There is at least ONE exception in the US: Firstnet. They primarily use AT&T’s towers, but they have some additional resources that other carriers don’t have - they have additional towers and entire network bands that other carriers don’t have access to. This allows us to still have coverage in natural disasters or network congestion times. In addition, if there’s a natural disaster that knocks out coverage, they have satellite-based trucks that stage DURING the disaster, then come online as soon as it’s over.

A few years ago, I had to ride out hurricane Ida in New Orleans (long story). The western eyewall passed directly over the house we were in, and the primary trunk lines coming into the city got destroyed by a cable tower that collapsed into the Mississippi. The next morning I had cell phone coverage when none of the other carriers had come back online yet. We didn’t even have power, but my phone worked perfectly.

You have to be a first responder to join - you have to be added by your department’s communications coordinator.

That’s absolutely reasonable, but I’m not a student. Is that required by the license agreement?

I’ve been wanting to learn blender for the same reason. Complicated models are an absolutely bitch to work with in parasolid modeling engines.

However, for simple designs, parasolid modeling is spectacular for designing models for printing. Fusion360 has a free tier for hobbyists (they hide it and you have to go hunting to find it, but it exists), and I’ve done most of my designs there.

I’ve also used tinkercad for really simple edits. I’ve heard great things about solidworks, but it’s expensive af, even for a hobbyist account.

That’s not what a conspiracy is. A conspiracy is a bunch of people working together in secret to do something illegal. A conspiracy theory is when you put a bunch of seemingly random or unrelated facts together and they give the impression of a conspiracy causing something to happen.

You can’t just say “dogs can smell the color blue” and call it a conspiracy theory.

You need to have something to back it up. Even if it’s not hard proof, there needs to be a string of coincidences or suspicious actions or something.

So what makes you think Andrew Tate is an illuminatus? That’s where the meat of a good conspiracy theory is - form your answer to “why do you think that?”

Also the bulbs that last forever are majorly undervolted. They last forever because they’re not run anywhere near their current capacity, and as a result, they emit way less light and their filament doesn’t degrade as fast.

If you take any old off the shelf incandescent bulb and only run it at 50v, it’ll last decades.

Actually, come to think of it, it’s not just toasters… it’s coffeemakers, microwaves, stove knobs, thermostats…

HE’S SUPPORTED BY BIG BIMETALLIC STRIP!

That’s fair. I can get behind a neutral view of it.

Now there’s a conspiracy theory I can get behind. He’s financed by big toaster.

That’s so oversimplified that it borders on being a lie. Yes it happened, but the why of it wasn’t as simple as just “sell more lightbulbs”.

I can’t link it right now, but go on YouTube and find the channel technology connections. He does a deep dive into the history of the light bulb and the phoebus cartel. TLDR: believe it or not, it was actually a good thing.

Oh. Yeah. If it’s a manual valve turn system, not a central hvac, then a Nest or ecobee won’t work for you.

Eh, I mean, clearly I’m not OKAY with what happened. It was a goddamned tragedy. But apart from initial shock and disbelief, it didn’t really affect me psychologically at all. It had been 4+ years since I had last spoken to him, and I wasn’t actually involved in any way apart from getting updates from my mom when she’d talk to his mom. So it didn’t leave any lasting effect. Not on me at least. I feel terrible for Maddie’s family and completely understand why they’d want him to rot in prison forever.

I’ve got two kids now, and if somebody did that to one of them… there’s a good chance I’D be the one in prison forever once I got ahold of the guy who did it.

Link works for me. I think the parens in the link target are borking it for some people.

As for what it’s like…. It’s weird. I knew him when we were both like 10 or so. My mom and his mom were pretty good friends, so I’d go over to his house any time they wanted to hang out.

He was a normal kid. He liked Nintendo and was trying to learn to play guitar.

His dad though… his dad was a raving psychopath. He used to beat the shit out of both him and his mom. I damn near caught a beating from him once until mom declared that if he was there, we wouldn’t be.

Eventually, I moved to another state, and his family moved to Florida.

