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Manufacturing the Librem 5 USA Phone in the US

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Re: Manufacturing the Librem 5 USA Phone in the US

#101

Post by Dylan16807 »

lucian1900 wrote: post #75
jolux wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why is complicity in abuse of populations suddenly a problem? It's always been a problem, but it's best to make whatever strides to resolve it that we can. > The US imprisons more than China does Sure, but it is not currently engaged in a genocide. Standards for due process are also stronger in the US than in China, and you don't get thrown in jail for criticizing the government either. The US prison system being b…

The US is the one with widely documented concentration camps on the border. And last year showed us just how much due process is ignored and political prisoners persecuted, if previous history wasn’t enough.

> The US is the one with widely documented concentration camps on the border.

That's for people crossing in, and on average they're only in there for a couple days. The current population is around 10k people. It's a problem but it's absolutely nothing compared to putting entire groups into concentration camps. We did that once, but it sure wasn't any time recently.

> And last year showed us just how much due process is ignored and political prisoners persecuted, if previous history wasn’t enough.

It did?

Re: Manufacturing the Librem 5 USA Phone in the US

#102

Post by LeifCarrotson »

ludocode wrote: post #80
jolux wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's politically unpopular for the same reason action on climate change is unpopular: it makes everything more expensive. You've got this backwards. Both taking action on climate change and buying American are popular [1][2]. Furthermore I don't know of much evidence that suggests taking action on climate change will raise prices. But you are right about protectionism in that way. That's the biggest problem here. I…

Of course everyone wants the government to do something about climate change. They're not thinking about what they'll have to sacrifice in order to make it happen. Almost no one is willing to suffer even minor inconvenience in favor of stopping climate change. Let's see the results of a poll that asks if people would be willing to take climate action that doubled the price of airline tickets, or that doubled the pric…

> Almost no one is willing to suffer even minor inconvenience in favor of stopping climate change.

People aren't taking minor, inconvenient, personal, moral steps to solve these problems because it's obvious that won't do anything to solve the problem. It's irrelevant whether or not I shut the water off when I brush my teeth when the farm over in the desert is subsidized to run a center-pivot irrigation in system in the middle of the desert that pulls 800 gallons per minute. Collective action is required, which means that instead of moralizing we need to fix the incentives. The only incentive that is universal is price.

A few people deciding not to fly or buying produce at a local farmer's market instead of the grocery store because they're concerned about climate change is not a signal that's audible to The System.

Re: Manufacturing the Librem 5 USA Phone in the US

#103

Post by lucian1900 »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #101
lucian1900 wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US is the one with widely documented concentration camps on the border. And last year showed us just how much due process is ignored and political prisoners persecuted, if previous history wasn’t enough.

> The US is the one with widely documented concentration camps on the border. That's for people crossing in, and on average they're only in there for a couple days. The current population is around 10k people. It's a problem but it's absolutely nothing compared to putting entire groups into concentration camps. We did that once, but it sure wasn't any time recently. > And last year showed us just how much due process…

Entire groups aren’t in concentration camps in Xinjiang, though. The only source is Adrian Zenz, a far right Christian that doesn’t even speak Mandarin. If you’re willing to read on the topic https://www.qiaocollective.com/en/education/xinjiang. The US is the outlier.

US forces murder and imprison innocent people all the time, both domestically (poor and black people in general, Chelsea Manning) and abroad (Assange, Guantanamo). There is no due process of any kind nor any justice.

If you talk to some people living in China you’ll find out a lot about how the justice system works there.

Re: Manufacturing the Librem 5 USA Phone in the US

#104

Post by auraham »

It is an interesting idea to have a USA model. However, I do not understand why do they have two models of the same phone? It is like saying "We have this made-in-China phone which is secure and open source but we also have this other made-in-USA phone which is more secure and more open". Oversimplistic but that is the idea.

Re: Manufacturing the Librem 5 USA Phone in the US

#105

Post by detaro »

martin8412 wrote: post #79
jonchang wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://puri.sm/products/librem-5-usa/ Scroll a little bit down and you'll see the country of origin for the parts. Most are of US origin.

Maybe you don't know, but Purism tends to publish misleading information. Most of the stuff in that product listing is trivial stuff to produce. The PCB/PCBA entries can basically all be ignored, and all the ICs on those PCBs can basically be assumed to be made in China, except for the NXP i.MX8M which is made in Korea

Do you have a source for where the i.MX8s are made? I tried to figure that out a while back and didn't find a clear answer, although Korea seems likely. (Samsung process which is done at fabs in the US and Korea, but origin documents I found list China for packaging/testing, which is more likely for a Korean fab - but not 100% certain, since chips get flown stupid distances sometimes for packaging, and not 100% if there aren't US-made ones too)

Re: Manufacturing the Librem 5 USA Phone in the US

#106

Post by danhor »

jandrese wrote: post #93
fsflover wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not just about the specs: https://source.puri.sm/Librem5/community-wiki/-/wikis/Freque... . By the way, there is also China-made version for $800.

