With my wired headphones, I press the siri button and say “read my text” when the text vibration goes off. With my cheap Bluetooth ones, it either just reads it if I have that enabled, or I say “hey siri, read my text” if it doesn’t. It’ll let me reply to texts or create them from scratch too.

I think Beats just enables some of the assistive tech by default.

It’s also fully programmable using Shortcuts: you can create shortcuts that check what headphones are connected and do different things when a text is received, including auto respond based on your location or the sender.

I used to walk a similar distance to work. Things I always had with me:

good quality walking shoes (not runners or hikers, but real walking shoes) - they’re usually a bit more expensive but worth it. And avoid anything with a mixed sole with a logo on it - you’ll wear through the softer rubber of the logo and then it’ll start sucking up water into the shoe.

A comfortable backpack that can carry everything you need to carry

A brimmed hat (I found a full brimmed hat was usually better than a baseball cap)

A jacket appropriate for the place you live.

A bottle of water

A snack

Something high-vis. Doesn’t have to be a vest; an armband or something on your backpack is good enough.

Sunglasses. Get blue blockers for cloudy weather and polarized glasses for sunny weather. They’ll keep stuff from cars driving by out of your eyes. I found cycling glasses worked well.

And keep a change of clothes at work, just in case.

Er, every pair of wired and wireless headphones with controls and a mic that I’ve used in the last decade have been able to do that? For that matter, “hey siri” can trigger most of those features without any headphones at all.

On an iPhone you go to Settings->Accessibility to manage most of the settings and Settings->Siri & Search for the rest.

Hippos were glibly dismissed in the article for some reason.

How did you guess?

Quite the event to share with the grandkids.

I do take issue with one statement though:

> which just might be the most dangerous creature on earth

Where I come from, there’s a saying: if it’s black, fight back. If it’s brown, lie down. If it’s white, goodnight.

A grizzly wouldn’t stand a chance against a polar bear.

I always just ask what their best virgin drinks are. And then I usually grab a cranberry ginger ale.

Neither this phone nor my computer has a windows key?

Maybe not for long?

This is likely because we have laws attached to the real spelling of a lot of words; if you call something Milk on the label, there are requirements for what’s in the container. If you call something Milq, you can put anything you like in the container, and it usually signifies that there’s been a substitution for something the FDA would be unwilling to call Milk.

Krispy Kreme, for example, often isn’t crisp and contains no cream. I have a theory on why they’re called donuts instead of doughnuts too….

Solar panels cost money, require additional assembly costs and time, and add weight.

There’s new tech that addresses the second two to some degree, but being new, it brings more of the first.

Good for her, and for everyone who supported her!

I’m definitely wondering why all three freshmen quit for personal reasons at the same time though (or was that just implied?).

It can improve prose style too — just has issues with content.

They have… it’s called a digital set.

Nobody wants an open drum. Everyone just wants different pillow effects.

They aren’t designed to not need one because each percussionist likes a slightly different sound. Without a pillow it’s like a mini upright bass drum, so some damping is needed. Some people like a bit of resonance, some people like a quick thud. This will change not just from musician to musician, but also from venue to venue and song to song.

Imagine Lego.

Now imagine you have all the pieces.

Now imagine that you can play with people all over the world.

Now imagine that some of those people have created intricate block worlds and set up different kinds of games to play on them.

The games themselves are as varied as Lego players:

Some are world shaping where you play cooperatively, some are wealth building where you mine the local resources and “craft” them into other blocks, with the end goal of unlocking a new area of the game with new blocks where you can eventually get powerful enough to defeat a dragon.

A popular variant is player-vs-player capture the flag, where you re-spawn at your bed when you die… unless someone destroys your bed. Last team standing wins.

Another popular game is Minecraft parkour, where it’s a race through an obstacle course to a finish line.

The types of objectives to any scenario are only limited by the world builder’s imagination.

Some people have built functional computers within Minecraft that do a great job of visually explaining how computers work.

Others have used Minecraft to demonstrate city planning methods and their results.

I’d like to know which animal below them is eating all the toilet paper….

I’ve never dated a day in my life. I just did things I liked doing, usually with a group of people with similar tastes, and eventually found someone who I spent more time with than most. Everyone else decided we were a couple before we did. By that point, “dating” wasn’t really the term for it because we were in a long term relationship.

Don’t force relationships. Enjoy being friends with all sorts of people first.

Well… yes and no.

My Wi-Fi router and security cameras are on a UPS. You’re going to have to wait a few hours after cutting the power for it all to shut down. And during that time I’m getting a constant stream of alerts on my phone that the power is off.

[edit] Oh, and I should probably have mentioned that my power arrives in an underground conduit to my breaker box, and my breaker box has a camera pointed at it that you can’t get to without setting off an intrusion alarm first.

With a properly set up modern security system, there isn’t really much short of an EMP that’s going to black out both the security cameras plus the hidden cameras in any timeframe reasonable to be effective for a burglary.

For that you need the human factor so that the warnings are being ignored by the time any burglary is attempted — or just move fast enough and disguised enough that nobody can catch you in time.

But these days with gait recognition being a thing, you’ll still probably be ID’d.

My fitness is running. Outside. With a small investment in my own at-home weights and fitness doodads. Some of them I’ve had for 20 years.

The only real cost after lifestyle adjustments has been $180 on shoes every year.

If I was a weekly regular at the liquor store, I’d have paid for all my stuff for 25 years within a few months.

Best to ask someone who uses Quicken products in the US.

Thing is, it sounds like you’re not making enough money to be having to pay for tax returns; you should just be able to do the web-based free filing.

Yup. In low interest periods, there’s no difference. In high interest periods, it’s sometimes more profitable to keep the money yourself and collect interest on it.

But either way, you’re going to have to pay it, so don’t spend it.

Yup. If you pay nothing up front, it’s up to you to hold back what you think you’ll need to pay at tax time.

Seems like it.

I generally get my company to do standard witholdings and then I donate to charity and top up my tax free savings, and so end up getting a nice chunk of money back each year. But that’s just money that really shouldn’t have been withheld in the first place.

I’ll just add to this that starting off in support and moving to IT security is a very common career path. For red teaming, you’ll need some people with a CS background, but mostly what you need is generalists who can think laterally and pick up how to use new tools in novel ways. Support is also a viable way into blue teams, but you’re going to need a deeper understanding of systems and structures (and basic coding and analysis) to play defence.