thank you for posting clear text links !
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A Pessimist is a Optimist with experience. 
Aaron, (he) like a good little Googie, uses term ‘tracking’ bantered about as a thing that sounds OK i.e. ‘Oh, tracking? That’s OK’ brainwashed attitude. If we look at what this ‘tracking’ really does, we’d all agree that it’s ‘stalking’ not white-washed “tracking” .
The ‘review’ helped me in my choosing a non-stalking device. I didn’t know it doesn’t do Youtube. I hope to see what else it doesn’t do so I have better idea of what is in store, or not.
~s~
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The Librem 5 can browse Youtube through the web browser just like Librem laptops can. Gardiner’s Librem 5 initial thoughts video even shows it loading a Youtube page in dock mode.
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…and the codec issue in Epiphany that was visible on his video is already solved. You can either do sudo apt install gstreamer1.0-libav now or wait three days until new librem5-base migrates from staging repos so it gets installed automatically on upgrade 
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And as we saw in the last 24 hours, with Google it’s not just about tracking: https://edition.cnn.com/2020/12/14/tech/google-youtube-gmail-down/index.html
When you can’t turn on the lights or can’t turn on the heating or can’t access your documents or can’t access your email, something’s gotta give. Most people can live without YouTube …
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@TheLinuxGamer put up a response if anyone wanted to see:
Odysee link: https://odysee.com/@TheLinuxGamer:f/WHOSETHEBOSS:9
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I hate to say it, but I’m glad there’s a YouTube link in it. I like LBRY and the likes, but most of the time I don’t really get the videos to load properly. I wonder if that is a geographic problem? 
I’ll be sure to try and post both when possible so people can choose - I try to watch through LBRY based services as much as possible but havent encountered those issues so that plays a part Im sure.
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the Linux LBRY app works well enough for me and if you want access to settings then that is pretty much the ONLY way to go …
@ everybody < does ODYSEE use a different GUI app ?
what about > https://lbry.tv/@Bombards_Body_Language:f/Body-Language---Facebook-Censorship---Data-Tracking-Tools--Centra-:6
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I havent seen an app for Odysee, looks like they’re still working on it (the web experience is smoother sometimes so I go between the LBRY Android app and that)
Please, how to pronounce Linux: https://mirrors.edge.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/SillySounds/english.wav
Thanks.
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I liked his video. Explains it well, even for people who have never heard about the L5 before. I’ll probably use this video to explain to others why I’ve chosen the L5 over the alternatives.
He makes a good point as well regarding hardware; as in that hardware is essentially specialized for its end goals instead of looking at raw performance numbers for comparison reasons.
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Plus, Linux is very resource-efficient.
Hmmm. My browser mishandled a .WAV file - brought it up as a text file which means not surprisingly that I didn’t quite catch that pronunciation. 
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It’s not the browser’s fault when the web server sends wrong mime type. But you can just save that link to your local disk and then use your favorite audio player on it. It’s worth the effort. Enjoy.
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Right. I didn’t look closely enough. Just saw the pages and pages of binary content. Anyone want to hassle kernel.org either not to host content that they can’t serve properly or to fix their config so that they can serve properly?
Eh, I won’t fault him for pronouncing it “lie-nux.” I said it that way too before I started using it.
Lots of things in the FOSS world have creators who want their names to be pronounced in a bizarre way (looking at you, “guh-nome” and “guh-nu” and “luh-tek”).
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I generally liked Mrwhosetheboss’s video, except for the part where he tried to explain why the Librem 5 costs so much compared to Android phones. Mrwhosetheboss mentioned the ad revenue sharing that Google gives to smartphone OEMs, but that revenue only pays for a minuscule part of the total cost of an Android phone. Google pays out 23% of its ad revenue in ad revenue sharing, but the Android phone OEMs don’t appear to get much of that.
Apple reportedly received $3 billion in 2017 from Google to keep Google Search as the default search on iOS devices, which works out to $15 per device, but Apple has leverage to demand those kind of fees. Most of the Android phone OEMs can’t credibly argue that they don’t need Google Mobile Services (Play Store, Chrome, Maps, Search, Docs, Assistant, YouTube, Drive, Duo, Photos, TV, Music, etc.). Maybe the 2018 ruling by the European Commission has given the Android phone OEMs a bit more leverage, but I still doubt that Google is giving them more a couple dollars per device in ad revenue sharing.
Microsoft used to demand that Android phone OEMs pay between $5 and $15 per device because they violated Microsoft patents when they supported microSD cards with the FAT file system. Now Microsoft doesn’t demand any fees, but it demands that they preinstall Microsoft apps on their phones.
What Mrwhosetheboss should have said is that Android phones are so cheap because the SoC makers (Qualcomm, MediaTek, UniSOC) hand them an already debugged reference design, so they don’t have to go through 6 development batches (DevKit, pre-Aspen, Aspen, Birch, Chestnut, Dogwood) like the Librem 5 to get to market. Essentially they just take the reference design, add a few tweaks that require minimal prototyping costs, and they have their new phone models.