The point is the device is clearly not competitive on specs. You have to put a lot of value in it being an open platform to find it attractive. It is the kind of specs you typically find on $30 phones. https://www.amazon.com/Simple-Mobile-Prepaid-Smartphone-Lock...

That's subsidized via the sim-lock. The "real" prize is probably more like 80$.

Re: Manufacturing the Librem 5 USA Phone in the US

#107

Post by 9wzYQbTYsAIc »

blihp wrote: post #70

Is their claim about electronic components 'origin declaration'[1] credible or is it just marketing sleight-of-hand? Aren't they just buying the same components made in Taiwan/China/wherever from a U.S. distributor such as Digikey and then saying 'Made in U.S.A.' in the same way other manufacturers do? (which would seem to seriously undermine their 'secure' supply chain claim) I've been under the impression that we d…

From your referenced page

> The Librem 5 USA will have a user-replaceable assembled in USA modem. The Gemalto modem chip itself is supplied from Germany, and we will be manufacturing our premium Gemalto M.2 modems in our USA facility.

Re: Manufacturing the Librem 5 USA Phone in the US

#108

Post by 9wzYQbTYsAIc »

fouric wrote: post #94

> Let’s say hypothetically that a Texas-based Instrument and parts maker has a part, let’s say that part is something like a TPS65892 (revision AB), and like all parts that Electronics Engineers (EEs) select, needs to be kitted exactly to part number (TPS65892) and package (NFBGA 96). Normally parts vary by part number (I am pretty sure it’s why they’re called part numbers), but in rare instances (I can think of only…

I don’t know why they won’t just come out and say who the manufacturer was, to give the hypothetical some real-world context. I wouldn’t want to assume that they are referring to Texas Instruments.

Sarcasm aside, I appreciated the humor they put into that paragraph.

Re: Manufacturing the Librem 5 USA Phone in the US

#109

Post by curiousgal »

cle wrote: post #27
yifanlu wrote: post #23

Yeah it’s 2021 and Chinese manufactured are more reliable and higher quality than anything American made. As an anecdote I build PCBs for a hobby and I’ve purchased PCBs and chips from both cheap Chinese fabs and suppliers as well as Americans ones. The only issues I’ve ever had were with American ones (which were many times more expensive) and I’ve stopped using them completely. I would be curious if librem will eve…

Even assuming that all hardware is backdoored, it can still make sense to use hardware from your own country, since your own government probably doesn’t want to harm its own economic interests.

Has it ever been proven that China backdoored circuits?

Re: Manufacturing the Librem 5 USA Phone in the US

#110

Post by an_opabinia »

ludocode wrote: post #80
jolux wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's politically unpopular for the same reason action on climate change is unpopular: it makes everything more expensive. You've got this backwards. Both taking action on climate change and buying American are popular [1][2]. Furthermore I don't know of much evidence that suggests taking action on climate change will raise prices. But you are right about protectionism in that way. That's the biggest problem here. I…

Of course everyone wants the government to do something about climate change. They're not thinking about what they'll have to sacrifice in order to make it happen. Almost no one is willing to suffer even minor inconvenience in favor of stopping climate change. Let's see the results of a poll that asks if people would be willing to take climate action that doubled the price of airline tickets, or that doubled the pric…

> If a majority of the world agreed on labor standards and excluded the rest from trade, there would be no need for protectionism

The average American does not want to buy stuff from slaves, at any price.

It's just that if I want to record a factory in China and show people how kids and prisoners are making their shit, it's not that they won't watch - it's that someone in China will shoot me.

It's very hard to show someone what slavery looks like, even though it's pervasive in the offshore supply chain.

People become vegans when they see what happens to animals at slaughterhouses. There are a lot of vegans. The reaction from the meat lobby isn't, blah blah blah prices. It's just to make it illegal to record in a slaughterhouse.

> But virtually no Americans are willing to pay a higher price for them.

This is some really myopic thinking. Just decide: would you pay a higher price to not get stuff from slaves, or not? Just you personally. I don't care what Americans think. How could you possibly say, "Yes, I'm okay with lower prices enabled by slavery." You wouldn't!

I just go and buy American. So I pay four times more for a pair of shoes, setting me back to 2001 prices. A time when quality of life was still very high. Boohoo. I don't want to fucking profit from slavery.

The argument you're engaging in is almost always made in bad faith. While you aren't saying it in bad faith, you're being co-opted by people who are. No CEO or politician sincerely blames Americans' sensitivity to prices for slavery in China, they just want to reap the profits of that status quo.

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