Or, you know, the device we’re discussing

E readers don’t generally make calls, texts, do navigation, or fit comfortably in the zippered hip pockets of my hiking pack

I’m kind of considering getting one, probably as a second phone to swap my sim card into for occasional use

The e ink is a big draw for me, as is the physical keyboard, not to mention the headphone jack and expandable storage.

With the e-ink comes good battery life, they’re claiming potentially 4 days from what I can see. I like the idea of that for travel, where I might be spending long hours on a bus, train, plane, car, walking around town all day, maybe even camping somewhere where it may not always be convenient to charge my phone.

E-ink is also easier to read in direct sunlight without a glare, as someone with a lot of outdoor hobbies that appeals to me. (Although for the same reason I do also wish it had a higher IP rating, and maybe an impact resistance rating as well)

I dont tend to play a lot of games or watch movies on my phone to begin with, so I’m not so much interested in that aspect of it encouraging mindfulness, but for people who do struggle with that temptation to spend too much time on tiktok forget hooked on stupid games, I can see this helping them to kick that habit since e ink isn’t really great for those kinds of uses, while not needing to totally unplug from the more utilitarian uses for a smartphone like navigation, different messaging apps, email, 2 factor authenticator apps, etc.

I’m not rushing out to buy one, but I might consider grabbing one if I get a good deal somewhere, or if it has some staying power I might consider picking up the next gen version of it.

I was recently reading some Wikipedia article on my phone and when I was scrolling I accidentally hit a button to edit it and was greeted by a message that my IP was banned from editing for the next 10 months.

I haven’t even attempted to edit Wikipedia in probably 20 years. Admittedly last time I did I was probably about 14 years old, and it may have been some juvenile vandalism, but somehow I don’t think that they managed to trace me from a computer in my high school library to my current cell phone, or that anything I did warranted a 21 year ban

So obviously it’s because phones using cellular Internet go through IP addresses only slightly less often than most people breathe.

It feels like that sort of IP ban really isn’t particularly useful. The vandals probably aren’t usually on that address and most of the time it’s getting used by random people who probably don’t even think about editing Wikipedia.

You got a typo for mastodon (mastadon)

I don’t really have any input on how it is to self-host, but I’ve been playing around with friendica a bit and I think that has a lot of potential and may be worth mentioning. I think it has a lot of potential as almost a unified fediverse portal in addition to its obvious purpose of being a Facebook alternative, from what I’ve seen it seems to play pretty nicely with a lot of other fediverse services, and also supports RSS feeds

It needs some polishing, I think the default UI is pretty wonky, but there’s a lot of functionality there if you can be bothered to figure it out.