Well, it has something to do with it. In the context of Pixels, carrier‐unlocked phones always allow the bootloader to be unlocked, Verizon‐locked phones never do (see, e.g., https://discuss.grapheneos.org/d/24254-no-way-to-use-my-veri...), and for other carriers it varies but often requires additional manual fiddling. To quote the GrapheneOS FAQ:
> Devices sold in partnership with specific carriers may be locked by the carrier, which will prevent installing GrapheneOS. This is primarily an issue with US carriers and isn't common elsewhere in the world. To avoid this, either don't buy a carrier device, or make sure it can be unlocked.
Is there a difference there for a Pixel? I thought those bootloaders have always been unlockable (after carrier unlocking, which should be possible after the contract is paid off).
I wonder if the person you talked to actually knew what they were talking about. Swappa explains what an unlocked device means in their FAQ and a bootloader is not mentioned.
That's sad, because one of Swappa's main selling points (and the reason they got popular) is that they started out as a marketplace for Android phones, and should specifically know about rooted / bootloader unlocked / etc. phones. Enthusiast stuff.
Their About page says:
> The inspiration for Swappa sparked when Ben had trouble finding a good source for test devices for Android development projects.
Someone can be forgiven for thinking that "unlocked" means "not locked" rather than "locked but with only one lock".
I only buy used devices from online marketplaces/vendors with free returns, as it keeps the incentives aligned such that sellers don't want to hide defects (as it just increases their return rate).
If it's not a carrier locked device, what would be the reason for it not to be OEM unlockable once connected to the Internet? This is not about the device being logged into an existing user account, that would trigger FRP which is something different.
I had a surprisingly working intercom setup with Asterisk and some old Cisco phones set to auto-answer on speaker. But ... complicated setup and eventually it fell into disuse.
Running X11 on Ubuntu 22.04 - I have a 2650x1600 main at 150% scale and a 1920x1980 secondary at 100% scale. Essentially they're the same virtual size side-by-side. This _only_ works on my nVidia GPU...
The "enriewu" thing wasn't a misspelling of "en route", it was someone's name who had arrived in Miami with Jean-Luc and Peggy. It's probably a misspelling of Henry pronounced in French.
LLMs are so good at telling me about things I know little to nothing about, but when when I ask about things I have expert knowledge on they consistently fail, hallucinate, and confidently lie...
But it's still not completely right. LLMs are actually great to tell you about things you know little about. You just have to take names, ideas, and references from it, not facts.
(And that makes agentic coding almost useless, by the way.)
I’ve found that they vary a huge amount based on the subject matter. In my case, I have noticed the opposite of what you observed. They know a lot about the web space (which I’ve been in for around 25 years), but are pretty bad (though not useless) at esoteric languages such as Hare.
Obviously, since the training material for such esoteric languages is scarce. (That's why they are esoteric!) So by definition, LLM will never be good at esoteric languages.
I think you end up asking it basic questions about stuff you know little about, but much more complex/difficult questions for stuff you're already an expert in.
I was going to comment on the Mac exclusivity too which might be a bad idea now that Linux is on the rise. But you're right, there's a Linux beta too now. Thanks for the pointer.
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