pudgywalsh

IMEI is needed to allow them to identify the device's capabilities, and know if it's been reported stolen.

> surveillance state

How do you suppose mobile phones are meant to work without subscriber info?

> I haven't really gotten really into this

Clearly.

Allowing Silicon Valley dorks to redefine the established UIs of cars was one of the biggest mistakes of the last 10 years. Ultimately it's cost shaving, but it spread like a cancer to other manufacturers owing mostly to a TikTok-brained customer base (to their own detriment).

It's one of the reasons I refuse to own a new car. Zero reason to hide critical controls behind a touch screen.

My daily driver has all tactile controls. I can operate wipers, climate, radio, and all critical functions blindfolded.

The key takeaway for me was he bought a $300 microphone and is acting indignant that he has full access to his own hardware via — gasp — a command shell.

Do we live in a bizarro world now where we expect — no, demand — our hardware be locked down?

It's worth mentioning all USB mics are toys anyway. Analog interfaces have gone away — artificially so — now they cram them into the device.

All mics are analog.

> Should every Chinese and Indian visit Venice, even though it destroys the city little by little? Should we send things as futile as watermelons by plane

Who are you to dictate where Chinese and Indians can and cannot visit or enjoy delicious watermelons?

If someone wants to eat a watermelon like a dirty slave that is their business and you are not going to deny them that right. This is pure insanity.

China and India are the biggest domestic aircraft markets in the world. The manufacturers literally cannot keep up with the demand. If trains were more effective they would have built them already. If California has taught us anything it's that implementation of high speed rail is a joke.

I am appalled at the level of delusion and craziness in these responses, it would take a year to respond to them all.

Air travel is not going anywhere and we are not setting society back 100 years on account of dubious climate histrionics.

Want to save the environment?

Ditch smartphones (future e-waste) and all their useless apps (and resource-sucking infra) we could all live without tomorrow.

Turns out we were as effective in moving goods and services and leisure travel in 2008 as we are today.

We just couldn't post to social media about how uncomfortable the airplane seat was and how the onboard Wi-Fi sucked.

> Is it not a bad thing to encourage poor people to continue doing the thing that has apparently made them poor?

Right, we should tell the farmers to "learn to code"?

Too bad you can't ask Claude to grow potatoes. Though it probably uses the same amount of water and fuel to tell you it can't.

> Haven’t they actually done a relatively good job in this regard in many ways?

No.

Can't run current versions of any apps including Chrome, Edge, and Safari.

Meanwhile the hardware is perfectly fine and could run a supported version of Windows or Linux.

Call me when Apple has a "LTSC" version of their OS. (Spoiler: they won't, ever. Supporting Apple in an enterprise is nothing short of a nightmare.)

Pepperidge Farm remembers when they removed the Telnet client (and ntpd, and a half dozen other things) from the OS and didn't warn anyone.

Yes, it's really bad, I see that scam ad constantly. Some even use celebrity deepfakes. Logged-out YouTube ads are 90% garbage like that.

Consider yourself lucky you didn't get the outright pornographic ones for boner pills "my husband fucked me 50 times".

Reporting them does nothing. Google does not care.

Should have remained neutral

Reddit is NOT FINE. They throw up full page modals now telling you to continue in the app.

> The "adults" came in and showed the kids how to make a grown-up operating system

Oh please — it's easy when you have the luxury of starting from scratch with unlimited budget.

DOS-based Windows had to both retain backwards compatibility with DOS applications and all their quirks and coexist with them at the same time.

The amount of hacks necessary to pull that off is an accomplishment unto itself.

Remember you couldn't really play games on NT-based Windows until Windows XP came out and even then DOS games were pretty much out until DOSbox came along.

Guess those "adults" had to stick with Solitaire and Hearts.