You could potentially match on audio, though -- look for the 15 seconds of podcast audio preceding the ad, and the 15 seconds following it, if folks reported it in a sponsorblock way.

Alternatively, we could build a shazam-style database of 30 second podcast ads, then skip them when they're identified. There isn't much variety out there.

Unfortunately true. Support sites you love through purchases, subscriptions, and donations. Ads are, at best, a vector of mental malware. At worst, a vector of actual malware.

What are the chances that an IR LED hat would get you run over by a self-driving vehicle? We already know they don't deal well with anything out of the ordinary, and they routinely slam into trucks and barriers.

Yeah, roll one out with a 5.8" screen and a headphone jack amd I'll buy it at a premium. I'd shell out even more for a true iPhone mini-sized phone if they make the battery fat enough for decent battery life -- small phones can still be ergonomic and light enough with a little extra chonk.

Giant screen, no headphone jack? No thanks, I might as well buy a $50 android phone at a gas station.

The containers UI is damn near unusable, they've squeezed so many of those "offers" into the tiny addon manager popup.

I wish Mozilla had management who understood their userbase. But instead they keep pulling this crap which only makes me (and likely most other power users) less likely to use Mozilla branded products.

Saw someone open a PR with this fully implemented a couple of months ago.

Goddamned PM faffed about "UI research necessary before we make changes", linked them to a bugzilla post closed in favor of a JIRA ticket only internal users could view...

And then closed the PR, denying the change. And we wonder why Mozilla has been struggling so much lately.

I know you don't want to hear it, but if you want a phone that's (relatively) privacy respecting, reliable as hell, well constructed so it won't break after just a couple of years, and supported for a long time... you just described an iPhone. You could be the 2022 SE today for $400ish and use it for 3+ years before you have to do anything to it, and even then you'd just have to pay $69 or so for a battery swap. You could also buy a 13 Mini or a 12 Pro for close to the same price and get an OLED screen and a better camera.

The Pixel series is probably your best bet in terms of specs and theoretical support. But I would be very surprised if you were able to use a Pixel for 3+ years without developing a hardware issue. Maybe you'll be lucky, but I wouldn't bet on it, personally. My partner's 4a isn't even 3 years old yet and it's clear that Google does not backtest any of their software updates on older hardware either. Hopefully that changes going forward, but Google has a pretty shit record with long-term support. They've promised to make replacement parts available for the 8 year lifespace of the 8 series phones, but the phones are glued together and hard to repair, so unless you're hardcore about DIY, it's unlikely that you'll bother with it. Instead you'll likely end up going to a repair shop, which you could also do with older Pixels today. And both Pixels and their replacement parts are iPhone-level expensive unless you're playing the carrier incentive game.

I'm not sure why others are shitting on the Fairphone's hardware. I think it's incredibly dumb that they killed the aux jack, and the phone is way too big for my liking... but it's literally built to be easy to repair. And Fairphone has a proven track record of support for their phones. It isn't perfect, but I'm much more likely to believe that you'd use a Fairphone for 5+ years than a Pixel. If you're concerned about part availability down the road, just buy a couple of spare batteries, a spare screen, a spare camera module, and a spare USB-C port today.

Verizon-style bootlocking ought to be criminal.

It's a tradeoff of convenience. I want the jack because it's a universal standard that doesn't require external batteries or the right alignment of the stars for proper functionality. Quality has been fine since the dawn of the smartphone, IMO, at least for earbuds. You're still free to use a USB DAC if there's a jack!

I'm glad that it works for you. Doesn't work for everyone, unfortunately. There are still a few brands out there that release new phones with the jack. Supporting them demonstrates that there's still a market out there. I find Bluetooth buds, even the great ones, a frustrating enough experience that I don't want to rely on ONLY that for music listening.

Same thing with small phones; there aren't many out there, but I show my support where I can. I may not be the majority but I think the jack is a large enough "niche" that it will absolutely be out there for a long time. In fact I suspect as people get tired of the $200/year (for good bluetooth buds) hamster wheel the jack will actually increase in popularity. But it takes time for all of those bluetooth buds to break down on people, and for people to decide that enough is enough.

I still remember getting in trouble at my public school with the IT admin because my friends and I discovered how to write BAT files, and had the brilliant idea to create a bunch of fork bombs that self-replicated until they froze their host computer.

Unfortunately I think kids today don't even get enough leeway to figure that sort of shit out. But kids are awfully good at finding cracks in systems, so maybe they've just figured out how to get up to similar hijinks with GUIs and cloud storage.

Sadly, I think they saw the writing on the wall with Google's RCS push, and the decided lack of RCS APIs for Android apps to implement an RCS interface outside of Google. SMS has a lot of staying power, so it won't happen overnight. But there's a good chance that third-party RCS apps on Android will never be a real thing, or will forever end up hobbled. I think the Signal product folks imagined they had a LOT more clout than they actually had in the community. Sort of a less disastrous version of the Twitter and Reddit changes this year, trying to lock folks in.