> 2) How did you even discover servers in the first place when you first started out?
Magazines and/or word of mouth.
> 3) Were there big popular servers that everyone used or was it fragmented?
Some of both, but way more fragmented than centralized (running a "big server" was also a "big expense" on the part of the Sysop, so most were small hobbyist endeavors that supported one to some small number (usually single digits) of concurrent users).
> 4) What was the general vibe of discussions like back then? How was it different than now?
As most were small (one or two phone lines to the BBS) and because toll (long distance phone) calls were charged by the minute, most were small isolated islands within a local calling area (which 'local' calls were usually unmetered [not charged a per minute charge]). So one usually ended up discussing with the same group of other users of that bbs rather than never encountering the same user again as is the case today. I.e. it was more a "remote access social club" for geographically "near" individuals.
At the same time, no one had the ability to broadcast to the world (in the same manner as FB, Twitter, Youtube, Tiktok, etc.) so there was (sometimes) less "politics" and/or if there was "politics" being discussed it was often local instead of national.
> They seem to be actually implementing a lot of high effort scam protection features recently in android
This all happened recently because a court case was recently decided that broke Google's monopoly on play store money flows (Google must now allow alternate play stores). These recent changes are simply to try to prop up as much of their play store profit center as they can by restricting what you can do with the computer you purchased.
> Not even a small fraction of a percentage of scams come from installing software normally, but only from Google Play store.
This change is not about stopping malware/scams. Malware/scams is just the gaslighting excuse for the change.
The actual reason for the change is to try to protect playstore profits. With the lawsuit that forced them to allow alternate "stores" they saw the money stream shrinking, and this is their attempt at propping up the money flow for as long as possible.
It was, but xdamage is part of the composting side of the final bitmap image generation, before that final bitmap is clocked out to the display.
The frame buffer, at least the portion of the GPU responsible for reading the frame buffer and shipping the contents out over the port to the display, the communications cable to the display screen itself, and the display screen were still reading, transmitting, and refreshing every pixel of the display at 60hz (or more).
This LG display tech. claims to be able to turn that last portion's speed down to a 1Hz rate from whatever it usually is running at.
In my case it began with 16K (yes, 161024 bytes) and 90K (yes, 901024 bytes) 5.25" floppy disks (although the floppies were a few months after the computer). Eventually upgraded to 48K RAM and 180K double density floppy disks. The computer: Atari 800.
I'll see your Atari 800 and raise you my Atari 2600 with its whopping 128 bytes of RAM. Bytes with a B. I can kinda sorta call it a computer because you could buy a BASIC cartridge for it (I didn't and stand by that decision - it was pretty bad).
I thought the timex Sinclair 1000 win 2 Kbytes of ram was bad.
The membrane keyboard wasn’t great (the lack of a space bar was a wierd choice) but it did work. We had programs on casette and did get the 16Kbyte memory expansion.
That's how you end up with "Hollywood accounting" where movies that gross over 100M dollars still show as a "loss" for tax purposes via creative accounting methods.
> What they're actually trying to do is obsolete the devices faster
This is exactly why. Obsoleting older devices keeps (in their eyes) the purchase treadmill running. Making a device that could be updated forever means never making another sale to that user (unless some physical failure happens, or the user wants a second one).
> I had not even taken my phone out of flight mode yet, but somehow the app knew where I was, despite not having mobile service, wifi or bluetooth enabled.
None of which are GPS, which is likely what Uber used to know you had "touched down". And GPS, being "receive only" may not be disabled by "airplane mode".
> I also have settings for the application set to only allow location while the app is in use.
Is that a phone setting, or an app. internal setting (i.e., a setting inside the Uber app. itself)?
If it is a phone setting (external to the app) then this would imply that it may not really do what it says it does.
If the setting is inside the Uber app. itself, then that is just a "promise" by the app. developer that they will behave, and if it is this case, then they clearly did not behave.
Edit to add: Checking my android phone just now, GPS is not disabled by airplane mode.
If it was an "inside the app" setting, then Uber did not behave.
> but the app should not have my location made available to it when I am not using it
Unfortunately, not how Android works. You can turn "location permission" on or off for individual apps, but if it is on for an app (and Uber's app likely demanded it be allowed "location permission" upon install) then if the global GPS is turned on, any app with "location permission" can ask the phone "where am I" at any time.
Typically every couple days, but that all depended on how much free time (and available telephone time) one had.
> What program would you use?
Typically, a "terminal program". Qmodem (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qmodem) and ProComm (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Procomm, link is what comes up on Wikipedia) were two popular favorites.
> 2) How did you even discover servers in the first place when you first started out?
Magazines and/or word of mouth.
> 3) Were there big popular servers that everyone used or was it fragmented?
Some of both, but way more fragmented than centralized (running a "big server" was also a "big expense" on the part of the Sysop, so most were small hobbyist endeavors that supported one to some small number (usually single digits) of concurrent users).
> 4) What was the general vibe of discussions like back then? How was it different than now?
As most were small (one or two phone lines to the BBS) and because toll (long distance phone) calls were charged by the minute, most were small isolated islands within a local calling area (which 'local' calls were usually unmetered [not charged a per minute charge]). So one usually ended up discussing with the same group of other users of that bbs rather than never encountering the same user again as is the case today. I.e. it was more a "remote access social club" for geographically "near" individuals.
At the same time, no one had the ability to broadcast to the world (in the same manner as FB, Twitter, Youtube, Tiktok, etc.) so there was (sometimes) less "politics" and/or if there was "politics" being discussed it was often local instead of national.
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