I don’t know how it could possibly be implemented, but I wish there was some kind of application or token that ran on my devices that would track how much I visited or used various pieces of FOSS software and services and then at the end of every month would pay each one from a predefined amount of money I set for how much I think I can afford for all of it. Maybe before actually sending the payments it generates a report stating the breakdown and allowing me to tweak the percentages.

Likely a privacy nightmare even if entirely locally running, but would be sweet.

I actually did this a couple of months ago. I pulled population data and using percentages from the most recent census and pew research I applied reasonable dating criteria to the population to figure out what the order of magnitude was.

When I say reasonable criteria stuff like age range and gender distribution in addition to some other stuff. I also tried to avoid statistics that are highly correlated. For instance since I used percentage of people with a college degree, I avoided using percentage of the population that is liberal since education tends to make people more liberal.

The number I came up with was 35 people… I also estimated that the half life for that number to replenish is about two years. That is with me living in one of the larger cities in the US (top 30). The criteria I used isn’t all that unreasonable, but one of the items has a VERY large gender disparity. Meaning if I were a women looking for the same criteria in a man the options would be one or two orders of magnitude larger.

All of that is to say, I have no doubt there isn’t just one person out there that is perfect for me. In fact I’m positive there are thousands if not hundreds of thousands out there. I am as confident in this fact as I am that aliens exist or have existed. The reason I will likely never meet either though is the same though. Space is too large and time is too vast.

Hopefully it’s a nice day so I could go outside and lay down in the grass or climb a tree to chill and completely relax.

One of the cards dangles out, and you do sometimes have to file the SIM tray down a hair (just the tray the slot/phone is not modified at all). A lot of the ribbons have an adhesive back and just enough length to curve around the body of the phone so that it contours the phone and sticks to the back.

Since I kept my phone in a case it was essentially indistinguishable/seamless to me.

Below is a link to an example of the adapter I’m talking about.

https://www.amazon.com/Adapter-Android-Extender-Samsung-Accessory/dp/B0C5FCZY71

So technically if a phone has a dual SIM slot where the second slot is shared between SD card or SIM, you can still use both SIMs and an SD card. There are little adapter ribbons that allow you to do so. One of my previous phones was a Huawei Mate 8 that I did that with.

And yet they still probably won’t allow any third party app to have access to RCS via an API. FFS.

If you work in certain fields of engineering then you have to pass a drug test. The only job I have had where I wasn’t drug tested was my hourly IT job before getting my degree. I have never had to give out social information and I never would.

I would add a caveat to your statement. It might not be just through a lawsuit but the threat of a lawsuit. A lawsuit will cost big money, but having a lawyer right the company a letter shouldn’t cost more than a couple of hundred bucks. Most people give up immediately and that’s what they are counting on. Worst case scenario is what? Tack a couple of hundred on to the thousands you will already owe? Basically a drop in a bucket.

Also, as scummy as the profession and some lawyers are, there are plenty who just want to do right by people. I have only paid a lawyer once, but I have talked to around half a dozen in my life time with questions about the law and some of the issues I was having. One or two probably spent at least a couple of hours on me over the course of a month or two when you factor in the initial 20-30 minute conversation, reading the documents I put together, and answering some of my follow up emails, and despite my insisting they charge me, they were insistent on not doing so.

(I suspect because in many of the situations what was happening to me was morally wrong, but legally more or less fine just barely grazing the gray area, and taking payment for their time could be construed as them acting as legal counsel as opposed to just answering some questions)

In what way?

Good to know

I have always thought if I became super rich I would pay for a bunch of people’s lawyers to force the government’s hand. Essentially the only way our legal system (in the US) “works” is via plea deals. If every case went to trial things would grind to a halt. However, even if a person is innocent they may not have the money to fight the charges or risk the consequences of fighting and losing anyway.

So basically fund defenses until the prosecutors and cops stop being lazy and actually do a justice instead of just a prosecution.

It’s an LSposed/XPosed based app called YouTube Adaway. It also enables background playback.

Any tips for someone who would want to emigrate, but doesn’t have any connections? I am an engineer and I have looked at immigration requirements for places like Canada and New Zeeland in the past and it seems like the only real shot I might have is if I work for an international company that has facilities in one of those countries.

That has been my specific issue with paying for any Google product always. I understand when I am using a product for free that I am not necessarily the customer and that money has to be made off of me or the users more generally somehow. That’s “fine” (ish, not really, but that has more to do with issues of security than anything).

However when I pay for a product or service, I want to now be the customer and I want to be in control of my data and have the company cater to me. If, when paying for a Google service, there was some legally relevant things in place that insured I was no longer being tracked and used to generate revenue via third parties I would gladly pay. Probably more than they are charging now, but instead they want to have it both ways which is just not OK with me.

What I find the most hilarious is that on a rooted Android phone there is an app that hooks into the YouTube app and eliminates adds in it. Even when my PC with Firefox and UBlock get temporarily blocked in the battle between Google and ad blockers my phone using the standard app still doesn’t have adds.

I don’t know something about it is very satisfying to me.

Are we talking about me specifically or people in general? I’ll assume general as I was just relaying a personal anecdote to show that my point/thesis wasn’t just a hypothetical as I do know how to get around it in my specific case.

In the general context, that’s not a great solution for most people as it is beyond their skill or time set. For the most disadvantaged people just having the ability to have a phone at all and a place to reliably charge it is an issue. There is also the issue is practicality. When I take public transit where I live, the app pulls up a QR code on my phone they gets scanned. I’m not even sure I could fit my laptop screen into the space to scan the QR code if I was emulating Android.

So I guess my thesis here is that systems should be made more accessible and inclusive rather than requiring those in the minority to either have to put more effort in using a workaround to reach functional parity or end up left out all together.

Unfortunately yes, and I would go even a step further and say a smart phone is a basic necessity. More and more companies and even government services are operating on the assumption that everyone has a smart phone. I have encountered various services where if a person didn’t have a smart phone they literally can’t use it. I even have personal experience with it.

My landlord uses a company for payments that can only be interacted with via an app on a smart phone. There is no web portal option. There is no option to mail a check. There is no option to setup a direct bank transfer. I was essentially strong armed into it since the place itself was (and still is) better than almost anything else I saw and is a reasonable price.

He’s not wrong…

I’m not convinced the employers know that. At least not the ones that ultimately control hiring. Granted, I’m not CS, I’m in the Mechanical Engineering world and it seems like a similar issue has existed (for possibly different reasons) for the last decade or so. That goes double for the skilled trades that our work heavily relies on. Companies don’t want to spend the time and money developing new talent, they just want to find already developed talent.

They may throw some money and lip service at some school or community programs, but they don’t really take on the responsibility of insuring a sustainable ecosystem of people in the industry. Like a lot of issues it’s the Prisoner’s Dilemma. I’m not sure how it is in other parts of the world, butat least in the US, with some rare exceptions, I don’t see people and companies changing from being selfish to trying to maximize the benefit for all without changes in policy, and the likelihood of that is well…

They even stopped selling their ICE Transit Connect in the US while almost simultaneously introducing an EV in Europe with no plans to sell it in the US.