My OG Pixel died last night and while I'm waiting for tech support to get back with me on how I can still use MFA to do my job, I figured I would ask you all how I should proceed with getting a new device. My first impulse is to get a Referb Pixel 2 on Amazon for $99, as I liked my original Pixel, I like having the latest Android version and I like only paying $99 for an older flagship phone. Additionally, I was considering a Pixel 3a as it would presumably last a bit longer and has had good reviews but is three times as much and hasn't devalued nearly as much when used, which is good and bad.

I'm open to anything that's relatively stock Android and still updated, and am curious about iOS, Kaios or other options. Landlines are a hard pass.

It could be positive ("I'm so glad I convinced Management to let us set up for working remotely" or "I'm so happy we tested for a ridiculous setting on scalability testing") or negative ("If you had let me set up the server to [whatever] we would not be in this pickle").

For the past few years I haven't had any speakers connected to my PC due to a lack of space in my room and on my desk. For the most part I have been using a pair of headphones which are great, but they aren't the most comfortable thing when I just want to watch YouTube on my second monitor and keep my ears available for my significant other.

So now I am looking for alternatives to desktop speakers. Right now I am either thinking of:

• Bone Conduction Headphones

• Bose Soundwear

I think the bone conduction headphones would give me a ton of options to use while I am biking and sitting at my desk. The Bose on the other hand have excellent sound quality. A small, discrete speaker bar may also fit my needs if there are any good ones that can be recommended. Any thoughts? Have I missed an audio product that may fit my needs that you could recommend?

I was recently in the market for a cheap used phone. I was looking for an Android device, preferably less than 3 years old, preferably with an unlockable bootloader and rootable, for $200 or less. I was looking at used Pixel 2's when I came across this weird Chinese manufacturer I'd never heard of.

The Umidigi F2 is a bizarre device. I was blown away by the specs, and the seller was only asking $200CAD for it, so I took a chance. I've got to say, so far I'm pretty impressed.

Quick Specs:

• 6.5" IPS LCD, 2340x1080px, bezelless, w/ hole-punch camera, no notch
• 6GB Dual-channel LPDDR4 RAM, 128GB Storage
• Mediatek P70 - ARM Cortex A73/A53 Octo-core 2.0/2.1GHz CPU
• 5 cameras, 32MP front-facing, 48MP rear, 13MP wide-angle, 5MP depth, 5MP macro
• Dual SIM, MicroSD
• 5150mAh battery
• ~40 frequency bands
• 3.5mm headphone jack
• Stock Android 10

At this price I was initially skeptical. There must be something wrong with it, some glaring flaw I wasn't seeing, and/or those specs must be fake. I'm happy to say though, they're real, and the device seems much more solid than I expected.

I've had the thing a little over a week so far, and have only charged it once. On the first charge it lasted 4 days before I charged it, and still had 30% battery remaining after I'd spent a couple hours surfing the web and two hours watching youtube (total screen-on time was ~4.5hrs). After charging it I haven't been using it as much, but it's currently been running 3 days and it has 70% battery remaining. I've used it to listen to the radio for 3 hours this morning. Oh yeah, did I mention? Bizarrely, it has a FM radio tuner for some reason.

So far everything has been smooth, the device performs really well, which is not something I expected from a Mediatek CPU. Rooting it went smoothly, and I've been able to tweak a bunch of settings via the EdXposed framework, as much as you can in Android 10 anyway. I did remove some background bloat, but otherwise the default ROM is very close to vanilla AOSP.

The build quality of the thing is honestly not bad. I've used mid-range Samsung devices that have felt cheaper and more plastic-y than this. I have read some reports of bad touchscreens, but so far I haven't had any problems. There's also a DIY solution to solve that. Unfortunately, if it dies, this is pretty much my only option, since the warranty and support is pretty much nonexistent. At a quarter the price of a brand-name phone with similar specs though, I'm willing to roll those dice.

So, other than warranty, what are the downsides? Well, so far the biggest gripe I have is there is no notification LED on it. So if I go to the washroom and come back I can't just tell at a glance if I've missed a call or text, I actually need to unlock it. Luckily the fingerprint reader and face unlock are both pretty reliable. There is no wireless charging, which I'm more or less okay with. The main reason I'd want that is if the USB port died, but again, this is the sort of phone that if anything is wrong with it you're pretty much meant to throw it out. The speaker is a bit tinny, and unfortunately it's mono. The cameras are bad. The 48MP camera does take 8000x6000 pictures, but they're grainy to the point where even if you resize them down they still look worse than something taken with a good 6MP camera. This seems to be a software problem though. The camera module is apparently made by Samsung, and people have said it's gotten better with every OTA update. As for that, there's been an update this month, but a lot of people are expecting it might be the last update they put out. Umidigi apparently has a bad track record of only providing updates for a few months.

In conclusion, this is objectively a decent phone, and for it's price, it's exceptional. You sacrifice warranty, updates, any kind of support really, but you get some very decent hardware for $200.

Official site: https://www.umidigi.com/page-umidigi_f2_specification.html
Purchasable on amazon for fast shipping, purchase on aliexpress to save $50.

I am thinking on installing League of Legends, but I am not sure about the privacy implications of doing so. If I install it, would it be able to read all the other files in my computer? If it can, can I avoid the problem by using a guest account on my computer to play? Riot's privacy policy seems to be standard as far data mining goes, but I would like to know how much it can see if install it. I am playing on a Mac.

due to the looming pandemic forcing everyone to stay inside, I've recently decided to get back into video games. I did a fresh install of windows 10 the other day, and tried to play a few games with my controller. I found that whenever I press the right trigger on my controller, my computer's audio cuts out system-wide immediately and does not come back on until I restart.

The controller is a wired Afterglow for Xbox 360 PL-3702.

Windows 10, version 1903.

I see two audio devices under Sound, Video and Game Controllers in Device Manager: a AMD High Definition Audio Device and a Realtek Audio device.

I've tried updating drivers for my controller and audio controllers.

I've reproduced the issue and collected logs of it following the steps here. If you know how to read these I'd be happy to send you the trace.

Now, I've tried to look at the trace of this in both Windows Performance Analyzer and Windows Media eXperience Analyzer to try and get a better sense of what's causing this. I see a pretty clear event where a bunch of stuff shows up in the visualizer, but I don't know what any of the stack traces that show up mean. This did not occur on my previous install of Windows on the same computer so I suspect it's related to something with some new Windows "gaming" feature I didn't have before.

I'm really at a loss as to where to go from here. It's both perfectly clear and completely mystifying. Any ideas?