Historically, more often than not, when a narcissistic megalomaniac is victim of a close call of targeted violence against them, rather than them becoming more empathetic with the sadly large swathe of humanity that also often faces targeted violence, they just double down on their own paranoia.

Yeah, software support tends to be pretty bad for their devices, with few updates, and they are often bad with posting kernel source for their devices, so hard to get custom roms or flash alternative OS’s on them too. But if you want a phone that has a battery that can last 3 days straight - they are indeed available for purchase

Unihertz and Oukitel both make “rugged” phone models with giant batteries - aimed at weekend campers with giant hands. And Fairphone and Volla both have phones that still allow for easy battery swapping.

Geddit also works well as an open source, no-account needed, Reddit browser - https://f-droid.org/packages/geddit.buzl.uk/

Vivaldi has some closed source components to it, so that makes it a “pass” for a lot of us that are more privacy focused. But in performance and features Vivaldi is certainly a good chromium based browser - it’s just not one I choose for myself.

Well, that’s nice that you’ve never had problems. But issues I’ve seen over the years, range from not having certain functions working after the flash (generally needed specific firmware upgrades prior to the flash), not having the device recognized by the PC without additional steps, needing specific custom recoveries, bootloops, being stuck on splash screen, needing extra steps to unlock the bootloader (e.g. Xiaomi), not being able to easily downgrade Android version (sometimes needed as a first step prior to installing alternate OS’s like Ubunu Touch), even soft bricking. Plus, in learning how to flash custom ROM’s in the first place, guess who provided me with the info on how to do it.

Nearly every time I’ve needed to learn how to get around an issue in flashing a custom ROM onto an Android device, it’s been South Asian YouTubers’ tutorials that saved the day.

It’s not out yet, but there is a kickstarter from German company Volla, coming in the next few days for a 12" tablet running a Mediatek soc that will be capable of running Ubuntu Touch - for which you can use UT native apps, webapps, some Linux desktop apps via their “Libertine” container, and some Android apps via “Waydroid.” And Volla has an excellent track record of delivering on their product promises - in contrast to Purism.

https://volla.tilda.ws

Or you can use browsers that can be set to not “phone home” - e.g.Brave, Librewolf - there are in fact a few privacy respecting options in this.

Edge is better if you are wanting to always have your data mined by Microsoft, for sure.

All I know is I received so many daily texts and emails from her campaign begging for money that it seriously turned me off, and I don’t even live in CA.

24bit 96kHz FLAC (purchased from Bandcamp & HDTracks) -> JRiver Media Center software player -> Merging Anubis Pro DAC -> Coleman Audio M3PHmk2 passive monitor controller -> Pass Labs X250 class A solid state power amp -> B&W Nautilus 802 3-way floor standing speakers

Or if from vinyl KAB modded Technics SL1200mk2 -> Shure V-15MR cartridge -> Simaudio Moon LP5.3 balanced preamp ->

(in 20’ x 14’ x 9’ room with bass traps, absorbers and diffusors by GIK, ATS, and Auralex)

As far as tablet usage goes - with Ubuntu 23.10 running the latest “Surface Linux” kernel on my Surface Go gen 1, Wayland is finally buttery smooth. Screen rotation with Wayland is near instant, where as on xorg takes a couple seconds.

I can’t say the same for my dual boot desktop that has an Nvidia 1050ti in it going to a 55" tv monitor via HDMI though - had to hook up a second monitor from dvi just to be able to login - which was not the case on Xorg.

Oh well, baby steps, but Wayland is definitely growing up fast and getting closer to being daily dtiver ready for nearly all use cases.

There are “vanilla” versions (which is what I use) that are basically de-googled AOSP which work well with apps from F-droid, Izzy-on-droid, and free apps from Aurora stores, which you can also install MicroG on if you wanted to - and there are “Gapps” versions which have Google Play Services, the Google Play Store and some of the basic Google apps pre-loaded.

Whoops, yes you are correct, you would need to go to Asus for front facing speakers. Maybe the Asus Rog 2, which can run degoogled Bliss ROM

Yeah, which is why I use de-googled “vanilla” Bliss ROM 17.2 (Android 14 with latest security patch) on my Xiaomi Redmi Note 10 Pro instead of going the Graphene or Calyx + Pixel route. This way I have the hardware features I wanted (headphone jack, micro SD card slot, 5000mAh battery, 108mp camera, stereo speakers, 120mHz refresh rate) all for cheaper than a Pixel, and the Bliss ROM community is pretty friendly and dedicated in my interactions with it.

In USA I’ve found it’s pretty easy to live without banking on your phone, although you can’t say the same for some other countries. Granted I have a job where I am working with my own desktop computers most of the day, so I can pay bills and transfer funds on them during those times - and lots of people might not have the same luxury. But I’ve yet to feel a need for any of them while out and about beyond a few occasions of Venmo’ing funds on the go - and at least Venmo still allows you to use their site via browser.

Sony Xperia 10 iii has all those things, and you can run Sailfish OS on it, including VoLTE and Android app support with it.

Obviously floating point is of huge benefit for many audio dsp calculations, from my observations (non-programmer, just long time DAW user, from back in the day when fixed point with relatively low accumulators was often what we had to work with, versus now when 64bit floating point for processing happens more as the rule) - e.g. fixed point equalizers can potentially lead to dc offset in the results. I don’t think peeps would be getting as close to modeling non-linear behavior of analog processors with just fixed point math either.

Yes, while you can still do 3g/2g phone calling in most of Europe, the only hold out in the US for this is that T-mobile still has 2g calling in some areas, but they have announced that this will be shut down sometime in the soonish future (it was scheduled to be all shutdown of April this year, but they announced this was delayed to a time tbd, likely in order to continue to serve all the ATM’s and iot devices that are still running “legacy” systems being used beyond supposed eol). Which is why I reverted to using de-googled AOSP for my daily driver - I like to be able to use my phone as a phone after all.