It still baffles me that having a NOT "smart" phone is more expensive by far than a "smart" phone.
this post was submitted on 14 Aug 2024
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chapotraphouse
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I own a smart phone, yet I am stupid as hell. Curious! 
Debating seeing if I could get one of those twenty year old spring loaded phones they made for the Matrix sequels and getting it compatible with a service now as a bit
Actually impossible. The device was carrier-locked to Sprint PCS, who ran a CDMA network. It was decommissioned by T-Mobile (who bought them out) in 2020.
It is unlikely that there are any networks in the world that would still support tech that ancient.
Sorry for seriousposting a shitpost! In a past life, I worked for AT&T (TDMA 2G gang representing!).
Nah you're good lol, I just kinda yearn for a modern gizmo with some swivel screen and clickyclack physical keyboard
Aww. 
I miss when phones were goofy doohickeys instead of glass rectangles, I had the original RAZR and a friend with the Sidekick that I always thought was sick
Debated getting the Sony PSP Phone when that was new and am kinda glad I didn't but that was neat to me too
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De-googling (FOSSifying?) my digital life has been very costly, not in money but in time, effort, and loss of convenience. I make it work for me just fine, I just wish it was easier to bring my friends and family with me.
Do you have any recommendations on how to effectively do this now that you've gone through it?
there are many guides out there that are going to be a lot more organized than asking a random user.
https://tycrek.github.io/degoogle/
https://redlib.pussthecat.org/r/degoogle/wiki/index
etc.
It really depends on your usage (which products, for what, how much, etc) and your tolerance for spending time vs money vs inconvenience.
I endorse what Chronicon posted, those guides are good. YMMV but for me the turning point was switching to grapheneOS on mobile. I've still yet to completely detach from Google but I'm enjoying the process.
The one thing I'm struggling to get rid of, eventhough I hate it to high heavens, is google messages. The features I do like are great but they keep adding crap I will never use(Gemini) and I'm naturally concerned with privacy. But if everyone in your life is still on one platform, it's so hard to switch.
I quit using google messaging when they killed Hangouts and Voice. Sorry, wish I had a recommendation for ya. Definitely feel ya about platform woes, and this is coming from a guy who got his IRL loved ones to switch to Signal back in 2017. I wanna get my peeps on Element/Matrix but already I've run into some resistance... so it goes. Good luck comrade.
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My Nokia cost me $35. Or are you talking about other costs?
I'm glad that you proverbially got yours. I have seen no such offers for affordable not-smart phones with coverage in my area.
I'm in the U.S. This is TMobile. When I used Verizon I had a flip phone that cost me maybe $80. I just did a quick search and found flip phones for AT&T for $60. That covers >90% of the U.S. cell plan market share.
That covers >90%
That's great. I'm checking right now and I may be in that <10% area. Glad you got yours.
Even if you have a smaller carrier they probably still use one of the big three networks , in which case the cheap phones will be compatible.
I want to be clear that I'm not saying "fuck you, I got mine." I didn't get a special deal or win a raffle or anything. You're certainly right that they do try to hide the fact that it's at all possible to get a cheap phone. But contrary to appearances, you can probably save money here. If not now, then the oligopoly will probably invade your section of the country soon enough.
I may have to dig around if it really is possible in my area to get a cheaper not-smart phone. If I can keep my current number, even better.
I had to order mine separately from my carrier, but I verified with them that they could activate it and all that - I think you'd use the same SIM card and therefore wouldn't have to change your number but I don't really know how that works. When I've had to change phones I just tell the people at the carrier store that I have certain red lines I absolutely will not cross (budgetary and otherwise) and whatever their misgivings or confusion they've worked with me on that. They still try to upsell me whenever I have a technical support question, of course.
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man someone should write a book about how all this stuff tends to happen and why
Speaking of; what’s the best place to get the essential reading? Feels fucking weird to get them through Barnes or Amazon lmao I’m not SO opposed to it, it’s just the way things are now. I just am curious if there’s better options.
If you don't want physical books: https://www.marxists.org/index-mobiles.htm
And if you do want physical books, they also sell them. I don't actually know anything about MIA as an org, but their site is great for research and feeling like it's 1999 again
most college libraries have a great collection and sometimes offer a free card to the general public
Thanks!
I decided to at least pick up my thumbs and do a little search myself. Found a website called ThriftBooks that seems pretty cool. My sister is a book nerd as well, I’m sure she could point me to a proper place.
bookshop.org for new books. abebooks is probably best for used books, but even they are owned by Amazon. Sometimes you can find books on there and then go to the listed bookstore's own site, but more often than not they'll just be using the abebooks engine there, too.
If you want to support the author, there is always the option to pirate the book, and see if he or she has pages to receive donations (paypal, bitcoin, patreon, etc) or you can just email then money.
Sadly, I don’t think Marx has a Patreon 😔
I recently bought a cool looking 1920's copy of State and Revolution from eBay for $15. I've had good luck buying used leftist books from there, especially the ones that were printed in large numbers.
To add to the ebook recommendations, Anna's archive has the biggest pirate collection of ebooks online.
ebook-hunter.org
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FOSS is getting nicer and proprietary software is getting worse. Things are looking up, IMO.
Each update that almost kills my pc is driving me further and further to linux.
At this point my busted old laptop is like Son Goku who gets a powerup each near death fight he has.
Next PC build will 100% be Linux, I run it on most of my PCs, but my desktop runs Windows because of NVidia. Can't wait, lol
Depending on how old your Nvidia card is you might be able to make the jump now, the beta drivers released in the last couple months have made huge leaps in making Nvidia cards function on Wayland. My only remaining gripe is discord flickering but I may just need to try a different discord client.
I'll wait a bit more, but that's encouraging, thanks.
Just wanted to also echo that sentiment. Using a nvidia card and after the Nvidia 555 driver update things are almost perfect on Wayland for me. Keep an eye on future nvidia updates because I'd say your near-future decision is almost here from a software standpoint
Nice! Excited to switch over the last of my machines!
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The FOSS alternatives to Adobe Photoshop, Lightroom, and Illustrator have really come a long way in the last 10 years.
What's the alternative to lightroom?
Darktable
The realization of this was one of the things that started my journey of radicalization. When file sharing was recuperated into paid services (iTunes, Spotify, etc), it really made some things clear to me. I didn't have the theory knowledge yet to contextualize it, but it made me very hungry for explanations.
wowe ms-13 killed a white woman and Biden gave them a smooch on the head.
To be fair, not all tech is enshittified, I'm an electronics enthusiast and there are insanely cool open source devices made by the community or by Chinese companies that blow my mind, like the NanoVNA vector Network analyzer, the Pinecil soldering iron, or the meshtastic LoRa-based wireless communication between phones
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As cool as I find the YouTube one, I already hear way too many stories about that from my friend's cousin who's in MS-13
I love being right but also hate being right
I wish I was just a panicky chicken little dumbass who doesn't understand that the powers that be have it all taken care of. Instead I keep getting hit on the head by lab-certified pieces of sky
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