u/lmoki

I'm not an expert, but.... Google AI says Assurance has a policy across all their plans that limits high-speed data use to 35GB/mo before throttling takes place. The "additional bundled data" line is informing you of that policy, even though it won't come into play on a base-level Lifeline plan. It's not additional data that you have available to use. (Yes, it's a very awkward presentation!)

Yes, an outbound call or text is required on a 'regular' (but not defined) basis to keep the number. I don't believe incoming activity counts. The 'trigger' is merely time passing since the last outbound call or text. I have a TextNow line, and rarely use it all: but since I want to keep the number, I try to place a call every couple of weeks. (In a high-demand area, the time span to get a warning message might be much shorter: in my area, it seems to be around 30 days.)

Outside of the verification code thing: yes, there are legitimate reasons for someone having a TextNow or Talkatone number: perhaps for registering on a website, for shopping for a car, home repairs, or any other service that wants a phone number, and then resells their list of phone contacts to spammers (or will call you back a million times), as a backup that can be used on a different device or PC if your main phone should break, etc. I'd guess that a significant percentage of users have numbers similar to TextNow for those purposes. Of that group... well, some percentage is specifically using them for dating apps. Not applicable in your case, but some of those using similar numbers for dating apps are also 'legitimate': for example, a woman might not feel comfortable giving out her real phone number to a first date.

Just to be complete here, since you received an official response in your other thread: Infimobile does not support tablets on their plans.

No one gets details on exactly what promos will be a month in advance, or even days in advance. Best you can do is be prepared, know which networks would work & what length pre-purchase you're comfortable with, and a target price. You can be pretty sure US Mobile and Mint Mobile will have some aggressive promo price, likely tied to a 12-month pre-purchase. US Mobile's best deal may be restricted to a specific network. (Most likely AT&T, if restricted.) InfiMobile is likely to have something tempting, since they always seem to rotate between attractive promos.

But of course most of the MVNOs & flanker brands, even large ones, don't have storefronts.

They absolutely cannot lock the phone number on an active line. You can take your number to any new provider that will accept the transfer. As for unlocking the phone: T-Mobile could care less whether your new provider is promising to pay off (more likely reimburse you) your existing phone so that it can be unlocked: they care about whether it's already been paid off.

It's hard to argue against someone's personal experience, but.... your experience with Switchcraft certainly does not match my own, with about 50 years in the business. I don't have a beef with Neutrik, have used 1000's of them, and buy more Neutrik than anything else in the last 15 years. (Because they're 'good enough at the price', but not because they're better than Switchcraft.) The Neutrik chuck style cable grip is great & easy, and the connectors are dimensioned correctly after their first-and-second generation screwups on the female sockets. But they don't touch the mechanical reliability of the Switchcraft A3F/A3M. The Switchcraft plating and solder cups are superior, the insert base material is superior, and the shell is far stronger than Neutrik. This gets driven home to me each maintenance cycle we do on our decent sized cable inventory at work-- there is not a single working 1st or 2nd gen Neutrik left in service, and only a tiny percentage of 3rd and 4th gen Neutrik. But we still have bunches of perfectly serviceable Switchcraft that is old enough to have the patent number stamped into the body, and parts are interchangeable with brand-new Switchcraft.

I'm not alone in this analysis, either. Shure is almost universally recognized as building the most reliable mics in the industry, the SM58/57. Look inside the XLR socket on any of those that are more than a couple of years old, and you'll see 'Switchcraft' molded into the socket base. (In the last few years, that's changed to a 'Shure' imprint: I don't know if it's still a Switchcraft part customized for Shure, or if Shure is cloning the Switchcraft insert.) It's so universally considered correct and bulletproof that the standard field-test method of testing a suspect connector (of any brand) on a cable is to plug it in to an SM57/58 and see if the cable works reliably. If it doesn't, everyone knows it's a bad connector on the cable, without questioning the Switchcraft insert in the 57/58.

To be fair, most Good2Go members would have said the exact same thing (never had a problem) before the whole thing tumbled down without warning. They even had a decent reputation for customer service.

Very cool! Local co-op is what makes RE5 our favorite, even though I like the gameplay better in RE4.

It's worth trying bypassing your power conditioner. Trade it out for a new, cheap, power strip that doesn't advertise surge protection. If same issue, swap back. (The normal failure mode of most 'power conditioners' as they age is to leak voltage to ground.)

Your results would be unusual. Straight Talk prohibits the use of their branded phones on the BYOP plan, and plenty of people have lost the promo rate by switching to a branded phone.

