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So here I am sitting in an AirBnb on Christmas Eve in North Augusta on my laptop while Annette is watches Wheel of Fortune as she likes to do on weeknights. Inside I’m trying to mentally prepare myself for a full day of Christmas related events and visits with various in-laws tomorrow and thought to myself, “This would be a great time to spew out a new blog post.” Dare I say that your opinion on that may clash with mine after you finish reading what I have to say. It’s Christmas related and as with most topics I’m going to make a lot of powerful statements which I may or may not choose to back up with any real degree of supporting information. Though in this case, I probably won’t be providing a lot of links and references as most of this post is likely going to consist of me preaching and I simply don’t have enough time to make this a proper essay. So if you like my typical content, you may want to just skip this one. Whatever you ultimately choose to do, consider yourself warned. ...

So over the years I’ve had a number of people tell me that I tend to focus on the negative aspects rather than the positive aspects of situations. This feedback has been relayed to me on both professional and personal levels. Let me tell you: That this is absolutely the case. However I don’t see it as a failing so much as an asset. The purpose of today’s post is to both delve into why I feel this way and why clients, co-workers and compatriots feel the way they do. ...

So in light of the exceptionally serious posts that have graced the front page of this site over the last month I have decided to do something a little different today. Consider this my official attempt to remind you all that I am actually capable of doing something other than bitching about the behavior of corporations and people. The topic of conversation today will be the MiSTer and why I’m absolutely enthralled with it. ...

This post marks the third in my series about the sad saga of Purism and the Librem 5. If you haven’t read the first or second posts yet, I highly recommend that you click here and then click here. Give them both at least a quick skim before reading this one as they contain important background information that is required to appreciate this one. After mulling over everything I had seen along with what my source had shared with me, I decided that I had a moral duty to spread the word as far and as wide as possible while protecting the identity of my source as best as I could. I resolved that the best way to do this would be to create threads with specific questions directed towards Purism which would help to shed some light on some the questions I now had. I created two threads, one on the Purism forums and one in the Purism subreddit. ...

This post marks the second in my series about the sad saga of Purism and the Librem 5. If you haven’t read the first post yet, I highly recommend that you click here. Give it at least a good skim before reading this one as it contains important background information that is required to appreciate this one. Sometime in the midst of the Aspen shipping window I began to casually express skepticism on the Purism subreddit. In some of my comments I posited the theory that Purism had hit rough financial straits. I also further theorized that Purism was using PR to generate more revenue in the form of pre-orders for the device so that the project could continue. Within a day of posting this, I was contacted by an informed ex-employee of Purism. They gave me their credentials which I verified using information they provided and information I was able to dig up. My source has decided not to go public yet at the time of publication. This means that while I have verified their identity, I cannot share any information you would require to do so. ...

Today I’m going to tell you a sad tale of a device called the Librem 5 and the company behind it, Purism. As of right now, this story does not have a happy ending. I am writing this series of articles as a protest against the behavior of Purism, a company which claims that transparency and openness are their core values. If they won’t tell the world the truth about the Librem 5, then I’m willing to at least give it a go. ...

If you are a regular visitor, you know that I normally I update my site with new content on a monthly basis. However the events of the last 24 hours have compelled me to break with tradition and reach out to the wider world as soon as possible. I already hear you asking, “What happened Jay?” Well the modern web happened, that’s what. Since I’m a web developer you are probably operating under the assumption that I’m acquainted with the modern web and it’s basic rules more-so than most. You aren’t wrong. However I am not infallible. That having been said, the events of the last 24 hours have forced me to take a long hard stare at one of my blind spots, produce a full accounting of the horrors that were subsequently revealed to me and react accordingly. ...

Over the past few years, I’ve spent a lot of time speaking to the dangers of our current blind obsession with the cloud and all it has to offer. Professionally I’ve experienced life on both sides of the fence: I’ve seen this problem from the perspective of the cloud provider and from the perspective of the consumer. In both cases I have arrived at the same conclusion: We’ve got a rough road ahead of us. ...

Most who know me have at some time or another heard me profess my love for Retro and Indie gaming. At the heart of this love however is a growing and increasingly cancerous disdain for modern gaming that I have finally decided to no longer ignore. Now I realize this is going to shock some people, especially as I have a rather embarrassingly large Steam library (as of today it contains 943 games). Most of those people don’t know that I that I also have sizable GoG (407 games) and Playstation Store (around 350 games) libraries as well. So okay yeah I’m addicted. But in my defense these purchases have been made over the last decade. In addition a lot of those GoG library purchases are for older games that I played as a kid but never bought back then. So that has been my way of atoning for past sins as I firmly disagree with software piracy in every case where software is being actively sold. But yeah those are huge game libraries. ...

A number of people I know have asked me why I feel so strongly about particular tech issues that I feel compelled to take action. A number of those people have also informed me that my practice of maintaining a ban list of companies and products that I refuse to patron is objectionable to them. They don’t always say it directly, but once you get used to hearing it implied, it becomes easy enough to recognize it. ...