I personally really like the Pixel line, they're really good phones without a lot of bloatware. The problem with them is the fact that they aren't consistent within a generation, much less between generations. This means that the cases for every single variety of Pixel phone are different. It's maddening.

I generally support phones for my household and I'd really like to move them all to Android, just for consistency because it's what I use, but I question how my dad will manage when his iPhone SE 2022 plays out. He can barely work it and changing in any way is not going to go well. The fingerprint home button is nice for someone like him, and the switch to silence the thing means he can actually figure out how to silence the phone when I explain it every single time he needs to do it.

As for Samsung, I have never owned one of their phones. I've had Samsung tablets that cost as much as an iPad, however, and they were universally awful. Support that ends far sooner than it should, and performance somewhere between a snail and a brick. This annoyed me so greatly that I haven't bought a Samsung product since. The same sort of experience led me to stop purchasing HP printers fwiw.

They should have done this sooner. There was a murder at an Amazon warehouse in Horn Lake, MS, that probably would have been prevented if Amazon hadn't let the murderer wait around for the victim. It may hurt unionization, but it's better for the safety of everyone.

FAA apparently denied the request and they did it anyway, and one of the planes DID crash, so I'd say there's going to be some suspended licenses over this.

Meanwhile actual fraudsters get to keep peddling their scams on FB with no consequence. I use FB because of its marketplace (it's the best online option for local selling in my area) and come across this crap in buy/sell groups frequently. That free $100 Lowe's Gift Card phishing scam? Yeah I reported the jerk, and FB helpfully sent me a message that no action was taken. And now they're banning people who did nothing wrong. While letting the spammers run wild. Terrible company.

I'm sure they could easily deal with setting up a European targetted advertising operation. The real issue, I think, is that their websites operate in a truly global manner. That is, a person on Facebook in the US can connect with a person on Facebook in Europe, viewing their posts and such, and Facebook would for usability reasons want to mirror those posts so as not to have ungodly latency for cross-ocean viewing.

I hate to say it, but I do (to an extent) agree with Facebook. Saying "nothing can be shared" will be death to the global internet as we know it, just like saying "everything can be shared" is death to personal privacy. Clarifying where the line is would help immensely, and leaving it to the courts to do so is a recipe for disaster for all involved. Politicians on both sides of the Atlantic need to figure this stuff out.

What I'd really like to see is for equivalent privacy protections to be written into US law. That would solve a lot of the issues, and would benefit US citizens immensely. That would likely be the ideal outcome for everyone except Zuckerberg's bank account, and I'm fine with that.

While the Eudora email client hasn't been updated to work with the newer security that gmail uses, Thunderbird works once you set gmail up to allow it. I seldom use the web mail except to report spam to Google.

As for gmail, if you're not enough of a nerd to roll your own email server, it's actually a pretty good service, indeed I'd rate it among the best free services. The spam filters in particular are remarkably good. Even my mom's account, which gets hundreds of spam emails every month, only occasionally has one slip through.

Somewhere between 2 and 5 crap tons.

I'm a packrat and it's taking too long to get a more accurate measure.

I've used most versions of Windows since 95, and the only ones I've skipped are Windows ME and the base Windows 8.

I went straight from 98 to 2000, which was a significant improvement.

I used ME once, on a secondhand machine I was repairing for a friend. Fixed it by digging out a copy of 98 (and later a lightweight Linux distro) for it. Both worked better than ME.

The start menu's recommendations section is annoying, I turned off all the Recommendations and the category is still there. I finally just got a copy of Start11 which fixed that problem. If only MS would give the option to turn that section off completely.

At least Windows 11 seems to have fixed some of the issues I had with networking on Windows 10. Now if only they'd fix it on my mom's computer that's stuck on Windows 10. It has a local laser printer that I'd REALLY like to share.

Stability has been great, no crashes since upgrading. The interfaces to do a lot of basic things (like change DNS server to my Pi Hole) are much better, no need to jump to the adapter options. While not as familiar as the old Control Panel, the new Settings does make a lot of things easier to accomplish.

Did not like the centered taskbar, but changing that's easy enough, thankfully MS kept the option to have the icons on the left. The limitations on task bar placement might be annoying for anyone that kept their task bar anywhere but on bottom, though, since it stays on bottom now.

The notifications area is different, don't particularly like the change. Of course I didn't like its previous implementation either. Most notifications are useless anyway.

Other than that, it's basically a somewhat reskinned Windows 10. It's got its annoyances, but I don't regret upgrading. It works fine.

Plug-in blowers are in fact absolutely useless for doing any real work. There's simply not enough power in a 120v 15a receptacle (really 12a because code requires you to leave headroom) to propel air at anywhere near what even the cheapest gas blower will do.

The big reason is gas blowers are far cheaper and somewhat lighter. You could pay $350 for the electric blower, plus $350 per battery, or under $200 for a 2 cycle gas leaf blower of equal power. It will also be lighter, and last longer in a professional setting. That said, most professionals will use more expensive gas leaf blowers with produce more air flow than any of the currently-available battery models. 4-cycle versions do actually exist as well, but are much heavier than even the battery-powered blowers, as well as being slightly more expensive than the 2-cycle blowers.

A battery leaf blower is likely to work for a homeowner who won't destroy the batteries from constant use over the course of a very few months, but the cost is likely to dissuade many, and the performance (or lack thereof) of the more affordable budget models will mean many go back to gas powered blowers.

And as for plug-in electric leaf blowers, I have yet to find one that will actually move leaves. They're great for clearing a few out of the garage, but they're useless for actual work. The maximum available power on a standard 15A 120v outlet just isn't enough.

As for abandoning the blower and using rakes, that's fine until you come across awkward places where you can't rake. I personally prefer a rake for open areas with big piles of leaves (it's faster and more controllable) but a blower really comes into its own when clearing under the deck, behind a rose bush, or in a flower bed where you really don't want to destroy what you've got planted.

All of this even before one considers whether free will exists at all in most people. I mean, the number of people unable to think for themselves (and thus extremely susceptible to such tactics) is staggering. Even though I'd like to think I have a very refined BS detector, it would be a stretch to suggest that even I am immune. It's almost as if all humans are are complex pieces of hardware, running software that develops based on input received during development. The average human is very predictable, even when trying not to be.

From what I hear Windstream is just as bad, if not worse. Having these two as choices for ISP is like having to choose between two turd sandwiches.

The average gas pump pumps 10 gallons per minute, which means I can go from empty to full on my 20-gallon tank in 2 minutes.

Electric cars cannot recharge from zero to full in 2 minutes. It's simply not possible.

As I tend to take a lot of road trips, it is important that refuel or recharge happen in a reasonable amount of time. Reasonable to me is under 5 minutes from zero to full.

Add to this the fact that there are often lines to use the gas pump. Think how bad that will be when you transition from a 2 minute refuel to a 2 hour charge. There simply isn't enough real estate to accommodate such a scenario. I mean sure, you could possibly charge at home, but that doesn't do you much good when you're not home.

Facebook needs to be held to account, and not just for their role in spreading conspiracy theories.

Facebook doesn't want to act against ANYONE. Not even obvious scammers/spammers. The platform is awash with people offering to send out free $1000 gift cards, just send personal information or go to this site loaded with ads and malware. I've reported these before, and every time I get notified that they don't breach facebook's community standards. The platform is a legit cess pool.