General > General Technical Chat
who Needs a Phone
msuffidy:
I used to not want a cell phone. My parents upgraded and gave me 2 older ijphones. My land line, which was mostly unused, was approaching $50 Canadian/month. For the second time it went dead and they botched the repair appointment, so I just cancelled it and got an 'unlimited' cell phone plan with no overages and 20GB of high speed for $75 Canadian/month. This means that I saved $4 per month on my 10mbit DSL and land line formerly. So when it goes slow it goes to 512kbit/s connection, and I use wget and yt-dlp to get stuff slowly. I can live with it, and it is probably the cheapest world connection solution. It does a NAT forward through usb connection to my SmartRG400ac router that is running openwrt.
TimFox:
--- Quote from: Kim Christensen on January 24, 2022, 06:26:49 am ---
--- Quote from: SmallCog on January 23, 2022, 09:47:35 pm ---Not sure which state the OP is in but with the Covid Check in's I'd much rather scan a QR code as I walk into a shop than stop and fill in all my personal details on a piece of paper.
--- End quote ---
But you can just have a card with the QR code on it....
--- End quote ---
In Chicago, proof of vaccination is now required for bars, restaurants, and entertainment venues (not grocery stores, etc., but the State mask mandate applies indoors).
There are smart-phone based apps available that are accepted (must include photo ID to verify that you are, in fact, the Fred Flintstone on the vaccination record).
However, my experience starting in October when concerts, operas, and theaters united to require this is that the digital thingies are much slower at ID check than my simple procedure:
We keep our original CDC Covid records safely at home in the file cabinet, and use 1x photocopies (which are acceptable) that we carry. Folding this over once is the right size to go over a driver's license, and that fits nicely into a shirt or jacket pocket. It is much faster to pull out the paper copy, unfold it, and hold the license to show everything important to the checker than what I see in front of me with people pulling out there phone and finding the appropriate bit.
BrokenYugo:
--- Quote from: SomeGuy on January 24, 2022, 04:09:42 am ---I'm not attached to my phone like some people but it's kind of a necessity to have these days. Even just for 2 factor authentication, if not for spotify or looking things up.
--- End quote ---
Yeah, I converted about 2 years ago and honestly it was getting to be a pain in the ass carrying only a dumb phone for a couple years before that. That stupid rectangle has replaced like half a laptop (well enough I only own a desktop PC now) and my GPS, it will even SSH into my home network stuff for quick checks and whatnot, connects to my print server (print a datasheet from anywhere in the house!), has an internet connection when the house doesn't, acts as an OBD2 code reader in my car, etc.
It's only a box of endless distraction if you let it be one, my app list is short, no Facebook, minimal notifications, if it can be done in browser it mostly is.
Also, if you want to actually keep a low profile, actively avoiding the one thing everybody now does is probably not a good strategy.
Halcyon:
Almost every person in Australia has a mobile phone yet landline phones are dying off pretty quickly. The old analog POTS network is just about non-existent these days so everyone is relying on VoIP in one form or another.
How useful your phone is depends on how much crap you install on it. For example, I don't use social media at all, so the constant garbage most people get bombarded with doesn't exist on my device (I couldn't give a flying fuck what someone posts on "Insta"). I use mine for calls, messages (SMS and Signal), personal email, 2FA and some finance/banking applications. That's it.
I purposely keep work-related email on my work PC only so I'm not disturbed by 95% of the crap that isn't intended for me.
I'd say, you're making your life much more difficult without one.
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