101–110 of 141 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Rarely use the phone, often use it to check emails, reply to customers, create shipping orders, manage bank accounts and credit cards, view Reddit and Slacker News. Yeah, you're right. I wish the Android hosts file would fucking block hotspot traffic, as well.
It does on my Android. This is not standard (on a rooted device, with AdAway installed)?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Language changes. Phone now means (primarily) thing-in-pocket, but importantly its _shorter_ than thing-in-pocket so phone it is. Don't think so? I misplaced my ____. Sally is playing games on her ____. Joe is watching netflix on his ____.
Phablet?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think other languages call "phones" different things. In German I think it's a "handy". While like most German words its a bit awkward, it does seem closer to the truth.
But for English speakers it seems childish which also reinforces some of the stereotypes of European attitudes to tech.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Get lost and have to stop/call for directions? Abandoning modern technology doesn't seem like the better alternative in this case.
Spend a few minutes looking at a map before the trip?
I used to get to the destination station, and would wait for the phone to get a reliable connection to download the map tiles... then the dodgy phone "compass"/magnetometer needed calibration, so wave it in a figure eight for a while, try to reconcile surroundings with arrow that keeps flipping direction, etc.
I get on much better with "south out of station, left onto X street, right onto Y street, final left onto Z street, then watch out for that building eyeballed on Google Streetview earlier".
The article uses the word "phone" about 40 times. Based on my own usage patterns, I don't even have a phone. I have a portable computer. I happen to use it to make phone calls a few times every week. I use my desktop to make video calls a few times a month, but I don't call that a phone. We all know a smartphone is a computer, and I'm not trying to be pedantic about the words we use, but I think our insistence that t…
But a phone... a phone is a social lifeline. In the 80s, it was a mark of privilege to get a phone -- even a regular, POTS, wired touch-tone phone -- installed in your room as a kid. The truly posh got their own phone lines. It meant you could keep in touch with your friends (or bf/gf) whenever you wanted. Themed phones (football, New Kids on the Block, etc.) were commonplace. This even extended into the cellular era with things like custom faceplates for Nokia dumbphones.
Technically you're correct. A smartphone is a computer. It has a CPU and RAM and can run programs and is indistinguishable from a computer in terms of its structure. But your technical distinction between "computer" and "phone" is as meaningful to most people as the technical distinction between "mammal" and "fish" would be to the ancient Hebrews, who called the whale that swallowed Jonah a "great fish". They classed everything in practical terms related to their own experience, under which a fish was anything that swam in the sea and had to be hunted or caught by people in boats.
To most a "computer" runs Windows or occasionally macOS and is used by students, office drones, and lizard people to crunch numbers or prepare documents. A "phone" is a tool for people with social lives to engage in and manage those social lives. From a perspective of what it's used for, it has a lot more in common with an office phone or a teenager's NKOTB-themed bedroom phone than it does a computer.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
First of all, not having a GPS does not automatically imply getting lost. People used to be able to navigate just fine most of the time before that technology was available. And then, what's wrong with asking someone for directions? I've been asked many times in the olden days and never once was it an unpleasant experience.
And then, what's wrong with asking someone for directions? Ask this 14 year old.... https://www.cnn.com/2018/04/14/us/michigan-man-shoots-at-tee... The last thing I want to do is be lost somewhere in the South. Yes I live in the south.
Not to detract from your experience (after all, you live there), but I doubt that situation is representative of most of the world.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
What do you do for navigation? (Thats literally the only feature keeping me with a smart phone right now).
GPS doesn't need data, just use an offline maps app on the tablet. HERE is okay, Google Maps nowadays also lets you download areas to use offline, and there are multiple apps that can use OpenStreetMap data.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
And then, what's wrong with asking someone for directions? Ask this 14 year old.... https://www.cnn.com/2018/04/14/us/michigan-man-shoots-at-tee... The last thing I want to do is be lost somewhere in the South. Yes I live in the south.
Thanks for the anecdote. Doesn't prove a thing.
The "anecdote" is even in my own neighborhood, if my son invites some of his White friends (who are his guests) to hang out at our neighborhood pool. He gets asked does he belong there? Do you think I would leave him in a position to have to walk up and ask a random stranger for directions if he got lost while driving?
It was sheer luck that both the teenager didn't die and the guys own camera showed he was lying. If the boy had been killed the man would have gotten off. If the camera hadn't been there, they would have taken the word of "upstanding member of society -- a retired fireman" over the word of "just another teenage thug" and the boy would have been arrested.