Spyke

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Is it time for 6G already? Traffic analysis says yep

4G, 5G and now 6G are worthless if cell providers don't provide enough bandwidth to the towers. The range also keeps decreasing as the generations increase, so now there are these big gaps that 3G used to cover.

In my area, 5G is slower than 4G and both have lower signal and slower speeds than 3G used to have. I need a dual SIM phone and to constantly switch my phone between AT&T and T-Mobile, and both are crap. I only use about 1GB in total too, and I'm lucky if I can pull more than 1 megabit on either service. I miss 3G speeds, coverage, and competition.

Worst of all, AT&T is forcing home users to switch to a 5G hotspot from DSL. It's probably a big part of why the cell towers are always overloaded too. Imagine running your home internet on 1 megabit with constant drops...

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US residents: What big domestic policy improvements have the american people won from congress in the last 30 years?

SOPA/PIPA

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stop_Online_Piracy_Act

That bill would have completely destroyed the internet. Democrats and republicans alongside Hollywood faught the American people and lost. It's the only time I've seen the people actually win, and pretty much every individual regardless of their other politics was united against it. It's debatable if we could have done it without Google and the rest of big tech helping though. But still, it sent a clear message across the entire political spectrum that there was a line they couldn't cross.

We also briefly won Net Neutrality ( https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Net_neutrality ), and although it's no longer in effect, the ISPs would have probably done a lot worse if they didn't know we cared and are watching.

Honestly though, I don't know if stopping things from getting a lot worse should even count as an "improvement".

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Samsung joins Google in RCS shaming Apple

Apple is not going to change this unless legally forced to because it is quite possibly the biggest driver of iPhone sales.

A whopping 87% of American teens use an iPhone, and the green text from Android SMS is the biggest reason. At that age people will do almost anything to fit in and get a date, and the green text was chosen specifically to elicit an "eww" response. Most of those teens will likely will continue to use iPhones as adults because it's what they know.

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Seeing how good Lemmy is makes me frustrated with Mastodon

I think fundamentally Mastodon can't work. The entire point of Twitter is for celebrities, brands and governments to have a single place to be able to send out a public message and for that message to be seen by everyone, especially those who opt in to it by following. Decentralized alternatives by definition can't do that. Centralization is the entire point of Twitter.

Decentralization does work for Reddit/Lemmy though, because they are content centric, not person centric. I don't care who posts content to the subreddits I follow, just that the content exists, can be easily viewed (RIP third party Reddit apps, hello Lemmy!), and is interesting. Lemmy doesn't need hundreds of millions of people in a single place to create enough content that is interesting, and in fact having fewer people makes the content that is posted more interesting and focused. Lemmy's decentralization is a strength because if this instance doesn't have the interesting content I want, I can just go elsewhere.

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The golden years

The bus picked me up at 6:30 AM and I had extracurriculars, so I didn't get home from the late bus until after 5:30 PM. I'd almost always have an hour or two of homework too, but usually I could get it done on the bus or during other classes. But not always.

Then there is the puberty and hormones, plus the depression from not being popular or good looking, which still affects me today.

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Disney’s password-sharing crackdown has begun

I cancelled my Netflix the moment that announced their new account sharing policy, which, looking back on it was probably too early for it to count as protest. I don't personally share my account, but I knew that if they were able to pull it off that every other streaming service and probably other services would do the same thing.

Consumers can beat these large corporations, but only when they stand up for themselves. See Wizards of the Coast and Unity. Unfortunately Netflix subscribers did not, and now this is the new standard.

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Return-to-office orders look like a way for rich, work-obsessed CEOs to grab power back from employees

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When I was an intern at a large company, the CIO talked to our small group of interns. He said he worked around that much, and I don't think he was lying. He told us about his typical day.

The company was located in a big city and he lived in the suburbs with a long commute by taxi and train. He would get up at 5AM to start the commute. He worked on the train and taxi. Then he would leave the office at 5PM, work on the commute home, have dinner and family time for 2 hours, then work until bed at around midnight. He said he was lucky he only needed 4 hours of sleep and how much he treasured the 2 hours he spent with his family every day. It was the only time he refused to take calls.

I think part of the problem why executives mistreate their workers so much is that they themselves are overworked and exhausted. Despite having a ton of money, they don't get to enjoy it, so it becomes meaningless.

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Explained: Why you can't move Windows 11 taskbar like Windows 10, according to Microsoft

"Microsoft applied a data-driven approach to find out which features to add now, which features to add later, and which to completely avoid.

Unfortunately, for the enthusiasts who had a left-aligned or vertical taskbar in Windows 10, you would have to settle for the fact that Microsoft’s data shows such users are really small when compared to the number of users who are asking for other newer features in the taskbar."

100% of the users that are smart enough to care about moving the task bar are also smart enough to turn off all optional telemetry. This sadly a part of why tech companies are making products for the dumbest people and pushing away power users.