The interesting thing is this basically happened already, a while ago. WebASM exists.

So what's different here?

I still don't see why we can't just use IRC anymore. The protocol itself is old but reliable, and just needs a good client or two to help people compare it to Discord a bit more favourably. Though I suppose the need for a BNC to fully match it is probably a bit much of an ask for most.

It does still live on, somewhat, in its spiritual successor, Haiku: https://www.haiku-os.org/

Its last release was in December 2022.

Brave likes to push BAT (and thus its own ads replacing the existing ones on the web) but it's ultimately opt-out. Same with their analytics (which, in fairness, Firefox also does by default).

No, I've honestly never heard that be a thing for this phone. Do you drop it frequently or something? Never had any charging issues.

I'd used Linux in VMs since the early 2010s, though only really for curiosity purposes and never did much worthwhile. Got a job that uses Linux pretty extensively back in 2016 and by 2019 once I'd noticed proton was a thing I was using Arch Linux on my own laptop. Distro hopped several times in the following years and now on a new PC I've decided to just stay on Debian bookworm and just keep applications up to date using flatpak.

Xiaomi Poco F2 Pro (Redmi K30 Pro). I honestly only really got it because it had a wild discount on AliExpress back in 2020 and wanted to give MIUI a try. However since then I've put TWRP and a custom ROM on it (MIUI isn't terrible but it seems to kill apps far too much and I'm not big on the ads within the actual OS).

I continue to use it because it still performs great and the battery life is pretty good (usually get about 2 days charge on it), and the custom ROM community around it is pretty reliable too. Plus it has a pop up camera so I definitely know when my phone is trying to look at me.

Not really found much to dislike to be honest, though I guess the camera could be a bit better. It's definitely helped along with good software though (especially either GCam or the MIUI camera).

I wonder if this will finally take us back to the days of standardised battery sizes, instead of the random only-works-on-one-phone ones we get currently. I highly doubt manufacturers would want to invest too much for a single phone model for that long.

As awesome as system76 is, the fact they're based in the US practically makes them a no-go for someone not from that continent. Shipping and electrical standards make for too much headache.

Maybe someday they'll get a bit more global.