Oh of course! I meant to say they aren’t worth it to me, folks’ uses and wants for a smartwatch vary so widely. I totally agree that the pebbles have great aesthetics, and the issues about data collection for pretty much everything else on the market. I do wish the new pebbles had a heart rate monitor, though.
I got introduced to smartwatches with the original pebble time, and when Rebble stopped working on my phone I switched to a Bangle.js 2. I still have some nostalgia for pebbles, but the bangle is pretty much just better for everything except aesthetics, and is less than half the cost. The new pebbles just aren’t worth it, unfortunately.

Nope! Lithium polymer batteries are substantially different from lithium ion. Each generation of lithium batteries is a pretty unique chemistry, the only thing that stays constant is the use of lithium as the cathode. Electrolyte, anode, and interface chemistry actually progresses pretty quickly.
Also, for drastically different battery chemistries which have been commercialized, see sodium ion batteries, and to a lesser extent NaS/ZEBRA batteries.
**edit: typo

I assumed that Linux was not really under the control of the US, but I guess the Foundation is incoporated in the US as a 501©(6) and the kernel org itself is a 501©(3), so that does give Congress more levers on the kernel than I expected.
Not to mention that most (all?) of the major corporate funders of the kernel are US-based…
I really hope the kernel doesnt get (geo)politicized.
Edit: based on @RobotToaster’s link, yeah it looks like every major “employer” contributor to the kernel other than Huawei, Linaro, Arm, and Suse are American. Arm is probably working mostly on support for its architecture, so I guess it’s Linaro (UK) and Suse(DE).
That’s not to downplay the role of independent contributors, but it seems like a good indicator of the “power of the purse strings”.
Edit 2: here’s a more recent set of development statistics from LWN. Looks like the ordering has changed quite a bit since 2022, or it varies a lot with each kernel version

At least according to Wikipedia, small amounts of carbon (< 2.14%) in the final alloy are an important component in controlling the ductility, which agrees with what I thought I remembered from materials classes (although I am not a materials scientist). Obviously not using the Bessemer process drastically reduces the amount of carbon necessary, but trace carbon is important.
I see, the time does but the round doesn’t. I saw the round and assumed they’d be the same, oops!