The main reason I'm not using an iPhone is that Apple destroyed the ability to move files back and forth over usb with a Windows PC a few years ago and has flat out refused to fix it.

As you write, 8 is pretty much the same size. I only knew that 9 was larger because I had looked for a 4a replacement with similar size from 2024 and found three, all from Ulefone and considerably heavier (roughly 300 g).

Sorry for double-answering, but after considering the statement

for a bit longer, I can't help thinking if the actual background is that the build environment for Pixel 4a simply doesn't exist anymore, so they ended up building on a dev PC, possibly one that has been mothballed since Pixel 4a development stopped. Definitely not a good sign, but it could explain why.

Assuming that Google isn't just doing this for fun, it might be a good idea to look into your battery. This little post shows a simple way to determine if you (could?) have a faulty battery: https://www.reddit.com/r/Pixel...

According to the findings by Hector Martin, I have a faulty battery, even though it could easily hold a charge for a few days with my usage prior to the update. Now it's good for about a day.

Being a pedantic, the offer to fix it for free is only available in some countries. It is not available where I live. The $50 payout is close enough to pay someone to change the battery, but it requires you to use something called Payoneer to get the money. And I don't know if $50 is worth giving Payoneer a lot of personal info, not to mention that they appear to charge a lot of fees.

The new Pixel 9 is 8 mm wider, 3 mm wider and 50 g heavier than Pixel 4a. For me (and maybe GP?) that is a significant size increase, especially as the 4a was already a bit too large for my tastes.

My Pixel 4a had decent battery life for a 4 year old phone until the update. BUT I am also not a heavy user, so when the phone was new, I think it lasted some 4-5 days on a single charge, which also means that it probably has gone through a lot fewer charge cycles per month than your daughters did.

They are offering money: $50 paid over some third party service called Payoneer, and only that servide. I know, because I own a Pixel 4a and opted for the money. As far as I can see, the money is roughly equivalent with the price to pay someone to change the battery, so not a bad offering ... if it had not been for the requirement to use some financial service that I have never heard of.

It won't.

Disinformation (foreign or national) is just to damn useful and profitable. You make something up that causes powerful emotional reactions, and make a shit ton of money from the eyeballs. Actually listening to people of different political or emotional opinions, understanding their motivation and reflecting on their thoughts is hard, takes time and is nowhere near as engaging.

I suppose you could enact laws to change how social media can be gamed to highlight certain posts and regulate advertising, but those are tricky to get right. It would probably also be a good idea to break up the large media houses, e.g. the Murdoch press, and add heavy handed regulation of campaign contributions, but how likely is that?

The datamining entities could sell access to the data to the profitable entities, thereby making money and becoming profitable? This could feasibly also open the door for other dataminers with competing products and a different user base. Not sure if this will be better for us private citizens, though.

About a year and a half ago, windmill producer Vestas developed a method to break down the wings of a retired windmill and use it to cast new windmills.

The pills aren't just vitamins. They contain all sorts of other stuff to encapsulate the vitamins and make them look nice. Until recently many pills used titanium oxide to color pills white. Even though titanium oxide had been made illegal in foodstuffs due to suspicion that it hurt the nervous system, give inflammation, hurts DNA and it might be a cause for cancer, producers kept using it in pills and tooth paste.

You know what assuming does? Here is a quote from the article:

If the claim is correct, both Apple and Google failed to protect the phone users.

Denmark exports on the order of 150.000 tones of pork and 75.000 tones of beef each year, so someone is competing. Yes, it Denmark also imports 90.000 tones of beef, so it is a net importer of beef.

This may come as a shock to you, but the main agriculture lobby organization was actually part of the agreement, and made sure that it would continue be very profitable to farm in Denmark. If you look at the actual agreement, all money paid by agriculture is routed back into agriculture, so net cost is ... zero. This is one of the reasons that the agreement is a bit controversial, because our politicians like to say that the polluter should pay the cleanup bill. And agriculture gets to continue polluting without paying the bill for the cleanup.