a sentient cat’s Comments

• Oct 2nd, 2019 @ 7:52am

  (untitled comment)

  on Welcome To Working Futures: 14 Speculative Fiction Stories About The Future Of Work

  I'm excited to read this. Science fiction/speculative fiction is like catnip to me.

• Aug 5th, 2019 @ 9:35am

  Verizon sucks

  on Verizon's New 'Unlimited' Data Plans Still Have Very Real, Problematic Limits

  I have a tangentially related story:

  Recently I decided to upgrade my phone because 32GB internal space just wasn't cutting it any more. I decided on the Pixel 3 with 128GB, so I went to the Verizon website and got connected with a support person in the in-browser chat window. I said "I want to upgrade to the 128GB Pixel 3" and they said "okay I'll set that up and you can pick it up tonight at your local Verizon location".

  Then like an idiot, I assumed everything was on the up-and-up, and didn't actually check to see if I'd been given the correct phone--it said Google Pixel 3 in large letters on the box, but the small print on the side label said 64GB.

  Could have been an honest mistake, sure. But then, since I'm still on the family plan, my mom decided to upgrade to the Pixel 3 as well, and she'd get the 128GB model, and we'd swap devices. So she went online and arranged to get it sent to her local store, and right before actually handing over credit card info, she said "just to be sure, Pixel 3 128GB, right?" and the support person said "oh sorry I put that through as 64GB; let me fix it".

  So I think Verizon is doing dishonest and creatively incompetent things behind the scenes. Because once is an accident, twice is suspicious.

• Jul 25th, 2019 @ 12:29pm

  Re:

  on The Death Of Ownership: Educational Publishing Giant Pearson To Do Away With Print Textbooks (That Can Be Resold)

  I'm a rabid fan of ebooks for my personal library, but I agree that textbooks or anything with indices, lots of footnotes, or cross-referencing between pages of the book is a huge pain to do on an ereader. I don't know of any way to conveniently reproduce holding a physical book open to two different pages and looking back and forth between them.

  Pearson is the absolute worst anyway. Everything they do is to grab more money. I predict that their ebook portal will be bug-riddled to the point of unusability their response to students' complaints will be, essentially, "sucks to be you."

  One last thing: ebooks can absolutely be shared in a group setting. It won't take long for someone smarter than me to crack Pearson's DRM. They could do something like Microsoft does with electronic copies of certification exam study texts and put "from the library of Purchaser's Name" on every page, but that could be sanitized away if needed.