Tarquinn2049

We like to use the Mandarin X pronunciation, for a popular example: Xiaomi is pronounced “Show Me”.

When you aren’t choosing based on merit but on frivolous selfish whims, it’s hard to all agree on the same person.

They are probably just fishing for our public opinion to see which ones feels more like they are “owning” us to us.

If it wasn’t the literal scariest thing to happen in the real world in decades, Trumps presidency would feel spot on as a cartoonish caricature of an evil movie villain somehow tricking their way into presidency. Like if it was in a movie, you’d think “this isn’t very believable, they could have at least put in some effort to make it convincing that this could actually happen instead of this cartoony slapstick bullshit in what was otherwise a serious movie”…

Every step of the way just seems like he is doing his best to get out of having to follow through with all the stuff he said by doing stuff so dumb that his followers will finally be disillusioned, but it keeps backfiring and making them like him even more. And it just keeps escalating…

But I know in reality he actually wants it, and is just pushing as quickly as he feels he can to pivot his audience towards his goals without losing them.

Hmm, maybe I have to change some wording. That is not at all the tone I was going for, I’m not angry or anything like that. And certainly not trying to direct anything at one specific person, or defend any terrible companies doing the things I specifically am saying shouldn’t feel comfortable. I’ll see what I can do to the post to clear things up some.

But I do agree that if you wouldn’t make a friend do something, you shouldn’t feel ok making a stranger do it, do it yourself or don’t do it.

The post is not some line for line rebuttal, it’s more of a loose essay based off a hypothetical posit.

They call it that, because when they do it, that is why they are doing it. They just assume the other side is doing it even more, not realizing how exausting it would be to keep it up if it was fake. If it was possible to fake it as much as they think dems are, wouldn’t at least one conservative be doing it? They love “points”, if they could earn as many “points” as they see democrats earning, they would be all over that. But because it is an act to them, they can’t keep up.

How convenient should it be?

How much would you pay a friend you see every couple months that is friends with your other friends to go out and buy fast food for you while you sit at home playing videogames instead?

What amount of money would make that feel ok to you?

Assuming it would take more than 2 dollars to feel ok with that, why is it ok to spend less on a stranger doing it? And how much less is ok?

The “that’s somebody’s job, they signed up for that” mentality that prevents so many people from doing what little they can to make that job suck just a little bit less at often times nearly no cost to themselves, like not clearing their trays/garbage at a fast food place, or leaving all their stuff at their seats in a movie theater… it’s such a pervasive mentality, “I don’t -have- to do it, so why should I?”.

Do you want to live in a world where people are nice to you, well too bad, cuz they don’t -have- to be. As long as that mentality persists, we can’t have that world. Doing things you don’t -have- to do to make someone else’s life just a little easier, is the foundation of basic kindness.

It has the outer screen too for when you want a one-hander. Though you’d have to go with either fold 5 or one of the other brands to get a better outer screen, fold 4 and lower were not particularly useful there. Too skinny. I pretty much only ever use the outer screen for actual phone calls. You can transition from tablet to phone while already having answered the call with no issues.

And as with all larger phones, you always have the option of going into “one-handed mode” using whatever shortcut you assigned(either diagonal swipe or triple tap home are the defaults). It’s less necessary when you just have the option of a smaller one handed screen on the outside, but still there if you’d rather that option.

You might have to settle for a “two screens that meet in the middle when unfolded” style folding phone. They have different problems, but screen hardness is something they can do, since no actual folding happens to the screen.

They do have good battery life, I have to be playing a GPS game at 120 hz outdoors and thus full brightness and outside ideal operating temperature for the battery to get my fold 4 under 4 hours of playtime. Using it normally, like spending half my day on it playing regular games at reasonable settings, and the other half browsing news on lemmy and other “social media news aggregates”, I am still around 30% or so by bed time. On a day where I didn’t game much, I could just not charge it do that again the next day.

