That’s Louis Rossman, a repair technician and YouTuber, who went viral recently for railing against Apple. Apple purposely charges a lot for repairs and you either have to pay up or buy a new device. That’s because Apple withholds necessary tools and information from outside repair shops. And to think, we were just so close to change.
My mom has an iPhone 6 Plus and hasn’t even had it for a year when one day it suddenly died and would not charge. So she took it to an authorized Apple repair place and they charged her $50 for a diagnostic only to tell her that she would have to buy a brand new phone.
So she decided to go to the AT&T store to talk to our usual guy that upgrades our phones and handles any problems for us. She tells him what’s wrong and he takes her phone to the back only to come out two minutes later, puts her phone on charge and it comes back to life.
She asks him what was wrong with it that he managed to somehow fix when the people at the “authorized apple repair place” couldn’t. And you know what he told her?
“There was just a bit of fuzz in the charging port.”
I FUCKING KNEW IT. Listen, I have a MacBook from college. The charger has died twice, and I had to get a new one. This happened for two years in a row around the same time each year. I’m fucking convinced that their hardware is rigged to “expire” in order to force people to keep buying their shit.
Wait, people are just now learning that Apple has some of the shadiest business practices?
You know this isn’t really just apple, company’s do this all the time, everything is rigged to expire and all they want is your money.
Ohhh no no no, this IS JUST Apple.
All companies want you to buy their new products. None have gone to the lengths that Apple Inc. has gone to make end user repairs as impossible as is legally viable. I have been repairing electronics and computer systems privately, commercially and active duty in the US military for about 30 years.
Apple puts extra effort into special hardware requiring proprietary tools that are only legally produced by their licensed manufacturer and can only be purchased through licensed repair shops if at all.
Companies like iFixit can only exist as profit making companies because they are able to make workaround tools and kits that are still profitable but less of a blatant ripoff than Apple.
Apple has been doing this forever. The way Apple treats consumers is abysmal, and people still eat their products up.
This is called “planned obsolescence” - many companies do it, but Apple has made it into an art. Basically, companies - tech companies in particular - have realized that if their products are manufactured too well, they won’t be able to sell you a new one in three years. So, in order to keep consumers coming back for more, they design your gadgets to “expire” in all manner of ways; Apple is infamous for pushing software updates that render older model phones and computers useless right before releasing a new product so that consumers will be forced to purchase the newest version of a gadget they already have.
The best way to fight back against this kind of wasteful, predatory, capitalistic schlock is to learn more about how your gadgets work so that you can repair them instead of replacing them. This man is doing the Lord’s work.
I get asked a lot in stream about maintaining my 10 year old mac as my main comp and why I won’t be getting a new one when I can’t maintain it anymore. This bullshit is why. I want this here so I can point to it as I divolve into unintelligible on screen ramblings about my adventures in apple upkeep. Get fucked so hard, Apple.
With Halloween fast approaching, let us remind you that few American writers can get you into the existentially chilling spirit of this climatically chilling season than Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849). And given that he lived and wrote entirely in the first half of the 19th century, few American writers can do it at so little financial cost to you, the reader. Today we’ve collected Poe’s freely available, public domain works of pure psychological unsettlement into five volumes of eBooks:
So if you lived in a society where you had to secure your communication in order to be yourself around others, here are the apps that could help you do that.
Signal let’s you securely text and make phone calls.
Onion Browser allows you to surf the web without leaving a trail.
Duck Duck Go isn’t super secure but it won’t record your searches like Google.
ProtonMail is a email client that lets you email other secure email accounts.
Periscope allows you to stream live video.
Semaphor is there so you can securely make group chat rooms.
American privacy laws allow you to use these all. So that’s pretty cool.
Because we’re currently living in the prologue of a cyberpunk dystopian novel, imma reblog this.
FYI the feds can crack Signal when they’re sufficiently motivated, which means the rest of these are probably also done. Not to say you shouldn’t use them–you should–but don’t go around thinking you’re immune to snooping.
True. These things delay, put up barriers that make you harder to follow and it takes more work and time to decrypt your messages.
That’s useful if you wanna pass on information that only needs to be hidden for a short time but if you need communication to stay secret forever no matter how hard the state tries, don’t use the internet at all. There is no encryption that is going to stay uncrackable forever.
pay attention to that last sentence. there’s a fallacy in thinking that if you lock something, it’s safe forever. in truth a lock is a deterrent, and anyone sufficiently determined will get through, it’s simply a matter of time and a lock makes it take longer.
think about what you want encrypted, and why, and what lengths you’re willing to go to, to keep it that way
When locking your phone use a pin, not your fingerprint or face. You’re pin is safe under the law, your fingerprint and face are not. Again, they are meant to delay things to keep you safer.
Fire blight is a bacterial disease that primarily affects the young, rapidly-growing shoots of pome fruits (especially pears and quince, but also apples and firethorns, and to a lesser degree, hawthorns, serviceberries, loquats, mountain ashes, and other related species in the subtribe Malinae).
It is spread by pollinators like honeybees during flowering, and pinkish orange streaks develop in the wood as a canker develops. If left over many seasons, the infection moves from the canker towards the roots.
The name ‘fire blight’ refers to the burnt appearance of leaves, bark, and fruit at infected sites.
Younger trees—and rapidly-growing tissues—are more vulnerable to infection. Infected wood can’t be treated with the application of antibacterial and antifungal copper sprays: and must be pruned out. However, an older tree tree can live with the disease.
The tree above is my Clapp’s Favourite European Pear, on an espalier. As sad as I was to cut off 10 fruiting spurs, it’s much better for the long-term health of the tree that infections are eradicated as soon as they appear.
The canker becomes active in spring, dripping a sap laden with bacteria down to the soil, and also slowly moving towards the trunk and roots, thus continuing the life cycle of the pathogen. Instead of allowing that to happen, I am burning the infected tissue and converting it into useable ash and biochar, both excellent soil amendments.
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Photo by @michael.laubscher On foot… wild dog Face to face with these incredible creatures is a life changing experience. Mana Pools National Park. #Wild #Nature #Wildlife #Animals #WildDog #Igs_Africa #Wildeyesa #Zimbabwe #ManaPools #ThisIsWhyWildEye https://www.instagram.com/p/B4E5BG3gHyQ/?igshid=1fcrpmtcis0f3
the greatest skill a woman can learn for herself is self reliance
to clarify … so many strong women in my life rely on men. that dependence is dangerous. ladies here are some good ref resources I’ve found helpful on my journey towards self reliance
This blog is mostly so I can vent my feelings and share my interests. Other than that, I am nothing special.
If you don't like Left Wing political thought and philosophy, all things related to horror, the supernatural, the grotesque, guns or the strange, then get the fuck out. I just warned you.
