The MNT Reform Next in purple is my "someday" upgrade. It is fully open source, modular, and repairable. It is a machine that actually respects the user instead of fighting them. Plus, that purple is beautiful. I have respect for MNT Research for being one of the few ethically sound companies in Tech.
new post: "because fuck you" — why consumer choice is being systematically stripped away, and how the tech industry profits from your inability to leave.
covers the App Store tax, the headphone jack, right to repair, accessibility as PR, smart device bricking, and the one thing that actually makes these companies change behavior (hint: it's not your complaint).
Right To Repair
@pluralistic In Alaska, people living away from our 3 big cities learn to repair broken devices as best they can, often there is no repair business in a town or village Even in the city areas, businesses that seek to make repairs are stymied by lockouts, withheld information and anti-modification laws. Here are 3 examples from a repair business near Anchorage, AK.
What is the single oldest piece of hardware you own that is still in active, daily use? 💾
I don't mean a museum piece sitting on a shelf. I mean something you actually turn on and rely on every week.
Is it a first generation Kindle? A 2011 thinkpad? A printer from the Windows XP era? A mechanical keyboard from yesteryear? An old iPod? A really old toaster that works great?
My phone screen went black and wouldn't turn on again.
I tried looking for my replacement phone, charging it and updating it. Took some time, so i unscrewed the broken phone, fixed the connector and turned it on again.
Was faster than switching to my replacement phone.
Make sure to get easy to repair electronics, everyone!
"If they can be shut off with an over the air command we need to be able to trust the companies that make them."
-Ben Alexxander on the bricking of TESLA power walls.
Remote software updates, feature enabling/disabling, and the most extreme remote bricking raise several "consumer rights" issues that have not been adequately addressed. #tesla#solar#rightToRepair
🛠️ 💻 In the spirit of repairability and keeping good equipment alive, I've gathered up a few retired Thinkpads from local surplus auctions. I'm upgrading the RAM and drives and will be making them available in the next few weeks. These will be cozy little Solarpunk machines, older equipment preinstalled with a lightweight linux desktop and all the software you need for browsing, writing, docs, email, managing passwords, and videoconferencing.
I would like to find each one a good home with a nice person who will appreciate and take care of it. If you know of someone in the USA who would be a good fit, please put them in touch. I will be sending these for the cost of shipping (estimating about $40) with a completely optional tip jar to help cover the cost of upgraded parts.
When I have more details together I'll send out a link but for now ping me with any questions. Thanks! 🙏
Shipped out the first two rehabilitated Thinkpads this morning. These have SSD drives, upgraded RAM and are running Linux Mint instead of the usual bloatware/spyware. Light and lean. Yay for repairability. 🛠️
If there's someone in your life that needs decent laptop for general use, let me know. I will refresh and ship one at no charge. (Donations are welcome, to cover the cost of shipping.)
Not only is this the right thing to do, but #RightToRepair laws should make this required. They should also anticipate malicious compliance (make the device perform really badly before open sourcing it, then open source a crippled, shitty version).
Endnu et skruespørgsmål... jeg ved, hjemmefikserne derude elsker den slags.
Selv ikke mit iFixit-sæt kan hjælpe med de her. De ser først ud til at passe en almindelig flad skruetrækker, men har en vinklet flade som gør, at den glider af, hvis man prøver at løsne skruen.
Tidligere forslag om at save en lige fure med nedstryger er temmelig bøvlet her pga skruernes placering. Jeg erstatter dem nok med mere kurante skruer, hvis jeg får dem her af.
Windows 11's hardware requirements sent millions of perfectly functional CPUs to the landfill. Linux extended their lifespan by a decade. From an e-waste perspective alone, installing a lightweight distro is an act of environmental conservation.
"It just shows the power of community skills and generosity and the value of repairing rather than replacing": Local #RepairCafe saves hip-hop legends' gig
The band’s sampler had packed up
By Will Simpson, published 20 November 2025
"An #ArrestedDevelopment gig was saved last week when volunteers from a local repair cafe stepped in to fix a sampler that had broken down during a soundcheck.
"The incident took place down in Falmouth, #CornwallUK, where the Grammy-winning conscious hip hoppers were due to perform at the Princess Pavilions. The piece of equipment failed when the band were soundchecking in the afternoon. Cue some frantic phone calls by the promoters before they alighted on the only people who could save the day: #FalmouthRepairCafe.
