The 8 to 9 upgrade wasn’t terribly expensive but the rest were a lot more. Do you think the individual upgrades were worth it? What were the biggest jumps in usability?

I still think of the 4A as the last good Pixel, since it has a headphone jack. So I’ve been wondering if it can run current versions of Graphene.

The main attraction of the 9 from my perspective is NTN (satellite) messaging, but older models might get that later. I certainly don’t want AI in my phone.

I see there are some fairly affordable older Pixels on woot right now, particularly refurbs, but some new units too. Refurb 6 is $145 and refurb 7 is $200. New 9 Pro XL is $900, way more than I’m willing to pay. I wonder whether the older ones are basically as good if you don’t care about AI or the fanciest cameras.

Then my laptop is a phone? It’s sort of a phone but it doesn’t connect to the phone network, so only sort of. Since it needs a wifi signal it’s not so mobile either.

Ok but wifi only isn’t really a phone?

I didn’t watch the video but I don’t think there is any phone that lets you avoid having your location tracked. If there is wifi near where you want to use the phone, you could run a voip client on on a wifi-only tablet, perhaps.

I’ve been wondering whether satellite communications gizmos with no GPS allow any type of precise location tracking from the satellite. I’ve been interested in this, which lets you exchange text messages at fairly low cost (about 2 cents per 50 byte unit). Besides possible privacy advantages, it also lets you communicate where there is cell coverage:

https://shop.blues.com/products/starnote-starter-kit

What exactly do you want it to do? You can implement TOTP with a 10 line python script and I probably have a few of those kicking around. I’ve ended up doing that at least a couple of times.

Use a medic alert bracelet if you need something like that. EMTs are trained to look for it. They aren’t going to derp around looking at your phone.

I’ve never been able to get a library card anonymously, but anonymous email is pretty easy I thought. I use mailinator sometimes, which has no registration even.

I set up ZNC and got it working but it was a pain in the neck, took some trial and error, and the docs were confusing. Once I got it going I basically left it alone rather than try to clean up the situation.

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Yeah I’m particularly wondering what the flagship hardware offers (ok, besides the camera) that is interesting. AI slop-enabling tensor cpu, no thanks. Is Graphene really better than LineageOS?

I thought one of the “laws” of consumer electronics was that retail price of a product has to be at least 5x the BOM cost. So for the Pixel 9 Pro to be profitable, there must be a heck of a lot of post-sale revenue coming in from advertising. Ugh.

What does a Pixel 9 Pro do that a $200 retail Moto G doesn’t?

At some point you might just have to just accept it warts and all.

I’ve never felt that interested in flagship phones. Why does anyone buy them if they have warts? Budget phones have similar warts but at least they are affordable. I don’t understand what the Pixel 9 has going for it other than some niche features here and there. I’m not trying to diss Pixel 9 buyers but if I wanted a Pixel at all, I’d probably get an older model. Maybe I’m missing something.

Those used to be called coffee shops, though now they are likely virus spreaders.

This is about installing on a Nexus 5 which is from 2013. Sounds painful.

Does gnu bc have outstanding bug reports? If not, it doesn’t need updates. Its spec was frozen 30 years ago, more or less. Rather than unmaintained, I’d call it maintenance-free. BIFL software as it were. Sounds great to me.

Seems like a whine, bc is an interactive tool and it’s unusual to use it for anything where its response isn’t instant.

GNU bc is one of the oldest GNU tools and it uses an MP library that RMS banged out in an afternoon or two, I think. It could probably be adapted to use GMP which is very high performance.

Preferring GPL to other licenses seems fine with me, unless I want to work for Amazon without getting paid.

It doesn’t and can’t exist, because the networks keep changing. You could have a 2005 phone that still is perfectly solid, but it’s a 2g phone and the networks now are all 4g and 5g. Also, the idea of a smartphone is to use internet services or at least web pages, and those invariably want you to use recently made phone hardware to deal with bloat. If you can get 5 years from a phone you’re doing ok.

I use autotools and don’t remember having such issues.

We have supercomputers in our phones. They can handle it.

Gnus.el