Finding a phone anymore that actually fits in my pocket is a real challenge. I had a Motorola defy, Sony Xperia acro s, and an Xperia z5 compact and they were all just about right. My current Xperia 5v is honestly a little bigger than I like but it was the smallest option that had a good camera, removable storage, ip rating, and a headphone jack.

I outright refuse to buy a phone without a headphone jack, removable storage, and ip rating. My current phone is an Xperia 5v and I am gonna hold onto that until I am forced out of it by destruction or loss I guess.

The original Motorola Defy had it right when released, micro sc slot, decent camera for the time, rugged case you could literally unscrew with an allen wrench to fix the phone, removable battery, a size that actually fit in your pocket, sub $300 price iirc, and it was ip67 rated.

Don’t tell me we CAN’T make that phone, Motorola did it in a cave in the 2010s with a bunch of scraps!

Maybe not on your sd card, I don’t think that’s universal anymore though. There’s a whole lotta doom out there and in your focal lenght if you know where to look.

Mine are too little for now for much more but I have gotten them successfully to use our Emby server for videos and music. Calling that a win.

I go with the flow.

To make it worse, I was working full time at the time. It was the only way I could get to the next course in the schedule since certain classes were only offered in certain semesters so if I had missed that window, I would have been set back a year. It was awful.

I did a summer “mini-mester” for my undergrad Fluid Mechanics class where the class was condensed into 4 or 6 weeks but you met every day and it was FUCKING BRUTAL even though I was only doing that one course. I can’t imagine doing that for a full 15hrs of coursework. This smells more like a click through the classwork once randomly, figure out the right answers from the online quiz when they pop up at the end, then click the right answers the next time type of situation but for a whole program.

How this got accredited (if it actually is) is beyond me.

What’s that?

I bought one of these from Flirc but never used it.

A totally valid option I had not considered. Imo, the solution needs to be controlled by a standard remote. I tried for a couple years to get my family to use a media pc that used a media keyboard and no one would touch it. I turned it into a server and streamed to emby and now they will use it but only after I showed them it works even when the internet is down.

No doubt. The market is shriveling up for people who want a new tv that isn’t garbo. Outside of commercial displays which are like 3-4x as expensive and have lower image quality, I don’t know of anyone making dumb tvs in a 55" plus size. Yes, you can opt not to hook them up to the internet but in a house with non-tech people, its a huge hassle to get them to want to use anything other than the built in apps. Even diy set top boxes running on a pi or shield are not as user friendly for kids or grandparents.

I basically left it vanilla after switching the launcher and borking the updates. We use emby for our home streaming but I am always looking for extra functionality

I will 100% jump over to it if that does turn into a thing

Oh cool, I’ll have to checkout those other tools!

When I lived at my old house, the interstate (a mile away or so) switched from sodium lights to LEDs and the light bleed was bad enough that I could have done precision yardwork at night. Even with blackout curtains, I could see the outline of my door at night. It was miserable.

I have a HiSense TV and use ADB AppControl to disable/remove the telemetry or forced updates, and Projectivy Launcher to get a home screen/launcher that doesn’t show ads. Both are free and work really well. I don’t see trash on my homescreen anymore.

For sure don’t bring kudzu.

I won’t say you are wrong but I can still be pissed about this and expect/demand better while recognizing that there is a longstanding historic pattern of shitty and shortsighted behavior directed by incompetent and morally deficient corporate stooges against the better interests of the people they are supposedly representing.

If it helps, they were never meant to protect the US homeland. Logistically there is too much coastline and not enough batteries. You have the same amount of protection as you did before.