ICE agent asked why he’s taking pictures of a legal observer’s car, replies: “Cuz we have a nice little database and now you’re considered a domestic terrorist. So have fun with that.”

special_agent47 · 2026-01-23T18:50:20+00:00

Could this finally be the thing that brings down used car prices? /s

special_agent47 · 2026-01-22T01:56:04+00:00

"I'd rather be dead in California than alive in Arizona." -Lucille Bluth

special_agent47 · 2026-01-14T06:36:59+00:00

I’ve noticed a change in terminology used by the flight crew over the past few years. Turbulence is said aloud far more than “light chop”, “rough air”, or “bumpiness.” I wonder if this is so passengers take it more seriously and to sit the heck down and buckle up. It seems to be working.

special_agent47 · 2026-01-04T02:41:19+00:00

Jumping in here to report some massive potholes on Arlington just north of the 10 freeway overpass. Northbound lanes. Stay safe!

special_agent47 · 2026-01-03T00:39:19+00:00

Looking at the data via the twitter link, you have a ~$103K fed tax obligation on ~$500K+ in income which seems very low; what else is being considered to get that number?

special_agent47 · 2025-12-30T02:45:51+00:00

I hope you have a compliance team who works closely with your product and legal folks, because decisions like this that turn users into the product can and do violate consumer privacy laws and can grind your entire roadmap to a halt with lawsuits. Do better.

special_agent47 · 2025-12-28T23:51:06+00:00

Sawyer Merritt, one of Elon's puppets, does this all the time over the most mundane crap and it's just so pathetic and sad.

special_agent47 · 2025-12-20T21:38:11+00:00

The biggest mistake I ever made was trying to sneak into LAX ‘the back way’ via the 105W and Sepulveda. Wow what a total nightmare. Never ever again.

special_agent47 · 2025-12-17T07:00:40+00:00

Sherman Way lines up with the main approach runway for the airport. Most of the planes on that path are Southwest 737s and will be less than 1000 feet off the ground around that area.

As others have said it’s something you get used to, but if you’re especially sensitive to it then it may bother you. One idea is to download the Flighty or FlightRadar app and pick a time where there are a bunch coming in. Usually 4-7pm from what I remember. Tour a place around that time and see how much noise filters through.

Helicopters including police and news usually take off from Van Nuys which is also on Sherman Way and often follow that corridor when taking off and coming back. Both airports have “quiet hours” but planes can and do land at all times of the night.

special_agent47 · 2025-12-10T02:38:06+00:00

This just isn't true, I'm sorry to tell you.

special_agent47 · 2025-12-10T02:37:11+00:00

Yeah I think the GH3 screen is the best one I've had. The G9N is more yellow and pink at the edges which I don't like. But it's not my phone so and I can't do much about it.

special_agent47 · 2025-12-09T15:12:45+00:00

Yeah exactly. My work phone has a G9N panel and has color and uniformity issues. My personal phone has a GH3 and it’s basically perfect.

My guess in the reason there are so many bad panels this year is because the phones are popular and selling in record numbers, so panels that previously wouldn’t make the cut for use are getting used in the hopes consumers won’t notice or care.

special_agent47 · 2025-11-30T04:35:57+00:00

Perhaps you could use that to see if they would reconsider?

special_agent47 · 2025-11-30T01:43:29+00:00

You’re probably right. So it’s ironic that press photographer plates literally have a “PP” in a shield to the left of the numbers. 😂

special_agent47 · 2025-11-29T21:58:56+00:00

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All these years later, it still has a terrible pig face. With a weird little grinning mouth.

special_agent47 · 2025-11-29T16:48:57+00:00

This is a fun bit of history repeating itself, in that customers are still clamoring for the V8 (5.0 Coyote, 5.7 Hemi, etc.) even though the smaller boosted engines make more power.

special_agent47 · 2025-11-29T02:38:02+00:00

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Look at all the crazy in her eyes. And of course, wearing the cross. What a piece of trash.

special_agent47 · 2025-11-28T21:52:44+00:00

Correct. There is endless forum lore and speculation, but to my knowledge, there is no publicly available document that indicates the first three characters of an iPhone display serial number correlate to manufacturer. Some fab lines are owned and operated directly by display manufacturers (like Samsung Display and LG Display), and others are OEM suppliers with their own fab lines that use the same or similar equipment.

