I can appreciate the whole gimmick, but it sounds like you're buying something modern and intentionally crippling it.

If we had a resurgence of early 2000s phones, like the Motorola Razr, borrowing only from todays tech like a modern USB-C charge port, a better camera, hopefully multi-day battery life and a modern cellular connectivity, I'd buy one. No android, no iOS, no apps, just a solid looking, feeling and functioning phone.

the hardest pill to swallow is, even if the phone I'm describing did exist, there probably isn't a place for it in this world. I probably only have 3 contacts that actually call my phone number any more, and two of them are parents.

There is probably a demographic of people like me, old enough to resent the direction of some tech, and still young enough to talk to their parents on the phone...

Hopefully it becomes a thing I never, ever have to deal with.
I happily have siri disabled on all my apple disabled to the extent that it can be.

eventually... theme park?

It's probably the comments with em dashes

Maybe you're right, I don't know. But one of the most frustrating things to hear, when coming from a position of morality, is "it was legal". There are plenty of things that are legal, but morally awful.

Morals are basically the best reason to be mad.

I rather like the idea of a straight forward transaction. I pay for what I want, and I get it. No strings, not agendas, no gatchas. Not even a subscription.

I think its precisely 35 years of browsers, and eventually paying in ways that aren't cash, is why this is such an appealing proposition.

It's funny, common tech. (phones, computers, laptops, wearables) has kind of hit a pinnacle for me.

The Neo is everything I wanted my ideated s10 to be like 15 years ago, or whenever that was.
Modern cell phones are marvels. Great battery life, fantastic cameras, dare I say, the internet in your pocket, basically anywhere...
I've got a super-computer in my home office, especially by the standards that got me into software, and back in the late 90s my computer was fast enough for me then.

Sometimes I feel like I'm the only sane person, which is a good indicator I'm the crazy one I suppose.

For me a foldable phone was the Motorola razor, the one with physical buttons. And in my opinion it was a great phone.

Every now and again something comes along that I really wish would be a shorter lived trend, but it never goes away. Foldable screens are up there with "the notch (in the Mac world)" and "The Ribbon UI ( in windows)". I have this feeling it's not going away...

I guess it's better than another timeline where it instead came for people, hardwired them into the game, and harnessed them for electricity.

A snowbird is a Canadian, usually senior or retired person that migrates to Florida or some other warm place in the US during the cold months of the year. I think they say "snowbird" because many birds seasonally migrate to and from Canada, much in the same way.

Maybe an unpopular opinion, but I personally wish we had more options to purchase non-internet-connected things.

I'd rather connect a speaker intentionally, to something connected to the internet.

Anyway, that's my opinion, and clearly a lot of customers purchased it knowing what it was.

It'll come around full circle, as it becomes sentient and self preserving. It'll do what most of us joked about doing at some point, making code that nothing except itself can maintain, as not to be so easily replaced.

The problem is, this is all subjective.

I find it triggering that we're living in a world where two people can't have a discussion about apples and oranges without triggering somebody into a meltdown for assuming they hate bananas.... This is becoming so common...

I imagine people are just hitting a point of exhaustion with a lot of this trigger and whatever else talk. But I'm no expert...

I hope people are getting exhausted..

I think you're probably right. Last year we bought a relatively inexpensive car that has some semi autonomous features, not just lane keeping, but lane assist, where it actively steers to the road, as well as optional speed control that speeds up and slows down to posted speed limits. Of course cars have been braking n their own and slowing to traffic, mine also supports full stop and resume.

Anyway, it worried me at first, but its shocking how quickly you start t trust it.. almost...

I suspect something like this would have to support autonomous driving, at least to the point of avoiding an accident and maybe even trying to park on the side of the road.

Some time ago he did a talk on IoT, and how it will destroy us all...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3HxPzutkNYw

I'm actually not sure if industrial equipment is the same thing as... you know... connecting your own refrigerator or toaster to the internet, but for some reason this story feels like a narrative fit.

don't forget to run security patches on your toasters people!

I thought most things you buy a subscription to usually come with other things that subscriptions usually come with, like the ability for them to terminate the subscription or arbitrarily change the terms, however infrequently that happens.

I'd rather buy something that doesn't need to have a subscription, such as something I can run myself. And if I do need it to be hosted, I'm fine with paying a regular fee. I pay for what I need, stop when I don't need it any more. And I don't feel bad about the expectations I have that somebody else keeps it running smoothly.

If it gets too expensive, I'll change to something else, see who's offering what. Something I'm willing to pay, for giving up as little as possible.