They’re not smooth brained at all. They know exactly what they are saying, but them gaining full control always takes priority over all other factors. Just because a foreign adversary did it to us, which they don’t like, doesn’t mean that they don’t still want to do it to us.

I assume everyone is owned by someone terrible, but the individual policies and changes are what drives me to swap.

I pay for things on sites processed by PayPal too, I just don’t have an account.

Just standard credit card processing for purchases and zelle or venmo for transfers.

Good thing I deleted my PayPal years ago over a previous TOS change.

And this is where you went? This is literally Reddit’s bias taken to the level of hyperbole. The extremism groupthink here is the primary reason it hasn’t and likely will never go mainstream.

I sold it for market value, it was a rare 6 speed one and since then manuals command an insane premium in some segments.

They’re a joke to all the manufacturers that went all in on EVs before the market fell out from under them.

Prices for even 200k mile used vehicles are skyrocketing and cheap new cars simply don’t exist. Yes, ICE is the majority of vehicles out there, especially in rural areas, but they are more expensive and less available than ever. 10 years ago I bought a 100k mile Volvo wagon for $10k, put 50k more miles on it then sold it for $5k; if I wanted to buy the exact same car back today with 250k miles i would need to pay $15k for it. As manufacturers shift to EVs that problem is only going to get worse.

There is a logical reason to be against forced adoption before the technology matures. For a lot of the country they are not a viable replacement for ICE yet. They’re improving, but not as fast as ICEs are being phased out and that leaves a lot of places where a dwindling used market will be the only option for many people.

Yeah, my degree is in comp sci and I am very aware of what is possible. 99.9999% of the time scripting just results in the desired content being covered by something unnecessary and making what the user is attempting to view/interact with jump to somewhere else against their wishes. This is absolutely the best usage of scripting I’ve ever seen on the web.

I normally hate heavily scripted websites but holy fuck this is one of the cleanest user experiences I’ve ever seen. This is truly a work of art.

I have one on my pocket knife that goes with me almost everywhere.

It’s such a minor thing but fuck it’s annoying.

I have never listened to the radio in my car by choice. My phone is plugged in (currently Apple CarPlay but I used Android Auto with my last phone) but for simple play controls the buttons on the dash or steering wheel are still superior.

Maps make sense but having play controls for music as physical buttons is amazing. I have both a touch screen and physical volume/next/prev and I use the physical ones all the time. I actually like the sync system in my Focus other than the fact that when you start the car it tries to “resume” the first thing it can find and blasts loud AM static 75% of the time when I start the car. The controls are good though.

I’ve definitely gotten text messages at 35k feet on plenty of different occasions. Not a single issue with any systems on the plane from it.

As someone who has traveled across many countries all over the world. Anytime it’s illegal to say “this country is a shithole” quite often that country is a shithole.

Trying to force a switch to pure EVs before the technology is actually mature and viable is one thing, but simply cracking down on absolutely monstrous SUVs/trucks could do a lot of good to bridge the gap in the meantime. Not everyone needs a freakin MRAP to drive around a suburb. Just bringing cars back could help immensely.

Songs and albums that I’ve listened to for years have disappeared from my Apple Music subscription. I swapped completely to a paid service and never looked back until they removed things I could listen to last month.

Yeah, I’m looking at some of the options. I like this speaker set so an option with an analogue jack and USB port for power seems the way to go. Whether I go for a Pi or just a simple Arduino board doesn’t matter to me. I think I’m going to be messing with code anyway to get the switch behavior I want since most existing MP3 options seem to be standard play/next/prev controlled with multiple momentary buttons vs a toggle. Even just toggle on to start the song each time will need a bit of customizing and at that point I might as well make it a bit more fancy with off being pause and then a timer for back on to be unpause if it’s a short period or play from the beginning if it’s been sitting for a few minutes.

It’s still a first dive into any of this for me, Pi or Arduino but with a bit of help pointing in the right direction none of it seems that hard. Just trying to figure out which hardware to go with and once I have it playing with it until I get what I want.