Yeah I have the AirPods Pro and have tried out the transparency feature, specifically because Apple has been floating the idea around that these could technically act as hearing aids and I’m looking for alternatives that might be cheaper now that I’m on disability.

It reminds me of when hearing aids first came out when I was a kid, only not quite as good. But you get the idea with the frequencies and also background noise. Go into a loud coffee shop with them on and try to carrying on a conversation with someone only using the transparency feature.

For someone with slightly declining hearing it might be ok. For me I have mild-to-moderate hearing loss and I have to use an actual hearing aid, not a hearing device which is what all these “hearing aids” that are cheap are. I have to order them through an audiologist and they are not cheap and barely covered by insurance (most of which won’t cover them if you don’t use THEIR cheaper brand). But hey, at least they’re kinda covered now. For 40 years or so of my life it was all $4,000 - $6,000 out-of-pocket every 5-7 years depending on how long they lasted and if they could be repaired.

So it’s the plague’s empty toilet paper section only store-wide? Great…

I wear hearing aids and air dryers annoy the hell out of me because they’re so loud. Almost as much as leaf blowers annoy me.

Hearing aids don’t have the ability to filter noises so it’s like plugging a microphone into headphones and trying to carry on conversations. Mine can now reduce loud noises a little bit so they don’t damage my already horrible hearing further but that wasn’t the case when I had them as a kid and air dryers started getting more popular, that shit hurt.

As someone with multiple mental illness labels and struggling to do basic levels of self-care often, I’m terrified of this. But I also unrealistically think it works make my life easier. Besides the torture.

While that sounds cool to me, it kind of defeats my main purpose of switching to an e-reader in the first place. I have trouble holding physical books for a long time due to hand pain. I had a similar issue with the e-reader, just not as bad, until I put a PopSocket on the back of it. Now I can hold it with the PopSocket resting in-between 2 fingers and can read significantly longer.

I switched from Kindle Paperwhite 1st Gen to a Kobo Clara Color a month or so ago. It was cheaper than Amazon’s color Kindle offering plus Amazon not letting readers download their books pushed me out. I did try the jailbreak for the Kindle and…I gave up on it after numerous issues that I ran into probably relating to the age of my Paperwhite.

I mostly use Overdrive (Libby) to get books from my library. The Kobo has Overdrive support…mostly due to Kobo store availability and whether or not you have multiple library cards with multiple libraries. I’m in NY state and have a library card with my city library and then one with the NY Public Library. This isn’t really a reflection on Kobo, more so Overdrive being shitty and not willing to update their Kobo app to work with how they migrated from the Overdrive app to Libby.

This is where Calibre comes in handy, I download the book to my phone from Libby, transfer it to my Mac and use Calibre to add it to it to my Kobo. It’s not pretty like Overdrive’s Kindle integration where you basically press a few buttons in the Libby app and the book is sent to your kindle.

As far as reading the book in general, I don’t really notice that huge of a difference other than better technology. I did have some slight bugginess when I first used it, but after a full charge and a few reboots it seems to be fine now. I don’t have a current gen Kindle to compare it to, so someone else can speak to that. I do wish it wasn’t such a hassle to get my library books to it, but at least I have access to all my books!

I want one too! Only because I love Lego 😆

Thank you, I needed the laugh

Jokes on them, I have facial paralysis!

That’s good to hear, because back then that wasn’t the case. I know no matter what model iPhone I get, if it’s new then support is the same for every model from that year.

Source: https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnkoetsier/2024/05/06/global-top-10-best-selling-smartphones-all-from-apple-samsung/

The only good thing about most Android phones is that you can install a different version of Android devoid of all things Google and get an interface that isn’t Samsung. That’s my plan when this subscription crap comes around or the phones are too expensive that I can’t afford them anymore. I’m too tied into Apple’s ecosystem with mail, iCloud, and Music.

Also, buy some other brand that’s cheaper because Samsung makes garbage and don’t support their hardware unless they’re flagship. Admittedly, it’s been almost a decade since I’ve had anything but an iPhone, but I had a couple Samsung Android phones were an update broke the phone and Samsung wouldn’t release a fix because it was an update from Google. One in particular was a Samsung Moment on Sprint where it would enter into airplane mode silently and still look like it was connected to services until you went to use said services. They refused to provide an update to resolve the issue.

No “average” person is aware because they are too busy trying to just survive. Nobody wants to chance losing what they’ve worked so hard for. The only people who watch the news are seniors and disabled people, and they’re being misled if they just watch TV news.

People who call themselves Republicans are happy with what’s going on. People who call themselves Democrat are not happy but think they need to work within the system to solve the issues and wait until the next election. Libertarians have sided with the Republicans. Socialism is still a taboo way of thinking for the most part here.

