I haven’t transferred data over a usb cable in at least a decade. This means nothing to me.

Weird. My txt said the following:

“Hi, it’s AT&T. As early as Oct. 2nd, the AutoPay and Paperless discount for customers paying by credit card will decrease from $10 to $5 per line. If you prefer to use your credit card, no action is required to receive a $5 discount.”

Sounds like your offer is different. One quick tip if you are looking for other ways to save on AT&T. If you sign up for AARP you can get an additional $10 off of the top plan in addition to the paperless discount on AT&T.

Some Minivans share the same chassis as sedans. I’m not starting to call sedans “Minivans” just because the chassis is shared.

Senior developer here. It is hard to overstate just how useful AI has been for me.

It’s like having a junior programmer on standby that I can send small tasks to–and just like the junior developer I have to review it and send it back with a clarification or comment about something that needs to be corrected. The difference is instead of making a ticket for a junior dev and waiting 3 days for it to come back, just to need corrections and wait another 3 days–I get it back in seconds.

Like most things, it’s not as bad as some people say, and it’s not the miracle others say.

This current generation was such a leap forward from previous AI’s in terms of usefulness, that I think a lot of people were looking to the future with that current rate of gains–which can be scary. But it turns out that’s not what happened. We got a big leap and now are back at a plateau again. Which honestly is a good thing, I think. This gives the world time to slowly adjust.

As far as similarities with crypto. Like crypto there are some ventures out there just slapping the word AI on something and calling it novel. This didn’t work for crypto and likely won’t work for AI. But unlike crypto there is actually real value being derived from AI right now, not some wild claims of a blockchain is the right DB for everything–which it was obviously not, and most people could see that, but hey investors are spending money so lets get some of it kind of mentality.

That txt from ATT about the paperless discount was so poorly worded. Took me forever to realize I can still get the $10 discount if I switch the autopay to a debit card. It’s only the credit card autopay/paperless that is getting reduced to $5.

I think it is way more likely they just bought imagery from existing sources. There are tons of high res imagery out there that you can purchase. Price is usually determined by how old it is. This seems way more likely than an insurance company hiring a drone operator and going door to door. Secondly, companies never share the details of things like this. Wherever the source, they are unlikely to share it. Companies don’t give details because they don’t want to fight you. They just want to cancel your account and move on.

That isn’t to say this is right.

Do we want insurance companies peering into our backyards from imagery? I don’t. Regardless of if it’s a drone or not.

I have such mixed emotions about Python. I have to concede its uses. Especially when working with data and data scientists. A lot of people use it. There is a good amount of existing code floating around that can be re-used, etc. Its never the first language I reach for, but I have to accept that a lot of people use it.

But OMG, I have had to re-install my OS more than once due to python versioning issues. Not recently sure, I think I have it figured out now with virtualenv and pyenv, but it literally has caused me to reformat twice after getting too deep into dependency version mismatch hell.

Just also want to add:

When A federates with B, it does not get B’s content. A only gets content from B that A’s users subscribe to.

USA perspective:

Here, dental insurance isn’t really “insurance” like health insurance. Everyone needs dental work and preventative. Dental insurance is better thought of as a “discount plan”.

The cost of preventative is factored in. You have to go to their dentists with whom they have a relationship with and have negotiated a rate. And then they barely pay anything on major stuff.

If an employer is paying for it, great, it’s a little bonus–but I don’t think it is usually in your best interest to sign up out of pocket, unless you know you need something major done and the premium is less than the maximum payout. BUT–usually these plans (when signed up individually) have a waiting period on major items. This means you have to factor in 2 years of premiums to see if it is worth it.

On a side note, if you do need some major work done, there are a lot of different countries you can go to and get it done for a lot less and also get a vacation in at the same time.

This is the true LPT.

If you carry a small splitter, then you don’t have to try and find an empty outlet at airports and such. Unplug, split, Plug.

Going to need a little more power, do you have a 50Amp outlet in the back?

My options are $65 a month for 10Mb download / 768 kbit upload and 120ms ping to gaming servers, and about 1 in 10 packet loss. Or… $120 a month for starlink which gives me 100-200 MB download and 50-100 MB upload and 40-60ms ping to gaming servers and about 1 in 100 packet loss.

Not rude at all. I wouldn’t even ask for a phone charge.

Just don’t plug your giant bitcoin miner in.

I don’t know what the answer is, but I hope it is something more environmentally friendly than burning cash on electricity. I wonder if there could be some way to prove time spent but not CPU.

I think I’m miss stating my key point.

When I swap a SIM card out for one in the country I am in, how am I going to receive all my SMS and RCS messages tied to the phone number? Nobody uses SMS/RCS outside of North America. Making people in other countries pay per message to send me a text or photo is weird. And yes a lot of plans internationally still charge per message, which is why most messaging is on WhatsApp in Europe, South America, and Aftrica. Line in Asia. Kakao Talk in Korea, WeChat in China. And none of this has to do with iPhone not using RCS–which sure, they should adopt–but it’s because people don’t want their phone carrier involved in their messaging. So again, even if Apple implemented RCS–and they should–I don’t think we are seeing any kind switch back to using phone carriers to deliver messages outside of North America.

When I use iMessage I use my email address as the source/destination, not phone number. And in that sense, it is no different to me than WhatsApp, Line, KakaoTalk or WeChat. And I use all of those too depending on what country my recipient is in. Whether SMS/RCS I don’t want the message tied to a phone number that might be temporary. So again, when I ask my android friends to move to WhatsApp or another app it is not because iMessage is better. It’s that SMS and even RCS are worse than everything.

What? I only said SMS is inferior to everything. Whether it’s googles latest chat, WhatsApp or iMessage I don’t care. Just no SMS.

iPhone user here. Not a dealbreaker, but I can explain why some people may want to switch platforms. Blue bubble iMessages go out over the Internet–wifi, cell data, whatever. Green bubbles need cell signal and go over the cell network as an SMS, Blue bubbles can go out over cell network (via data), but they also can go out via wifi.

For me this means green bubbles cause a couple issues:

• Many places I go do not have cell coverage. Sometimes its a dead area because of mountains, sometimes its an office building that is too thick. In both cases, iMessage blue bubbles still work. Green bubbles do not.
• When I travel internationally I might not purchase an International plan. But you can bet the hotel I am staying at and most bars/restaurants I can go to have wifi. This means I can still communicate without buying a SIM card or purchasing a data plan. FURTHER, even if I did purchase a SIM card, now we are talking international SMS messages which cost a ton.

Now not a dealbreaker. I just move those conversations to Whatapp, Messenger, Line, KakaoTalk, whatever. It’s not a big deal. And definitely not a dealbreaker. If it’s a dealbreaker for someone that should be a red flag.

I can still be friends with someone even if they did choose the wrong phone ;) /s