PSA: Google is now sending scary push notifications to your phone for scheduled exports (takeouts) of your data.

By gating the export behind a SCARY PUSH NOTIFICATION requiring confirmation, Google is adding friction to the process.

Do I recognise this activity?! I do, because it's part of the planned series of takeouts I requested. If I was busy or forgetful I might panic because I wouldn't remember having requested this months ago.

Isn't it fun to discover new dark patterns megacorps are using to try and discourage users from exercising their rights? 🙃

For your Easter reading list: possibly the most cursed of 8051 firmware cross flashes?

https://watchmysys.com/blog/2026/03/managing-the-unmanaged-switch/

Anyone knows how to update the UEFI firmware of a Surface 2 (RT) when the Internal battery is already dead? Battery shows as "not installed" or "0%, not charging"

It's a known issue on UEFI firmwares prior to v4.22.500 that the battery will not charge if deeply discharged.

Problem is, to install the UEFI firmware update the battery has to be at least 40% charged.

I have tried all the "unplug, hold power button for 20 seconds, plug in" and "Go to Device Manager, Uninstall "Microsoft ACPI-Compliant Control Method Battery" voodoo you read about on forums to no avail. The battery don't charge.

I was greeted with a large prompt in the Bitwarden browser extension to upgrade to Premium.

Here's the thing Bitwarden, for years *I paid for Premium*. I was happy to support a quality open source product. Then you took the VC money, the enshittification started, and I decided to vote with my wallet and stop paying for Premium.

You nerfed the information dense extension for something with 150% more whitespace, and ignored the community feedback asking for the old UI back.

You don't seem to understand that some local network devices don't even support HTTPS so "jUsT gEnErAtE aN aCmE cErTiFiCaTe ItS eAsY" doesn't apply.

To top it all off, you decided to replace QA with vibes, or something? The fact that this regression made it into a production release is just astounding.

$997 for an 8 year old quad core CPU?
$2249 for an 8 core embedded Xeon? That benchmarks at ~55% of an EPYC 3151 board you can buy for 60 Euros? I would compare it to Ryzen but then it's even more laughably obsolete (and Ryzen doesn't support Reg ECC). A Ryzen 5 5600 is over 4x faster than the C3758.

These boards are so ancient they don't even have USB 3.0!

Their Antsle one XD is even worse, shipping with a Xeon-D CPU from 2015.

Antsle, seriously? You're polishing e-waste at this point.

800W laptop chargers?! I am going to need some pictures of those bricks, for science.

I would love to see some references from the author of this piece on how they came to comparing 800W to charging a laptop (or a fridge, for that matter): https://grist.org/buildings/how-germany-outfitted-half-a-million-balconies-with-solar-panels/

These analogies are completely nonsensical.

PSA to all vendors stripping source code archives before sending them to GPL requestors: this is a waste of everyone's time. Please stop.

I get that I am probably the very first person to ever ask you for your product's GPL source code, but please try to do better. (And to everyone screeching about the latest supply chain compromise, why haven't you requested source code from your vendors?!?)

Your widget that has been discontinued for 5 years contains no trade secrets that I am going to expose from your subcontractor's absolute hatchet job on the vendor's ancient SDK.

It takes me about 5 minutes to look at the archive you sent me and realize there's no configuration files for the product in question and you did not include half a dozen directories required in the Makefile to even build the thing.

Then I have to write another email to your customer support explaining in some detail that you sent me an incomplete archive and pointing to different sections of the GPL that state what you need to provide.

I don't think this was the author's intention, but I consider this a strawman argument: https://hugotunius.se/2025/08/31/what-every-argument-about-sideloading-gets-wrong.html

We already have well-documented hardware (e.g. PinePhone) and FLOSS software on mobile devices is, 10+ years later, utterly irrelevant in the market.

None of the issues here are technical, they all stem from legal/policy shortcomings.

What we need: legally compelled documentation from chip/device makers, legally mandated unlocked bootloaders, and legally enshrined rights to sideload applications on operating systems (Windows, macOS, iOS, and Android). Even, and especially, if the companies selling devices and developing the OS object.

What we have: none of that.

Until then, anyone from the EU claiming to support the right to repair or regional autonomy is just blowing smoke while the industry lobbyists buy them lunch.

All the major desktop and mobile operating systems are developed by American companies (Microsoft, Apple, Google), running on devices manufactured in Asia, with chips from American or Asian companies.