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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: August 15th, 2023

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  • Even with a free forum host, it’s difficult to keep things running for a long time.

    Awhile back I was unsatisfied with how quickly my (new) furniture was degrading, and found a furniture forum run by a guy in the biz. So much knowledge on there about different furniture and how to actually find quality stuff that will last decades.

    The owner retired this week, and he had been paying for an IT contract to do basic maintenance / upgrades on the forum (I think he started on a free host, but as it got bigger he eventually had to move it). He needed IT help basically to apply security patches and do upgrades. He’s stated that he no longer plans to pay for the maintenance contract. I’m guessing the forum will disappear soon.







  • Just to update this: I got a new phone and had the exact same issue.

    I went to settings -> Sync Ultra and went through the flow to purchase lifetime (which I had already bought). This brought up a message saying I already have Sync, and the notification with the guy raising his glass.

    So it looks like the purchase flow works fine, just the “restore purchase flow” gives me an error for whatever reason.


  • If the color is what’s bothering you the most, there are black and white emoji fonts out there. For example, Noto Emoji.

    I get where you’re coming from, and don’t entirely disagree, but at the same time I’m grateful to emojis for spurring interest in and adoption of Unicode. The situation a little over a decade ago was much different, with many devices supporting only ASCII. It was also so much more complicated to use a computer for multiple languages, with so many different encoding standards. Nowadays Unicode seems to work well for most languages. And users have come to expect support for it on whatever platform they’re using. Even if it’s true that some users only demand that support due to emojis, I certainly don’t want to go back to how things used to be.






  • The term “public record” usually refers to records that a government is required to maintain and make accessible to the public. In most states, I believe SMS messages sent by government employees while conducting official business are considered in-scope (though there may be other laws that make certain messages private).

    As far as whether your SMS messages can be accessed by law enforcement without a warrant, it gets more complicated.

    Older than 180 days? Fair game. A court or government agency can subpoena your provider without any requirement to notify you, per the Electronic Communications Privacy Act of 1986.

    Newer than 180 days? A warrant is required, but there are exceptions. For example, administrative subpoenas are allowed in cases of national security.

    Records of incoming/outgoing calls require only a subpoena, same with cell tower geolocation data and IP addresses. However, wiretapping of actual calls requires a warrant.

    The reality of how and when the government accesses your data in the real world is probably different than the laws as written, so of course take everything with a grain of salt. The best solution with text messages is at least E2E encryption so that the provider cannot store them. (Accessing messages stored on your device itself does require a warrant).