The toggle showed up on Monday but RCS didn’t start working until yesterday. I have T-Mobile.

I probably check all the boxes. Currently a cyber security engineer have worked in infrastructure for the last twenty years and currently head up the compliance team of the cyber division of the company I work for, I focused mainly on NIST, CMMC, and SOC II compliance. I’ve modded a few forums and discord servers over the last 20 or so years. There is no way in hell I’m dropping private info on a random google doc that’s open to the public. If there is a more secure way send my info send me a message.

As someone that flips between Samsung and iPhone they all are selling us the same shit every year. Smartphones in general have gotten stale. I can’t remember anything in the last 5 years that anyone has announced that made me think I have to upgrade my device. Maybe it’s just me but the tech seems boring now.

And you’ll probably need Windows Pro to be able to disable it. The average user isn’t digging through a registry so it will stay on for most users.

Time to loosen your tinfoil hat it’s starting to cut of circulation.

If they are making it past your firewall and hitting your computer then the firewall is open and it shouldn’t be. Or that’s an outbound connection triggering the alert.

Article sounds like it was written by the credit card companies. I use a credit card for all purchases and pay off monthly and I got back 1500 dollars. That isn’t paying for a whole lot of travel for a family of four, which is what my household is. Also 1-2 % investment is a joke. My company pays 3% to process credit cards and if you take Apple Pay it’s higher.

I’ve deleted my account way before Elon bought the company and haven’t been back since. When I was super active on Twitter which was many years ago and they said I had to pay a small fee every month I would have stopped using it right away. I don’t see the benefit of having social media and I sure as shit won’t pay for any of them. I’m in my 40’s so maybe it’s just me or my age but I can’t imagine anything on those platforms that would be worth a dollar a month.

Sounds like he’s trying to recoup lost revenue and I can’t imaging this is going to work out well for them.

Well shit. I print a few times a year so we will see what kind of crap I have to deal with.

Big box retailers is mostly expensive electronics for me. TV’s and computer parts. After getting bricks from Amazon on a GPU purchase I won’t get anything I can’t open on the spot in a store to make sure I am getting what I paid for. I’ll also drop in for stuff I don’t want to wait on shipping for like console accessories and headphones if mine broke.

I just had to get rid of a canon printer that I’ve had for the last 10 years or so and I had been looking for a printer that I didn’t have to deal with this. As much as I hate HP I got one of their printers that use the tanks you fill with bottles of ink and so far so good. Good luck on them trying to DRM the liquid ink. I’ve purchased a 3rd party bottle of ink and it still prints like their first party bottles so I think that’s the route I’m going from now on.

Now they have some other bullshit you have to deal with like having a friggin account to manage the printer locally so I just set it up on the screen itself. I blocked its outbound connection to on the firewall so it can’t connect out and I haven’t had any issues. I sniffed the traffic I did see it trying to upload something after a print so they are more than likely trying to steal my data but I’ve been working on IT for 20 years so they won’t get my shit but I wouldn’t recommend it for someone that doesn’t have the ability to do that.

I support a few business that have locations in Texas that can’t get fiber or cable internet. We use Viasat for them. I wanted starlink since we were seeing people with the service that had way better speeds and latency compared to Viasat.

I was waitlisted a while back but because of all the Elon bullshit when I got my email saying it was available I opted to just stick with Viasat.

My Apple Card gives me 1-3% depending on the purchase type. I average 2% since I use Apple Pay all the time.

Fraudulent parts on Amazon is a mix clever and just plain dumb I got bricks instead of a GPU. For work I’ve gotten a handful of hard to notice frauds. We got some Samsung SSDs the older sata drives not NVMe. One was a different shade of black and looked altered. It had the guts of a USB drive with a usb to sata homebrew conversion. That one Amazon took back no questions but it was a company purchase so they probably treat those differently.

For Legos if they were frauds I would imagine it would be noticeable. It’s probably a discount because of the volume they purchase.

If you buy legos often I’ve had some good luck going to goodwill stores and getting them super cheap. It’s not going to be a set. Usually it’s mixed pieces in a vacuum sealed bag or bin if there are a lot.

Appreciate the advice I didn’t think about the CFPB.

I’ve definitely got a few things at Microcenter that were obvious repackages. I bought a cpu once to find the pins covered in thermal paste. Clearly someone made a bad choice and just returned it. I believe for the most part their returned items are sold at a discount after a review but people repackage things well and some get away with returning something as unopened. If I’m spending 150 or more I just open in store to just in case I find something odd I can return it and they never question it because I never left.

Microcenter is my go to. I live about 45 minutes from one but any PC parts that are expensive I get there, I also open in store to check for GPUs that were returned to the store to make sure someone didn’t swap out with a cheaper part. I don’t build too often so I don’t make my way over there too often.

I stopped buying electronics on Amazon after getting bricks instead of a GPU for my PC and they treated me like shit when I went to return it. I filed a complaint with the state about the fraud and their unwillingness to correct it. Complaint didn’t do shit but I was pissed. Now the only stuff I buy on Amazon is random household items and stuff for the kids that’s under 100 bucks.

I see the cops in my city, and a few nearby, at the gas station all the time. They all have gas cards. Some of the larger cities near me have pumps at a few of the city properties that the city employees can use to fill up city vehicles.