Shopping for a new phone? Consider the Galaxy A5 & A8 before splurging on the Galaxy S9

This is not as timely as I’d hoped, but given that the Galaxy S9 is out and deals are everywhere, I wanted to give mention to a phone line which isn’t even on the radar of most Americans.  The Galaxy A series from Samsung has a lot of the nice features of the more well-known S series, but are sold completely unlocked and at a much lower price. They generally have higher end features like IP6X waterproofing, and have a nice speaker placement on the side of the phone versus the bottom which I really like.

Galaxy A5 (2017)

If you prefer your fingerprint reader on the front of your phone, or just like a smaller phone that fits in …

Spectrum’s 10 channel ‘TV Choice’ is the Real Deal (if you can get it)

  1. Click here to skip my Doofenshmirtz-level backstory and right to the review

Let’s be clear: there is no better feeling than the day you break up with your Internet/TV/Phone provider and cut the cord.  Every cord cutter knows what their breaking point was.  Mine came when I called Verizon this summer to try and get a better price than the $120+ I was paying for (to be honest, decently fast and pretty reliable) FiOS Internet along with an assortment of cable channels we almost never used. But I started to wonder more and more as the bills came rolling in: is that reliability worth such a mark-up, when Verizon was recently offering Internet-only plans for $40 for new customers (and …

What’s up with nano?

As expected, the recent state of events where nano transitioned maintainership to Benno Schulenberg, and the project left GNU, has a lot of people speculating about what happened, and more disappointingly, making some pretty nasty assertions about motivations.  I want to try and give a brief update on them to hopefully calm things down.

  • I was mandating copyright assignment from Benno.  False.  What happened: In an effort to transition maintainership to Benno, as he was clearly far more capable and available than I have been for some time, I tried to get him added to the GNU maintainers list to peacefuly transition the project to him.  A private thread ensued between myself, GNU, and Benno, and what came out

A/UX 2K14 Notes

Since AUX Penelope has been shut down, I’m going to jot down some details about where you can get A/UX software and commands you need to get going with your shiny old A/UX system.

Hardware:

  • At this point you want a full 68040 Mac like the Quadra 650, 700, 800, or 9xx, they can still be had on eBay relatively easily.  If you want to use a luggable you’re stuck with an SE/30 which is B&W.  Get yourself a decent amount of RAM and a supported CD-ROM.
  • KB/Mouse: Any ADB KB & mouse you can find should work like a champ.  Im toying with picking up the GeeThree PS/2->ADB adapter so I can eliminate the old physical mouse as my

MVNOs Part 2: For you Sprint and Verizon users

In my original article I let you know what options there are for those of you who wanted to switch to discounted phone provider (also known as an MVNO) in the US to save some moolah, but I focused mainly on carriers who operated on the AT&T and T-mobile GSM networks.  Since then I’ve gotten some good experiences with two other MVNOs and wanted to share my findings; one for all those of you who think you HAVE to be on Verizon’s network (and if you live outside a major Metro area you’re probably right). And another which seems to be redefining low-cost quality cell service and combining cellular and wifi calling working on your cell phone amazingly well.  So …

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