I drive a Ford Maverick that is equipped with adaptive cruise control, and if I were to get 3 “keep your hands on the wheel” notifications, it deactivates adaptive cruise until the vehicle is completely turned off and on again. It blew my mind to learn that Tesla doesn’t do something similar.

Teams is truly awful. The fact that I have seen it maintain the same general clunkiness for years at this point is crazy. When it was newer, I could overlook it somewhat and assumed that the wrinkles would get smoothed out over time, but it still feels very janky and duct-taped together. It’s functional enough for what I need it to do, but it may be my least favorite piece of software that I need to use regularly. I used Slack a few jobs ago and I miss it. It has been Teams ever since that job.

The other big issue I have with Discord is that information isn’t really indexable or able to be archived easily. Reddit developed its own issues, but at least it was great to use alongside a search engine. Discord just feels like a black hole of information in comparison. It feels like a ticking time bomb in terms of inevitable enshittification.

Yup, calorie counting is where it’s at. I lost something like… 60? Pounds in the year leading up to my wedding by just counting calories, as I was too busy between working full time and going to college full time to go to the gym consistently enough to rely on that. People underestimate caloric intake and overestimate the impact of physical activity in my experience. Not to say that physical activity is not important, more so that you can overeat calories much more quickly than you can burn them off.

I have a family member who is constantly posting on social media about their weight and appearance, and has been doing so for easily a good 10+ years at this point. I am sympathetic to their struggle, and I feel bad that it affects their self esteem and whatnot, but on the other hand, if they had been putting in enough effort to lose even just 1 pound per month over the decade+ this has been happening, then they would have been able to stop posting about it by now. They are one of the most active social media users I know, so I know that they have plenty of time that they could divert towards being more active, they just simply choose not to. I can only feel so bad about that after so long.

Thanks, I appreciate your perspective, and I’m glad to hear that I’ve been handling the communication aspect of it properly - I’ve never used my suspicion as an excuse or justification of anything, so far I have just told a few trusted people that I suspect I have it, basically like I said here.

I have experienced several financial rough patches in the past year (job loss due to my employer shutting down, for example), but now that things have seemingly stabilized, I hope to begin pursuing a formal diagnosis soon, and I look forward to doing so! Thanks again.

You are correct that it isn’t really an essential feature, but it gives a nice boost in fluidity that I really enjoy, and directly ties into latency, which you mentioned as being important, which I agree with. Color accuracy still seems to be very good on modern flagships regardless of HZ, according to those who test those things.

The battery impact isn’t as bad as you probably expect actually, most newer high hz phone displays are LTPO, which allows them to scale down to I believe as low as 10hz, such as when you are reading or the AOD is on. I believe it will also scale down to match the frame rate of a full screen video too, which can also help.

As far as cost, I’m sure it’s not “free”, but now that OEMs like Apple, Samsung, and Google are all ordering them in bulk, I imagine it’s kind of just built into the category of display spec that they are ordering. For what it’s worth, the $300 Galaxy A23 features a 120hz display. Of course, Samsung makes the display, but that cost still has to be accounted for somewhere, especially as their profits are currently down 95%.

But yeah, overall I just enjoy a high refresh rate. My monitor, TV, iPad, and phone all support it, so I enjoy the consistency. I recommend trying a high HZ phone in person sometime if you haven’t. I find that it adds a lot to the fluidity of the UI both visually, and in terms of feel, as it feels like it follows my finger more closely when scrolling, for example. Of course, you can always turn it off and cap it at 60hz as well.

I love Pixels, they’re easily my favorite option. I’m currently on a Pixel Fold (yes I’m an idiot, but that’s beside the point), and I also enjoy my Pixel Watch and Buds Pro and A series.

I carried an iPhone for work for 3 years and just don’t care for iOS in a personal daily carry capacity. It’s fine for a work phone though, but I also enjoy the way that Android handles work profiles. I do own an iPad though, and that’s fine. I would consider replacing it with a Pixel tablet someday when it’s time though, especially if there’s a 120hz display option by then.

I’m not a big fan of Samsung’s design choices or bloatware tendencies. The kitchen sink approach isn’t for me when the majority of it is stuff that I won’t use, and it feels sloppy to me switching between apps and one uses Samsung’s design language, and then the other uses Material You. I like the consistency you get on a Pixel.

I use my camera a ton, so Pixel is an obvious choice there. Software features like call screening are indispensable for me too. I have been seeing daily spam calls again recently, and watching my phone silently discard them is always enjoyable. I also enjoy getting updates as soon as they are released, which is something that always bothered me with other manufacturers. I have made quite a few people happy by recommending the A-series to them. Wonderful budget-midrange value options.

Where would I go if Pixel went away? Tough question. The Nothing phone seems alright, I could see that working. The Zenphone 10 looks nice as well. I think I would explore one of those options before considering Samsung or Apple again.

This has been me the majority of the time since about 2020, which I chalk up to depression and more recently suspecting that I have ADHD (I know self-diagnosing isn’t cool, I intend to explore this more formally eventually, but I have many reasons for suspecting it in general). Sometimes it’s bad enough that if something doesn’t grab me in 5-15 minutes, I’ll bounce off to something else and probably repeat the cycle a few more times before giving up and doing something else instead.

I find that I can’t really play modern games at all anymore. They just feel like work and are more concerned with monetization rather than being enjoyable to play. Modern experiences feel so hollow to me now. I miss when the main draw of a multiplayer game was feeling your skills improve rather than spending 100+ hours to get some skin from grinding out a battlepass. It feels like a chore. I fell off of TOTK in May and apparently haven’t been too eager to return to it. I’ve been doing a decent job sticking with Mass Effect lately though. Helps that it runs perfectly on Steam Deck so I don’t always have to be on my PC. It’s my first time playing ME1, which helps. We’ll see if I can stick with it through 2 and 3, which I played many years ago.

This has also led to me drifting apart from many of the people who I previously considered to be my friends. Most of them barely leave the house anymore and only hang out and communicate on Discord, which I am barely on anymore due to my general lack of interest in games lately, my general disinterest in modern games specifically (which is all they play), and my disinterest in participating in more voice calls after being in Teams calls during the workday beforehand. They also have significantly more free time than I do due to almost all of them being single, so the rare times I have tried to play anything progress-based with them has been a bust because I inevitably fall behind. It’s unfortunate to drift apart like that, but it took longer than it should have for me to realize that we probably weren’t actually that close if me losing interest in games is all it took for them to cut me out. Oh well.

Not if they use Pixel Binning, which Google, Apple, and Samsung all do, and I’m sure others do too. This results in my Pixel’s 48 megapixel camera generating 12 Megapixel photos, which reduces the file size.

It is not a separate app, but it can be opened by tapping on the weather widget or searching weather in the Google app, tapping the 3 dot menu next to “Weather / Today” and then tap on add to homescreen. It is more like a full app UI vs searching for weather.

Here’s what the new Fold/Tablet design looks like.

I liked Appy Weather for a while. Nice clean design, and had access to the Dark Sky API and now the Apple Weather API after Dark Sky was shut down.

The precipitation notifications became nonsense for me though. We were on week 2 of a drought recently and I would get notifications saying things like “heavy rain continues for 8 hours” with no precipitation in sight. Not sure if that was the app’s fault (developer hasn’t updated in a while) or the API’s, but yeah. Inaccurate notifications.

I am on a Pixel Fold now, so I’m currently using the redesigned Google Weather app. I really like the redesign. I just noticed that I had notifications disabled due to previously using that other app though, so I’m curious to see if it has live precipitation notifications now that they have the ML-Powered Dark Sky-like Nowcast thing.