‘The tyranny of apps’: those without smartphones are unfairly penalised, say campaigners
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You can host a webserver on a Raspberry Pi. I don't know what you're doing with your setup but you absolutely do not need hundreds of watts to serve a few hundred KB worth of static webpage or PDF file. This website is powered by a 30 watt solar panel attached to a car battery on some guy's apartment balcony. As of writing its at 71% charge.
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An Ampere Altra Max CPU has 128 ARM cores (the same architecture that a raspberry pi uses), with a 250 watt max TDP. That works out to about 2 watts per core. Each of those cores is more than enough to serve a little static webpage on its own, but in reality since a lot of these sites get less than a hundred hits per day the power cost can be amortized over thousands of them, and the individual cores can go to sleep if there's still not enough work to do. Go ahead and multiply that number by 4 for failover if you want, its still not a lot. (Not that the restaurant knows or cares about any of this, all this would be decided by a team of people at a massive IT company that the restaurant bought webpage hosting from).
On top of that, even the server setup they talked about wouldn't actually cost that much energy to run, because that's not all that will be running on it. That physical host will likely have dozens or even hundreds of servers running on it, and the small menu serving webserver will account for hardly any of the power draw from the hosts.
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I use a dumbphone. I'm not buying a smartphone just so I can play these stupid games, and I'm installing an app for every fucking business I interact with. I realize there will one day be a point where I won't be able to do things I need to do without one, but until then I have no desire for one. Fortunately they haven't made the parking meters here require a smartphone yet.
My grocery store still uses loyalty cards for most discounts (which is irritating enough), but also has "digital coupons" that require an app so I can't get that. Theoretically I could go to their website and print them off but that's not worth the effort. I have to pay close attention to the price signs they put up because some of them say "with digital coupon" in small print, meaning "not for you, bitch". You know who doesn't pull this kind of shit? Walmart. So I wind up getting a lot of my groceries there so as not to be discriminated against.
Walmart doesn't let you use contactless pay unless you use their app. several times now I've gone there to grab a few things, not realizing i didn't have my card with me, and had to leave a full cart behind because i will not install their adware.
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THIS IS ACTUALLY SO REAL FUCKING SMARTPHONES I HATE STEVE JOBS FUCK YOU WHY DID YOU RUIN TECHNOLOGY.
ok rant over, but seriously though, it's so fucked how you basically just need a smartphone to do ANYTHING these days. I don't want a phone, i have no use for one.
sounds like you DO have a use for one...
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the gates that slide over using a chain, they often have a removable link at the end. If you unhook the chain on the opener side, it will open one more time, then spit all the chain out trying to close it. I used to take that link out when living in complexes with those gates. Made life easier for most. Would take months for it to get fixed. They are just standard 1/2in x1/8in bike chain.
I don't live there anymore, but if I did this would be useful information.
I think I forgot to mention that they had cameras pointed at the gates, and I have an extremely identifiable appearance.
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I literally had to switch bank accounts because I couldn't reset my password "on the web" and required me to use Virgin Money's app.
Customer service agent(s) on the phone after prolonged discussions why their app wouldn't work on three Android phones right in front of me surfaced, and I shit you not
Well sir, I have my iPhone here and can login just fine maybe you should buy one of those instead
That day I found out about this
Dude that comment would make my blood boil, like holy shit.
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Surely that falls afoul of some sort of equality legislation/disability legislation?
in the height of covid panic, there was a wheelchair bound, oxygen tank connected, customer whom I still respect for unrelated reasons, who insisted on entering my store without a mask because he was disabled. My dude. If you are so weak that a mask would kill you, you should not be going to stores right now. Do you not know that there's a plague happening!?!?!? There are delivery services, and it doesn't cost that much.
Americans will find any excuse to justify their lazy entitled bullshit.
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I wouldn't mind these apps if there was actually a technical need for them beyond just being a Chromium component, but with added data slurping and pointless notifications.
If I have to use an app to use your product/store, I won't use your product/store, with a side helping of go fuck yourself on top.
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holy balls that thing looks amazing, is it good?
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Those are laptop keys on a phone, i have seen one of these before, i wonder if there are those with older "phone like" keyboards?
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It's true in many ways. If I buy McDonald's without the app I pay more for it. If I fill up my gas tank without an app like upside, I pay more for it. There are services that aren't even available to people without modern phones (I refuse to call them smart phones). Maybe we need legislation to ensure all available discounts, services and benefits are available to customers equally regardless of how they engage services.
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Walmart doesn't let you use contactless pay unless you use their app. several times now I've gone there to grab a few things, not realizing i didn't have my card with me, and had to leave a full cart behind because i will not install their adware.
