Joe

It doesn’t have to completely kill private.

Many countries combine the two with standard medical, and optional private for better terms (eg. single room, chief doctor, better dental).

Then there are the hybrid systems, like full public insurance through multiple insurers with private opt-outs under certain conditions (germany). Or full private but with single payee and standard coverage and legal guarantees of affordable insurance.

Then public systems with some capped self-pay component to encourage self-discipline and not running to the doc with every sniffle.

Honestly, almost any system is better than what the US has, which adds unnecessary cost and complexity at every stage.

Troops denied their right to vote. News at 11!

It’s really not that complicated.

They will answer the 911 call, you say this is just a test to ensure the functionality, thank them and then hang up.

Worst case you get some person who complains about the test call, and you calmly explain that you called their non-emergency number beforehand to ensure that it would be OK, thank them, and then hang up.

As for your VOIP location Q: If it has a registered address in another location, you should call that location’s local number. Normally you want the correct address registered though, but you could inform them of this directly, as they probably have a database with notes that pop-up based on the calling number.

why

• why get up in the morning, only to have to do it again tomorrow?

• why paint a still life, when you can just stare at the real thing for a while?

• why not hunt and forage your own food?

• why not make your own clothes?

• why write boring code, when you can get someone or something else to write it for you?

• why contribute features that you think are interesting to a product that you use and enjoy?

• why post on social media, rather than doing any of the above?

Someone mentioned Fairphone here… which seems to have just that.

demonstrated any actual competency in this domain

It may be that he/they have significant competency in this domain, just not publically or under this name/pseudonym.

I’ve personally made contributions under pseudonyms just to avoid employer paperwork/approvals, for projects that I’d rather not have my real name attached to, and for sharing in potentially hostile communities.

I’ve also developed software internal to companies that has never been released publicly.

In short … he doesn’t need to prove his prior credentials to you, me, or anyone. He may have some, he may not.

We can legitimately critique what he/they have done in this project all we like though.

I read the other replies. I was purposefully giving you an alternative, rather than repeating what others said. How you choose to receive it is up to you. Good luck, I guess.

Hate to be “that guy”, but you can probably make the FOSS alternative work for you. Create a feature/bug issue on the project(s) explaining the problem in detail. It might be easy to fix.

You can also try to fix it yourself, or ask a programmer friend to help. Friends often like helping friends.

For a smaller investment (eg. one month of ChatGPT Plus for Codex, Kimi, whatever) and you can probably fix all the niggly things that you don’t like yourself. Just don’t go opening pull requests for code changes you don’t understand - it won’t be appreciated.

Some home internet routers (e.g… from FritzBox) support multiple VOIP providers, letting you configure rules as to which provider is used for outgoing calls (e.g… default for local calls, and another for international calls). And they provide a normal phone connector.