pulled, in order to release the glue. But especially if you’re not experienced these are likely to tear, leaving the battery attached. Don’t try to pull the battery away as it may result in damage to the battery and turn it to an instant spicy pillow or twist the frame of the phone making it wonky. You can use isopropyl alcohol to weaken the remaining glue in order to free the battery. After it’s removal, put the new battery in it’s place. Make sure all the alcohol had evaporated. Then put the phone back together pretty much as you took it apart. Make sure not to forget any screws or mix between them. Then glue the screen back together with a strip of glue. If you used to have water resistance it is now likely compromised.

    That’s what it means to replace the battery in some phones. This shouldn’t be legal.






  • Back when I was a kid and got my first computer, I was mostly offline except for the occasional dial-up session. I didn’t have much to do on the internet anyway and it was quite expensive. I remember being amazed the first time I have set up to meet a friend over ICQ, rather than a phone call, of being able to communicate with other computers from mine. It didn’t matter whether these computers were at a neighbors’ house, a different city or entirely different country. I was looking forward to the internet giving us ways to connect like never before. No barriers, just directly communicating and bridging cultural differences and whatnot. Little did I knew that this was just one phase, as the internet gets more and more segregated. Rather than connecting with people, it gives you the ability to filter out whatever you don’t agree with, while staying connected with those who share your beliefs. It’s like we are no longer living the same reality and can’t even agree over fundamental things. I miss the old naive days of the internet when we feared viruses and the occasional pedophile in a chat room. Nowadays it’s the possibility of spreading misinformation that could overthrow a government. Either having it going uncontrolled and unregulated, or having a private company in control of such power.

    Personally, I think that this should be the choice of an individual user rather than the platform.