Kristell

Oh that’s gross as shit. Seems they have a general BYOD plan, but I guess that only applies if they have that model of phone.

Didn’t even realize that could be an issue, given I’ve used a PinePhone of all things on my carrier and it worked as fine as one could expect mobile Linux to work

Yeah, I’ve tried finding alternatives, because having a second phone number was helpful, but… Nothin’. It’s still the fake phone number I give out to companies to stop them spamming my phone though

I’ve mostly used new budget phones, personally. My current phone is the most expensive one I’ve owned, and it was $400 xD I probably should do used more, but phones do usually last me a while, and I normally use a wallet case so they’re fairly well protected against drops

I haven’t heard of a carrier that doesn’t, at least personally. Then again, I’ve mostly used smaller carriers. Republic Wireless, FreedomPop, Mint, etc. I did use TMo for a while on a prepaid plan up until I got tired of the texting not working half the time

Huh, I’d never actually noticed they were higher price. Most of the time I’m buying the phone from the manufacturer’s website, and I at least didn’t see carrier locked phones on Motorola’s website when I got my last phone. Does make sense, though, given carriers will hope to subsidize some of the cost of the phone through the plan itself

Kinda depends. If you buy the phone outright it’s usually pretty similar in price, but most people finance, and then it is cheaper to buy separately because interest hits like a truck :D

I know a lot of people who can’t necessarily afford $200 minimum to drop on a phone, though, and that’s for one that really starts to struggle after 2 years to do anything other than the most basic call/text functionality

As a reminder to everyone:

If you can afford it, you can 100% just… Buy a phone online and use it with your carrier. Make sure it’s carrier unlocked, but yeah. All but one of my phones (bought in an emergency) was bought this way, and I’ve been through… 5 or 6? carriers and never had an issue

I’m not sure if bluetooth hacking is enough of a concern to be a problem? I’ve never heard of any major cases of it, and of all things, I doubt a music player would be a high enough value target for them to bother with? Could do something meant to spread to other devices, sure, but… I doubt the risk is high enough to be a primary concern.

Semi-related, but I did learn something: The modern name for MP3 players is DAP (Digital Audio Player), which can help with searching for them.

It’s opt-out. The default experience of DDG is with AI. They have a subdomain without AI, and you can disable it on the main domain.

Opt-in would be if it were disabled by default on the main domain, and they had a subdomain for AI.

goes to focus

PAID: Lootbox Losers™️ is an immersive online experience-

Not sure where you are in the world, but 4tb drives are $80? Which like. $80 is a lot when you ain’t got it, but in computer terms it’s probably the cheapest part in the box

RAM’s expensive, storage has gotten pretty cheap, at least for HDDs.

Given your sunny disposition, I’ll politely decline.

Most countries. The bigger concern is typically whether they can compell them to keep logs, which not all can. Sweden (I believe) is one where they can compell a company to share logs, but not keep logs

For comparability with each other, this table from Hagezi’s block list on github is a good reference

Honestly the difference mostly comes down to the software you use, from what I can tell. Generally if you use an extension it will be more comprehensive in the blocking, since some sites (like YouTube) serve ads from their own domains.

Also, the Adblock format is what’s used by a lot of the software that blocks ads at a DNS level, at least that consumers will use. Per the table it supports Pi-hole, AdGuard, AdGuard Home, eBlocker, uBlock Origin, Brave (only in aggressive mode), AdNauseam, and Little Snitch Mini, which is pretty comprehensive.

Aside that there’s hosts if you want to do it on a Linux desktop. I don’t recommend that, as you need to manually update the list every so often, though I’m sure it could be automated if you really want to.

Personally I just shoved one of Hagezi’s into AdGuard Home and called it a day. I check it about once a week to see what domains are getting pinged most, and block any suspicious ones.

Edit: No idea why the table condensed that much in the picture, removing it since it’s not really useful if you can’t see the whole table

I mean, SL took off enough that it’s still here. A lot of F2P MMOs from around then aren’t really around anymore at all, I can only think of 2 others.

It may not be one of the big MMOs, but an estimated 600k MAU isn’t anything to sneeze at either.