4kW CO2, Jesus xD. I don’t know if that is a lot, but sure sounds like it ^^
I’m happy I even got to work with some CO2 lasers around the 100W mark at a rapid prototyping workshop for a few years. I loved working with those, even if it was just on wood and acrylic (and they constantly needed recalibration and tuning).
Now I just sit at a computer all the time… I honestly miss that even just slightly more hands-on work ^^
I’ve seen the xTool MetalFab laser cutter/welder thingy pop up in some DIY and metalworking YouTube channels somewhat recently and it seems wild to me that you can reasonably just buy a machine like that for non-astronomical (for an individual) prices nowadays. I mean, it I assume it probably can’t compete with actual industrial machines but still, the fact that this is even feasible for a home workshop… I have absolutely no use for it but I really want one anyway, these things are so cool >_<
Correct me if I’m wrong, but, regarding the first point, in what way are the calendar clients proprietary? Unless I am missing something, the clients for iOS and Android are open source and licensed under GPLv3 while the desktop client (part of the mail app) appears to be licensed under AGPL v3.
The email system not working with Thunderbird etc. out-of-the-box is true but that is kind of understandable, considering that the emails are only stored and transmitted to the first-party clients in an encrypted form that other clients couldn’t work with? And you could use the mail bridge (which is also open source, if I am not mistaken) to expose them as a local server to be used by Thunderbird etc., right? Maybe not ideal but I’d agrue it’s “fine”.
I do agree that there are things to dislike about Proton but those two don’t seem like problems in my opinion…
At least in the EU they were forced to allow other browser engines a few years ago, but their “solution” sounds like some malicious compliance (because of course, it is Apple we’re talking about after all): https://developer.apple.com/support/alternative-browser-engines/ Apparently you have to request some special entitlement and fulfill a lot of requirements to be allowed to ship an app with anything other than WebKit.