“Parental controls? What parental controls?”

Congress has recently proposed multiple bills to regulate the internet (such as the recent “Kids Online Safety Act”), in the name of protecting children. This has caused a simple response: “Just have parents be parents and set up parental controls if they care.” That’s simpler said than done. Parental controls right now completely suck by …

Safari bug leaks cursor position between overlapping windows

Recently, I’ve built a navigation sidebar with Tailwind that changes appearance based on a CSS hover, and I’ve found a strange bug. I’ve found Safari will, under the right conditions, leak the cursor position during a click to completely different windows, underneath the window being clicked on. Unfortunately, I can’t reproduce the above bug on …

Sorry Purism, I’m not investing. It’s (possibly) not even legal. (updated once)

Update 1: Purism states on their website in a March blog post that there is one production run that covers the entirety of late 2019 – mid 2021. So, it is actually possible to accomplish. https://puri.sm/posts/where-is-my-librem-5-part-3/ This also makes some of the production timing mentioned below much more innocent even if calling it “In Stock” …

The “Location Off” switch on your phone is a lie.

If you’re going somewhere anonymously, or attending a politically unpopular protest, or visiting a sensitive client, you might want to turn Location Services to Off in your smartphone’s settings. Great – now you can go and do whatever it is without worrying. Well, that would be the case if we lived in an ideal world, …

Nintendo Switch modding is illegal in the US, full stop.

Note: I am not a lawyer – but hear me out. Considering the recent squabble between Pointcrow and Nintendo, almost everyone has heard of the “DMCA Takedown.” The DMCA is a huge (and arguably unconstitutional and 70% stupid) law that has a ton of sections, with Section 512 dealing with takedowns. However, there’s another section …

Perhaps something was rotten in Skylake

Here’s yet another theory that could partially explain why Windows 11 doesn’t support anything below Intel 8th Gen: Something’s really borked in Skylake (Intel 6th Gen), and operating systems are eager to get away from it. And, when possible, the refresh (7th gen). Consider: There are good alternative motives for all of those events (Windows …

Tech’s over-reliance on the internet is a preventable national security issue

What would happen if the internet suffered a prolonged and serious outage, reason irrelevant (cyberattack, zero days, P = NP with a simple and fast algorithm, solar superstorms, major vendor compromise, AWS KMS shredded from attack or mistake, total BGP meltdown, take your pick), but we still had electricity, gas, mail, mostly functioning government, and …

Debloating Windows 10 with one command and no scripts

Recently, I had to set up a Windows 10 computer for one specific application in a semi-embedded use case. Anything else that Windows does or comes with is unnecessary for this. While there are plenty of internet scripts and apps for de-bloating Windows, I have found the easiest (and little known) way to debloat Windows …

Open Question: How will Apple keep sideloading in Europe?

I saw the news by Bloomberg (a questionable source) about how Apple was getting ready to comply with the European Digital Markets Act, at last, by allowing sideloading among other things. However, this quote caught my eye: If similar laws are passed in additional countries, Appleā€™s project could lay the groundwork for other regions, according …

Nobody agrees what “Right to Repair” actually means

Right to Repair: Almost everyone supports it, it will make our devices more repairable, but if you look closely: the definition of what Right to Repair actually is and entails constantly changes based on who you talk to. Note: This table is an oversimplification of their definitions of R2R and does not include all necessary …