I’m beautiful and tough like a diamond…or beef jerky in a ball gown.

  • 67 Posts
  • 211 Comments
Joined 11 months ago
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Cake day: July 15th, 2025

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  • IMO, peak internet experience was when you had to make an effort to log on. i.e. dialing-up and tying up the phone line. Yeah, the speeds sucked and sometimes you got the dreaded “all circuits are busy now” message during peak hours, but everything else about the experience was better.

    When you logged into AIM/ICQ/MSN/Yahoo, etc, you did so with a purpose. You never worried about bothering someone by messaging them at a bad time because if it was a bad time to do so, they wouldn’t be online in the first place.

    “Back in my day” (lol), the internet wasn’t always on, it wasn’t demanding your attention, it wasn’t pestering you with constant notifications, it wasn’t in your face all the time, it wasn’t constantly recommending or suggesting things at you (not “to” you, at you) etc, etc. It was there when you needed it but didn’t butt into your life every second when you weren’t.

    You could disconnect.

    I honestly don’t know what we can really do about it. Personally, I turn off pretty much anything that can send a notification except SMS/MMS and check manually when I want to. Some people hate that and get annoyed that I rarely respond instantly to IMs and such, but I hate being constantly “on” as well as the expectation to be.











  • A few years ago I decided to try the lithium-ion UPSs. I’m on my 3rd year with them, and I will never go back to lead acid. I’ve got one “classic” UPS that is still in good shape as long as you don’t try to run more than 100w from it, but when it goes, it goes.

    These use the LiFePO4 batteries, and I get close to twice the runtime as my old ones, and they don’t drop from 80% to 10% like lead acids do. The battery chemistry is also good for about 10 years of daily cycling, so assuming the electronics hold out, they seem like they’ll last.

    The only hiccup with the model I got is it doesn’t have a serial monitor connection, but you can probably fine plenty that have it.





  • You can’t uninstall Play services once it’s installed (or if you’re on a stock ROM where it’s “baked in”), but you can disable it. Apps -> Set option to “show system” -> Google Play Services -> Disable

    Will it crash as soon as I uninstall it?

    No. However, you won’t be able to use most Google apps and RCS messaging and anything that relies on Google sign in or integrated Google Maps will not work.

    You’ll also get hammered with “Google Play Services are unavailable” notifications from SO MANY APPS. Most of those, you can go into the app’s notifications and disable the alert for “Play Services Availability”. The only one I can’t disable on my phone is from Android Setup, but it only pops up once after a reboot.

    Some apps depend on it more than others. Some will just complain that Play Services aren’t available but otherwise work just the same, but others will lose some functionality depending on how they use those services. For example, my bank app still works but complains Play Services isn’t enabled.

    Most apps that depend on Play Services use it for notifications. So, with my bank app, I no longer receive transaction notifications. I can live without those, though, but some people may not be able to.

    Can I have Android but not Play Services?

    Yes. Most custom ROMs don’t include it by default or offer builds that exclude it.

    Should I use MicroG? If yes, where do I download it?

    You can only install MicroG or other Play Services features before booting into the phone for the first time (e.g. with custom ROMs), but you can’t just replace Play Services with MicroG.





  • What are you honestly tired of people bitching about by this point?

    Literally everything.

    Half the posts I scroll past are just someone bitching about something. Few people posting about cool stuff, most people posting about rage this or rage that. Or if there is a post about something good, there’s people bitching in the comments how it’s not good enough.

    Ugh. It’s like this place wants to be miserable and doesn’t know any other way to exist.