Old Intel crapbook air from 2013 or 2015. The battery life wasn’t ever great, but it significantly diminished when i changed them to linux. I expected an increase…

very bad, sadly

installed Linux Mint on various apple macbooks i got second hand and the battery life is abysmal.

i hate it

https://www.forbes.com/

we are going through a very authoritarian drift right now. Flashballs used to be exclusively used against terrorists, hostage situations : 19 000 were fired during the yellow jjackets crisis and they’re now basic police equipment. Drone usage is increasing, the government bought 90 armored personnel carriers with multiple grenade launchers exclusively for riot control… and now the phone spying.

edited to add : they’re also starting to qualify any protesters as “terrorists”. Climate activists planning to disassemble an inanimate, illegally-built, ecocidal infrastructure ? they get the eco-terrorist tag.

i’d be fine with it if they presented it like this. But they don’t, they aren’t honest about the actual (very moderate) sustainability they offer

I’m neck deep into Highfleet right now. It’s only 2 years old, but on sale at 15€ I feel it’s worth it. If you like Dune and diesel/steam punk, that game is for you. It’s far from perfect, but it’s a raw diamond imo.

My problem with FP isn’t only that their phone lacks in features and sustainability. It’s that their whole PR and marketing is misleading. They hold back a lot of essential information to trick the customer into thinking that the phone is good for the environment. I would be more enclined to support them if they were honest about it ; right now it looks like corporate BS intended to make a maximal profit, like any other phone company

yes i’m talking about the startup speed. It’s not as bad as snap, but noticeably slower with some apps (it can be annoying for a web browser for example)

I’m not really conviced by fairphone. They claim they have an ethical and ecological supply chain / manufacturing but there is very little on their website to support that claim. The phone is made in China like any other smartphone. The “Fairtrade Gold” label doesn’t mean Gold-rank fairtrade materials, it means that only the actual gold that’s inside the phone has the fairtrade label. The amount of gold in a phone is ridiculously small and doesn’t represent the major part of the phone’s emissions footprint. They have another label which name I can’t remember but I looked it up and the terms are very vague. After all the electronic components are still electronic components : copper wires made from copper, qualcomm CPU made in the same qualcomm factory, etc. I don’t think a label changes that.

All in all I don’t think that buying a brand new, 580 € smartphone with subpar performance is a good move if you care about the environment. Buying a used phone sounds like a much better option to me : cheaper, better performance, probably not as serviceable BUT it’s already living a second life anyways.

I tried to be enthusiatic but FP looks way too much like a cash grab aimed at people that care about the environment

Flatpaks are my second choice when there isn’t a recent enough version in the repos. They’re fine but take 1. too much storage space, and 2. are usually slower

Actually, morphine is excellent at stopping coughing. Probably not wise, but efficient