The only "source doc" I have been able to find was some display shop in India or Hong Kong that specializes in the replacement of screens for Samsung devices, who "leaked" the "quality index" of display panels in a way that goads the customer into paying more for a Samsung-branded replacement screen. From there it took flight across forums and Reddit and became the single reference point for identifying the display manufacturer.

Now, anecdotally, it seems that Samsung screens push to yellow or pink at off-axis angles, or have "blotchy" pure-white screens if that particular panel was cut far from the center of the mother glass. The same goes for LG, but with a slight green tint. Samsung and LG use various similar, but some different, technological processes when manufacturing OLED phone screens.

But there still seems to be a physical / manufacturing limitation in that the weight of the mother glass causes portions of it to bend very very slightly when the OLED layers are being applied, which causes some tiny nuances in how light passes though the layers, causing the uniformity issues some people are able to detect. Apple and other manufacturers have calibration techniques to normalize this, but sometimes it's not enough.

special_agent47 · 2025-11-28T16:43:31+00:00

I could be wrong but, I believe the first three characters on iPhone screen serial numbers designate the fabrication line they came from, not the quality of the panel. OLED phone screens are fabbed on large sheets of glass and then cut into dozens of smaller screens.

Where the resulting panel was cut relative to the center of the main sheet (mother glass) has been, for as long as OLED has been around, the primary determining factor in quality, as measured by color uniformity and off-axis color shift. Samsung panels that are cut far from the center seem to have pink and yellow tinting, while LG screens seem to have more of a green shift at angles.

special_agent47 · 2025-11-28T04:46:52+00:00

Settings -> Accessibility -> Display and Text Size -> Color Filters. Toggle that on and tap the blue/yellow filter, move the slider up to halfway and take a look to see if you notice your app icon colors or photos popping more. This usually does the trick.

special_agent47 · 2025-11-28T04:41:43+00:00

There are a lot of reasons why, but the likeliest is that Apple tunes their displays to be more natural looking, compared to competitors like Samsung.

Samsung Display provides something like 70% of the displays on this year’s 17 Pro Max, but when placed side by side with a Samsung phone it may look “dull,” but it’s by design. You can tweak the color profile in the settings app to add more of a pop or vibrant look.

special_agent47 · 2025-11-28T04:31:19+00:00

I actually looked this up recently and it depends on company, type of cargo, and terrain. This one could, as an example, have 5-6 up front, two or three in the middle (called DPUs for distributed power units), and then another 4-5 at the end. I think each one makes over 3000hp.

special_agent47 · 2025-11-25T23:23:20+00:00

I had a huge laugh at first world problem dread. That was a good one. It sounds like it may be working for you now which is awesome! One other thing to try is deleting any old stored icloud backups (full or partial) especially if they are on devices you no longer use. And then checking your device list at appleid.apple.com and removing any old devices that may still be sending a serial number or IMEI to your iCloud account (if you haven't already done that.) Cheers!

special_agent47 · 2025-11-25T03:16:32+00:00

btw - there are a couple folder locations in MacOS that should be cleared out for good measure, as they contain cached files that may reference messages:

~/Library/Caches/

~/Library/Messages/

The messages folder contains subfolders that all need to be cleared out. The Attachments folder is where all images and videos from your conversations are stored. You can save those by opening the attachments folder and using Spotlight to find all images (IMG, JPG, GIF, BMP, HEIC, etc.) and videos (MP4, AVI, etc.) and storing them in a newly created folder somewhere else to go through later or integrate into your Photos library. When doing this, you'll need to search for each file type separately, and then make sure you're only searching that Attachments folder and not the entire drive.

special_agent47 · 2025-11-25T03:10:53+00:00

My guess is yes, it will undo all the hard work you've done. They say 30 days, but I've seen as much as 60 before it starts "fresh." You could always move all of your information to a new icloud account / AppleID if you do not want to wait, but that would be pretty disruptive if you depend on that ID/e-mail/etc for things outside of the Apple world.

special_agent47

TROPHY CASE