From what I can tell, Odin should still work on US devices, but I don’t think that its been kept current with devices and Android versions. Most of what I’m seeing is support for Android 9.0 and later, which is pretty out of date at this point. That being said, it’s not something I’ve messed with much, so I’m happy to defer to someone else with more direct experience.
Samsung is a separate kettle of fish in that they make things difficult while keeping the bootloader technically unlocked. Things like a lack of fastboot option, or bespoke for Samsung security changes, and a whole mess of other things. Carriers do also impose addition restrictions for locked models.
Most Motorola phones have unlockable bootloaders. The ones in their range that don’t are the carrier specific models.
Motorola Moto Edge (2021)
Pros: Moto’s classically lite skin with sensible additions that can be turned off if you don’t want them, great battery, great performance, really just a well rounded device.
Cons: I think I legally have to mention the update cadence, and lack of long-term support, but honestly it doesn’t bother me. Android versions haven’t mattered much past, what, Jelly Bean? Though longer security support would be nice. Also, the camera can be a little soft, but I don’t take a ton of photos so I’m rather ambivalent on it.
Honestly, I paid a good price for an unlocked device that still holds up amazingly well. I’m very satisfied.
I haven’t done much with it in a while, but I’m also not giving up on it, so I suppose it’s still valid lol.
I collect LaserDiscs
I got started with the format around 2010, and it was super neat to delve into this old, but strangely good, format. I found that most players and films were super cheap, and as a poor family with really no ability to move to HD yet, the SD format picture was clearly worse than DVD, but not so much so that it was unwatchable or anything.
I spent a lot of time collecting new films, looking at players, etc. etc., but I took a break while in college. Turns out that in that time everything went wild, and now the format is expensive to collect for. So much so that I’ve basically stopped at the moment. It’s still a super neat format though, and I’m not about to offload all my kit just yet.
For anyone looking for info about the format, I’d recommend Techmoan on YouTube. Matt does a lot of interesting tech videos, and the handful he’s done on LaserDisc are quite good.
I still do, but not in the same capacity.
With the death of BaconReader I don’t scroll as much, and just from looking at my front page, I imagine it’s not only the summer doldrums that have thinned it out so much. It’s just… harder to find good discussion there, and what I do find is often charged in some way, or very thin. So, I stick around for some of the communities that I’m more active in, but I’m also doing things on Lemmy, and a few other places. Honestly, idk that I’ll ever full drop Reddit in the same way that I did, say, MySpace, mostly in that there’s probably going to be some value somewhere on the site. But, it’s certainly not my main source of idle scrolling or engagement anymore.
Also, yes, I know I can still make BR work, but at this point I’ll just keep using Reddit in browser with uBlock Origin.
Coming SoonTM
But yeah, they’re plugging away at it yet. Basically, K-9 sat in maintenance mode for a good while, and while it worked, there’s a lot of tidying up to do yet. I imagine they’ll have the Thunderbird name on it once it has some of the bigger pieces in place.
They’ve been selling NFT avatars and avatar parts for a bit now. They’re not like, $1800 single unit ape pics, but they are a limited run set of digital items purchased for real money. They actually gave most people one for free like 2 years ago or something.
Planet Oat has some tasty varieties, I’m a big fan of their Blueberry Oat Crunch. Also, Dole Whip is dairy free as well and is getting more popular just about everywhere.
Otherwise lactaid is always good if it helps you at all and you still want ice cream.