I just tested LTE on my iPhone XS with 3/4 bars and got 156Mbit/s with a 25ms ping and 4.2ms jitter.

Seems pretty fast to me, but 5G is supposed to be even faster.

And you couldn't vote absentee why?

I have voted absentee for the last 14 years because I just find it more convenient than going to the local polling place.

I don't understand why more people don't do it.

When does the end user ever need to actually worry or care about a decoder license fee though?

Either your devices are going to support it already or they aren't. Someone had to pay the fee whether you use it or not. I've never encountered a device that didn't support AAC, so it's already a paid for cost.

I have run into plenty of devices that don't support Opus, and in particular my phone, which makes it a non-starter for me.

But if I did switch to Opus, none of my playback devices suddenly become cheaper simply because i'm not using their AAC deciding functionality. At least that's how I see it.

Also, at reasonable bitrates like 128K+ there isn't a meaningful quality difference between Opus and AAC. There is between them and MP3 at 128K.

No

My library is stored on my file server in FLAC.

Lossy formats are just for local storage on my portable devices or for streaming over a metered or slow network connection.

I switched to AAC at least a decade ago.

I dunno, I don't think i'd have a problem living underground.

AC just seems so inefficient. It takes so much energy to run which just seems to make the problem worse unless we have eliminated coal power and such.

Could we build cities and dwellings underground that stay cool against all the heat?

Wouldn't a better metric be "active cases"?

Total cases will always go up, but active cases would give you an idea of how bad it "currently" is and whether the pandemic is growing or shrinking and how quickly.

Yeah, my company is hiring for several positions at the moment as well.

How do you find them then?

I tried looking here: https://www.plugshare.com/ but it only finds 2 spots with 1 plug each in a city of 31,000 people (West Bend, WI). And they are only available during business hours.

And I live in an apartment so there is no way I can get a 110v or anything way out to the parking lot.

Do you have any proof of this?

My connection was rock solid for the past 10 years.

But these last few months I have seen so much unstable, speed fluctuations, service interruptions etc.

Maybe it's a coincidence and I only have 1 data point. But it's still my experience. Although my friends who I game with online many times a week have been seeing interruptions as well that they normally never had in the past years.

They have been lagging and dropping from our games pretty much every week and have to reconnect which is definitely not normally how it used to be.

What used to be a super rare performance issue seems to be every few days now.

Eh, the small specific technical subreddits seem fine to me.

For instance: https://www.reddit.com/r/zfs/

I only use reddit for technical subs such as this, and none of the ones I use seem to have any problems with racism nor are they a mess.

Well isn't keeping prices the same over time technically lowering the cost because of inflation?

My cell plan has been the same cost for the last several years.

That doesn't make sense to me to blame those.

Those services are 100% voluntary to use.

If they are making someone unhappy then they should not be using them.

I put the blame on the individual for continuing to engage in platforms and activities that make them unhappy.

I've never used twitter, facebook, etc and am perfectly happy. Seems like I am doing something right.

I don't have a developer account.

I have rooted the device and modified the core system files.

All location services including GPS, WiFi, and Cellular location get spoofed via my custom indirection layer.