azdle

I didn’t think any of those companies did any manufacturing.

They don't. Well, TI does but not anywhere near the the node size of the three you mentioned: https://en.wikichip.org/wiki/technology_node

I asked nicely why do I need to give my phone number and I was told that to register me as a member so I can get the discount.

I declined and said I don’t want to join and would like to just pay.

I've just said "I don't have one" when asked this for awhile. This never seems the phase the cashiers, I'm guessing they know what that really means. Half the time I still get whatever discount, though I've never tried to sign up for a membership saying that.

If it's an online form my phone number is just (local area code)555–5555. I've never had that not take, except for one case where it automatically enabled 2-factor auth and I had to create a new account.

So my advice to other IT folk is: take the time to check up on your state’s employment laws. If you are being exploited by your employer they may be totally in the wrong.

100%

I'm unfortunately in a state with even more vague and useless definition of who gets to be exempt than the federal definition.

It has definitely changed, I don't know when, but it's been like this for at least the last decade.

Though, in my experience (NB: I'm a software engineer, which is a notoriously lax field.) only what the piece of paper says has changed. Hell, most of my employee handbooks have claimed that "full time" is 50 hours a week. They get away with it because I'm classified as a "computer employee" (lol) and make more than $35k/year (super lol) which means my employment is exempted from minimum wage and overtime pay laws.

Nobody that I know actually works that consistently. Most people I know don't even do 40. I do 9-5 (or 8:30-4:30 usually), I take breaks when I need them and nobody has ever complained to me about the amount I'm working.

My only guess for why it's this way is that having that be the official working time means it's easier to fire anyone for no reason because they're not working their "contractually obligated" amount of time.

You're an Agnostic.

Agnosticism is the view or belief that the existence of God, the divine, or the supernatural is either unknowable in principle or unknown in fact.

The repo owner claims to have permission from contributors to relicense (and rewrote some other parts where they couldn't get permission?): https://github.com/stenzek/duckstation/pull/3295#issuecomment-2348988362

I don't really understand the rest of that comment though...

[edit: To be clear, I assume the part that OP is not sure if it's satire or not is "or switching to a more privacy-conscious browser such as Google Chrome."] The emphasis in

Firefox is worse than Chrome

is in the original. To me that clearly implies that they are of the opinion that in general Google & Chrome are worse on privacy than Mozilla & Firefox. The comment at the end is just tongue in cheek snark alluding to the fact that in this particular case google did better for privacy in Chrome than Mozilla in Firefox.

or switching to a more privacy-conscious browser such as Google Chrome.

Definitely satire, the context from earlier:

2. Firefox is worse than Chrome in their implementation of ad snitching, because Chrome enables it only after user consent.

IMO, the best free option is https://freedns.afraid.org/. The biggest downside of that one is that you have to login a couple times a year (IIRC?) to keep it active. I actually still use this even though I have a paid domain, I just CNAME my real domains to the afraid dynamic name. That was easier than changing the config every time I become unhappy with my domain registrar and have to reconfigure everything after swapping.

I'll start off with a proviso, I haven't s much touched my Librem 5 in at least a year (maybe even 2?), so if they've had some massive turn around in that time I don't know about it. All of this post is just what I think I remember, if you want actual facts go dig around in the wayback machine or something.

The promise of the L5 was super grandiose. They were going to create this mobile device that could completely replace your android device. It was going to launch with a custom matrix client that would let you make voice and video calls, which no other matrix client at the time could do. It was gonna be great and it was going to be delivered in a year.

Now clearly that was never going to go off without a hitch. I don't blame them for being late nor for not delivering all their promises right at launch. But when things started getting delayed they seemed to be doing everything in their power to not communicate with backers. And anytime they would say something, they would say "well we didn't hit that deadline, but we promise we're totally super duper close now". And then they'd blow through that deadline without a word too.

I did eventually get my phone, obviously, but it wasn't anything like a usable device. The battery that it came with was smaller than advertised and it didn't have any power management so you got a few hours of battery life. The cameras just didn't exist as far as the software was concerned. The privacy switches would randomly kill power to the modem when you lightly brushed against them without the switch moving out of the 'on' position. Which was super annoying since you had to reboot the phone any time you wanted to turn the modem back on. And rebooting took ages.

Even at this point I was still rooting for them to succeed. I really want a proper Linux phone and have since 2008.

But ever since then, I really haven't seen much of anything change with the software, at least for as long as I was paying attention to it. One of the cameras got support added by a community member at some point, but the pictures it was taking were so bad it looked like some 1999 digital camera taking pictures in a dimly lit room even in full sunlight. There was no way to know if an application in their store was going to work or not, most didn't, mostly because they were meant for a larger screen & a mouse.

I pulled it out a few times on and off over the years, but the last time I did, I couldn't even figure out how to get it to update. So, I haven't really even touched it since then. (I've got it out connected to power to see what it's like now. Though, I'm not sure it's charging, is flashing green (with an occasional flicker of red) a good thing?)

Since receiving it, the only communication I've gotten from Purism has been "Investment Opportunities". I'm not sure why I'd invest in a company that still hasn't delivered what it promised me over 5 years ago.

I absolutely want them to succeed, and I hope they prove my pessimism wrong, but at this point I absolutely would not put my money on that happening.

As the owner of a Birch batch Librem 5 and former defender I'm sad to say, agreed.