Testing different voting methods: https://electionscience.github.io/vse-sim/VSEbasic

STAR voting seems to be the latest and greatest.

People in Oregon tried to get it on the ballot, but failed to get enough signatures from voters... 😭

https://ballotpedia.org/Oregon_STAR_Voting_Initiative_(2024)

I hate websites with low contrast text.

lelz. can relate. I was at a family's house for the holiday and they had a book about California history... Shit was funny as hell. The first 30 pages was basically just shit talking Californios, Spanish, and Mexican settlers. They quoted a lot of English, French, and United Statian visitors instead of the people who lived in California... Comments ranged from "the Californios looked uncivilized" to "they wasted the land they had". Then on page 31, they had 1 small paragraph were they talked about "an event" where the US acquired the land. Uh, ya mean the bullshit war where the US invaded Mexico and stole half of it?! The book continued with a whole chapter on the gold rush. XD Fucking trash!

Not as cool as a dinosaur statue, but practical! Of course!

Eh... are there going to be any real consequences though? I have a feeling he's not going to jail and he's still gonna be the Republican candidate for president. Is this gonna end up like the impeachment? That didn't do shit. :(

The problem with dumb phones is that the entire world pushes people towards smartphones. For a lot of adults, it's really hard to move to a dumb phone.

Have a security system for your house? Need an app. Router? App. Bank? App. Payments? App. Doctor appointment check in? App. Texting? WhatsApp. Fucking menus? App. Refrigerator? Believe it or not, also App.

My bank is so shitty that sometimes the website doesn't work, but their mobile app does.

You can't always opt out of using an app. I tried setting up my new ISP's router last week and it required an app. No other way to do it.

Currently, I'm thinking something like the Jelly Star might be the best compromise. Has maps and other tools, but the tiny screen prevents them from trapping you.

What are your thoughts on the Unihertz Jelly Star?

Even now they're already leveraging their OS-level control. The Android Authority guys said in their report, "the Rabbit R1’s launcher app is intended to be preinstalled in the firmware and be granted several privileged, system-level permissions — only some of which we were able to grant". I don't work at Rabbit, so I don't know exactly what modifications they've done to their AOSP fork, but they're doing something.

If I had to guess, I'd say they've messed with the power management of AOSP and probably the process scheduling somehow? I say this because the Rabbit R1 is hands down the fastest way to access an assistant that I've used. I have a ChatGPT shortcut on my homescreen of my Pixel 8 phone and the ChatGPT app is constantly killed in the background, so often times I go to access the assistant but I have to wait for an app to load. The R1 is instant.

And that's without counting the time it takes to face or fingerprint unlock the phone, then tap an icon.

No, I would have not paid $200 if Rabbit was an app. I have ChatGPT and Perplexity on my phone, I don't like the experience compared to the R1. I paid $200 for the end to end Rabbit experience.

Btw, I get that some people don't mind unlocking their phone, tapping an icon, waiting for it to load, asking a question, then getting an answer. That's fine. If you're happy with that experience, then the Rabbit R1 is not for you.

there's nothing the rabbit device does that couldn't be done via an app

Currently, the Rabbit does 2 things for me that can't be an app on my phone.

1. It's not my phone. I value this enough to pay for it. I spend more time than I would like on my phone. I'm happy when I can use another single purpose device to help me stay focused.

2. The push to talk hardware button has been more pleasant for me to use than the ChatGPT shortcut on my Pixel phone.

In the end, the ChatGPT + Perplexity in a box fills a space in my life that I can't find anywhere else—given my criteria.

I understand your criteria is different and you value different things. That's ok. It just means this device isn't for you.