Price is definitely where they could do with some work. But I got mine open box, so half price. Was about equal to contemporary standard smart phones then. At least when they are not open box.

Android runs almost all USB keyboards and mice or touch pads, you can totally have that as an option for your phone. And it’s like 50 bucks to get a powered hub that can also charge the phone OTG while connecting all those USB devices at once.

It is the same size as as the common smaller form factor tablets have been for a decade. And note pads also have been coming in this size for over a century.

It is smaller than the average phone when folded into phone mode. Especially if we are not only talking smart phones, but even if.

They are indeed relatively more expensive right now, I got mine “open box” for half off, and it was about the price of a contemporary regular smart phone then. But they won’t always be this much more expensive.

You are not always near your 75 inch TV. It’s nice to have an acceptable option when out and about. Fold 4 also has spacial audio, you get your head about a foot away from those speakers in horizontal tablet mode, and boom, the virtual surround sound is surprising. (Anyone who has one and hasn’t tried it yet, take this moment to try it out then come back) (it’s pretty crazy, right?)

It is what we claim it is. Just my 2 cents. I hope eventually the price gets to a place where more people can choose it without having to worry about whether they can justify it.

Wait, the screen cracks? Or the screen protector? The protectors are known to crack in about a year, but those are cheap and easy to replace, or if you aren’t worried about scratches, just peel it off when it cracks and don’t replace it, screens feel much nicer without the protectors.

For me it was mainly gaming. Can run two full apps, both in real time, not that thing where it suspends one with a static image when you touch the other one. They both actually run at the same time, full frame rate. The fold 4 in tablet mode “wide” screen is pretty close to 4:3, so it’s nice for emulating console and computer games from that era, which I do alot. And the tablet in tall mode is a great size/shape for reading, can even leave it slightly folded down the middle for the real book feel, lol. And the battery life they manage to pack into both halves of the phone is pretty great. But most importantly, putting it back in my pocket when not using it. Carrying even a small tablet around all day would not be awesome otherwise.

I should mention I am 6’4" with relatively large hands, so fold 4 still feels pretty small to me, before I got the handle case I had to make due with palming it when I wanted to hold it one-handed. It’s decently comfortable for me to palm it in vertical tablet mode, but horizontal tablet mode while still possible, wasn’t comfortable. But with the handle case, it would be comfortable for almost anyone to hold it with one hand.

One of the things I was most worried about was that the screen crease would be visible, or that it would get annoying to play games where you gotta move your finger accross it. Luckily, the crease isn’t visible when you are straight head-on with the screen, only when you try to show other people stuff on your phone, lol. And even after more than a year of not treating the phone as anything special, the crease isn’t annoying to my fingers either. The original built-in screen protector did peel off from folding the phone alot when it was cold out(Canada), but I normally don’t use screen protectors, so I just left it unprotected. Not really sure what you have to do to your phone to benefit from screen protectors, I don’t baby mine, but I’ve never had a scratch. And screen protectors just feel so much worse to use than the naked screen does.

Might be a good time to mention I am autistic and hypersensory, so there is nothing mild about mildly annoying things to me, lol.

Have you customized your touch keyboard at all? You can resize and move it to fit your hands/thumbs. You may even prefer a transparent floating keyboard for some situations, like entering text in a wide-screen game on the outside screen, so the game isn’t cut off to like 10% of the height of the screen. And that’s just the built-in keyboard. If you go third party there are tons of options.

And if you find yourself accidentally adding letters here and there, you can add a 0.01 second hold time before a key is pressed. Low enough that you’ll never have to think about it when actually typing something but high enough to ignore most accidental presses. Also if extra inputs happen without you noticing them and you have to go back and fix them when you do spot them, crank your haptic feedback up higher. Won’t miss an accidental press then.

One of the main upsides of Android phones is that you have the ability to spend 30 minutes in the options menu of one tiny element of your phone experience. The default settings work for alot of people, but if they don’t work for you, change them.

