Well, of course BMW has to charge $80/year to enable CarPlay, because of all the extra bandwidth it ... uh ... the additional load on ...

This reminds me of Caller ID. At home, I have phone service over fiber. One of the features of fiber phone service is that it provides caller ID. But my phone company sets a bit on its customer accounts to block caller ID. If I want them to go unset that bit so that my phones can display caller ID, I need to pay them $8/month for the privilege of them making this one-time change. It's infuriating.

Oh, not very much time at all. My fake identity is saved to my phone's notepad so I can use it any time I want, and each spammer call is usually over within five minutes. And I actually use this to help my work - when I'm stuck in a rut or facing an intractable problem and a scammer call comes in, if I don't choose to ignore it, then I have some fun with it and it gets my mind off work just long enough so that I can return to the problem fresh.

Whenever I get a scam phonecall and feel like having some fun, I engage with them. I created a fake profile: fake name, fake address, fake credit card (with the BIN code and the customer service number matching the service I tell them it's from), fake social security number, &c. All of it is completely valid-looking data; the only thing wrong is that when they call the credit card company pretending to be me (with the information I gave them), they won't get through. "I just used this card this morning to get cappuccino at Starbucks!" I tell them. "I've been having trouble with this card recently and I've been meaning to call card member services about it. Can you help me with it?"

The thing that always amuses me, though, is how quick they are to hang up and abandon the call the moment something doesn't look right. If the first words out of my mouth are anything other than an answer to "which credit card do you have the highest balance on?" Click. If I ask for their company name? Click. If I tell them I had my identity stolen recently and I want to make sure it's safe to give them my credit card number over the phone? Click. Or, they immediately set upon me with cuss words and bad language. Never a "there seems to be a problem, would you please double-check your information?" You'd think a reputable business would at least have that level of friendliness...

When Florida State Representative Kimberly Daniels (https://www.facebook.com/State-Representative-Kimberly-Daniels-189630017733619/) asked the congregation the church that she leads (where she's an "apostle") to vote for HB303, which gives students and teachers the freedom to hold religious gatherings during school hours, I politely reminded her that it would give as much freedom to Muslims and Pagans and Satanists as it would to Christians - something that I'm completely okay with, but that I figured she might not be. In response, she blocked me from her official state representative FB page and deleted my comments.

Looks like, with this ruling, I should be able to ask her to unblock me?

Thank you!

OP here. To clarify: I have expensive (well, $150, which is more than an impulse buy) headphones because I don't want to hear my cubicle neighbor talking to herself all day. I'm trying to get work done, I'm not worrying all that much about audio fidelity.

I don't want to get rid of perfectly good headphones just to buy the Bluetooth version, and I don't like that the other option is to get a third-party adapter that will let me plug in the headphones and charge at the same time. (I've had bad experiences with third-party Lightning adapters.)

AirPods have batteries in them and need to be charged every five hours. They won't even make it through a full day without a recharge. Plus, batteries deteriorate over time and eventually won't even last for five hours. And with AirPods, you actually have to be concerned with three batteries - one in each earpiece and one in the travel case.

I don't need remote control over my music because I have my iPhone on the desk next to me. And I don't want tiny separate expensive earpieces; I want big headphones so that people can instantly see that I am listening to music and not to them.

AirPods are a great solution for certain situations that aren't the one I have.

I bought a Redmi Note 4 for $179 to learn Android on because it was compatible with LineageOS. I've thought about making it my everyday phone, because I'd much rather subject a $179 phone to daily wear-and-tear than something three (or more) times as expensive.

The only thing that's stopped me is that I don't see an easy solution for syncing my contacts, music, and other data from macOS to an Android phone (especially as I don't use Google services). If there's an app that'll sync the data for me, please point me to it?

I'm an iOS developer and a longtime Apple fan, but I'm having trouble finding a reason to upgrade from my iPhone 6S (even though Apple's offering me $200 in trade-in value for it).

Honestly, the lack of a headphone jack is a big thing for me. I listen to music all day at the office with my iPhone and an expensive set of headphones. It's a simple use case. No reason why I should have to bother with dongles or batteries.

"For example, they may start integrating technologies for which they have exclusive, or at least 'special' access. Can you imagine if all of a sudden Google apps start performing better than anyone else's?"

Boo hoo hoo.

- Former Netscape engineer

If Apple sold a reasonably-specced computer (either a mini or a tower) that let me upgrade the memory, storage, and video card whenever I desired, I'd click 'Buy' on that immediately. Since they don't, they're forcing me to question whether I really need to continue using macOS.

Right now my desktop is a Hackintosh that I built in 2011. Over the years I added more memory, upgraded the HD to an SSD, and upgraded the video card a few times. I boot into Windows for games, and into macOS for most everything else.

But frequent rebooting back and forth is a pain. Recently I've been getting into VR (HTC Vive) and have been thinking about building a new computer with current parts ... and I've been putting thought into how much I really need macOS, given that so many of the apps and services I use are online and cross--platform. Do I want to continue dual-booting? Or do I want to run macOS in VirtualBox (which apparently has problems with sound, and FaceTime and iMessage don't work)? Or do I want a Mac mini, or to build a small Hackintosh with an ITX-based PC, so I can remote into it from Windows with VNC? Or do I want to wean myself off macOS entirely?

My realization is that I use macOS for lifestyle stuff. Using the Safari web browser is nice because it has access to the same bookmarks I have on my iPhone and iPad. Photos is a good library app for the photos I take with my iPhone. macOS is generally easier to get around in ... though it absolutely sucks for games. And so I will continue to need to run both operating systems for now.

And don't even get me started on Mac laptops.

Yeah, because freeing someone from a moral framework and letting that person exercise his power as best he sees fit has worked so well in the Star Wars universe.

Watched the video. I never noticed before that the shots of Boba Fett in Jabba's lair are mirror-imaged - he's suddenly left-handed and the rangefinder is on the left side of his helmet.

I've been a Mac fan for a long time, but I use the latest MacBook Pro for work and I don't like it - useless Touch Bar, poor keyboard, poor battery life, no USB-A or HDMI ports, high price (starts at $2400 with a dedicated graphics chip), &c.

I recently played with a Razer Blade 14 and I was impressed; $1900 from Amazon for better specs. (Windows 10 is tolerable enough and unobtrusive enough for my tastes.) Though, the Razer reviews are extremely hot or cold; some people love them, others have had endless problems with hardware failures and recalcitrant tech support. Looks like this is the price of high-end Windows laptops at the moment.

My next laptop might be a Razer Blade. Change my mind.

An email system that's impervious to spam.

Or, at least, that doesn't happily send a single spam message to millions of recipients.