"Simon Baker, chair of Falmouth Repair Cafe, told the BBC: 'We've repaired a lot of things over the years, but saving a Grammy-winning band's historic equipment was definitely a first.' "
Jeg har fundet en udmærket stikdåse brugt, men kablet er lige 1-2 meter for kort...
Kabinettet er godt nok sat sammen med skruer, så jeg kunne i teorien skille det ad og montere en længere ledning, men selvfølgelig er det ikke så nemt.
Er der nogen som kan identificere de her skruehoveder, og hvilken hexbit jeg skal ud og købe for at fikse udfordringen?
If a phone still works fine, it’s not “device hoarding” to keep using it. It’s common sense.
Screenshot of a CNBC headline that reads: “How device hoarding by Americans is costing economy.” The subtext says Americans are holding onto devices longer than ever, which may be smart for consumers but can reduce productivity.
As Cory Doctorow's #Enshittification book tour approaches its conclusion, there are a couple more online channels where it would be great to see Cory present the book tailored to the channel audience. Particularly, #GamersNexus (despite its name and origins) has developed into a serious investigative journalist organization, taking on the likes of Nvidia and Bloomberg and winning. See, for example, their excellent documentary on "The Nvidia AI GPU Black Market" [1], their follow-on video about Bloomberg's vexatious DMCA takedown [2], and their second follow-on about that takedown backfiring [3].
GN (with whom I have no affiliation) currently has 2.53 million subscribers, and their videos have exceptionally high ratios of views per subscriber and likes per view. Their new spin-off channel, GamersNexus Consumer Advocacy, has a more model (and presumably largely overlapping) 182K subscribers, and covers mostly the topics political leaders, regulators, and enforcement bodies have been contacting GN about since the GPU smuggling documentary. (See, for example, their video [4] about the stock and finance sloshing around in the companies forming the AI bubble.)
If you can get Steve and the team at GN to host you, Cory,
@pluralistic, you'd reach a large audience of likely buyers who are also likely to act meaningfully to further to political objectives advocated in the book.
Another channel where I'd love to see you appear, if you can, is Louis Rossmann's. Louis is a very active advocate for #RightToRepair and #RightToOwn, a likewise active opponent of #surveillanceCapitalism and #enshittification, and a strangely effective herder of tech-culture cats. He founded the Consumer Rights Wiki [1], and lobbies and organizes political campaigns which get gamers and PC builders out to city halls and state legislatures. His YouTube channel has 2.47 million subscribers, similarly active to the GamersNexus viewers, and the Consumer Right's Wiki editors may soon give the venerable
@molly0xfff a run for her (figurative) Wikipedian money.
He's also covered the Bloomberg #DMCA abuse against GN [2], and volunteers to fund legal battles against such corporate #censorship. There's likely a large part of the combined audiences of GamersNexus and of Rossmann's channel which do not overlap demographically (or, for a significant portion, politically) with typical audiences of the venues where I've seen or heard of you (
@pluralistic) presenting the book so far, yet those audiences are certain to be amenable to your message, so talking with those audiences could help both the sales and the mission of the book.
I recently saw a post describing a "smart" kettle that required an app or voice command to boil water. The user noted, "I can have tea as long as they have a wifi connection. Welcome to the 21st century."
This is the defining characteristic of modern tech-horror: a device made functionally inferior to its "dumb" ancestor by the addition of a microchip. The failure mode of a normal kettle is a pot; the failure mode of a smart kettle is a brick.
If you think the kettle is bad, here are five devices that prove we have peaked as a species and are now sliding rapidly backward.
The $400 Bag Squeezer (The Juicero)
Price: $400 (Launch price: $700) The Superior Alternative: Dieter Rams’ classic Braun Citrus Juicer ($60) or Human Hands ($0).
Juicero was a Wi-Fi-connected cold-press juicer. You bought proprietary bags of chopped fruit, put them in the machine, and it pressed them.
The "Smart" Feature: It read a QR code on the bag to ensure it hadn't expired. If the internet was down or the bag was expired, it would refuse to make juice. It is vital to note that the QR code checked the expiry of the bag, not the actual juice quality.
The Stupid Reality: Bloomberg News revealed that if you just squeezed the bag with your hands, you got the same amount of juice in the same amount of time. It was a $400 rolling pin that required a software update to function.
Furthermore, the machine’s refusal to operate on "expired" bags highlights a fundamental misunderstanding of biology. The main selling point was the ability to bulk-make juice to store. But juice is already pre-stored in nature's perfect packaging: fruit. An unpeeled orange is essentially juice with a shelf-life, contained in a biodegradable wrapper. The Juicero was a subscription service for squeezing a bag, offering less functionality than a mechanically rotated plastic cone from the 1970s.
