There was one team fairly recently that thought they had developed one that got a lot of press, but it turned out to not be true.

But that was only for that one specific case, it didn’t prove that room temperature superconductors can’t exist in general, there are still other teams working on developing them, and theoretically they could be possible, we just haven’t quite worked out what materials will exhibit superconductivity at room temperature, under what circumstances, and how to make them.

And we have some materials that come pretty damn close, Lanthanum decahydride can exhibit superconductivity at temperatures just a few degrees colder than some home freezers can manage (although at very high pressures)

I don’t really like that they seem to be floating the idea of adding ads to the mix, but as long as this stays a separate part of the service from the on-demand section, I don’t exactly hate it.

I’ll occasionally have parties where we’ll use Pluto or similar services just to have something on. Usually something like the The Asylum channel to have a stream of something going that we’re not really invested in but that we can comment on and go “what the fuck was that‽” once in a while, and kind of do our own little MST3K thing.

And sometimes you just kind of want something on in the background while you’re doing stuff, and I know I’ll sometimes get a little bogged down trying to choose what I want to have on even though I’m not really going to be actively watching it.

I remember once upon a time there were some people who really wanted Netflix to add a “random episode” option, I wasn’t really one of them, but this could kind of fill that niche.

Also, if they curate it right, it could be kind of a cool way to drop new episodes. Say a new episode of a star wars show drops at midnight (or whatever-o’clock) For those who care to watch it immediately as it drops, they just need to be tuned to the star wars channel and it will come on automatically, no having to refresh and hit play. And leading up to the new episode they can do a mini marathon of relevant episodes from other star wars shows and movies that will help you understand what’s going on in the episode, maybe even create some new content summarizing content from the books, comics, and video games, etc. sort of an extended “last time on…” segment for the new episode. I’d also want it to be immediately available on-demand when it drops, but it could be kind of a good way to get yourself back up to speed about what’s going on in the show.

So there are ways this could be a cool addition to the service. Whether they actually use it that way is another matter entirely.

(and no inputing the number corresponding to the letters like on an old phone didn’t work either)

Just to be sure, are you trying to enter the numbers like T9 texting by hitting 222 to type a C, so you’d be entering “* # * # 222 44 33 222 55 444 66 # * # *”

Or are you entering like you’re dialing JG Wentworth at 877-CASHNOW, where the C would just be a single 2? So what you’d want to enter is “* # * # 2 4 3 2 5 4 6 # * # *”

And have you tried the other method?

A bit more context about what/why you’re trying to do may also help us to help you figure it out.

I don’t think any common phone system is set up to accept actual text input, so I doubt you’re supposed to be sending the actual characters “CHECKIN”

I just entered “##2432546##” into my phone’s stock dialer, and I got a pop-up saying that check in was successful, so I suspect that’s what you’re , but I’m not entirely sure what that means.

Also when I copy/pasted “##CHECKIN##” into my dialer it automatically converted the letters into 2432546

From a little googling, it looks like its a way of forcing your phone to check for updates, but most of the sites I could find referencing it were a decade or so old, so there’s a chance that may not be used as much anymore, or it’s possibly something that varies from one manufacturer, carrier, whether your phone is locked to a carrier or unlocked, software version, etc. to another.

43wpm, 95% accuracy, Gboard Dvorak no swipe

Fingers are a bit cold from just walking the dog, and I’m tired from getting off a 12 hour shift, have a feeling I could do better under different circumstances.

Haven’t tested myself on a real keyboard in a long time, but once upon a time I could hit well north of 100wpm pretty consistently if I tried. When I tested myself in preparation for my current job about 5 years ago I think I usually hovered somewhere around 80-90 (911 dispatch, my agency requires at least 60 to pass the aptitude test, I wasn’t worried about passing but I was curious where I was at since I hadn’t been typing much at the time)

Growing up my mom lived on one of the biggest hills in a town that was basically all hills. She remembers when it snowed they’d watch all kinds of cars and trucks get stuck trying to make it up that hill, and then watch a guy in a little VW beetle go right up the hill like it was nothing, perfectly happy will of that engine weight right over the rear drive wheels.

Years later I’m a new driver borrowing my parents’s cars, a '93 RWD ranger, and a '92 Buick century, and that comparison did a good job of driving home how much difference that weight distribution matters. The ranger had some pretty good grippy tires, but without any weight in the bed, it didn’t take much to make those wheels spin. The buick, on the other hand, handled snow beautifully, it had all the weight of that big boat-like front end over those front drive wheels, never once struggled to find traction, the only limiting factor was that it sat pretty low to the ground so it didn’t take too much snow before that front end was just trying it’s damnedest to plow through snow. If some mad scientist ever thought to lift an old Buick a few inches, I’m pretty confident that 4wd/AWD would become all but obsolete.

HP Omen

Only tangentially related, but I’m still kind of pissed about HP buying VoodooPC and doing basic fuck-all with it and just slapping the Omen name on stuff once in a while.

For those who don’t remember, VoodooPC used to be a higher end prebuilt gaming computer company. You can go ahead and argue about why prebuilts are trash, not really the point, I don’t know if they were at all good computers or worth the cost, but I thought they made some really cool looking computers if nothing else, and occasionally had some pretty cool ideas. The omen was one of their flagship offerings.

I may be misremembering, it’s been like a decade, but I think HP acquired them pretty soon after Dell bought Alienware so it was probably their way of trying to stay competitive. I think by most accounts Dell kind of turned Alienware into shit, but at least they’ve kept the branding around and still make some cool-looking computers if nothing else.

I’m not sure what the defaults are on Gboard because I’ve tinkered with the settings a lot by now, but you can have both long press to change language and swipe to move cursor at the same time, they don’t really interfere with each other, I just did both while writing this comment.

Also I’m not sure how many people have more than one language enabled on their keyboard, I’m admittedly not in a great position to judge that as an American since not too many of us speak more than one language with any regularity or fluency. A lot of people don’t tinker with the settings too much and for a lot of languages that use some variant of the Latin alphabet using the keyboard of your main language is probably sufficient for most other Latin alphabet languages in like 99% of cases. I suspect a lot of people don’t bother (though I’m happy to be proven wrong)

IIRC Toyota bet hard on hydrogen fuel cell technology and have been stubbornly working on making them a thing instead of pivoting to BEVs.

Which I’m not exactly mad about or sure if it is (or isn’t, I genuinely don’t know enough about the technology to make a call) a bad decision. While it’s certainly looking right now like BEVs are the way of the future, maybe Toyota will make some breakthrough and hydrogen really will end up being the next big thing.