Your Phone Runs On Cobalt From DR Congo

It might be out now. For the life of me I can’t recall the title

Gotta control the natural resources everyone else needs, yunno.

A large cobalt mine next to a major wilderness area is firing up again in Idaho.

Telepathy should be explored for the most economic effect.

The sad thing about humans is that the evil among us are always thinking up new ways to enslave others and destroy the natural environment for profit.

Whenever you buy anything you have to think about where it came from and what's going to happen to it once it's no longer useful to you.

It's pretty had to give up your smartphone. My job depends on it.

There is a Dutch alternative called "Fairphone", but its not available in the US.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fairphone

If 10 years ago most people said, "No, don't need the extra screen or the problems that go with it" it wouldn't be reasonable for your employer to require that you have one.

Instead, you'd have a Blackberry v9.2.

Two were made obsolete by my cell phone providers, 2G and 3G no longer supported. The third phone was lost or stolen, I'm not quite sure which since someone answered but hung up on me when I called it, and my wife got a call from it too.

My fourth phone is a flip phone like all the others, like a Star Trek Communicator! That's the only reason I find cell phone tolerable.

That's four phones in about twenty years. Not too bad.

My wife has a personal smart phone and a required work smart phone that sometimes wakes us up in the middle of the night.

The last time I myself carried a work cell phone they were the size of lunch boxes.

wikipedia

I was young, I thought that was so cool! They needed me! I didn't see it as a leash, albeit one I could hand off to the next guy when my call ended.

I'm not sure I'd ever be happy with a mandatory work required smart phone, but you do what you gotta do.

Now they expect you to have a phone with apps that can be used for a secure login. Multi-factor authentication, they call it.

It's locked down tight and pretty useless for any non-work related stuff.

She can call home on it, and 911 I presume, but internet stuff goes through the work proxies.

They're gaining market share.

Sadly, the DR Congo is still responsible for over 2/3 of the nickel needed for the lower-nickel batteries. So better, but not virtuous.

Can't find much information in the few minutes I've spend wandering the web to compare relative performance.

Tesla was one of the leaders early on in moving away from cobalt.

Here's a random link, there are many out there.

https://thenextweb.com/news/the-cobalt-free-electric-vehicle-batteries-are-here