I've read that masks do not actually thwart these systems.

I think this takes home the prize for weirdest.

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I've been trying to get used to DDG recently and while I've definitely noticed the decline of Google, that decline has been subtle for me, it hasn't become a disaster, it's just generally frustrating and just not as good as it used to be. But that said, I haven't exactly loved DDG in comparison. It's okay, definitely works, recent outage excepted, but I often found the results kind of needed more work to make use of, they were more kind of, on the topic of what I asked for rather than specifically what I asked within the domain of that topic. It's more like using a search engine as one would have done some 15 or so years ago. Often if trying to find something out I'd be disappointed by the non specific or irrelevant results and get suspicious and try changing back to google for the same thing and found that though they largely contained the same results, Google would have one or two that DDG didn't which were closer to the top of the results and were more specifically about my precise query than just the general topic. I think these tend to be things like forum posts where, if my query is a question, someone's asked basically that exact or very similar question.

I think DDG is mostly working ok enough for me that I'll persevere but I can't say it's been better.

It was brand new at the time come to think of it, it wasn't released until 2008 so this more likely happened in 2009. The timing and the dramatic difference from stock to jailbroken is just too striking to have been a coincidence, although you might be alleviating some 15-16 year old guilt, that perhaps it triggered something. Still very worrying that a new and very expensive phone was triggered in to dysfunction from the process but maybe it was unlucky defective model. I definitely think that while it was jailbroken the problems were as a result of the OS but maybe the Cydia apps or something else were particularly draining and then that fast draining cycle triggered something else physically.

This is mostly sounding reassuring. My wanted banking app is on a list of apps that people have successfully used on Graphene OS so it's probably ok, but yeh, definitely want to be able to go back. I guess I don't know what answer I'm looking for, but in the anecdote I started this post with, I was amazed that it was somehow possible for changes to somehow survive a re-flashing to stock. I really, really don't want that to happen.

Matrix is for chatting, not posts.

This is what I find so odd about modern messaging systems being used in the manner that they're used. I get that the immediacy of conversation is sometimes extremely helpful for discussing topics and I can understand why like minded people would then want to hang out together to have those conversations, but like, it's also kind of flawed for this because of the ephemeral nature of conversation. That's why I wondered if this flaw had been addressed through some forum-like features.

Wow, they sometimes don't provide service to a device physically capable just because of the brand? WHY!? Thanks for the heads up

ah. That's interesting I'll have to see if I can use this same method for determining whether it would work on the Xperia 5V too

My understanding is that we don't use whitelists here (I'm guessing except for stolen phones) although I only have random internet posts to go on for that as well. What's the basis on which you say VoLTE is likely. It's looking likely from the collected internet forum posts and that one youtube video that I've seen but I've been unable to find anything the least bit official. Even if not straight from the horse's mouth then at least a very reputable 3rd party like GSM arena but so far no luck. I've at least been able to confirm the absence of evidence of VoLTE on GSM arena's part is not evidence of absence of the feature because of my own personal case confirming that I can get a false negative this way.

Why China in particular though?

Aww I was just about gush about how awesome they've been all these years. Guess I haven't really kept up to date. I mean it doesn't sound like it's gone totally to shit, but just clearly embarking on a path straight in to the shit

I've never seen an option to pay for one specific article. I think I'd be more inclined to do that than to subscribe. The guardian offers the ability to donate but if I recall it was only in amounts that around $10 or more which feels like it would cover several articles. You could just donate that much and personally consider it a down payment on however many articles you think that buys, but psychologically a cheap price to buy the one specific thing you're trying to read feels more reasonable when you're making the decision to pay or not.

Another idea I've heard is basically getting a subscription to access a big basket of publications with each publication getting paid out of a central pot based on what someone chose to read. I think the various publishers hated this idea from what I heard so it was something of a non starter.

I've done that for broadcast before. Sadly it barely made any difference, but I felt it was at least just a little better than nothing and made it at least possible to sorta see what was supposed to be going on in the low quality source images and those images were the only ones that seemed to exist of the thing we were showing.

I'm freaked out that someone else uses the exact same grouping and naming as me. I mean I guess they were deliberately generic but for some reason I thought no one esle would call their folders the same thing.

I wonder if they were super in to mammals while he was making people to begin with and then suddenly got super bored and was all about them beetles now.

Doesn't sound particularly bothersome. It does leave a little less room for comments which can be pretty dense text especially compared to video thumbnails that.don't need as much room really but at least you can read and scroll at the same time as watch.

Wow I only knew about the /s.

Hmm, but is there a period between each of those times when they weren't funding a genocide here or taking a police action there or a full scale invasion elsewhere that you can identify different cultural beauty standards? It's kind of hard to separate.

Hmm, sounds tentatively good. Definitely worth a shot. Thanks.