Complaining about fit on 'switchcraft style' connectors is most certainly not a valid complaint about real Switchcraft connectors. Like it or not, they are not only the most consistent, but the industry standard for compatibility on both XLR and 1/4" connectors. Any manufacturer that does not make their XLR connectors 100% compatible with Switchcraft dimensions is doing it wrong. (Hosa does not use Switchcraft XLRs. They use a connector designed to look like a Switchcraft.)

Just as it would be unfair to judge Neutrik consistency based on the huge variances between crappy copies that 'look like Neutrik' connectors.

What matters is the magnetic field strength inside the voice coil gap-- not possible to measure directly without some specialized equipment. You can test for Thiele/Small parameters with a kit like the Dayton DATS tester and a laptop, which will measure most of the parameters & a measurement of the sensitivity to compare to the JBL sepcs, but it can't tell you the magnetic gap strength independent of a working cone.

A good cone assembly is not necessarily cheap, at least judging from the prices a recone kit commands from a major manufacturer. I have no idea about the relative cost of the magnet structure vs the cone assembly at any particular price point for the complete driver.

None of us are going to be able to give you reliable ironclad advice on this: you haven't named the manufacturer, and we haven't seen the actual drivers, or any spec sheets on the drivers (if they exist). If you're happy with the cabinets themselves, the best advice I have is to buy one set of higher grade cone speakers , or a recone kit, and HF diaphragms, and give it a try. If you can lay your hands on a sample of the real JBL (around $350-$410, new, in the US), you'd have a good baseline for comparison.

Have you used this line recently? A few months ago (July/August?), Good2Go required everyone to get a new SIM card-- did you do that, and was it working properly after the switch?

(Mostly asking because your error message is specifying ztar Mobile, who was the owner of Good2Go previously-- but as far as I know, it hasn't been confirmed that ztar is actually involved anymore..... and most people see Black Wireless or Red Pocket in the status bar after installing the new SIM.)

I would agree with this-- in general. But my metro area has 2 good junior college audio programs, and there is a line of willing production companies trying to hire the best students from both of those programs. As a matter of fact, the head engineer on our audio team (a live event production company) came from one of those programs a few years ago. We'd hire another, half as good, in a heartbeat.

One of those programs has 4-5 event spaces (small community access, black box, a concert hall), and events are staffed by students (with hired heads-of-departments, of course).

Oh, what a great idea!

You've been very good, or very lucky, to get that many referrals from the referral thread over the last year! I think I've always posted within the first hour, and I've gotten a total of 1 referral over the last year.

This depends entirely on how she will use it. I use my Kindle to check out library books (free), to buy ebooks from Amazon, and share books my wife picks with her Kindle Unlimited (now Kindle +) subscription, and to occasionally sideload a book from elsewhere. No point in me modding, since it already does what I want it to do. (And I'd guess that's true for the vast majority of Kindle users.)

It's generic wire, just twisted. Nothing magic: make sure you're getting stranded copper wire: finer stranding will be more flexible. Match the existing gauge (wire size), or at least close. (If the original is 24 gauge, you're OK with anything from 26-22 gauge, with the lighter being a little more fragile, and the heavier being stiffer. You will need to solder.

Yes, Tello's backup data throttling is very severe! I believe it's the lowest speed T-Mobile offers for throttled data, which is pretty much the speed you should expect on any T-Mobile MVNO unless they specifically mention something faster.

It's been a number of years since I've been able to test throttled data from different carriers (networks, not specific providers). When I did have a chance to do that, T-Mobile's throttling was the most hardcore, even if throttled speed was similar from the other networks. Other networks often allow a short burst of high speed before clamping down, while T-Mobile seems to apply the throttle instantaneously. The slower 'attack' time of other carriers might mean simple websites could often load before being throttled, while T-Mobile network throttling would just lead to a timeout before rendering the first page.

I understand passing on this, since it doesn't sound like an attractive option-- maybe better marketing if they'd described it as 'Magic Hair Eraser', or something.

That said, if they were described in blunt terms, a lot of cosmetic products would give pause. I've long been astounded that nail polish items routinely include solvents that would come with big bold warning labels if I bought them in the solvents section at my local hardware store, and that makeup contents can be equally scary sounding.

It is very difficult for a provider to target (competitvely) both the very low end of the plans range, and the upper end of the plans range. It takes a different company strategy for those 2 niches. It seems like US Mobile has decided to focus on higher data users-- and it appears they are effective at doing so. My guess is that along that journey, they've decided they're comfortable with giving up the low-end niche.

Something seems off if either L+ or R+ has 1.4V on it. Either a board failure, or mixing up speaker and mic connections (if the mic input is set up to provide remote power for a condenser mic).