Ehhh agree that it frequently happens from poor planning, but I think we should do what we can to improve safety rather than blame victims. Learning about and paying for obscure satellite tech only helps those people who already know a lot about hiking, whereas this could bring the tech to everyone with a phone.

But also I think they could do it with a lot fewer satellites than this. They don’t need absolutely great coverage. Just a message service. The government could provide this on an emergency basis.

It’s not for streaming. As far as I know it’s just text messages. Absolutely agree we should not be using screen time when out and away. We just need that little bit of safety.

It’s still a good thing for cell coverage in remote areas for hiking emergencies though. The few satellites that currently do that are stupidly annoying and expensive to use. You have to carry specialized equipment, and if you use Garmin, you pay a yearly fee for the privilege of signing up for the low tier plan, then a monthly fee for the service, and then pay by the text message after the first few. Starlink just added T-Mobile so if you have a newer phone and use T-Mobile you can skip all of that and message out in emergencies without all that nonsense. Hopefully more brands will be added soon, but I don’t know.

I’m pretty sure it can, but I don’t actually know what subscription services or how it works to get podcasts downloaded. Spotify has been pretty easy. I guess it’s time to look into this stuff. I have been doing this stuff legit for a while, but I guess I could get back on the high seas too if I have to. I just wanted to make sure the people making content were getting paid, but I think Spotify is bad for that too. So tired of good services getting slowly worse.

Is there any reasonable option that I can use on a Garmin watch standalone? I like to run without my phone and listen to a podcast and Spotify has been my go to.

Especially VR files

Facebook was fine at first. I remember excitedly hearing that my school was added to the list of approved schools to get a Facebook account.

Not sure if problems started when it was expanded beyond just listed colleges, or if it was just the public stories or wall or whatever it’s called.

Stock market as a whole is…okay I guess. These one-off, bulletproof companies are silly. It’s almost a religion and the people who hold the stock truly believe that Tesla is going to make automatic cars that will drive everyone while also making autonomous robots that will do everyone’s laundry and the current problems are nothing compared to the beliefs in the future. The value will hold until it doesn’t (eg, they finally need the money for today’s bills in a recession that cost them their jobs), and then the value will plummet to something that actually looks normal for the sales they are making at this time.

Until they need their money, they have the unshakable belief they will all be millionaires as soon as Tesla comes out with the world changing techs and has no competition. Should be any day now. Or maybe in 2 weeks.

You wouldn’t want to wear a dive watch if you never dive, so why put that feature set on everything? Probably similar thoughts for a lot of these models.

That said, you are correct that they should streamline a little. It’s a ton of nonsense and very frustrating to hide features that are clearly being calculated (HRV) but hidden because you didn’t buy the right model.

One glaring omission for me is the lack of database options in the app store. They have a TINY bit of hard drive dedicated for a third party app. I used to own a Samsung and wrote an app for my gym workouts. It was great, but I like Garmin watches better. But even if I use the available key value pair database on Garmin, it only gives me space for maybe 100 sets before I am out of memory. Useless if you want to track any kind of history for multiple workouts. Same for the disc golf app I made for Samsung. I could technically save enough to play, but my old app has room to let me know all my previous scores per hole at each place I was, etc.

This isn’t a huge amount of space needed for these things. A few MB. But it’s walled away for some random reason. Really limits developers from making good stuff.

I think the point here is that, rather than endorse a genocide, you endorsed 2 genocides, and everything else that this administration does. I get that even one genocide is too much, but for that one you could be calling your representative and writing letters and doing whatever else you can to people who might care about those actions.

This isn’t really a great argument. Subsidies are there to promote the things we want to come to fruition. Want your people to have solar? Subsidies for putting one on your roof. You want more electric cars on the road even though more expensive? Subsidies.

You want a billionaire to help a new technology reach people he wouldn’t bother with? Subsidies.

As someone buying a color screen boox soon, I think it’s worth a mention that the battery is MUCH worse on boox because it has to run android. Like, the boox may last a day or two vs the Kindle Paperwhite lasting a couple weeks.

It’s not a huge issue if you are home a lot and can charge, but I love the Paperwhite because it feels like it ALWAYS is charged. It just doesn’t have the color screen so I guess I will have both now, one for comics and one for books.

C sucks to write and take care of memory, but it’s nice for super efficient code for use on smart watches. Samsung ditched it (tizen- native apps written in C) in favor of wearOS (java?), and their battery life is now less than half what it was.

I like to help support the production of new stuff to watch. This was great with Netflix for awhile, but I didn’t really like their shows lately, so I canceled them and got an HBO account. It will take me awhile to get through the shows there I want to watch. Then I will cancel and do another, either hulu or paramount or Disney, depending on shows.

I feel like paying for one service is a fair amount still.