I have no idea what it sounds like but I figured it’s because everyone keeps their phones muted. I know I do.

Same. I couldn’t stand the Reddit app and all the ads loaded in it. I switched the day Apollo stopped working.

I’ve deleted my account way before Elon bought the company and haven’t been back since. When I was super active on Twitter which was many years ago and they said I had to pay a small fee every month I would have stopped using it right away. I don’t see the benefit of having social media and I sure as shit won’t pay for any of them. I’m in my 40’s so maybe it’s just me or my age but I can’t imagine anything on those platforms that would be worth a dollar a month.

Sounds like he’s trying to recoup lost revenue and I can’t imaging this is going to work out well for them.

According to Google their average life expectancy is 84. So in the next few years they can lose 10% of their population. With birth rates so low would they even be able to make up for that?

I support a few business that have locations in Texas that can’t get fiber or cable internet. We use Viasat for them. I wanted starlink since we were seeing people with the service that had way better speeds and latency compared to Viasat.

I was waitlisted a while back but because of all the Elon bullshit when I got my email saying it was available I opted to just stick with Viasat.

Fraudulent parts on Amazon is a mix clever and just plain dumb I got bricks instead of a GPU. For work I’ve gotten a handful of hard to notice frauds. We got some Samsung SSDs the older sata drives not NVMe. One was a different shade of black and looked altered. It had the guts of a USB drive with a usb to sata homebrew conversion. That one Amazon took back no questions but it was a company purchase so they probably treat those differently.

For Legos if they were frauds I would imagine it would be noticeable. It’s probably a discount because of the volume they purchase.

If you buy legos often I’ve had some good luck going to goodwill stores and getting them super cheap. It’s not going to be a set. Usually it’s mixed pieces in a vacuum sealed bag or bin if there are a lot.

Appreciate the advice I didn’t think about the CFPB.

I’ve definitely got a few things at Microcenter that were obvious repackages. I bought a cpu once to find the pins covered in thermal paste. Clearly someone made a bad choice and just returned it. I believe for the most part their returned items are sold at a discount after a review but people repackage things well and some get away with returning something as unopened. If I’m spending 150 or more I just open in store to just in case I find something odd I can return it and they never question it because I never left.

Microcenter is my go to. I live about 45 minutes from one but any PC parts that are expensive I get there, I also open in store to check for GPUs that were returned to the store to make sure someone didn’t swap out with a cheaper part. I don’t build too often so I don’t make my way over there too often.

I stopped buying electronics on Amazon after getting bricks instead of a GPU for my PC and they treated me like shit when I went to return it. I filed a complaint with the state about the fraud and their unwillingness to correct it. Complaint didn’t do shit but I was pissed. Now the only stuff I buy on Amazon is random household items and stuff for the kids that’s under 100 bucks.

I’m American and for as long as I’ve been alive I always got the sense that Americans are not respected but just tolerated. Mostly because of our military.