For a long time, you couldn’t really buy an unlocked phone straight from the manufacturer in the US. The closest thing was importing one is with the correct network bands (GSM), but that also kind of went away when VoLTE became a requirement.

Relatively recently, some manufacturers started offering unlocked devices sold straight from them, but it wasn’t until Apple started doing it with the iPhone that it became a mass-appeal/well known thing.

So overall it’s because:

• That’s just how things were for a long time
• Carriers offer deals on their locked devices
• 2-year carrier contracts were a thing until the mid 2010s or so
• People are just used to their carrier being a one-stop-shop

Nowadays more people are aware about buying an unlocked phone instead of a carrier firmware/carrier locked device. But in the US I’d say most people only know about iPhones being offered unlocked.

Same specs as you except 5800x3D. Same sentiments at 1440p.

It sucks because that’s also Google and their products/services. So it’s like jumping from one shitty platform into another in the context, except the other one is more niche.

No. As a user of both Amazon and Google devices (with screens/sticks), Amazon is far more aggressive in their advertising practices. As the other guy said, neither is ad-free out of the box, but Amazon devices will literally make your screensaver/lock screen a full screen ad (even on your TV). Google just has a home screen ad about something that’s going to play on streaming, usually.

If you want NO ads, set up DNS ad blocking or get an Apple TV and use that for streaming. But again, Amazon’s devices are FAR more aggressive about advertising as much as possible. My father has one of those Echo Show things that’s a speaker with a rotating screen attached to it. It’s playing ads almost all the time.

In Germany you’re paying to access the bathroom, not the “privilege” of wiping your ass

They’re going to try every medium/platform possible. The only way to tackle this is to teach critical thinking. Easier said than done, I know. Otherwise we board up the internet “for the children” (which is currently happening).

So about that Wifi app in the third screenshot…

Came here to say the same. It’s an empty threat. After all this is famously the company who made dual physical SIM iPhones for China and other Asian regions because eSIM isn’t/wasn’t legal.

I use Seal. It works fine. It has trouble downloading from “official” pages though (e.g. Vevo or Universal or whatever). It’s like those pages, since they’re owned by corporate entities, have some extra protection on them or something. It’s been like this for years, across Android, Windows, Mac, etc – doesn’t matter what I try to use to download, it’ll fail on those pages/accounts.

I cancelled YT Premium after paying pretty much since Google Music was a thing. The price keeps going up ($14/month now here in the US), and Lite is meh even for the discounted price (e.g. no background play I think?).

They just keep building the wall higher and higher, while they survive only because creators keep filling it with content. Nobody is watching “YouTube Originals” or their first party content. YouTube exists solely because of third party creators.

Not only that but I can survive with Brave or Firefox with UBO or whatever. It’s not that hard to avoid the ads, even if it’s a little inconvenient vs being able to use the app.

Ding ding ding. Anyone who’s been paying attention since the beginning should know this.

You can flash the US Unlocked firmware. I use a US Unlocked S22 Ultra. Works on all carriers. No bloatware like what you described. I know what you’re talking about – it’s called Carrier something. It’s a system app. You can disable it but updates might re-enable it.

Good explanation. Thank you.

In a fucked up way, yes. As in I think it’s intentional/logical on their part. The culture of reddit has been changing for a while. I think they would want the “old heads” to leave, but also leave behind their posts/comments for others (and Reddit) to benefit off of.

That’s why people use those web apps that overwrite their comments with garbage. But I always think about how Reddit controls the servers, data, and backups.

The answer:

The device local name string is specified to be encoded in UTF-8. However, the Microsoft Wireless Notebook Presenter Mouse 8000 reports its name as Microsoft⟪AE⟫ Wireless Notebook Presenter Mouse 8000, encoding the registered trademark symbol ® not as UTF-8 as required by the specification but in code page 1252. What’s even worse is that a bare ⟪AE⟫ is not a legal UTF-8 sequence, so the string wouldn’t even show up as corrupted; it would get rejected as invalid.

Thanks, Legal Department, for sticking a ® in the descriptor and messing up the whole thing.

There is a special table inside the Bluetooth drivers of “Devices that report their names wrong (and the correct name to use)”. If the Bluetooth stack sees one of these devices, and it presents the wrong name, then the correct name is substituted.

That table currently has only one entry.

I mean, I don’t get how it’s legal’s fault when they’re not the one’s creating the firmware/programming, but sure let’s blame them. It’s the dev who verbatim copied and pasted the name from legal for whatever reason (even though a normal person wasn’t going to check the firmware to see it).

“Well don’t look at me like I’m frickin’ Frankenstein or something. Give your father a hug.”

They don’t care about whether they live with you or not. It’s about providing less service than what you’re paying for. Like how mobile carriers say, “unlimited data*” – *after 25GB, we [may] slow your connection speed to 256kbps. So this way, it’s “5 accounts*” – *they must physically live with you. So now you’re paying for 5 accounts, where 3 or 4 of them technically are unusable.

Why? Money. Those other people who you would have shared with now need to get their own account(s). Suddenly, “profits are through the roof!” – until the next big squeeze. At this point, Google is squeezing its customers like a dry tube of toothpaste.

Thank you for the new knowledge; I thought this whole time that Opera was renamed Vivaldi after the sale. That explains my original comment.

It’s a coordinated play, that’s why. Their hope and plan is that VPNs become worthless because you’re gonna be VPNing into censored countries anyway. They won’t want anonymity/pseudo-anonymity like we’ve had.

Opera was bought by a Chinese firm years ago. I’m not saying to use it or not based solely on that; it’s just something to keep in mind. That being said, they do have some legitimately useful features, like being able to cap the amount of RAM used with a slider. But yeah, I remember the sale raising some eyebrows.