I think it’s too late for this to be useful. Number spoofing is ultra-common these days and most of the unwanted calls I receive are from spoofed numbers that appear to come from local areas.

If we start blocking the spoofed numbers then eventually we’ll just be blocking every possible combination of digits that can exist.

What we really need first is better detection and blocking of calls using spoofed numbers.

If answering the email requires writing a book to anticipate all the possible questions or options or complications that might come up, then no it’s not disrespectful to call someone instead.

I tried a similar scenario: The phone has a nfc reader built in, so I put the tag on the charger and tried letting the phone read it, but quickly discovered that android can’t/wont read nfc tags unless the phone is unlocked, which defeated the elegance of the solution. I hadn’t considered buying a standalone reader and attaching the tag to the phones, that sounds a lot more complicated.

Is there some law of physics saying you can’t target and destroy a plane from above?

You made the general comment that hypersonics don’t make sense “against airborn targets”, so that’s whst I was asking about…not bombers specifically. Fighters are airborn targets also, and those are what I was immediately thinking about when you said hypersonics make no sense against airborn targets.

Using an Automation APP like Tasker to turn off a Home Assistant-controlled smart plug when the battery exceeds a reprogramming threshold, might be a more reliable method & works for any device.

This is the method I have been using for years and it works great. I use Home Assistant to manage the automation, the Home Assistant client app for Android (you could use tasker for this) to collect the device telemetry to send to Home Assistant (how it knows when the battery hits 85% or drops below 70%).

I do want to point out there is one small downside to this method: your device charger (and I’m using an Anker wireless phone charging stand as my charger) only works for one device. Example, say my personal phone is charged up to 85%, so I take it off the charger, but my work-issued phone needs to be charged, but when I put my work phone on the charger nothing happens and it doesn’t charge because the charger is connected to a smart plug that’s turned off because my personal phone is charged up.

Hypersonics don’t make any sense against an airborne target.

Why not? Aren’t all modern active counter measures dependent on reaction time? And isn’t there simply a lot less reaction time against a hypersonic inbound?

And job applications!

As much as I would LOVE to see them waste their money on this, we know they are all talk and no action and won’t actually contribute anything.

Just because the boss can’t spy on their employees

Even this is no longer a valid justification. Activity monitoring software installed on companay provided computing devices used by remote employees has been around for a while and is gaining in popularity. They don’t even need physical presence to spy on employees.

So, its even more confusing why corporations are so against the idea of remote work.

They don’t need to “enter the war” because they are already successfully planning, funding, and supporting it from behind the scenes.

Not only did they NOT do a recall, they also did NOT execute any kind of customer outreach program to advise about the very real possibility of data loss. And then to just shit all over everyone, they put all the affected products on sale with deep discounts - presumably to sell them as fast as possible before the bad bress became more widely heard.

I don’t know anything about how truthsocial works.

Is “retruthed” the same thing as “retweeting” (or whatever that’s called now on xitter), or is it closer to “liking” something?

Regardless, trump now thinks he’s found a loophole in the gag oder by letting other people post it and then boosting it somehow?

The article was super confusing to me.

No vendor is selling their guns advertising how fun they are to make up.

This is a huge part of the build community, vendors know it, and vendors specifically cater to it. In fact, there in an entire industry built up around supporting and selling to this community. I have no idea how you can make this claim from the position of complete ignorance on the topic.

You are saying that the purpose of a gun is to go in a box. Not a purpose. A shoes purpose is not to go in a box.

Yes, and that’s true for the vast majority of them. Most are just display pieces that are never even fired.

Yea let’s get that eneegy out woo! How fun. What are the bullets doing to the targets?

It’s not for you to shit on what another person finds fun. That’s pretty lame of you and is a textbook ad hominem fallacy. Blanks don’t do anything to targets. Neither does laser gear, which is very popular these days for indoor practice. Bullets that hit a target, obvious go into or through the target…which, for the vast majority of bullets fired, is either a paper target or a piece of wood.

People gotta eat. What does the gun do to the animal?

Ideally…kills it swiftly. You’re point? Are you forgetting that the only part of the article that I challenged was that the “sole purpose is to kill people as fast as possible”? You love trying to move goalposts and get onto tangents don’t you? You do understand that killing-animals is not killing-people right?

Need to stay safe. What happens to the dangerous animal?

Answered this already. The linked article is saying “sole purpose is to kill people as fast as possible”…so why are you continuing to imply that animals are people?

I’m not trying to say it isn’t fun to do that, but it isn’t a gun’s purpose. No vendor is selling their guns advertising how fun they are to make up.

Yes it is, and yes they are. There’s an entire community built up around this along with vendors who directly support those communities.

The only thing i am saying is guns are meant to destroy.

Some are. Lots aren’t. And even among the some that are, it’s not necessarily humans and not always “as fast as possible”. I’m not disagreeing that we need to change the way we think about guns and make changes. But that’s not the topic of this debate. The topic of this debate is whether the sole purpose of them is to kill people as fast as possible. And that’s clearly not the sole purpose. They have a lot of other purposes. I’ve demonstrated that. Just go look at the statistics. As of 2020, there were about 20 MILLION AR15 style firearms in the US. If the sole purpose for them was to kill people as fast as possible, we’d already be extinct a thousand times over. We’re not…because that’s not their sole purpose.

I have always thought of it as how graffiti taggers work. They are always tagging over each other’s work. The last one to paint gets the most exposure but you can still see remnants of more recent taggers the lay under the topmost. Eventually the oldest stuff just gets covered completely. They don’t necessarily pick their canvas because there is other work they try to cover up, they pick their canvas for the location and exposure.