A few years later, I was in freshman English class in high school (year 9 for the Brits), and an office runner came and told me I had a phone call.

It was my mom. “Josh killed a girl.” I’m not sure why she thought it was necessary to tell me at school since there was nothing to be done about it, but I guess she wanted to break the news to me before I saw it online or something.

The story on Wiki is pretty accurate from there. His mom was cleaning his room while he was at school because it was starting to smell when she noticed a wet spot under his bed, investigated, and found the body of a missing neighbor girl.

She had been missing for a week or so, I think; it’s been a while. While she was missing, he had even participated in the neighborhood searches for her.

I remember following the story as it developed. It was weird af to be reading about the kid I used to play Mario with on cnn. There was a whole media circus about him. We weren’t involved in any way since we had been moved apart for years.

In hindsight, knowing what I know now, there’s still ZERO indication that he would do something like that. He wasn’t a problem kid, he never let on about any weird sexual things (even hints of budding weirdness), if anything, I was a bad influence on him - he was a well behaved kid and I was the friend that was always like “hey, let’s go throw rocks at cars” or something because I was a little shithead.

I 100% believe the “scared dumbass kid” story the defense put out. I don’t for a second believe any of the “sexually motivated” shit. Every 14 year old had porn hidden in their room in those days. That doesn’t make him a crazed sex killer.

He was a scared kid with a terrifying abusive father that panicked and did something horrifying that can never be taken back.

Did he murder a child? Yes. Is he to blame? 100%.

I do not condone, approve of, or support what he did in any way whatsoever. But knowing his dad, I understand WHY it happened.

Good point. Edited. Thanks for the lookout homie.

I knew two that have their own pages, and know one mentioned in a Wikipedia page but doesn’t actually have his own dedicated page.

I knew:

Lee Vincent, my best friend’s dad when I was a kid.

And

Josh Phillips, another childhood friend, who, later on after we both moved away, murdered an eight year old girl and hid the body under his bed for several days. His mom found the body when it started to smell.

Currently:

My wife is a second cousin of the lead guitarist for a major international rock/metal band I guarantee you’ve heard of. We’ve hung out with him a few times. Really nice guy. I’m not putting the name because some of y’all creepy and might be able to identify us based on info in this post.

(Edited to remove potentially identifying familial relation)

Some of the newer cheaper nest models don’t spin. They have a touch sensor on the right side.

But this looks like a spinny model.

It’s the us. Fahrenheit, bruh.

Even if you’re using wireless devices, you almost certainly have a master device that DOES connect via a wire. Wireless thermostats are a recent invention, so if you have a non-newly-constructed home, it’s almost certain that at least one of your thermostats has a hardwire connection.

Pull each off the wall and look behind it. The wires are small, not like household power lines. They only carry 24v, so they look closer to phone wires than anything else, though not exactly.

When you find the wired thermostat, you can replace that one with a nest or ecobee. They come with directions on how to wire them up. The downside is that the other thermostats without a wire will become decorative and not function anymore without the master.

Rammstein in Foxboro a year or so ago.

I was expecting a good show but holy shit. Just the atmosphere, effects, stage presence, and showmanship. Best show I’ve ever been to.

Close second is Trans-siberian Orchestra, for similar reasons.

Ham radio.

On the surface, it just sounds like listening to a bunch of old farts babbling on about their enlarged prostates, and tbf, there is a bit of that if you never go any deeper than 2M/70cm voice modes.

But there’s just SOOOO much you can do.

Want to see how far you can bounce a signal off a mirror laying on the surface of the moon? Yup. You can do that.

Want to launch and communicate with your own satellite? Yup. It’s a thing.

Want to remotely control devices from hundreds of miles away without using the internet? Yup.

Want to gps track your car at all times, even when there’s no cell phone service? That’s called APRS.

Want to have a conversation with astronauts on the ISS as it flies overhead? They’ve got ham equipment on board.

You can even play with broadcasting and/or receiving “secret” tv and radio stations - that is, they’re on alternate frequencies that regular TVs and radios don’t pick up.

It just goes so deep.