Unfortunately, the citations are generally quite low quality and have in my experience a high rate of not actually supporting the text they're attached to.

This is on par with humans, honestly. I’ve dug into cited studies by consulting firms that were 100% false.

Adventure Maker and Bryce3D were an S-tier way of making very nonsensical games as a child!

It would be cool to have a FOSS redux of it, to be honest.

I remember when everything was "Sign in with .NET Passport" as a yoot and just being like "what the hell are you talking about"

I really haven't found this to be true at all; corporations are just as dysfunctional or worse.

It's more that there's fewer legal protections, so private surveillance is a great way for governments to launder the illegal things they want to do.

The dysfunction on the corporate side just gets swept under the rug, only in extreme cases does it get brought to the attention of the public.

Governments have to operate in a more open manner (at least those with a reasonable amount of democratic accountability do). So the dysfunction is made public more often, and likely used over decades for political point-scoring.

It's similar to open source development. Everyone moans that open source projects are full of infighting slowing down development compared to closed projects.

Then, as soon as someone comes along and gets shit done like with systemd or the Linux kernel it's the opposite complaint. The doer is now a wannabe dictator ordering everyone about.

I ran xfwm's compositor back when it was first introduced on a 400 MHz Pentium II with a GeForce 2. It was fully fine.

The compositing tax is just waiting for vsync; unless your machine is, like, a Pentium Classic, compositing itself isn't a problem.

The 2026 redesign has put in a proper liquid cooling loop.

(Battery heating is inexplicably an extra $300 option, and not available on the base trim AFAICS?)

They often have eSIMs I think, but (depending probably on the car) pulling the modem's fuse can be safe. That's the case for the VW ID.4 at least.

I want the car to be able to contact emergency services, but not to otherwise be able to use the cellular network. Is there a good way to sabotage the eSIM, without otherwise breaking the modem? (This would still allow the car to be tracked via IMEI, but I'm not too worried about that: anyone capable of that is also capable of tracking my actual phone, and anyone buying that data will already know what car I own.)

why do you want your car to contact emergency services? the people around you can do that just fine and very reliably.

How on earth did we survive as a species before our cars could make automated phone calls?

There's often been a few cases of "disappeared" people who went missing and it turns out they actually crashed off the road somewhere and weren't found for a week or two.

That's extreme of course but there are probably a lot of accidents that happen in low-density rural country areas or late at night when there aren't many people around. The automatic e-call from the car gives exact GPS coordinates and severity of the accident, even if you are unconscious or if your phone that was neatly in the cup holder before the crash was flung somewhere else (potentially even flew out of the car etc) and you're trying to find it while someone might be dying in the seat next to you etc.

People didn't survive before all this. It's a mandatory feature now because it's so effective at saving lives. 2 to 10% reduction in fatalities and serious injuries apparently. Would you also question why we have mandatory airbags and traction control?!

There's often no cell service in those locations as well.

It uses a automated voice call and a SMS message I think. It's not internet based, it just dials 112 like a human would

The parent comment is interested in the survival of themselves and passengers. The survival of the human race is a low bar to pass.

Funnily enough, I mostly hear about it from hyper-individualistic types. It's probably a facet of some American conservative-traditionalist belief cluster invented in the last 40 years, but it's hard to say for sure, because the people who say this tend to be bad at introspection, so can't answer my questions about it (even when they're curiously cooperating with my investigation).

If the modem has no fuse, physically damaging the NIC chip in the module will also work.

I found USB-C to be pretty unreliable up until the past several years -- I had multiple phones and laptops from multiple brands <=2020 that just had USB-C ports turn fiddly or outright stop working after a year or two.

Things are better now in my experience, but for a device made in 2019, this is pretty darn plausible.

I feel like, from the hardware point of view, wireless charging should be more durable than using a cable, since the charging connection is done without contact. But then again, wireless charging is less good for the battery then wired, so it's probably a balancing act.

That being said, I know that the moment I switch to a phone that supports wireless charging, I won't be able to go back, so I've just been trying to use the phone I have (POCO X3 Pro) until it'll completely break.

I had the battery replaced, because it was starting to bloat to the point that it was starting to bend the phone. I've had the back panel glued three times, but it still comes off, so now there's always a gap in the phone, most certainly not waterproof anymore, I would have wished that the repair would have been flawless, because as things stand, I am disappointed and had I known that this would be the final result (I could try taking the phone back to the service centre to get it reglued, but I've already done that twice, so now I feel uncomfortable and awkward having to ask yet again, for who know if any improvement.

I have this with my phone, but it's because of dust. Did you try cleaning the port?

About 0%. China really has no serious interest in Greenland, and Russia isn't going to trigger direct confrontation with NATO. At least, unless NATO splinters, which is looking somewhat likely now with this foolish US administration.

Russia and China are just made-up excuses for Trump to do what he wants to do: steal territory, at gunpoint if needed.

I just cannot stomach the number of people who apparently value nothing except displays of performative cruelty and childish tantrums.

There's been a significant shift of an "ow-I-touched-the-stove" variety towards sanity among independents, but it's a Problem that some significant double-digit percentage of the nation just plain likes this violent self-destructive flailing, and will reward anything as long as it makes them feel like somebody is getting hurt.