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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. ...

Earlier this year in January, Google publicly toyed with making some changes to its Extension WebRequest API that would effectively kill off reputable ad-blockers. This announcement was met with much sound and fury and Google appeared to fold after a few weeks of controversy and a bit of research on the part of the community. However all of this ultimately signified nothing as Google announced plans to move forward with nearly the exact same plan this week. ...

So for this month’s blog post, I’ve decided to tackle a bit of tech drama that has been brewing for awhile. In case you didn’t know, the Chinese telecom/tech company Huawei has been repeatedly accused by the US government of spying on their customers at the behest of the Chinese government. No supporting evidence has been released to the public. Despite this lack of evidence, this week the Trump Administration has banned Huawei from doing business with any US based entity using an executive order. ...

In today’s irregularly scheduled pontification, I’m going to be addressing a subject that I have been personally struggling with for the majority of my career. When it comes to expectations in software development, I have recently realized that holding oneself to insane standards is not only ill-advised but potentially career ending. If you are a regular reader (which is impossible as I’m never going to be a regular poster) then you have likely already figured out that I am a software developer on the verge of burnout. I’ve been tip toeing along the edge of that chasm for the last five or six years now. In response I have been exploring a variety of possible solutions to the problem. For the most part these solutions have proven to be nothing more than temporary band-aids. Given enough time I always end up longingly gazing into that chasm of ill-repute where ex-software developers congregate. ...

Over the last few years I have chronicled my struggle to maintain my privacy while maintaining an effective online presence. If you are an avid reader, you know that I believe that I am fighting a losing battle. Today marks the beginning of a new chapter as I have finally realized that most people just don’t care and nothing that you or I can do will ever be enough to make them care. ...