thebardingreen

iOS is a hard no for me. It's like a mechanic buying a car that says "No user serviceable parts" on the sales contract.

• My Android phone that I've had for several years just died forever and I am currently without a phone (other than Google Voice on my computer).
• I'm in the US. Carrier is T Mobile. I understand I'd have to place my order through a third party.
• Things I care about: All of the above, as long as I can do my work.
• I have the budget.

Things I do regularly:

• Make phone calls.
• Check my email.
• Text messages.
• Signal
• Podcasts and Audiobooks (I'm currently going nuts trying to do chores without my normal audio stimulation). I need Audible and I need some app that will let me keep all my subscriptions and Patreon benefits.
• Magic Arena.
• Lemmy (I currently just use it in a browser, last time I tried Jerboa it was super buggy)
• ChatGPT app.

I also "Hey Google" all the time. I'm not sure what the state of deGoogled voice assistants is. If I could "Hey ChatGPT" it would be orders of magnitude more useful than "Hey Google." Losing voice assistance isn't a deal breaker, but it's something I do use frequently.

Probably 40% of my phone use is Magic Arena and 40% is podcasts and audiobooks. Then probably 5% is "Hey Google, set an alarm for 5 minutes / OK Google, set an alarm for 6:00 AM."

Google Services I need for work... but I'm willing to hack my way around to get them, as long as it's possible.

• Google Voice (non negotiable, sadly).
• My work email is through Google.
• My work video conferences are through Google Meet.
• My work calendar is through Google and my phone gives me 10 minute notifications before a meeting.

I would like to degoogle as much as possible, but these are work requirements, and my ADHD brain can't handle having two phones (one will get left uncharged / lost / never turned on and the odds are that will be the work one).

Possible? Yes. But the web server configurations might be hard to figure out for someone who's unfamiliar.

I run my own Lemmy instance that's just me and a few close friends. I federate with who I want so I can follow the communities I want and it always works fine. Big instances defederate from each other, but I'm federated with both and so (so far) totally unaffected. I never have to make new accounts.

I DO pay about $25 a month in hosting fees, plus do the server maintenance work for these privileges. It's a price I am HAPPY to pay.

I didn't really use Twitter and I don't use Mastodon (I get SO frustrated by character limits and don't really want to spend my time on shallow conversation in metered soundbytes), so that part doesn't really impact me either.

Paywalled.

On both sides even.

<3 Peanut Hamper.

It is fairly typical. Scalzi is pulp scifi brain candy. He's creative and comes up with unique ideas. He's fun. He's funny. I find him highly entertaining. But he's no Alastair Reynolds, Iain M Banks or James SA Corey. The author I would compare him most to is Dennis E Taylor in terms of narrative style.

If you want to see if you like Scalzi, don't start with this book. Read one of these:

Agent to the Stars - Aliens come to Earth wanting to make contact with humanity... BUT, too bad for them, they're slimy blobs that communicate through foul scents, have parasitic abilities, can take over corpses and ride them around as zombies, reproduce by oozing all over each other... they're very nice people, but they watch a bunch of movies and TV shows and realize humans will react badly to them because they look like (and have the biology of) B movie evil aliens. So... they hire a Hollywood talent agent as a PR / image consultant to help present them to the world.

Fuzzy Nation - A rewrite of the H Beam Piper classic Little Fuzzy. Why? Uh... it was there? Scalzi thought it could be updated for a modern audience? I think he did a fairly good job (assuming the job needed doing at all), but if you've read the H Beam Piper books, you're gonna be like "This is literally the exact same story with more modern language, more cultural diversity and whittier dialog..." It was a GREAT audiobook to listen to with kids in the car on a long road trip. (If you don't mind the kids hearing some F bombs)

Lock In - If you're more in the mood for cyberpunk, this is a near future world where a pandemic has left a significant portion of the population (like 1.2% or something) totally paralysed and lacking all motor control or physical sensation, but FULLY concision and aware. A new robotics / neural interface / VR industry emerges to allow the "Locked In" to participate in society. A young Locked In man becomes a homicide detective in Washington DC and investigates a murder that may have been committed by another Locked In person. There are sequels.

I think these are his three best. They're not his most widely read (those would be Old Man's War and the Interdependency series). But if you want to see if he's for you, start with one of these.

I listened to the audio book. It was fun, silly and I enjoy listening to Wil Wheaton reading me stories.

Was it great? No. Does the plot hold up under close scrutiny? Not really. It was better than Starter Villain and not as good as Agent to the Stars.

People are including AI generated code in their projects without fully reading it or understanding how it works.

From a PSA stand point, 23andMe makes a really good point here.

From a Legal / Responsible Data Custodian perspective, it's the same collective responsibility bullshit that the oil industry likes to shit out about climate change.

This is a cool article, and the art is impressive.

If you expect Rebel Moon to be a terrible movie going in, it's actually a lot of fun.

Honestly, the way to make Rebel Moon a good movie would be:

1. Have it be directed by Vin Diesel.
2. Have Riddick be the first character Kora recruits.
3. Make the movie mostly about Riddick, with Kora as a supporting character / love interest.
4. Change very little else.