Absolutely, security updates are much more important than feature updates. Upgrading to newer Android versions is mostly useful to have access to newer Android APIs (apps eventually will require newer versions, although that usually takes quite a while). Another benefit of newer Android versions might be added security features.
Yes, there are multiple reasons, but that security chip was very important to them. An easy way to install the OS was also quite essential.
Samsung’s update policy for their lower end models is pretty atrocious. While on paper they offer updates for a couple of years, it you look more closely, you’ll notice that the update intervals get larger and larger as time goes on. You might not get important updates for half a year. Sure, still better than not updates at all, but a pretty awful policy for security updates.
Fairphone is actually worse than Google when it comes to updates. Even their flagship phone is still on Android 13. Even the Pixel 6 runs Android 15 at this point and with this news it is guaranteed to get at least Android 17. Google has always been offering 5 years of support for the Pixel 6 and 7 series. What they didn’t promise until this announcement was additional feature/OS upgrades, but when it comes to that they were already ahead of Fairphone.
When it comes to alternative OSes, Google actually makes it very easy to install them. That’s one reason why GrapheneOS and the likes chose Pixel phones as their primarily supported phones.
For the Pixel 6 and 7 series Google has promised 5 years of security updates right from the beginning. What’s new here is that they now also offer feature and OS upgrades for that same time period. Certainly nice to have, but not essential.
If the PTO request would have been made a day in advance, very few would argue that denying it would be poor planning of the manager. A MONTH in advance though, that very much screams poor planning. Any competent manager should be able to manage and plan for that.
I would prefer more LAN ports as well, but how does that relate to what I said? I never said they intended to build or should build a device that fits all use-cases.
Linksys WRT54G
The Linksys WRT54G did not run OpenWrt by default and the original OS does not even remotely resemble OpenWrt. What OpenWrt did use from the original OS was the Broadcom wireless driver because it was closed source (and a similar kernel version, so the driver could be used), since there was no driver in the mainline kernel.
But to try to answer the question, this device has been designed by the OpenWrt developers to fit their needs (and their users needs). Other routers running some variant of OpenWrt on them by default were designed by companies unrelated to the project. They most likely used OpenWrt because it was convenient to them. Their intentions weren’t usually the same as the OpenWrt team’s (repairability, easy to unbrick, etc.). Not that there is anything wrong with that. I like GL.Inet routers.
Actually AMDs mobile parts are pretty good at idle power consumption and so are their desktop APUs. Their normal CPUs, which use the chiplet design are rather poor when it comes to idle power consumption. Intel isn’t really any better when compared to the monolithic parts at idle and Intel CPUs have horrible power consumption under load. Their newest CPUs are better when it comes to efficiency than 13th and 14th gen CPU, bus still don’t match or even exceed AMD.
With spinning turbines, the issue is, that you need to maintain a constant speed of the turbine at all times. That rotation speed directly correlates with the mains frequency of the attached generator. That’s either 50 or 60 Hz depending on where you live. If the load increases the frequency drops and the turbine speed decreases, when the load decreases, the opposite happens. The people maintaining the grid have to make sure load and supply are in balance to keep the frequency stable and the trubines within their operating parameters.
Compared to that, solar panels have none of these constraints. For one, they output DC voltage not AC, and secondly they don’t mind at all when there is no or very little load. The DC voltage is electronically converted to AC by an inverter. Such an inverter synchronizes its frequency with the frequency of the power grid. So you can easily simply disconnect solar panels when there is too little demand without any issue. You can’t easily do the same with a power plant with a turbine. If you were to remove the load from a turbine, you could actually destroy it, if you are not very careful.
While that is true for power plants with spinning turbines, it isn’t true for solar power. There is no issue at all when you don’t consume all the energy that a solar panel could produce.
MW/h
There is MW which is a unit of power and then there is MWh which is a unit of energy, but what is MW/h supposed to mean?
How would ZFS snapshots help in a situation like this, where you have accidentally formatted your drive?
Unless you require the dynamic features of Wordpress, you could have a look at some of the static site generators out there (such as Hugo). Having a static site would reduce the attack surface considerably. Also due to the shenanigans happening with Wordpress at the moment, I would be weary of using it.
About SSL, what others have already mentioned, SSL certs are available for free these days, thanks to letsencrypt.
Why? Even 1080p is more than what is usually needed for such a KVM solution. It is not like this is meant for doing remote work on a computer or anything like that.
It lets you remotely control a server as if you were sitting in front of a screen and keyboard directly attached to it.
I was really sceptical of the CTOs first response, but this does actually seem to be genuinely good news.
The head of BitWarden has come out and stated the SDK being required to compile BitWarden was a mistake, however, and if this proves to be true (which I have no reason to doubt) then I see no reason why any of this is an issue.
I don’t see why this should make any difference at all. Sure, I get why he is are saying they are going to fix it - he thinks that this gets them in compliance with the GPLv3. But from a practical point of view there is no difference at all. The software is useless without that SDK part. Even if it does indeed get them in the clear from a legal point of view (which I am not convinced that it actually does), it is still a crappy situation.
I think, it would look way less shady, if they said they are going fully source-available and not pretend that they are keeping the client open source. I would still dislike that, of course. At least that wouldn’t have eroded the trust in them as much as it did for me.
Proprietary is a strong word IMO. Here’s the repo, it’s not FOSS, but it is source available.
Yeah, that’s what I meant by “proprietary”. I guess having the source to look at is better than nothing, but it still leaves me uneasy. Their license lets them do anything they want (ignoring that - as it stands - their license is void due to the linkage with GPLv3 code, but they said they want to fix that). I have no idea what their plan is. I don’t think it is in their best interest to go the route they appear to be going. Having truly open source clients seems to be a selling point for quite a few customers. But what do I know…
Ok, that endoflife.date site apparently isn’t quite up-to-date then. But even still, Android 14 was released in October 2023 and as far as I can tell, Fairphone released their Android 14 update only in July 2024. I’m not saying Fairphone’s update policy is terrible or anything. It certainly is better than that of many other vendors, but if you want updates as quickly as possible, you are probably better of with a Pixel phone. Of course repairability is an entirely different matter.