You didn't say, and I wouldn't want to assume the situation, but calling the number on the back of a bank or credit card would work better here (in case it was a bank). This is also an argument in favour of paper bills, or logging in to a customer portal as a best-of-the-worst option

Correct. We all told the person after that they should've called the number from previous communications. But there's so much diligence that's needed in these stressful times and it only takes one mistake to get fooled. Wasn't nearly as bad as this though...

Found your article for you, as I was looking it up the other day:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._economic_performance_by_p...

thanks!

I assumed it was because people here are constantly telling Arathorn that Element (not ElementX) is slow and buggy, and that when they last tried the default server (circa 2019 or so) is was buggy and full of rough edges

He's (in my mind) always positive, open, and willing to admit the shortcomings of the platform he shephards... but damn does he deal with a lot of undeserved criticism (and deserved criticism, where applicable)

Mobile notifications do not require outside operators. UnifiedPush / ntfy is FLOSS, and allows for a single background connection for multiple apps / notification channels. It can also be self-hosted (and I do!)

This puts the operational costs (number of devices and notifications) on whomever is running the server - and because of how valuable metadata is, I expect them to be run in-house by governments

Well I guess you can do the same with zulip, redirect notifications somewhere else that is. Never hosted zulip, but it should be more or less staightforward when hosting it yourself, the 10 free looks like a limit when using their endpoint, not universal.

You would think so, but:

> You won’t find apps for either service on Google Play or any other app store; users who have tried report that it’s impossible to run them on any other third-party device, suggesting that they were custom-built by or on behalf of the makers of SuperBox and vSeeBox.

I'm lucky that I use a greymarket app for Japanese TV that runs on mainstream consumer boxes.

If the vendor is insisting that you use their box and locks the application to that, that is suspicious; it clearly indicates they are not really serious about the service and really want that specific box in your home for some reason unrelated to the service. Huge red flag.

Everyone normal who wants to sell a service would much rather just sell you the service for $200, without that having to include any hardware; dealing hardware is a hassle. Except in one sense in that you can sell a validated total configuration that requires less support.

Ballmer was kinda the best Microsoft CEO for Windows, IMO. He didn't get the Justice department's attention in either the states or Europe, and he started building alternate revenue streams (XBOX, Windows Phone) without destroying the core product. Sure, MetroUI had no place in Server2012, but that was less egregious than the AI-everything and multiple settings menus

Nadella is a marvelous Microsoft CEO for Linux though. Credit where it's due

This cuts both ways - ADP requires changing some settings on-device, and (in some cases I've heard) calling Apple to disable. So it is baked in, but it's hardly easy to enable and disable

GrapheneOS (which, FWIW, I do trust at least as much as ADP) has a web-installer IIRC, making it similarly easy to enable, but a little harder to disable for normal users. Moreover, it's not built-in to the Pixel. It's entirely third-party, and did not ship on mass-market hardware

Being an option on the default OS, with OEM support, can make all the difference sometimes

Maybe I’m mis-interpreting what you mean, but without a notification when a message is sent, what would you correlate a message-received notification with?

> The first electric car predates the 20th century

Great, now do steam. Being produced in the past does not mean it will make a comeback, despite steam being quieter, with great torque, and the main ingredient for propulsion (water) being safer than gasoline for normal people to refuel

>Great, now do steam.

I can assure you I would point out the silliness of someone saying steam technology was not obvious too.

You know that steam is used in nuclear power, right?

Coal also, I am not sure about gas.

Wanting to discourage motorists being around where a massive group of people are expected to gather is reasonable. It's why streets will close for parades and parties. You're turning something designed to protect protestors into a conspiracy to scuttle a protest