Back in the day, Walmart and Apple fought over contactless pay standards for the US.
Apple's standard was eventually mass adopted, and has Walmart refused to license the tech. So you have to use their app, which uses their own tech stack.
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not the person you replied to but, that's better than I figured it was tbh
I'll probally wait quite a bit longer though myself. It even says on the main screen it's not ready for mainstream consumption.
I'm super excited for the project still, it has massive potential.
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Society must revert their mentality and not expect constant immediate access to everything. Absolutely nothing happens on the internet for personal activity that can’t wait a few hours or the next day.
yeah ok so, counterpoint, you pull up to an EV charging station (it's tesla because of course it's tesla) please show me where the card reader is. I'll wait.
Bad example. Tesla chargers don’t use an app, they assume you have an account set up with a credit card on file. Most people do that through the app but I don’t think you have to. Once it’s set up, it just works with no further interaction
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Do NOT give these fucking cunts any fucking money. I was a backer for this phone on indiegogo.
They are liars when they eventually did communicate any updates during the project. They produced around 2000 units, most of which were sent to people who backed the project years after the first backers on indiegogo because they backed on a different platform.
Ultimately they just shut down the kickstarter giving no actual details. They stole thousands of peoples money through that. They made a product with the money people contributed to back the project and then just shuttered the project so they wouldn't need to deliver a device to these backers.
I didn't realise they were now trying to sell them again but the units that did get shipped were massively out of date and barely worked as it is.
If you want a keyboard on a phone Unihertz are about your only option right now.
Fuck planet computers, thieving fucking cunts
It's probably too late to do anything about it, but what you described there does directly violate Indiegogo's TOS in regards to perks, so I'm surprised that people weren't able to reach out to the platform itself and issue chargebacks against the Creator in order to get their backers payments back.
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Walmart doesn't let you use contactless pay unless you use their app. several times now I've gone there to grab a few things, not realizing i didn't have my card with me, and had to leave a full cart behind because i will not install their adware.
Walmart doesn’t let you use contactless pay unless you use their app.
By "contactless pay" I assume you're talking about paying by using a smartphone app? Obviously I don't care about that because the whole point of my post is that I'm not using a smartphone, so obviously I have no apps of any kind.
But if by "contactless pay" you meant paying with your debit card by tapping it or holding it near the card reader, yes they do have that like everyone else.
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Flipphones.... I want a full keyboard phone again. Maybe even a slider full keyboard. Those were the days.
Apps... I evade most apps as much as i can or if i must use closed source apps, i will put them in a secondary profile.
I have a flip phone with a touchscreen so I can type via the onscreen keyboard. When I bought it I wondered how well it would work since the screen is so small, but it works great! So much easier than using the keypad. BTW it also has maps with voice navigation.
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Hey, I usually like to have about 50 PLN (~$12.50) in my wallet, but you can't expect everyone to keep loads of cash on them.
In this thread we ask: Can we expect everyone to use a banking app either? How is that more reasonable, if one of them is democratically controlled and the other is corporate controlled?
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Why are they no option in the US?
Verizon who uses only CDMA has always had by-far the largest most reliable cellular coverage. Unfortunately, they dictate the firmware released to android phones on their network and they will gladly push an OS update to lockdown the bootloader. Phones like the Pinephone go almost completely unsupported by verizon, and a lot of linux phones are only supported by GSM (not CDMA) technology because thats whats used primarily outside the US. The main competitors to Verizon do support GSM but in 2 decades they have not managed to expand and surpass Verizon's network coverage.
For example I briefly did Doordash in the major Public University town I live in and when I was on the competitors network, my cellular data coverage would drop outside the student dorms in the middle of campus. I'd be doing deliveries and the delivery app would suddenly disconnect. -I switched back to verizon a year later, and though I lost some functionality on my phone (like access to the secret diagnostics menu) I now get coverage everywhere insidetown and most places outside town
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It's probably too late to do anything about it, but what you described there does directly violate Indiegogo's TOS in regards to perks, so I'm surprised that people weren't able to reach out to the platform itself and issue chargebacks against the Creator in order to get their backers payments back.
I haven't look at it in a while as I was pissed off that it went down the way it did. Although I personally didn't contact indiegogo many people from the backers within the comments did so and indiegogo refused to do anything about it. So they are complicit in this theft too so by extension I wouldn't advise anyone to use their "service" either.
I did have a look at the campaign because of this comment and nothing has changed, lots of people still complaining about planet computers and indiegogo so it doesnt look like anyone got anywhere in terms of getting their money back.
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https://customblogs.vercel.app/download-our-app-pleaseSo, my comment was removed without even a warning? What rule did I break? The rules clearly state that memes are allowed in comments.
