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  • 206 Comments
Joined 6 months ago
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Cake day: January 16th, 2024

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  • Not like they used to, mostly. They just replaced “contract” with “equipment payment plan”. Because $50/mo for 24 months is easier for a consumer to swallow than a lump payment of $1200, especially when the carrier is giving you a $10 or $20 (or more) “discount” on the phone.

    But as long as the EPP is active, the phone is locked to that carrier. And I think that’s fair. No different than the bank holding the title while you finance a car.

    The thing is that the plans that have these equipment deals are significantly more expensive than others. Namely big name plans like TMo or Verizon, compared to MVNO plans like Mint or Visible. So you end up paying more for the plan because you get “a deal” on your phone (but still end up ultimately paying more).


  • I’m reading (well, listening) to a book called “Trust me, I’m Lying” about the modern news cycle, and how lies and intentional outrage at lower levels (blogs and social media) get funneled up to traditional-media, and how that is driven by people like the author.

    I wouldn’t be surprised if causing outrage and later deleting the tweet and following up with a half-hearted non-apology was the intent all along.

    Really great book, IMO. Same guy (Ryan Holiday) had a book about the conspiracy behind the Hulk Hogan sex tape (“Conspiracy”) that was also real good.









  • This is bad practice.

    More accurately it should look something like this:

    # Load sys library for exiting with status code
    import sys
    
    def sayHelloWorld(outPhrase: str="Hello World"):
        # Main function, print a phrase and return NoneType
        print(outPhrase)
        return None
    
    if __name__=="__main__":
        # Provide output and exit cleanly when run from shell
        sayHelloWorld()
        sys.exit(0)
    else:
        # Exit with rc!=0 when not run from shell
        sys.exit(1)
    





  • Y’all gift wrong.

    Please don’t ever spend more than $50 on me unless it’s an experience-gift that we can share (myself and giver), like concert/theater tickets or admission to some event.

    Same is true for my kids. They have tons of toys and we hate your taste in clothes. So we ask for experiences. We’ve got tickets and giftcards for so many local family attractions. They also all have a little collection going of classic literature with gilded pages…stuff like Jules Verne or Treasure Island. So even if they don’t like to read, at least the look nice.

    IDK where you are but gift cards have no fees in the US, except for reloadable prepaid credit cards. And a lot of attractions have timed-entry so you can’t really gift a ticket, since you don’t know when they can go.