Yeah, I’d just not shop there. I never have change with me, and I’m not bringing change just because the store requires it. It might not be the first trip or the third, but over time, I’d shop there less and less because convenience matters.

Why not just 3D print a few more?

I’ll also go fetch a couple on the way if I see some hanging out. It’s not because I’m trying to make the cart wrangler’s job easier, but because it’s not orderly and it bothers me. I have to consciously limit myself or I’d end up patrolling the whole lot.

Wow, what kind of dystopia do you live in? In my town, they’re just happy you went to their store, and I presume cracking down on what little shoplifting there is would drive away more business than it saves.

But is creating those jobs actually something we want? How much does someone get paid for collecting carts? How much does that increase prices for basic necessities? Do we have a labor surplus such that any job is a good job?

The answer to all of those is “no.” I don’t know about you, but I’d much rather keep my office job than go collect carts, so I put my cart away so the person would would have that job can get a better job.

To be fair, I’m married and frequently misunderstand my SO, and it doesn’t help that they have a different native language. For example, when they say, “we’re out of X,” I take that as informative, not a request to go get more X. But sometimes I catch on, like this morning (WFH today) when they said, “are you busy?” (or similar) and I correctly interpreted that as “I want sex.” You win some and you lose some; sometimes I’m in the dog house, and other times I’m pounding out a quickie in the middle of the day.

I used to try to politely decline, now I just wave and say I’m not interested. If they try to change the script, “I’m not selling anything,” I just repeat myself and they get the hint. I used to feel bad, but then I realized it saves them and me some time, so I’m probably doing them a favor.

It certainly doesn’t, but it’s understandable for users to expect that paying a premium at a place like BestBuy should result in getting a better product that picking up something on Amazon.

I generally do my research, but in this case, I needed it in a pinch to flash a Linux ISO to get my computer up and running because I couldn’t find any of my other ones. I expected to get ripped off, so I’m not too mad about it, but I was surprised at how crappy it was since I figured USB drives are largely a solved problem.

And this is why I largely avoid BestBuy and steer others from it, stuff costs more (though they do match if you ask), and they tend to carry crappy accessories and peripherals. It’s basically Walmart quality crap priced higher than better products at Microcenter, all because customers either don’t know better or don’t have any other retail options.

MP3 players and later

Sure, and I had a handful that used mini-USB instead of micro-USB, and they were completely fine. It’s easy to quickly look at the plug and orient it the right way, whereas with micro-USB, it’s a fair bit harder.

I don’t think I ever had a mini-USB device wear out the port. Then again, I didn’t have a ton of them, so maybe it’s more common.

Regardless, USB-C feels like an over-engineered solution to a few small problems. The ability to use it in any orientation is nice I guess, but I still have similar problems that I had w/ micro-USB, with cables wearing out over time. I’d rather we optimize for easier to swap ports (i.e. something like the Framework laptop’s changeable ports).

It also makes me sad. But I guess someone needs to fill out the bottom 50% that are below your “average” person’s intelligence.

Yeah, not trying to argue with you or anything, it’s just a pretty big disappointment for me. I really want to be able to do privacy-friendly transactions, and I guess I wish someone like Proton or Mozilla would that up.

Something like a Proton Wallet could be really cool if I could add a few different payment options (e.g. XMR, BTC, credit, debit, bank transfer), and then pick the one I want at checkout based on what the vendor supports. They could add this to a phone app and get tap-to-pay working, which would really lower the barrier to people using crypto. It would then be backed by Proton’s privacy and security (e.g. stored on encrypted Proton Drive, no logging, etc).

I probably still wouldn’t use it because I don’t trust any single entity with all of my data, but if it appeals to the mass market, then I benefit as well.

So yeah, I guess I’m just frustrated and disappointed.

I don’t think I’ve ever called 411, or known anyone who has. I have known about it for ages, but I guess I was always under the impression that it was expensive or something.

What sites are you having issues with on a desktop? I find pretty much everything is desktop first, and most are mobile-friendly. But maybe it’s the sites we visit.

I remember paying a ton because I enabled mobile data in 2009 to check the score on a football game. My normal bill was ~$50/month for unlimited talk/text, and a few megs of data to check the score on one game doubled my bill that month.

