Qualcomm on their latest phones makes really high quality modems that have much better connectivity.

If you buy one of the cheaper mediatek phones, some of which get up to about $500, they have good performance on the soc but the modems suck and they don't maintain connectivity.

The Google modems stunk too, I've heard some people say the very latest ones are better but I haven't tried them. If I'm going to drop $700 on a modem I can just pick up a OnePlus 15r with a Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 5 and an x85 modem to go with it.

That's for Android. For iOS The actual Apple modems when they use their own really suck. Although I think they still use Qualcomm modems in a lot of their hardware. You do have to pay attention though.

For years I'd connectivity problems and my kid on iOS didn't and it was the modem more than anything else. Finally switching to a Qualcomm based chipset and modem solved to those connectivity problems. The downside is you really want at least the x75 modem just because one of the other problems is 5G was rolled out in completely and a lot of early 5G phone modems really suck and are missing tons of important features.

How "bout those removable phone batteries?

Yeah, taxes are generally unavoidable for most people.

Hosting a blog on Substack is just a market choice among so many.

Apple and Google stores are a bit more grey; I'd allow it.

It's like those guys who find a Civil War chest with a hundred gold coins in it and call the FBI.

Clout is far too expensive.

This is the one where they investigate Office on Antitrust grounds and wind up settling for not bundling Edge.

I've seen it in reruns....

Yeah this. I use teams all the time and I'm not happy about it but it mostly works and it has a lot of features. Meanwhile zoom is highly likely to not work. Last time I tried to use it, both video and audio tested good, then NEITHER worked and I could only chat during the "call".

People who lived in a big county could have to pay fees to call people in the same county! They were called "local toll" calls. Telcos have always been parasites.

Ok, I'm imagining a class of high school students breaking the guardrails, getting it to report that they're doing brilliantly and deserve A+ while they watch tiktok... at the very least they'll make it say racist things and publish that on tiktok for the lulz. It'll also find a way to organically mention how much its been hearing that everyone else really likes new Pepsi Cherry Zero on a daily basis too.

Is that not the outcome you were imagining too?

Oooh... yes please, i can't wait for virtual Feyman prefacing his lectures with the lords prayer, explaining how God created the universe and all the physics in it; and also: you look thirsty, there is a Pepsi machine with new Pepsi Cherry Zero in the hallway; have you tried it?

Einstein meanwhile extols the virtue of Zionist colonization in Palestine...

Wait? Do you actually think that it would go differently? If we create puppets of brilliant revered thinkers they'll inevitably say whatever slop some combination of political appointees and advertising companies want them to say. Why on earth would anyone think they would be used for anything else?

Its frequently used on general elective courses because they're big enough (often hundreds of students) that the statistical variation between student cohorts fits normal curves pretty well.

That doesn't even make sense. The defining characteristic of a credential mill is that it passes everyone who goes. A curve grading system assigns Fs and Ds and C- to the bottom of every class.

Meanwhile, at Harvard, right now, everyone who goes and shows up to class passes, and half of them get As. How is that not "essentially a credential mill" right now?

Even more damning, a generation ago 25% of them got As. What's your theory on that? Harvard students this generation are just a lot smarter and more studious and they're mastering the material at a much higher rate? Or that Harvard is handing As out like participation trophies now?

I know where my money is at. And Harvard's own teaching staff agrees.

By what they did to help my family and my country.

I'm not even going to waste my time listing the differences between Biden and trump. If you are so full of TDS that you cannot see the Trump is bad news you are a lost cause. Just somebody who traded their future and their children's future for an identity called maga.

My experience with maga is there so old they're going to die before the worst of it and they never really liked their kids anyway. So it was totally worth it. For them at least.

Write a paragraph about periwinkles.

I said some kind words about Anthropic when they refused to do targeting foreign and domestic.

In retrospect that was myopic praise.

Tesla shuts off before crashes
https://electrek.co/2025/03/17...

Tesla can't detect things even the most primitive AEB systems will stop for
https://www.theswansonlawgroup...

Idiots who Elon wouldn't piss on if they were on fire suck billionaire dick
https://slashdot.org/comments....

Months and months ago. What few groups of those statistics have accurate numbers are heavily heavily cooked using averages and baskets of goods and all manner of tricks to make the numbers look good enough that we can get to the midterms and keep the Republicans in charge.

People are just fucked but they keep asking themselves, maybe it's just me and I'm the problem? And because the news media is billionaire owned that narrative is reinforced.

I get it you are living in a trump branded form of reality. You won't admit it of course because well, for the same reason people don't like being called a redneck we have associated those words and communities with idiots.

If you lie down with dogs you get up with fleas. At least until you do something about all the fleas on your dogs.

In this case you lied down with a bunch of pedophile grifters. I don't think any amount of flea dip is going to fix that. You just have to ask yourself why you keep doing it.

The billionaires are pushing this and they have unlimited money. And they don't particularly care about profit anymore.

I know that sounds counterintuitive but they have so much money now, literally some of them are approaching trillions, that they are beyond profit..

What they want right now is automation and they don't care how they get it or what it costs.

People keep asking me, if they don't employ anyone who is going to buy their products?

Now if you read that sentence again you're going to realize there's a dependency there.

Elon Musk is dependent on you to buy his cars and his satellite internet and his rocket launches and whatever else he is selling.

This gives you, however small, a measure of control over Mr Musk. The same is true for all of his employees. They could theoretically withhold their labor from him collapsing his companies.

People like to say billionaires have all their worth and value on paper and that they are not technically that rich. This is a common apologetic for allowing them to command basically limitless money and power.

It implies a check and balance system where if the billionaire oppresses and hurts us we can withhold our labor and consumer purchases in order to exercise control over them.

If you don't think the Epstein class is upset about that check and balance and the dependencies above you have not been paying attention for the last 50 years.

We replaced monarchy with a semi hereditary merchant class. We are in the process of replacing that semi hereditary merchant class with a new class of monarchy. Techno feudalism. Everything old is New again.