The Bluetooth Salt Shaker (Smalt)
Price: $199 The Superior Alternative: Peugeot Paris u'Select Salt Mill ($45) + JBL Go Speaker ($30) + LED Candle ($10). Total: $85.
"Smalt" is a large plastic centrepiece that holds salt. It looks like an "ergonomically" designed, off-brand Waterpik.
The "Smart" Feature: It has a Bluetooth speaker (because you want your salt to play the soft jazz of Kenny G) and mood lighting, because you want your salt shaker to be a candle too. You can "dispense" salt by pinching a circle on your smartphone screen or asking Alexa to "dispense one teaspoon of salt."
The Stupid Reality: It requires batteries and a firmware connection to use gravity. The dispensing mechanism is a study in anti-ergonomics. To use the app, you must hold the heavy dispenser over your food with one hand. You must hold your phone with the other. However, a "pinch" gesture requires two fingers on the screen. Unless you place the phone on the table—taking your eyes off the food—or have a prehensile tail, the geometry of seasoning your soup is ridiculous.
Alternatively, you can talk to it. Because nothing kills the vibe of a dinner party faster than shouting commands at your table setting. This is objectively less functional than an electric button-mill (one thumb), a manual mill (two hands, one action), or the pinnacle of culinary interface design: putting your fingers in a bowl of salt.
Price: $99 The Superior Alternative: A stainless steel fork ($2) and basic etiquette.
A fork designed to help you lose weight by eating slower.
The "Smart" Feature: It contains a motion sensor that tracks how many bites you take per minute. If you eat too fast, the fork vibrates in your mouth to tell you to slow down.
The Stupid Reality: It has to be charged. If you run out of battery, you just have a very heavy, thick fork. Also, users reported that if you "scoop" your food (like peas) rather than "stab" it, the fork doesn't register the bite, incentivising you to eat like a shovel to trick the algorithm.
Eating like a peasant? Shovelling the grub in there like a pig at a trough? The Hapifork brings you all the joy of being hit on the head with a guide to table manners by a Victorian mistress, all for the low cost of $99. It is essentially a vibrator for your teeth that rattles your dentures when you enjoy your meal too much.
The Egg Tray with an App (Quirky Egg Minder)
Price: $50 The Superior Alternative: The cardboard carton the eggs come in (Free) + Eyes.
Numerate enough to earn currency to purchase useless goods, but too lazy to count to twelve? The Quirky Egg Minder is the kitchen egg accountant you never thought you needed.
The "Smart" Feature: It connects to Wi-Fi to tell you how many eggs you have left while you are at the store. It has LED lights next to each egg to tell you which one is the "oldest."
The Stupid Reality: It turned a glance into a tech support issue. Most people eat eggs in the order they grab them, rendering the LED "aging" system useless. If the battery died or the Wi-Fi disconnected, it often reported you had zero eggs when you had a full tray. It solved the non-existent problem of "egg blindness" by introducing the very real problem of "connectivity failure."
The Hairbrush with a Microphone (Kérastase Hair Coach)
Price: $200 The Superior Alternative: A comb (invented approx. 5500 B.C. in Ancient Persia).
The "Smart" Feature: It has a microphone that listens to the sound of your hair breaking. It also has an accelerometer to tell you if you are brushing too hard.
The Stupid Reality: It requires you to sync your hair-brushing data to an app. It "gamifies" brushing your hair, giving you a "hair quality score."
It must be noted that the "hair quality score" has nothing to do with the actual biological state of your keratin; it is simply a game score. It effectively turns your morning routine into a round of Guitar Hero for your scalp, where you must hit the strokes perfectly to avoid a low score, only the prize is anxiety rather than applause.
Archaeologists date the first combs to 5500 B.C. For over 7,000 years, humans—from Cleopatra to the architects of Ayurvedic medicine—managed to maintain their hair without a microphone. We could make a joke about the unruliness of Medusa’s hair here, but a microphone on a hairbrush wouldn’t do much for her split roots; every time a viper struck the bristles, the accelerometer would trigger a "Brushing Force Warning."
The Verdict
We are filling our homes with landfills-in-waiting. We are trading simple mechanics for complex, fragile software.
If a normal kettle breaks, you can still boil water in it on a stove. If a smart kettle breaks, it’s a paperweight that might be DDOS-ing a server. Remember that the next time AWS-East goes down.