There are a lot of bills that threaten privacy and could, if taken to a logical conclusion, result in the criminalizaion of open-source operating systems. This isn’t as nonsensical as it was ten years ago. I think it’s still very unlikely, but it’s been moved into the realm of “reasonable possibility.”

Also, Android and Chrome OS are Linux distros.

Explicitly yes. With a side bonus that their donors are enriched.

In fairness, from MacBook Neo teardowns I’ve seen, it’s only slightly more involved. But then again, the Neo doesn’t have a haptic trackpad. For the Pro’s haptic trackpad, yeah, I would bet it’s a pretty huge pain to replace.

I’m not trying to screw the government or anything. I’m just trying to spend less money and throw fewer things in the landfill. The government part is just a nice perk.

Those nine months are a pretty consequential nine months for your point, though. How much would that laptop have cost today if released new? How much is repairability and build quality worth to you?

No, I don’t think it was bigger on the top, I think it was bigger on the bottom. I’m pretty sure you just needed the bottom cover.

It’s slightly more expensive than a similarly-spec’d laptop from another company. It’s really not crazy.

That’s about the same price as a MacBook Pro touchpad replacement. Just the touchpad.

Honestly, that’s why the last laptop I bought (over a year ago, now) was a Framework that I put Linux on. I haven’t had to change anything out yet, but I like that it’ll be easier when I do.

They did a video where they swapped parts from a first generation FW13 with a FW13Pro. There were only two caveats: one, if you want the Pro battery on your older laptop, you have to buy a new bottom panel too because they made the battery bigger for a longer life and it won’t fit in the old cover. And two, depending on your architecture, the Wi-Fi modules might not be interchangeable due to some vendor chipset thing, I think?

Everything else was able to be swapped, though, it seemed.

Edit: oh wait, I take it back, the speaker modules. I think they might technically be compatible, but since they’re side-firing on the Pro instead of down-firing, you’d need a new bottom chassis if you didn’t want them to sound awful.

The DIY version also doesn’t include a Windows license unless you want it.

I think you can just get the new Pro input cover, right? That’s essentially just the trackpad. The aluminum of the cover itself is probably a fairly negligible part of that cost.

In the talk show they do, he talked about how even with the issues he loves Pop OS and even mentioned that very argument–that he has problems with Windows too, and at least this way one of those problems isn’t copilot.

Question is why they bought a Ring camera in the first place?

Probably because of marketing.

There is no way they can have been unaware that these gadgets can be accessed from outside.

(1) Clearly you’ve not talked to enough people outside the privacy-aware community. Absolutely they can have been unaware of that.

(2) They may well have known, but not known the scope, or not cared. If you’re having trouble with (for instance) porch pirates, you might not care about the privacy ramifications.

But it was only when the evidence was put right in their face they finally connected the dots?

Yes. When you don’t live and breathe this stuff, a lot of times that’s what it takes.

My mom used to use the same password for every service. It was a ten-letter password that she came up with in 1999, and she essentially never deviated from it; until I typed it in for her on haveibeenpwned and showed how many times it had been leaked. People who don’t care about privacy won’t care until they’re shown how it actually affects them.

So my answer is quite simple: Because they are stupid,

Profoundly uncharitable read on the situation. Are you “stupid” if you don’t know what you don’t know? We don’t have classes about this sort of thing in high school or anything. There are billions of dollars going toward telling people that sleazy products are actually great and companies actually care about their well-being, and only neckbeards like us on Lemmy spending $0 to tell them the opposite. If they’re not watching tech news because the regular news is too much, or because they have jobs and families and hobbies, or because they don’t know how to process or parse it, or just because they’re not interested and have never been convinced that they should be, they aren’t stupid, just propagandized.

and bought a sleazy product from a known sleazy company,

First of all, “sleazy” is a perfect word for this, and thank you for using it.

But second, keep in mind that for a lot of people, most companies are still responsible members of society; “pillars of the community,” and generally worthy of trust. It’s not because they’re dumb, it’s because they’ve been propagandized into believing it.

and when they found out it was in fact as sleazy as could be expected, they figured that maybe they didn’t want to to be voluntarily surveilled anyway.

People are waking up to the reality of big tech “convenience.” That’s a good thing. Don’t shoot at them for coming to their senses.