Piranha Phish

My pet peeve has always been when media controls (like volume) are on the right side of the steering wheel rather than the left.

To me it makes a lot less sense to put them on the right when my right hand is already 10 inches away from another set of media controls (left-hand drive vehicle).

My 2004 Mazda, 2018 Mazda, and 2011 Kia all had it figured out and pretty much used the same layout for media controls and accessories like cruise control. My Ford, however, seems like no thought was put into it.

Is this the new GM infotainment system?

I loath Plex. A year or two ago I tried to switch to JellyFin but there was no app for my then 2-year-old LG TV but there was for new versions. Apparently that was too old, and that’s just a natural manifestation of a non-commercial app.

Maybe I would have better luck with a Roku but it’s hard to beat the integration of built-in apps.

This is disingenuous at best and incorrect at worst. The mute button on the Echo is just that, a button; it is not a switch. It is software-controlled and pushing it just sends a signal to the microcontroller to take some action. For instance, one action is to turn on the red indicator light; that’s definitely not physically connected to the mute button.

Maybe another response of pushing the button is to disable the transistor used for the microphone, but it’s more likely that it just sets a software flag for the algorithm to stop its processing of the microphone input signal. Regardless of which method it uses, the microcontroller could undoubtedly just decide to revert that and listen in, either disabling or not disabling the red light at the same time.

But I personally don’t think it listens in when muted. I don’t think it spies on us to target ads based on what we say around it. I’m not worried that the mic mute function doesn’t work as intended.

But I fully understand that it is fully capable of it, technically speaking.

Make America-Online Great Again!

You can tell that this is just a cash grab, as opposed to a technical or administrative motivation, by the mere fact that Simple/Select Choice plans will be migrated to Magenta, while Magenta plans will be migrated to Go5G. So Magenta isn’t going anywhere for the foreseeable future.

Also, of course, by the fact that you can opt out of the “upgrade.”

I switched to T-Mobile a few years ago and, coming from AT&T, it had been hands-down a positive experience. More features, unlimited data, better customer service, better speeds, all for less than what I was paying AT&T. I even have a line or two that was added for free, no strings attached.

But then there were the many data breaches and the announcement they would add a surcharge for credit card payment. And now this.

Looks like I came on board just in time to witness the enshitification