Then you have disabled people (like me) who are watching what is happening in horror and have sky high anxiety wondering if they’re next to be disappeared or homeless. I can stand for maybe 30 minutes at most, holding a sign maybe 15 minutes at most. So I’m doing what I can and that is trying to live as if things are “normal” to continue on my mental health recovery and sobriety journey at the same time being horrified and terrified of what’s to come. It’s a weird duality that I don’t like. I told my therapist the other day that I have hope for the future for my recovery but I have lost all hope in what is going on politically and in the news.

A lot of this I also blame on false American beliefs fed to us in school that we were safe from all of this nonsense because of our constitution. The American Dream and all that B.S. They sugar-coat our history as a country in schools – at least they did when I went to school in the 80’s/90’s, I don’t know about now. It’s as if America only has a rosy history, even the Civil War is glorified in false narratives.

It’s easy to see how we got to this point as a country. The question is, how do we get ourselves out of it?

I’m on SSDI (and Medicaid and HUD housing) and have been having insane anxiety the last month and a half to the point that I’m wondering if I’ll even get paid in April. I regularly check my SSA account online to make sure my direct deposit is still freaking scheduled. Missing a payment could mess up all of my other benefits as well.

I know the fuck up is coming, but I don’t know if I can handle another few months hoping they don’t fuck up the migration if they don’t fuck up just paying people first with all that’s been going on.

I’m pretty sure Im not the only one in this situation who can’t handle the stress of this bullshit.

Ok, so this solidifies my desire to never buy a Windows PC/laptop and why my switch to Mac was a good choice a few years ago. However Mac gaming is nowhere near where it should be right now and I was thinking about getting a cheap Windows laptop for games that aren’t available on Mac.

I remember a push a few years ago to get some linux distros pre-installed on some OEM hardware but I didn’t hear much of anything past the hype. Anyone have any good OEM brands that have linux installed instead of Windows and are relatively affordable?

I’ve set up a community specifically for release updates from the Rayhunter Github at !Rayhunter@lemm.ee if anyone is interested

Thanks!

I am an idiot. Show Bot Accounts was checked. At some point I blocked rss.ponder.cat for some reason that I don’t remember 🤦🏻 I can see the posts now.

I’d like to have https://github.com/EFForg/rayhunter/releases.atom post to !Rayhunter@lemm.ee

But I also see an issue with being logged into my lemm.ee account that none of those communities linked show any posts unless I view them on rss.ponder.cat. That concerns me. Has lemm.ee blocked you? I checked my settings and I’m allowing bots to be seen on my end.

I knew about Apple’s tactics and still went all in.

For me at the time it was a choice between sticking with Android (my first smartphone was the OG Moto Droid), trying to de-Google the Android phone I had at the time, or switching to Apple.

Android hardware may be better now than it ever has been, but that wasn’t always the case. Samsung especially pissed me off when they had an Android phone out that after an update to Android the phone would randomly go into Airplane mode without indicating it. They refused to release a fix. That was the last straw for me after trying to use a ton of different ROMS on the phone to get around the issue. Also, back then if you didn’t have Google Play installed that meant you missed out on a lot of apps or had to use Amazon’s App Store.

I got fed up with having to constantly fix things after ROM updates and didn’t have the time due to working so many hours at my job. I didn’t want to stick with Google because I saw where it was headed. I switched to Apple and never looked back. Part of that switch was also influenced because I wanted to get out of the Microsoft Windows ecosystem and gaming on Linux wasn’t great back then so I had to dual boot. Gaming on Mac’s weren’t that great either, but at least I had the “feeling” that things were more private with Apple than Google and MS.

I’m so tied into the Apple ecosystem right now that I’m just not sure I want to go back to hacking Android phones and al that even if things are 100% better than they were a decade ago. I “trust” that Apple handles my privacy concerns better than an ad-supported Google and Windows. I’m going to recommend Apple to non tech-savvy friends and family 100% of the time. Until there’s a phone OS competitor that is both easy to use and on decent hardware out of the box, it’s just a hassle.

That said, I’m thinking about looking at picking up a cheap pre-paid Android phone and checking out the ROM scene again because of the happenings in the US the last few months. I don’t know if I can trust Apple to not cave to the government and destroy the only good thing it had going for the ecosystem for me.

Does this detect only Verizon bands or does it work for AT&T/T-Mobile towers too? I’m tempted to get this just out of curiosity but if it’s only Verizon bands it’s not really useful to me unless the fake towers attach to any device regardless of carrier.

Edit: Was able to find a brand new one on Ebay for a whopping $12 after taxes with free shipping. At the very least it’ll be a nice paperweight if it proves useless to me. 😆