#100Hacks for Puerto Rico

100 Hacks is proud to host our second hackathon, #100Hacks for Puerto Rico, sponsored by Anaplan.

Free year of Sprint cellphone

If you are on any carrier in the US and have an unlocked phone with a post paid account you can switch to Sprint for a free year of service until 11/30.  Just enter your MEID and current phone number to test if you qualify.  Get free forever, or until bankruptcy, like with RingPlus on FreedomPoP, which will be on Sprint or AT&T.  Verizon doesn't discount much.  If you don't have a phone Virgin Mobile is offering a $1 if you buy one, also unlimited for 6 months.* T-mobile gives free Netflix.

*Offer ends 9/30/17. Excludes taxes. Regular rate of $50/month applies after promotional service period. Only with AutoPay. iPhone is locked for a year to Virgin, if you unlock it it isn't welcome to work on Virgin anymore. If you buy your Inner Circle phone from Apple it isn't locked, but you can still get the $1/year offer.

PS my first bill arrived for $63.73, seems that in the porting issues somehow I have ended up on the paid plan, rather than free.  I am assured that in 3-5 days all will be well :)  Keep in mind that I brought my own phone and SIM and also seem to have violated the web onlyness of this offer.

Best Buy, Google, Huawei please fix my Nexus 6P

Yesterday I get a hangouts call and answer it on my trusty Nexus 6P that I bought as a referb with warranty from Best Buy on eBay about a year ago.  I remember thinking I needed to return it as it sometimes rebooted on me and had issues charging, but other then some quick reboots and not being able to charge on low power USB it worked great for about a year.  Then on Saturday I get the worst Hangouts call ever, first trouble hearing me on the other side then a reboot which ended up in a loop.  I try to press some buttons to get out of it and finally try power volume down and am able to enter a screen that at least gives me power off, meanwhile I was reading that there is a solution to the bootloop issue on XDA-developers from XCnathan32 albeit by disabling 4 cores, sounds like better than a brick though, so I try to do this, however my bootloader is locked and I am unable to flash the phone.  I also see some solutions involving temperature and rebooting often that might be able to temporarily get in by fixing the hardware issue.  Maybe if I take advantage of the fact that the screen is coming off the phone and actually get in I might see where the bad connections are?  Or is it an issue with the heat off a 810, who knows, why does the hair dryer help on some phones.  In any event there are plenty of pissed off customers and there is a class action lawsuit in the works, but I had to move my SIM to a N95 phone, which has stud the test of time, I guess Nokia did build quality hardware, although the S60 OS is now so dated and the phone was never really that useful compared to a modern cellphone.  Not sure what I will buy next while I figure out how to get Huawei to fix my phone as I feel they are at fault for producing hardware that fails, but the jury in the lawsuit I guess will decide that one as Google and Huawei seem to be pointing fingers at each other.  If only Google would sign the fix that disables some cores it would make things easier for me to get my phone working.  Meanwhile please sign the petition so that we can fix our bricked Nexus 6P if Google cares at all about this hardware and isn't just trying to sell a Pixel to all us bricked 6P users.  It isn't time for a new phone for me, this one was great back when it worked and should be good for another few years.  I need to write some letters to these companies CEOs.

MS Linux

I went to a meetup about running bash on Windows and was pleased to see that Satya Nadella loves Linux and will support it.  Jessica Deen gave a talk about WSL which emulates a Linux kernel on the Windows kernel and allows you to apt-get install anything from the distro they are using, Ubuntu 14.04.  It loads binaries, not like Cygwin that recompiled the user-space to run in Windows and are all .EXE files.  This seems like less overhead than running a Linux kernel, but I haven't bench-marked it.  Maybe someday the Linux kernel can replace the Microsoft one and we will no longer need to make 2 drivers for all hardware.

6% on savings up to $5K

I haven't tried this myself, but Michael did and seems to be happy: https://www.mangomoney.com/ you ACH in $5k then transfer the $5k to the savings account and then you can ACH in more $ to use the card if you chose to do so. Only catch is is you must ACH in $800 every single month or direct deposit in $800 to keep earning the 6.03%.

From the FAQ:

How can we afford it?

Basically, we’ve shifted a big chunk of our marketing budget to paying our good customers instead of advertising channels – no TV or print ads. We think word of mouth is much better.

Thanks RingPlus for a great value

So my free phone service with RingPlus is over I got migrated to Ting on 2/21 as they said it would happen.  Price on Ting is OK if you don't use your phone much, but it is great to have mobile data, so I am looking for a better deal.  Sprint currently has 5 lines for $90/month unlimited with roaming included, tempting.  MintSim a limited promo for $11.67 for 3 months, TextNow has a R+ porting instructions and an unlimited 2G starting at $13.99.  Cellphone service has so  many options it is confusing, but the winner for low usage is still FreedomPoP for $0/month you can get 200 Min of VoIP over your WiFi and data plan, which also has an additional 200 Meg, but with friends you can make that more.  Data speeds a pretty good and coverage is a bit lacking for voice as it runs over the data, so  you need to use a rather clunky FreedomPOP Messanger App to call.  FreedomPOP often has great deals on WiFi data as well.  And then there is a month of unlimited on AT&T network for $6.99, limit 3 on H2O SIM.  I ordered this, will let yon know once I use it, too many options right now, will stick with Ting for the free $35 intro they gave me for coming from RingPlus. I am surprised by how affordable a 4GB RAM 64 GB BLU Life ONE X2 is $179.99

Rain

I live in a desert that has had a drought for the past 4 years, now it is pouring.  I am not used this much rain anymore.  I decided to go without a car last year and this isn't fitting into my plan to bicycle to work.

More free phone service

FP, free SIM cards. looks like they're going to feed off the dead Ring+ carcass.

To keep your Ringplus phone from becoming instantly obsolete without having to pay recurring charges or any calling requirements of any kind,

https://www.freedompop.com/byodpromo5

READ AND FOLLOW these steps. Do not skip, do not execute out of order, do not hesitate.
NOTE: This will NOT save your Ringplus number OR your top off there. The following instructions just keep your phone alive and provides continui g service without cost as you exit the sinking ship.

1. First swap out your the IMEI of your R+ phone with a dummy, or just CANCEL the R+ line altogether
2. Create VCC with BoA, Citi, privacy.com, Kroger Visa/Mastercard money card, whatever

Then the usual procedure applies...
1. Register with FP, using NEW email address and VCC from BoA, Citi, privacy.com, Kroger Visa/Mastercard money card, whatever
2. Downgrade both PLAN and SERVICES
3. Add $5 to top off and turn auto top off OFF to avoid being charged top off or being cancelled for overages in the future

Optional: Add "Freedompop Friends" to bring your free minutes and data allocation up to something useful.

Feel free to continue to use your phone, knowing that if you exceed your allocation your phone service will simply stop working until you add money or next month's allocation kicks in.