And in the early days of the telephone, switchboard operators would listen in on conversations and cut off anyone they didn't like. Then in civilized countries, they required phone companies to be common carriers and required police to get warrants if there was anything illegal suspected, to listen in on someone.

Similar thing with the postal service.

The phones are run by private companies. Should they be allowed to restrict what you say over the phone (or sms)?

It is part of the SSSCA / CBDTPA / "Trusted" computing initiative. The large corporations want to control what you are allowed to do with your computer. This is where the phrase "digital rights management" comes from.

I have a Sceptre tv. I use it as a TV and computer monitor. I don't remember exactly when I bought it, but it has been at least several years-maybe a decade, and it works great.

The only issue is I think I damaged the screen slightly a year or two ago while cleaning. Most of the time the damage isn't visible and is very small, so I don't worry about it. Well...and I had to replace the remote once as some buttons stopped working properly. Otherwise I have been using it without problem.

There are many Android based OS for phones. Graphene is a privacy focused Open Source OS which already fills the niche Apostrophy supposedly does. https://grapheneos.org/

It looks like it is powered by a microcontroller. Maybe it isn't powerful enough to support epub?

Any good substites on FDroid? Specifically SMS and file manager?

A second USB port or headphone jack adds $1(US) to the manufacturing cost, if even that. Can't cut into the corporation's massive profits by even a little. Nope, can't have that.

This seems to be the reason why I don't use Amazon very much anymore. Almost every time I search for something, most, if not all, of the results have nothing to do with what I wanted. I can't be the only one who has stopped using them because of this.

Anyone have better recommendations for online shopping?

Java isn't an interpreted language any more than C. Java gets compiled into its own machine code developed by Sun. That machine code can be converted to native code or just run "interpreted." (which is more like emulation.)

Maybe you should learn more about something before you criticize it.

Now coming to everyone soon: algae world! All algae all the time! Covered in slime? That's worth a dime! There is no escaping it, not even a bit.

It isn't very accurate. I live in Idaho, and my phone's geoip shows up all over the United States. Currently it says Utah, last time I checked.