Edits are date/time stamped. My unedited comment included all 9 items in the very first submit. I later made a minor edit to correct some typos and spelling errors. You can see the timestamp of my edit was 7 hours ago. Your replay was posted 5 hours ago…that’s 2 hours AFTER my only edit.

Are you just talking about dynamic DNS services for one or a few home servers?

There’s always DynDNS, but that’s a paid service. I actually discovered that dynamic IP address service was provided free by Google when using Google Domains as the registrar, so I moved a few of my private domains over to Google several years ago to save myself $55 a year.

Unfortunately, Google Domains is shutting down and all registrar services and existing customer domains are getting moved to squarespace and I’ve not yet been able to determine if squarespace is going to be offering the free dynamic DNS service or not.

That’s what used to be called a “Freudian Slip”. These days, it it’s just standard GOP tactics to testing the waters to measure the amount of support for fascism.

I’m not trying to fight.

Oh really? You taunt me earlier with your “Will you honor the question? What are 6 different uses for guns?”

And then when I reply in good faith with 9 things, you a) completely ignore everything I wrote and b) try to change the focus of conversation from whether guns have only a ‘sole purpose of killing people as fast as possible’ and into a broader philosophical argument about guns in general being used for destruction.

The wooshing sound of the goalposts you just moved is deafening. You do not discuss in good faith, and now are just guilty of textbook sealioning.

First, let’s be clear about something…my originaal comment was challenging the article’s assertion that they only had a “sole purpose”. That’s their quote. If you believe that words still have meaning, then you should understand that “sole purpose” means “one and only one purpose”. So I don’t need to name 6 other purposes, I just need to name 1 other purpose. But I’m going to smash your naive challenge anyway and give you multiple.

1. From the perspective of the people who built them (the manufacturer), the “purpose” is to sell guns, not to kill as many people as fast as possible. They build what is popular and likely to sell.

2. For the vast majority of people that buy them, the sole purpose is to sit in a box or a case and never be used. People largely buy them the way they buy insurance policies. You buy an insurance policy because if you need it but don’t already have it then the consequences are catestrophic. So this is just people getting it before they need it hoping they never have to use it. The reality is that most people just buy them to have them without ever using them.

3. Recreational shooting (not to be confused with target/practice shooting). The modern AR15 is just a fun gun to shoot. This is one of the most common uses. What makes it so much fun? The action is usually very reliable, you can shoot a lot before having to change or reload magazines: It’s got the perfect amount of recoil - you can feel it but it’s pretty light. Ammunition, compared to other firearms, isn’t cheap but also isn’t super expensive, and it’s also a popular enough cartrige size that it isn’t hard to find. It’s lightweight and has great balance. It’s just a very fun gun to recreationally shoot.

4. Marksmanship and Training (target practice). This is another very common purpose. The AR is well suited to this because of how modular it is. As a platform, it can accommodate a large number of accessories and has a lot of options. Example: longer heavier barrels with more riflings for better distance accuracy, a wide variety of scopes and sighting devices, many options for different sizes and shapes of stocks to accommodate the needs of the owner.

5. Hunting (animals). This is a common use. It’s popular because it’s relatively light (which means it’s not a huge burden to carry it all day hiking/scouting), it’s a large enough caliber to be useful for a wide variety of hunting, and because of #4 above, it can be modified to fit the need of the hunter.

6. Defense (against potentially dangerous animals). This is a common use case for me. I do a lot of trekking in the mountainous wilderness of the pacific northwest. I do occasionally come across mountain lions, bobcats, black bears, and even occasionally bull elk/moose who can be aggressive toward humans during some parts of the year (like during mating season). I’ve never had to shot an animal in defense yet, but I have had to discharge a round on many occasions to de-escalate a close encounter.

7. Defense (against potentially dangerous people). Related to #6 above, an unfortunate part of the modern world affecting our beautiful wilderness and forests. While out experiencing our great natural wilderness, I have come across many illegal marijuana grows in the middle of our state and national forests. I’ve also come across many inactive or recently vacated meth operations and even one active one. You obviously don’t engage, and you get away as quickly and quietly as possible, but there is a very real threat to your own life when coming across something like this. I would not consider not being armed for these scenarios.

8. Show of force. Next to #2, this is probably the most common purpose. To be worn/carried and displayed as a show of force without ever actually being used. People go into a frenzied panic just at the sight of a modern AR15 (I mean, just look at you, your comments, and the comments of a lot of other people here just upset they exist). This is the actual most common use case and fate for a lot of these firearms…just carriedd and displayed as a show of force without ever being used to “kill as many people as fast as possible”.

9. Building/assembly. This is an aspect that a lot of people really enjoy - the building/tinkering aspects of the platform. There are so many internal parts and so many parts options, and a lot of people just like to start off with a registered lower receiver and then spend a lot of time thinking about the build, acquiring the parts and then building it out exactly as they intended…only to disassemble/reassemble for the pure enjoyment of it. It’s a bit like modle building, only instead of plastic or wood you have the feel of the metal, the sounds of the action moving andd sliding, the smell of the lubricating oil. This is a very common and popular use case and a lot of these are disassembled/reassembled more than they are fired. This one also appeals to me…probably thanks to all the time I spent in the US Marine Corps doing this and now it brings me a sense of nostalgia and is a very pleasant activity for me later in life.