At this point, many of the phone OEMs are turning to the Chinese design houses and ODMs to save money on R&D. 36% of smartphones have their designs outsourced. Huaqin designs phones for Huawei and Samsung; Wingtech designs for Xiaomi, Samsung and OPPO; Longcheer designs for Xiaomi; Chino-E designs for Lenovo/Motorola; and Tinno Mobile designs for Lenovo/Motorola and HMD/Nokia. Many of the Xiaomi Redmi and new Samsung A-series phones were designed by Wingtech. Purism used a Chinese design house for the Librem 5 (as evidenced by the Chinese in the schematics and the Neway design), but Purism still had to go through many dev batches because NXP doesn’t have reference designs for an i.MX 8M phone, so Purism had to do it from scratch, and unlike the PINE64, it didn’t have an already debugged SBC design to start from.
Chinese electronics assemblers and ODMs now assemble over 50% of the world’s smartphones, and they have undercut the traditional Taiwanese electronics assemblers like Foxconn, Pegatron, Compal, Quanta, Compal and Wistron, plus Singapore-based Flex.
Another major reason why Android smartphones have gotten so cheap is the shift from traditional higher-priced brands to cheaper Chinese brands. Chinese companies, like Huawei, B&K Electronics (OPPO, Vivo, OnePlus and Realme), Xiaomi, Lenovo (Motorola), TCL (Blackberry, Alcatel and Palm), ZTE (Axon and nubia) and Transsion Holdings (Tecno, Itel and Infinix), now control 65% of the global smartphone market and they have been able to undercut the prices of the traditional phone brands, like Samsung, LG, Sony and HTC.
While the Librem 5’s CPU may have the raw performance of a low-end smartphone from two years ago, its bill of materials is actually quite expensive, and probably over $250, which is like the BOM of a higher-end Android phone.
However, the big reason why the Librem 5 is so expensive compared to an Android phone is because Purism had to pay roughly a dozen people (currently 10 developers) to work on its software for 3.3 years whereas Android phone makers essentially get their software for free (although they pay for it by being forced to conform to the rules of the Handset Alliance and the Android Compatibility Test Suite that commoditizes their phones and drives out their profits). All the Android phone makers do is create a skin and slap a few of their own apps on top of Android to try to distinguish their phones from everyone else.
TheLinuxGamer’s response to Mrwhosetheboss was good because he pointed out that the high price of the Librem 5 is paying for the development of libhandy and Phosh. He also should have mentioned that it is paying for the cost of being an early adopter of the i.MX 8M and helping to get it supported in mainline Linux. The price of the Librem 5 also paid Redpine Signals to modify its firmware, so it doesn’t have to be loaded from the /lib/firmware directory.
What I didn’t care for was TheLinuxGamer’s response of “that’s Capitalism” and his discussion of the markup of couches. He leaves the audience with the impression that Purism is making a profit on the Librem 5. While hopefully that will one day be the case, Purism told us that it had gone way over budget to develop the Librem 5, when it announced that it was going to have to raise the final price of the phone to $799. Purism reported that it raised $2.5 million in venture capital last year and Phoronix published an article saying that Purism had to take out a loan of several million dollars. While several have questioned the veracity of the Phoronix article, it is clear that the original backers of Purism had to give up a portion of the company to finance the development of the phone.
If Purism was obeying the normal logic of Capitalism to maximize profits, it never would have tried to create a phone like the Librem 5. It would have stuck to making profitable Coreboot devices based on x86 processors, or at most, created the Librem 5 based on the i.MX 6 with Ubuntu Touch or Plasma Mobile. Nobody looking at how many companies have failed at Linux phones in the past can claim that Purism had good prospects of ever making a profit when it embarked on the very risky venture of using a new SoC that didn’t yet have mainline Linux support and creating a new mobile interface/desktop environment. Anyone who believes that Purism is just trying to make a quick buck needs to have their heads examined, because it will likely be years before Purism recovers its development costs for the Librem 5.
Having said all that, I’m actually very pleased with all the coverage given by Mrwhosetheboss and TheLinuxGamer to the Librem 5. The video by Mrwhosetheboss has gotten 2.8 million views. Reading through the comments to their videos, it is clear that they are reaching people who hadn’t heard about the Librem 5, and this is exactly the audience that Purism needs to reach to expand its sales of the Librem 5 and make the phone a success.
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This is what makes supporting purism worth it. They’ve shown with their bottom dollar they are committed to the end goal. Using FOSS, you would make way less money, but its the only way to ensure privacy. No shortcuts will be taken by Purism in this respect from what we’ve seen. I would gladly pay a higher price up front for software development that respects my privacy, than get a device with the same specs cheaper, and pay the difference (and more) with my data. Great writeup!
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