It depends on what phone you have. Some phones have bootloaders you can’t unlock, and you can’t do much at all with that. If you can unlock the bootloader, your options are determined by which third-party Android builds support your hardware.

LineageOS is a popular option with pretty broad device support; GrapheneOS is a privacy/security focused option that only runs on Pixels.

I’ll expand this question to my entire social circle.

I haven’t found that anybody cares about my email provider. It doesn’t affect them because email is federated. Nobody has ever asked me why I’m mailing them from a domain I own rather than a service provider they’ve heard of.

Where I do run into a lot of resistance is trying to get people to use Signal. Some people seem to find the concept of having multiple messaging apps objectionable, which has never made any sense to me as long as they have basic computer skills. On occasion, I’m on the other side of that conversation when I’m unwilling to use Facebook Messenger for reasons that should be obvious to anyone in this community.

I don’t think you’re being taken advantage of financially. I imagine you’ve spent less money than any option for three weeks of sleeping accommodations in Switzerland aside from living with your parents, for example.

I do think there’s a significant chance there’s a mismatch in expectations though. If you intend this to be short-term, it would be cruel to let her think something else. As others have mentioned, there’s a risk she’s trying to get pregnant to incentivize you to stay or financially support her; you don’t know her well enough to say she wouldn’t do that.

As long as you have both of those concerns addressed, it sounds like a good time for all involved.

You will get rid of that phone long before the battery dies.

Why? There was a time where smartphone tech was improving fast enough that there was a large benefit to a new phone every 2-3 years, but that time is in the past for most use cases.

PCs have a BIOS/UEFI that provides hardware discovery and abstraction to the OS, while phones lack that and need the OS to know what hardware to expect.

20 years ago when the predecessors to modern smartphone hardware were being designed, there probably would have been meaningful costs to adding that kind of flexibility. There probably wouldn’t today, but there’s also no motivation for phone makers to do it.

A quick search suggests all X1 Nano models can run Windows 11, so they won’t be ultra-cheap because of that.

I like the ungrounded North American electrical outlet and plug design (NEMA 1-15). It has no safety features, but it’s very compact, and very easy for device manufacturers to create folding plugs for USB power supplies and the like.

I prefer the US spelling of these words. The U doesn’t do anything phonetically and was not present in the Latin from which many of the words derive.

That’s not criminal anywhere to my knowledge, but very creepy for an adult to say to a 13 year old.

I’m against disabling replies entirely, but for disabling notifications. Once a post is out there and other people are participating in the conversation, it’s not just yours anymore.

Not in most states, and some of those that do are unlikely to charge the owner in practice.

I’m going to guess a majority of people wouldn’t file an insurance claim. It would only make sense if

• They have insurance covering theft of property from inside a car, which is far from universal
• The deductible is substantially less than the value of the gun
• The insurance company isn’t likely to raise their premium as a result

In the USA, it’s not rare for people to have gun manufacturer stickers on their car.

Imagine you’re a thief and you see a Smith&Wesson sticker on a car parked outside a building where carrying guns is forbidden.

The National Crime Victimization Survey is conducted by the Census Bureau by interviewing randomly selected households. It gathers information on crimes not reported to the police, and the reporting rate.

It’s probable that people being afraid to talk to anyone who works for the government will affect its results, but it does have some hedges against that, such as enrolling households for a three year span.

I expect we’ll see that reflected in 2025’s numbers when they come out.

The National Crime Victimization Survey shows crime victimization rates being lower than 20 years ago, and far lower than 30 years ago. The rate is relatively steady from 2022 to 2024. This is similar, but not identical to what the FBI Uniform Crime Report shows. The rate of victims reporting crimes to the police increased a little over that time period.

He then said I groomed him.

He was trying to make himself feel better about being creepy with a kid. He’s wrong is this situation. There isn’t really any room for ambiguity.

Neither of us were exactly saints

You were a kid. Kids are entitled to do dumb stuff while figuring out how social interaction works, and should not feel bad about it years later. He was an adult, pretending to be a kid online and being very creepy. Depending on exactly what he said, sent, or requested, his behavior may even be criminal in some jurisdictions.

So, according to the “Fediverse-Observer” (and similar services AFAIK), in terms of software, sorting by user-count, it seems the top four user-bases are

Not relevant to the comment where you posted the following to a Lemmy community from Piefed:

Mastodon is just beginning to rudimentarily connect to PF, but IIRC Lemmy still doesn’t.

Which looks to me like you’re saying “Lemmy still doesn’t connect to Piefed”, but reading it three more times I guess it’s possible you meant “Lemmy still doesn’t connect to Mastodon”.

If you meant the latter, then I do have some idea what you’re talking about. It actually is possible to interact with one from the other with the constraint that Lemmy can only see Mastodon posts that tag communities. It’s not a smooth experience at all to try to consume community-based content from Mastodon.

Reading through this story, I don’t see any mention of sexual contact, which would make it pretty hard for there to be any sexual assault. If I’m reading this right, it looks like you, as a child had a purely online relationship that was half roleplay and half real with an adult.

If you knowingly misled him, kids do dumb things sometimes; don’t do that again. If he knowingly mislead you, he’s an asshole. If he continued having romantic or sexual chats with you knowing your real age, he’s a creep.

The comment you linked to says

For example, last time I checked, the top four FV software bases still don’t connect to the Lemmy / PieFed / etc side of things. Mastodon is just beginning to rudimentarily connect to PF, but IIRC Lemmy still doesn’t.

and I’m not sure what you’re talking about. Lemmy and Piefed obviously interoperate; you’re posting to !asklemmy@lemmy.world from a Piefed account right now. It’s a rougher experience trying to interact with forum-like software using blog-like software, but someone wanting that should probably just use two accounts.

That’s DRM, and it only works if everyone is accessing the information on devices they don’t fully control.