I have a .com for like $19.99 but pay to have my info redacted from whois stuff, an email address, all cones to like $42.99

Porkbun charges $11.08 for a .com with whois privacy. $30/year for email hosting might be worth it if you’re getting very good service, but I think you’re overpaying.

$11.08 for a .com. Source: just renewed.

A different Wallet/Pay implementation is a possible outcome, but I’m thinking of a bigger picture where Android phones are more like PCs: no non-unlockable bootloaders, no remote attestation anywhere, barriers to root detection at the OS level, third-party ROMs encouraged.

The early days of Android were like that. I wonder if things had developed along that path, would we have a paradise for power users? A security nightmare for mainstream users? Both? Neither?

I wonder what an alternate history where Google chose not to become evil would look like.

What if they had looked at Microsoft’s Palladium proposal and thought, as pretty much everyone outside institutional IT departments did that locked devices with remote attestation was a nightmare scenario best forgotten, refused to build it, and made an effort to prevent anyone else from doing so on top of Android? Safetynet didn’t appear until 5-6 years after Android launched to the public. What if it never did? Android already had enough momentum by that point I don’t think the financial sector could refuse to be on it no matter what risk management said.

I had that in mind, but it’s been a while since I read it and skimming it today, it seems a little dated. The tone may also be a bit harsh to offer to OP in this thread.

Without seeing the entirety of the interaction, it’s hard to be sure.

Some people are assholes, and because nobody wants to interact with assholes, they usually end up congregating on whatever forum doesn’t ban them. Moderation is hard and ban evasion is often easy, so there end up being a lot of places like that.

The other side is that people in general ask a lot of bad questions, and a forum flooded with bad questions becomes useless because people who could answer good questions either get tired of it and leave, or spend so much time on the bad questions they don’t have time for the good ones. People get frustrated when they think that’s happening to a forum they enjoy, and programmers are famously better at communicating with machines than with people.

Here’s are some tips to ask good questions about programming:

• First, try to find the answer without asking other people. This is especially important when it comes to programming because the whole job is problem-solving. That means figuring out how a search result, LLM output, or published documentation relates to whatever it is you’re trying to do.
• Once you’re sure you need help from other people, clearly articulate what it is you want to happen, what you tried in order to achieve it, and what actually happened. Use more detail than you think you need here, especially regarding your expectations. Sometimes the mere act of composing a question this way leads you to the answer, which is effective enough there’s a popular technique of explaining problems to inanimate objects.
• Include the troubleshooting steps you tried from the first step above in your question. By typing it out, you may discover an error or omission in your process, but you also communicate to other people that you’re not just being lazy, wasting their time, and reducing the signal to noise ratio of their forum.

Lithium disposables beat alkaline in longevity, but lose in cost and are only 1.2V.

They’re about 1.6V open-circuit, and maintain 1.5V under light load for a large portion of their discharge cycle. They maintain 1.5V much longer than alkaline.

They’re terribly expensive for regular use compared to pretty much any other option though.

I’d much rather see modern rechargeable batteries (Li-ion, maybe Na-ion in the future) in standardized, field-replaceable form factors.

This is already common in flashlights. In my pocket today is a flashlight running on an AA-size 14500 Li-ion. There’s a magnetic pad to recharge the battery with a proprietary cable, but I can also unscrew the tailcap and replace it with a spare, as most people expect from a flashlight. I can use AA in a pinch with reduced performance, though I’ll note supporting both voltage ranges takes extra work on the manufacturer’s part.

Being complex and energy-intensive doesn’t preclude batteries being standardized or field-replaceable. The issue with smartphones is that they have a highly optimized form factor.

I don’t find that commercial social services are free of bumps and difficulties; they’re just different bumps and difficulties. They variously want me to:

• Log in to view this content
• Complete a captcha to view this content
• LOOK AT THIS AD
• Look at this other thing instead of reading through the rest of the comments on the post I opened
• Look at this other content instead of the people I chose to follow
• Consent to 237 different forms of tracking
• Pay for a premium account
• Don’t post anything too spicy for the advertisers
• Install an app

And people think picking a server to sign up or using an unpolished UI is a hassle? It’s a small price to pay to avoid that load of crap.

I use Lemmy and Mastodon because independent services that interoperate are how I want the internet to work. I still use some of the big commercial services because people or communities I value are there. It’s not all-or-nothing.