I don't. I indirectly enjoy the benefits: I am running SOKP on my Moto G. Before that, I ran similar AOKP-based Android releases on my Nexus 4 (before its digitizer and radio went tits up.) And before that, various community releases on my Xperia Play. In every case the rewards have been many and varied. These days I run ordinary kernels (no overclocking) and try to keep things simple.

The argument was over which phone was more like its desktop counterpart. Your argument applies equally to both platforms.

Actually having a nice userland means being able to use your phone as a troubleshooting tool. You can actually do pretty well just by installing busybox (from the app, it's free, or there's some features you don't strictly need which won't cost you very much... or do it manually) and android terminal, as well as anysoftkeyboard plus the ssh layout, which you're going to want very much. But having the option to go Wayland one day means being able to recycle the phone, use it for other purposes. My oldest phone is now a clock and occasionally plays me some MP3s. It's not really worth selling.

Hahahaha more powerful than having the source code, and being able to rip out any parts of it you don't want lurking in there to begin with? Tell me another one.

Modern SoC GPUs have scalers, they can scale for free and look pretty good while doing it.

You can buy a laser cutter, complete, for around two grand on ebay. Or you can build one for around two grand, if you can get lucky with your laser tube. So why should I be excited about another one in the same price range?

This is in fact how the soviet union was able to compete for so long, but eventually it could not keep increasing the amount of resources that it mobilized.

I almost mentioned Russia in my comment - there was a time in the 1930s, when the US and Europe were stuck in the Depression, many Westerners thought that communism might end up totally eclipsing their (at the time) failed economies. And the USSR did grow from a nation of mostly peasants into an industrial superpower incredibly quickly. China has done much better so far, in large part because it mostly integrated with the global economy which was quick to take advantage of the cheap labor. But it is also making some of the same mistakes, as demonstrated by the "ghost cities", or the high-speed rail crash.

It is capitalism that more effectively makes better and better uses of the resources that are available, and its driven by greed.

I wouldn't say "greed", although that term certainly does apply in many cases; I would call it self interest, which isn't the same thing. The fact that our behavior (and economic activity) is greatly affected by incentives doesn't mean that we're greedy or foolish, it means we're human. It's amazing how many people on both the left and the right ignore this when it doesn't align nicely with their preferred policy goals.

These things, combined with a population advantage, guarantee China's success long-term absent any other forces.

Only up to a point. Part of the reason why China has been enjoying enormous rates of economic growth is that it had so far to go. Once their economy and standard of living starts to get much closer to that of the existing advanced industrial economies, and they lose their advantage of cheap labor, all they're left with is the population advantage. And they'll be busy strip-mining the third world in the meantime, which means they'll probably overreach sooner or later and piss everyone off as badly as the US has. (And the US at least has NATO allies, and reasonably friendly relations with neighboring countries.)

I don't think the GP was limiting the scope to science missions - instead, we should also be developing robotic missions to prepare for eventual humans. And more than just robots; even stuff as relatively trivial as 3D printers will make the difference between sustainable human presence versus short-term missions that won't last. There are many other components: better radiation shielding, genetically optimized plants, improved solar cells, and so on.

Remember, ISS is only a few hundred feet up and it's still insanely expensive to service. If we want affordable permanent settlement on the moon or Mars, we need to limit the number of supply trips.

A big part of the reason why this won't happen is that space-related technology tends to be inherently dual-use, i.e. much of it has military purposes. In fact, that's probably the single biggest reason why there was a space race at all in the 1950s/1960s. Since China is already known to be developing military capabilities specifically to counter the US navy/naval air, and has ongoing territorial disputes with at least five neighboring countries that I can think of offhand (several of which are close US allies), it would be ill-advised of the US to make it easier for them.

Since you have different DC voltages you either need DC wall warts (not achieving anything), per outlet transformers (sounds expensive and turn the socket into a wall wart) or one circuit per outlet (sounds expensive and needs big conduits). And because of fire risk, property damage and whatnot you'll never get to use the same plug, tripling each outlet. Then you need something fancy to flip each socket at the source and what part of the socket is powered at the sink in a safe way, for every outlet. And I doubt 9VDC/500mW-2A matters much economically, if you want the aesthetics embed the wall wart in the wall, it'll probably be less hassle than the alternatives.

I like SOKP, the Sonic Open Kang Project.

I am shocked that in the hours since you wrote this comment, no Microsofties have showed up to tell us how wonderful their Windows Phone is. I literally only ever see those comments on Slashdot, but normally they are as reliable as the sunrise.

Oh? So you have the source code? Snicker snort.

A jailbroken Android device, on the other hand, really is a small Linux box. You can trivially install a more complete userland on most interesting phones. You can install an X server. You can get the sources to everything but the Google Play stuff, and you can use the phone without that stuff. In theory you should even be able to throw away the GUI and all the apps from Android and switch to Wayland someday, at least on relatively modern phones whose graphics drivers will be usable by Wayland.

Now, tell us again how much your iOS phone is like a computer, please. We're fascinated.

What? No. They are all motivated by profit.

That doesn't actually preclude our doing it, although we won't be able to do it with a robot arm any time soon. (Would love to be wrong.) It might be possible to do it with biotech, though.