I never buy phones new anymore unless there's a huge price drop or good deal involved. I'll most likely pick up an refurbished or preowned 8 when the 9 and 9a come out, to save on costs. Assuming there's nothing horribly wrong with the hardware, that is.
I don't think it's browser specific or a direct targeting of Firefox; that's likely confirmation bias. I see rolling captchas and the annoying ones that have a delayed fading in and out even on Chromium forks. I think the biggest reason for seeing them is VPN usage. When I turn off my VPN, I either don't see any captchas or it just automatically shows the green check when I start them.
This is one thing I never understood, especially when people try to use them for small purchases. At my workplace, the store owner has disallowed us from accepting $50 and $100 bills in order to avoid having to check for counterfeits. People get very upset at this policy.
One time, a customer came up to the counter with the items they had picked out. I scanned them all up and then provided her with the total. She then tossed a $50 bill on the counter. I politely explained that due to store policy, I would be unable to accept it, so she'd have to either break the bill elsewhere, or she'd have to provide a different payment method.
In response, she snatched the bill off the counter and angrily said, "Well, I'm never shopping here again." She said this loudly enough that it took aback multiple nearby customers, who began to look on.
After digging in her purse, she tossed two smaller bills onto the counter, which turned out to not be enough to pay for the total (after the cash she still owed $7-8). I explained this to her, and then she snatched the cash off the counter and left. The next customer I interacted with, who had witnessed everything, told me that she'd "go easy on me". Haha.
I understand it can be frustrating to not be able to pay with the money you have on you in the moment, but I wish customers would understand that the store owner sets the policies, not the people working for the owner. Retail workers don't really have any power in that regard, we just work here. Also, I wish they'd understand we are not a bank; even if we did take larger bills, we don't have a million dollars in the register to give you. Usually, we have just enough to get through the week. It's just a nuisance.
There's a FOSS fork of Signal which removes Google dependencies from the software.
Signal-FOSS
A fork of Signal for Android with proprietary Google binary blobs removed. Uses OpenStreetMap for maps and a websocket server connection, instead of Google Maps and Firebase Cloud Messaging.
From a post on the GrapheneOS forum:
If you try to "update" it from aurora store, the update will fail because the signature does not match between the open source version you have installed as part of the system image, and the google version on store.
Its nothing to worry about, just ignore it.
Just add it to Aurora Store blacklist.
Strange. I haven't encountered any major quirks with it in my use. I've had app gave me trouble but it was because I had installed a pre-release version of the app by mistake, but once I installed the correct version, it was fine.
I will say one criticism of Obtanium is that it's easy to get rate limited if you use a VPN, which is really annoying.
This happens to me almost daily.
A customer brings up a 1x1 inches, easy-to-hold item to purchase. Surely they don't need a bag, right? After all, the smallest bag size we have would still be way too large for this single item.
With this in mind, once the transaction is complete, I attempt to hand the receipt and item to the customer, only to be responded to with, "uh, can I have a bag??" as if I'm the idiot.
It's like people desire to contribute to landfills.
What's funnier is when it's someone who has a purse on them. You can't put it in your purse?!
The card terminals that my workplace uses requires that the customer presses 'confirm' to make sure that their total is correct prior to charging their card. Pretty simple, right? The card terminal clearly indicates that the customer needs to confirm. Unfortunately, this isn't how it plays out in practice.
In practice, it goes something like this:
\terminal says to confirm the total is $10.53
Customer: It says I need to confirm the total
Me: Uh huh.
Customer: So what do I press?
Me: Umm, is there a problem with your total?
Customer: No
Me: Then push confirm 🤡
Why can't people follow simple directions? It's written in plain English on the screen.