It wasn’t until 2011/2012 until I had a plan w/ data, and even then it was kind of expensive and slow. I remember switching to Google Fi pretty early on because it was only $10/GB, which was a really good deal at the time.

1. This seems to only work between Proton accounts, so I doubt many would actually do that. And it seems they’re using the regular BTC network, not Lightning, so fees are going to be huge ($1.60 from their screenshots). Monero solves this way better since there’s no way to see someone else’s balance with their address, and transactions are pretty cheap (a few cents). Their solution doesn’t actually add privacy, it just obfuscates transactions a bit. Lightning does a much better job w/ privacy (it’s private until you close the channel) and costs (transactions are way cheaper and way faster than regular BTC), and it would be the ideal solution to this problem since it still uses BTC.
2. Sure, but aunty is highly unlikely to be using Proton, much less Bitcoin. It’s a service for enthusiasts. Support is absolutely important though, I just don’t think aunty is likely to be sending crypto over Proton.

I still don’t really see who this is for. The requirements to actually using it productively is that your contacts need to also have Proton. If most of your contacts use Proton, that means you’re probably running a business or something and thus don’t need to send BTC to eachother.

Focusing on regular users makes way more sense than focusing on these niche use-cases. Make it so I can easily use cryptocurrencies for online payments. Integration with Proton Pass makes way more sense than integrating with email.

Right, which is why it’s so important to define tiers.

For example:

1. basic support (cheap) - gen 2 speeds, charging at 5v 500ma, etc; for peripherals and whatnot
2. high speed (fast enough) - 5gbps speeds, charging at 5v 500ma, etc; USB drives, regular laptop/desktop ports, etc
3. fast charging (general purpose) - 5gbps data transfer, fast charging up to 45W (or maybe a little lower) at various voltages; phones, special laptop/desktop ports
4. specialized PD - gen 2 speeds (faster is optional), fast charging up to 240W at various voltages
5. specialized data - 40gbps data transfer, charging at 5v 500ma (faster is optional), display out

You’d use the same cable for 1-3, and specialized cables for 4 and 5, and those cables would have special markings on the connector. Ports for 3-5 would have unique markings as well. Cables and ports can go beyond those specs if they want.

Just because you can break things into separate groups doesn’t mean you should. The goal here shouldn’t be to make things easier for manufacturers, but to make things easier for users.

Eh, USB4 is basically what USB 3.3 would’ve been, but with fresh branding. I expect it to have the same naming issues after a few updates…

Exactly. If Proton does anything with cryptocurrency, it should use one of the privacy coins, and Monero is probably the best option here. Here’s how I would’ve rolled it out:

1. accept Monero w/ a discount directly as payment for Proton - I might have picked Proton over Tuta for this
2. add Monero payments to Proton Pass
3. integrate 2 into existing products (e.g. send money to trusted contact, pool money for events in calendar, etc)
4. add other cryptocurrencies (e.g. Bitcoin and ETH) and payment networks (e.g. Lightning)

But no, they instead did:

1. accept Bitcoin as payment for Proton
2. release Bitcoin wallet
3. ??

At least it’s non-custodial, but that raises more questions because if it’s non-custodial, I presumably already have another wallet anyway. The wallet doesn’t add anything directly useful.

Or I’ll have one installed as a separate app, which will have access to data on my system.

So either it’s a separate app, or it’s a website. I don’t see a need for my browser to be that app.

Honestly, I didn’t really have an issue with USB type A ports. They worked fine, and it was only a minor inconvenience to orient them the right way. I cared far more about capabilities of the port (speed, power delivery, etc) than I did about the actual port.

That said, micro-USB sucks in every way. The awkward “is this the right way?” thing is way worse than with USB-A, it’s not meaningfully smaller than mini-USB, the port is incredibly hard to clean (and it always gets dirty), and the connector seems to break all the time. I would’ve been totally fine with moving everything to mini-USB instead. The connector was less flimsy without being that much bigger, and it had room for more wires.

I do like USB-C though, I’m just not sure the added complexity is worth it.