I’m on a Fold 4, never going back. There are certainly a few tweaks here and there that could improve it, but a tablet that you put back in your pocket when you are done is the perfect phone so far. I don’t know what they would have to do to make something better than this, but I’m sure something will come along. Until then, not going back to a phone that can only be bar shaped.

Hmm, the crazy part is that I’m in Alberta and people are masking here, not alot, but more than you would expect given our history. And it’s totally still possible to get covid kits here. I am in a smaller town, but it looks similar when I have traveled to Edmonton recently.

My sister has it too, her misophonia makes her dramatically more sensitive to any higher pitched sounds. And her borderline personality disorder combines to translate that annoyance directly into anger. She can still hang out with kids if they are being calm and quiet. But it’s risky. The kids know that when she gets mad it wasn’t their fault. They seem to handle it well, but we’ll only really know in time. They currently still enjoy hanging out with her, so that’s a positive sign.

If you have the same thing, as far as I know there is no way to stop it. But cbt(cognitive behavioral therapy) and things like that can help you be more present and mindful while experiencing those effects. Generally enough to prevent unwanted explosions and extricate yourself to a more comfortable environment to calm down over time.

Ooh, it can be disabled? Gotta get on that.

If you really want to throw them off, call it the proper name rather than the nick name. Association football. Most adult non-american english speakers are at least tangentially aware that the name soccer derived from that. But it certainly won’t make you sound American.

It’s not “the only way to avoid gummy mashed potatoes”, it’s just an easy way to guarantee it if you keep having the problem. If you don’t, then do it your way. It’s harder, but you already have it nailed, so don’t worry about it. Cooking faster can be a good thing if you want it, and are able to deal with them exactly when they need to be dealt with. Some people would very much prefer an easy guarantee even if it takes longer.

I mean, the Oculus exclusives are literally fully funded. They are games that otherwise wouldn’t even exist. There are no games that were going to be made for other platforms but were steered to oculus only or anything like that. So how anti-competitive can that really be? Should mario games be on other consoles? Is Nintendo anti-competitive for making first party games?

Facebook/meta is terrible, but they are terrible for real reasons, not fake reasons.

After 15 years of having to buy a new ink printer almost every year. We just bought an entry level laser printer. Same printer for 20 years now. Never even changed the toner yet. Was a huge upfront cost of 500$ compared to the 100$ ink jets, but man is it ever nice to just completely forget your printer exists until you hit the print button, grab your document, then go back to completely forgetting you own a printer. Never have to put any thought or effort into it. Just sits there always being ready and fully functional.

When we do have to change the toner, the exact same standardized cartridges are still the ones they use on the new ones, so they will be around when we need them.

In Canada we still have to pass a practical test that covers that stuff with pretty strict requirements for passing. Just how you gain the knowledge and ability to pass that test is up to you. It’s pretty normal to take a driver’s Ed class if your friends or family don’t have time to trach you themselves. And the drivers Ed class is what you described as what is mandatory in the Netherlands. We just don’t put people through it automatically if they have already learned all that somewhere else.

Having said that, there are some small towns that are known as places to go if you want an easier driving test, as they just don’t have enough things around to properly represent everything you should know while driving. But if it turns out you do actually suck at driving, you’ll lose your tiny amount of demerits on your beginners license pretty fast and then you are legally required to pass a driver’s Ed and defensive driving class before being able to reclaim your license. It’s not perfect, and I do think the one major thing we are missing is periodic re-testing. In Canada people are a little less resistant to “greater good” social policies, but there is still resistance. It’s tough to pass stuff that lowers or is perceived to lower freedoms, but they do still occasionally pass.

And as I’m sure is the problem everywhere, people want all kinds of services, they just don’t want the government to have the money to pay for those services. And also they only want the services they personally currently benefit from, everything else can be cut until they personally need it, then it was a tragedy that no one stood up for it.