Just the first few nodes of Skynet coming online for beta testing.

It does, and it's highlighted in big bold letters on the product page. https://puri.sm/products/libre...

Premise of the joke is the act of dumping "the perfect universal solution which has proven its worth over past several decades with little to no disadvantages" in favor of a "good-enough solution" that you hail! And Apple claimed it takes courage to go backwards like this, especially when the solution being dumped wasn't something that lost it's value over time!

Everyone knows that all the name-calling you deride in your comment has some semblance of truth in them, rather than "courage".

Now that he signed the "code of conduct", does he stop being Finnish? /s

1. Having physical access to your data at all times?
2. Freedom to switch to a different VPN/reverse IP service provider if the current one makes you unhappy or goes out of business?
3. ???
4. Profit

Agree with everything you said. Ran out of mod points, so posting my "modding up" like this.

At that point, with noting left to read, I wonder if /. readers will start reading TFS, or worse, TFA (shiver me timbers!)...

Without discounting contributions of Google to linux, I am concerned about presence of these mega-corporations in such influential positions within Linux Foundation and open source world in general. Somehow, it feels more likely that linux will be driven in a direction more favorable to corporations than the community in general. Android and Chromium browser are perfect examples... even though they are open source, they are heavily focused on serving Googles best interest as opposed to core principles of open source movement.

systemd is another good example of that... something that made distro makers life easy was chosen readily and almost universally, regardless of poor design choices.

Clearly the touch screen keyboard is not meant for touch typists ;).

There are people doing something about this situation.

https://puri.sm/shop/librem-5/

That's how it starts. First use all the data but "pay for more of this specific data". Once "paying more" becomes the norm, then slowly (over several years) the regular access to that data will vanish and paying through the nose will be the only way to access that data. It's all about "conditioning" the consumers to think in a certain way.

We have experienced this first hand in the US. In the early and mid 2000s (before the iPhone), "unlimited" data plans used to be $20 to $40/month. With the iPhones, service providers couldn't have that. So, they slowly started phasing out the unlimited data plans and made it difficult for grandfathered plans to remain current with technology. Then once the population got used to limited data plans, now suddenly every cellular service provider offers "unlimited" data plans for only $80/month (what a deal!!! compared to $60 for just 5GB!). So, instead of just flat out increasing the price of unlimited data plans, the consumers were "conditioned" into accepting that as the new norm.

Even in the US, we already see the ISPs "helping" us by saying "if you do this, this and this on the internet, you need this tier of internet service, but if you do that, that and that on the internet, you need this tier of our internet service". And then slowly, there will be a small fee for the "other" kind of data and before we know it, paying separately for data on different protocols will become the norm. ISPs and cellular providers have already started their transition from being dump pipes to people who control the medium of communication.

Consumers are being treated like sheep and they are not only happy about it, but in some cases (like the first post "the trouble with net neutrality"), argue in favor of that treatment. Huh!

You seem to argue that "the trouble" with Net Neutrality is that it's completely irrelevant to the lives of people who need government support the most. And that government you claim to be working for those people, has spent all of this effort repealing Net Neutrality laws, which are irrelevant to the demographic in question.

Here is something to dissolve the reality distortion field: -

Trump has been a rich businessman all his life, born with a golden spoon in his mouth, and has spent all his life in lavish surroundings. He is the last person I would believe who truly understands the plight of "people living paycheck by paycheck" and the last person who knows exactly what kind of support they need from him as a President.

On the contrary, he clearly understands the plight of the poor billionaire who "couldn't buy that luxury yacht because he was few hundred million short due to more investment required by this law". Hence, every action of his government has been towards helping those fellow poor billionaires.

He said whatever he said to "people living paycheck to paycheck", with the sole purpose of winning the election. And clearly, every single one of his actions has not been helpful (on the contrary, hurtful) for that demographic, YET. He is taking all of these anti-common-man actions early during his term to ensure all of these will be forgotten by the time of next elections.

And here is what I estimated will happen... come 2019 or early 2020 (year of the next election), you will see a flurry of activity from him which favor the common man! Why? He is a businessman of course, and he knows very well to exploit the short term memory of general population as a whole. But on an average, a significant portion of his actions will be helpful for the ultra rich and hurtful to the common man, and that has been the case for most Republican governments throughout recent history.

He is going to exploit every weakness of the general population to serve his purpose, which is far from helping common man.

And killing net neutrality takes away one of the few open opportunities people had to improve their lively hood, by concentrating power to control human communication into the hands of select few who want to keep the general population living paycheck to paycheck, which is one of the few ways to enslave them.

This is one of the rare stories /. where overwhelming majority of comments speak positively for something Apple did!

Adding another vote for the workstation class Thinkpads, which super upgrade-able. I was able to buy an i5 T430 off craigslist for 150 with 4GB RAM and a 500GB mechanical HDD. Two RAM modules and a 256GB mSATA drive later, I have a super fast laptop running Mint 18 for less than 300. Granted that it has a not so nice TN LCD panel built in, but I usually use it with my Dell U2412M anyway, so it has worked out great so far.