I would hope that by this point, with all the subway systems worldwide, that there would be some type of standard, so that manufacturers and suppliers are interchangeable. Or if not, you mandate that part of the contract is to give you the specs to be able to contract someone else to produce an alternative (with maybe a 10 year exclusive agreement to purchase from the original contract winner). There are ways to solve this.

Plus, the manufacturer would likely be using chips made using off the shelf components that they just assemble. Ordering replacement boards, assuming that you have firmware and other necessary bits, should be relatively easy to contract out.

Early on, Chrome was much better. Firefox had gotten pretty bloated and slow. I remember how refreshing it was to have a lightweight browser that was fast, and was excited when the Linux build came out.

In my case, I also live on a higher traffic street that has a decent amount of street noise (stop sign is in front of the house). Any time a louder truck or something drives past, chances are I can't hear the dialog unless it's turned up very loud. Even just normal cars accelerating from the stop sign cause problems at times. I have a surround sound setup, and I have the center channel at least 2x the volume as the other channels, to try to make dialog louder, but it's sometimes not enough. In places I've lived, if the windows are open you can't hear the dialog due to the street noise (but those would good sound isolating windows).

In many cases I just resort to using noise cancelling bluetooth headphones. Really annoying, because sometimes bluetooth will cut out briefly and then get desynced, but at least I can hear the dialog at a normal volume.

Unfortunately it doesn't seem to apply to international flights (which I take the most). International mostly uses Panasonic, which wasn't a partner for T-Mobile's free wifi either. It's $25 or $30 for wifi, and very spotty and slow. That being said, I have been on a couple AA international flights recently that were upgraded to Viasat, and there they were charging I think $10 or 800 miles.

Meta absolutely does analysis on decrypted messages. There have been many times when I'll make a joke or say something to a friend via Whataspp, and then within 10-15 minutes, I'm getting ads on Instagram for that very thing. It's even become a joke amongst my friends, since it happens so often.

I don't understand why the providers are in such a rush to shut it down. WIth 3G I understand, because it has a fixed 5 Mhz carrier size and they want to refarm this to LTE or NR where it can actually be used. It's a waste of spectrum when so few people use it. But 2G can fit in the LTE internal guard bands (T-Mobile US does this). So it takes away no spectrum from LTE or NR. Tower equipment still supports it, and to my knowledge it doesn't diminish or reduce performance or capabilities for 4G/5G. The only downside I guess is that they need to keep the 2G core online. So why the rush to shut it down?

My guess is that current GPS jamming doesn't just sprew garbage over the frequency, but rather is more strategic and results in a location being calculated, but it's the wrong location. In introduces error, so you might be say 5-10 or more miles off from where you think you are. Perhaps this is done by messing with the time that's broadcast, and could be corrected by having a referenced local time.

Many NTP servers use GPS for time. So if you get a position lock with GPS, and the time it calculates is different from the time of your local atomic clock, you know that it's being spoofed or jammed, and perhaps can use the local atomic clock time to undo the error introduced by the jamming.

Yes, this was a weird thing to me in Spain. People were shocked that I didn't carry an ID, because it's required there and I didn't know. I never considered it unless I was going to a place that checked ID (no bar or club checks ID in my experience), or was driving. Otherwise I didn't see a reason to carry it.

It just means that your auto renewal is working. The emails have helped me a couple times years ago, when for whatever reason the certificate wasn't updating. More often though I'd get false positives when I'd add a subdomain to a certificate. This replaces the certificate with a new one, and you get the automated emails for the old certificate when it's ready to expire.

Exactly. And if they aren't ready to go full PON for an area, things like RFoG work as a temporary solution until you have all the coax replaced.

Since you would be pretty knowledgeable on the topic, could this be used to still allow rooting, while offering a secure environment for the apps that really need it? And finally end the cat and mouse game with root by making both sides happy? I ask this, because while I certainly understand concerns about malicious access to banking or payment apps, there are still some uses for root where there isn't an alternative. For example, the app Network Signal Guru needs root to access the modem diagnostics interface. This app is used by a lot of cell network enthusiasts and professionals alike, but there's a constant fight with PlayProtect as a result which is really annoying. Especially as a lot of apps start checking for PlayProtect integrity needlessly (McDonalds for example, and the app to book a taxi in Barcelona).

Another use is app backups. There's no ability to manually trigger or create a full device backup and restore it. Even though it has improved a lot in recent years, I still often get incomplete app backups and transfers to a new device, and have to resort to using a third party root app to migrate the apps that didn't restore properly. Off the top of my head, I paid for the Speedtest app years ago. At some point the purchase verification method changed, and now it won't verify against my account on a new device and throws an error. The only way to restore the purchase is to use something like Swift Backup to restore the data to the new device, since apparently the purchase verification is stored locally.

So it would be great if Google could find a middle ground, and still offer a way to to have a secure environment for the apps that really actually need it, without completely killing the ability to have root.

They've moved on from pico cells in tunnels in most places. The current tech is "leaky feeder cables", that basically act like one long antenna along the length of the tunnel.

That's why you don't buy your phones from the carrier. Buy them from the manufacturer. If you need financing, they have financing. You'll get an unlocked phone that will work on any carrier. Just pop your SIM in (or setup the eSIM) and it'll work. No activation fee.

They do not work like antibiotics, and you need to take them continually for them to work. This is because HIV integrates into the genome, so once you're infected it's too late. HIV's polymerase is very error prone, so these drugs are fake C's that can't be attach to anything after they're used. The result is that the HIV is inactivated before it can complete the infection. HIV cannot develop a resistance to this if taken consistently and regularly. The issue is if people stop taking it, get infected, and then resume taking it. That can lead to resistance.

Truvada used to be expensive, but was required to be covered as preventative care. Then the patent expired a few years ago, and it became very cheap (and also available in more countries). However, Truvada doesn't have high bioavailability, which means you need to take large pills and it can put stress on your kidneys filtering it out.

The same company came out with a new one, Descovy, that is basically a more bioavailable version. Tiny pills, less kidney stress, but of course still covered by the patent so expensive. I haven't seen it outside of the US for that reason, and in the US some insurers won't cover it unless you get a priori authorization for why Truvada won't work for you (kidney issues would be one such reason). Other US insurers cover it fully (or enough that the manufacturer's copay card covers the balance).

The current injectable version is every 2 or 3 months, and is designed for people who have compliance issues taking a pill daily. Or are in unstable housing situations, etc. You really don't want people to get infected and then take PrEP drugs, because it can cause resistance. HIV treatment includes additional drugs, not just these.

On Android, at least at one time (not sure anymore), MX Player supported things that VLC didn't. I don't remember whether it was hardware decode of some formats, or if it was just AC3 audio. But basically you can/could download patent encumbered codecs from the forums and such, and the player could use them.