It really was remarkable how hated this device was at the time and I say this as one of the kids online laughing and calling it the taco gauge and ridiculing it for the side talking which lets be real isnt that egregious(and actually in what is likely intentional design the shell around the screen when placed to ear looks a lot like a side profile of an old phone). I do sometimes think back to it and how in hindsight it was just a smartphone that played games.
It was a little too ahead of it's time.
This is absolutely heartbreaking and the inevitable result of not just the repeal of roe but the active punishment of women. And people who are anti choice have this image in their head that it's some woman who slept around, didnt feel like using a condom and at 8 months 3 weeks is trying to use an abortion in place of birth control. They believe that obviously that the law wouldnt be so cruel and sinister as to cause people to die and withhold medical care and make exceptions when it makes sense.
But then theres this:
Soon after the ruling, the Biden administration issued federal guidance reminding doctors in hospital emergency rooms they have a duty to treat pregnant patients who need to be stabilized, including by providing abortions for miscarriages.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton fought against that, arguing that following the guidance would force doctors to “commit crimes” under state law and make every hospital a “walk-in abortion clinic.” When a Dallas woman asked a court for approval to end her pregnancy because her fetus was not viable and she faced health risks if she carried it to term, Paxton fought to keep her pregnant. He argued her doctor hadn’t proved it was an emergency and threatened to prosecute anyone who helped her. “Nothing can restore the unborn child’s life that will be lost as a result,” he wrote to the court.
Genuinely an evil evil man.
The weirdos crusading against bloat helped keep distros light weight and performant decades on. It allowed a linux distro to fly on older hardware that was bogged down by newer linux versions. The legacy to this day is that WMs like KDE can actually be fairly light weight and there is still attention paid to not using a lot of resources.
Nowadays I feel like the complainers dont even have a consistent definition of what bloat is and it ranges from command line only users who know theyre crazy and niche but speak up anyway, to people who are just upset if a distros ships with basic default tools like an image viewer or something that opens text files or videos, or drivers.
The whole thing is also silly with how much cheaper ram and storage have gotten. Even moreso because the distro and WM isnt the limiting issue. Yes you can still run a KDE based distro with 2gigs of ram, but as soon as you open your web browser and visit the modern internet the dozen high definition images that load in and videos and javascript.
It's literally what happened to the individual. Its not a bait and switch and chubby emu especially goes into detail explaining exactly what happens with a disclaimer at the beginning citing the journal this came from and explaining that this is uncommon but if you do show symptoms after licking to seek medical help and mention you have pets.
One of the issues I have with non alcoholic products is that because they are meant to be a drop in replacement for alcoholic they wind up being comparable in price sometimes even more expensive.
For what is effectively a softdrink you wind up paying almost 14-$20 a 6pack and a mocktail at a bar can cost $10+ a cup. Compared to something like soda, flavored seltzers, or a malty brewed softdrink like malta the prices are so high. You can get 12-24 packs for what theyre asking. Some mocktails actually take quite a lot of effort to put together to justify the pricetag, but most Ive seen in the wild tend to be simple to make and in terms of labor not much more than a late or milkshake despite being priced way above them.
That said there's nothing wrong with giving people more options to drink while out and about and if you do enjoy the taste of beer to be able to enjoy it without having to get buzzed(even if for some even a mild kick is part of the point)
While I understand the concern over the single appstore monopoly that we have on any device, I think it's worth remembering what ecosystem android and IOS came into.
The old multimedia phones that were sold in the mid 00s were effectively "smart". Many of them ran java and you could install programs, and freely install ringtones, and browsers that actually worked like opera mini/mobile. The thing is you couldnt by default. At least not in the US. The devices were locked down and everything you did went through the carrier's store. And US telecom services are some of the greediest and scummiest companies out there so you couldnt even use your own mp3 files as a ringtone.
Apple combated this with their closed off ecosystem, but android did face issues with fragmentation in the early days and needed a way to prevent the telecoms branded phones from stinking up the ecosystem. They did this by leveraging the play services and play store. From the playstore they can also since mainline release various peacemeal updates which helps resolve their other issue with fragmentation and thats android device being abandoned.
Sure enough you can still release your own version of android without it, amazon's tablets and tv sticks do pretty well.
That said I do think it's a good to help people move past the default and open up the platforms more, I just wish it would apply to all smart devices,
Anyone else watching this series? It's really well done and does a great job of going over matches as well as the two shoes during the 90s. The host has a knack for good commentary and a dash of humor mixed in for good measure.
Its not specifically hard but its also not just as easy to use. I say this as someone whos been gaming on linux for over a decade now. You still run into issues here and there with proton(often a devs fault for bad code) and there is genuinely a lot more going on and tweakable on the steamdeck.
Steamdeck is a great device but Nintendo is good at making simple systems