Probably cheap at the price compared to burning Jet A by the tens or hundreds of gallons.

Not that I am unconcerned about the resource usage. Lesser of two evils.

And no asinine private jet commute required for the AI CEO…

Was always curious why there was an extra step to confirm when making a call through the GV app. Not using it anymore, but I see the logic behind requiring that confirmation.

Google Voice, with built-in dialer, voicemail, etc., was useful once upon a time, from when they acquired GrandCentral (original company) up through a few years ago.

Not so much anymore, just recently ported out the last couple of numbers I was using them for. I don’t see much use case for replacing the dialer, except insofar as the ability to do so has value in terms of freedom and open markets.

It’s already trivial to get local banking details from many countries, (e.g., ‘multi-currency’ debit cards) but as far as I’m aware there’s not a practical way to get a foreign debit card without the usual hoops that the full account would require.

Probably because demand for such a thing is low - I can generate disposable card numbers on the fly, but only from my home country. Can’t imagine (aside from this specific edge case in question) generating foreign card numbers would be all that useful most of the time.

End-user support for such a thing would also be a challenge - I’m very accustomed to entering the usual data points with my card, but users would forget the associated postal code, or any number of other things, and then call support whining that it’s ‘broken’.

IOW, not something that one stuck in Ameristan can realistically override. Damn.

A handful of those factors are fairly trivial, but addressing all of them concurrently sounds like a tall order - especially since presumably one can’t talk to countryd directly and feed it the desired data.

Appreciate the clarity - iOS just isn’t a platform I have a need or the tools to code in.

There really is a dearth of choices. I’ve little love for Google’s version of android, mostly for privacy reasons.

If I could get a decent phone that ran at reasonable speed for a tolerable price, without the tracking, I’d be willing to give it a go - and endure more than a few pain points.

Had some very similar questions, TY. Hoping to get another 2ish years out of my Lenovo P70, and then I’ll be on the hunt for something smaller and lighter, preferably Linux native.

I liked the form factor of the older ThinkPads, but not much with current hardware that’s Linux friendly.