Technology

All this because Hyprland......checks notes......seems to allow free speech on their discord?

Guys.........come on lol. Why do some people try to make absolutely everything political? not just political either, but radical levels of political extremism. Don't judge a company by the things random unaffiliated people say on their forums lol. Hell, even if they are affiliated - who cares? Eat some concrete.

Guess this solidifies it.

I am going to buy their Ryzen ai ITX PC.

Framework can be supporting the project and not the ideology

A supermarket wouldn't be fascist for having a fascist employee even if they pay him. They don't have him for his political ideologies, but instead for his capabilities

And here, they are donating for a project by DHH, because they like the project

The thing to realize is that the reason EVERYONE knows about Framework Corp is that one of their larger investors is Linus Sebastien of Linus Media Group (most known for "Linus Tech Tips"). He/LMG have a long, well documented, history of conflicts of interest and even a few scandals (both in terms of manipulative data AND sex pestery) and have increasingly been revealed to be VERY manipulative of other channels they deem "smaller" (Rossman went off on them during one of the annual scandals)

So Framework's social media game is on lock both between their own in-house staff and whatever they get from "investor calls" as it were.

And you know what goes together like peanut butter and jelly? Youtubers and "accidentally" supporting really shitty chuds.

As for Framework Corp itself?

I dunno. To me it increasingly feels like a company designed to create/trademark IP that would greatly improve assembly line processes that haven't found an integrator willing to buy them out.

Because stuff like the "open source but we are the only ones that use it" proprietary "not a dongle but is something you plug into a usb c port to use different interfaces" and the pogo plug keyboards and so forth? I think Wendell at Level1Techs put it best where he acknowledged it was REALLY cool and something he would use once when buying the laptop and then as a fidget device during some meetings.

But for a "boutique" laptop integrator? That is something that can be done to really customize each laptop for each customer at minimal cost (by relying on cheap labor in a pre-Liberation Day world).

As for the rest of the laptops? Again, they look really cool. But every time I consider replacing my existing laptop I run the simple numbers. Too lazy to do it right now but basically:

Let a be the price of the laptop you want from Framework and let b be the price of just the motherboard+CPU of said laptop in the Framework marketplace. Let c be the price of a comparable laptop at Best Buy or whatever.

Framework only ever makes sense if a+b is significantly less than c*2. And every time I run the numbers? It is a few bucks cheaper, at best, and usually still more expensive. And all of that assumes you keep the same everything and are just "upgrading" the cpu. Which... considering Framework are already doing revisions of their chassis that, bare minimum, would involve heat pipe tweaks when upgrading... yeah.

And... in theory having reusable parts means you decrease e-waste. In practice? How many of us still have a box of DDR3 ram that we are totally going to need some day? There is very much an argument for donating your old laptop to an org that will reuse them or just chucking it in an e-waste bin (after wiping and preferably drilling out the drive...).

I DO think this tech would be amazing for the kind of company that provisions laptops for medium sized businesses. But their software/support and pricing keep them out of that too.

But as it stands? It feels a lot like those phones that had swappable camera modules and the like. It SOUNDS amazing until you actually price them out... and then realize the company went out of business so you never even had a chance to upgrade your camera 5 years later.

And just to elaborate a bit on the power of social media. Think about how few reviewers have ANYTHING negative to say about Framework? And then actually watch some of the better reviews. Wendell has a very good professional relationship with LMG but it is telling that even he kind of acknowledges their big "repairability" innovation is... kind of a gimmick.

Contrast that with a Thinkpad where basically every reviewer will spend a good chunk talking about how they don't like Lenovo and the laptop has all these flaws... before begrudgingly acknowledging it is still a REALLY solid ultrabook and is, hands down, the best price to performance option for people who want to run Linux. Also the nub is love. The nub is life.

And you can see similar with the LTT Screwdriver. It is a licensed knockoff of a megapro (?) so of course it is quality. But look at reviewers like Project Farm. He is VERY good about providing the raw data and encouraging people to make their own choices based on what criteria matter to them. And then look at how he weighted the criteria to be able to say the LTT Screwdriver was, hands down, the best.

THAT is the power of social media and a rabid fanbase who are known to attack anyone who goes against their parasocial best friend. And that is what Framework has.