It is pure madness that we build appliances intended to be sent to the landfill. Refrigerators are almost entirely disposable. Leaks in refrigerant coils embedded in foam insulation are not repairable. Older designs were better but in general, refrigerators haven't had a lot of design love with […]

I have posted in the past on repairability and repair-hostile appliance design practices. Let's integrate a couple of lines of thought: Firstly, our planet's resources are finite. Secondly, we're in late-stage exploitation capitalism. Thirdly, we have a mature ecosystem of open source […]

I kept saying to myself "I must donate to this most excellent radio station, if only in recognition of the ways this man has made my enjoyment of music better". I never did though, and eventually, he went off the air. In 2020, Steve signed off for good […]

I'm going to write about the necessity of contribution today. A brief anecdote before I start though. Some years ago, I stumbled upon a streaming radio station out of California called Radio Nigel. This was an exceptional station, playing 80s music. Really excellent choices in diverse material […]

If you’ve been in public transport any time in the last few years, you’ve probably experienced the phenomenon of a person loudly playing their phone on speaker. While this is unquestionably rude, let’s take a step back. Apple dropped the 3.5mm Jack in 2016. For a while your only choice from the […]

And another thing (dear lord I am ranty today) -- Fedora and Linux has had delta-rpms for ages. How about just applying deltas? Yes, I know it's grown-up engineering and recognizes the need for resource efficiency and introduces complexity and needs testing. Welp, sorry can't do that, too hard […]

Also to be clear, I use Doppler to play music, not remove it. For those language maniacs like me who read posts for grammer (sic) and delight in malapropisms.

To be clear, the update needs 18Gb of space temporarily, after which we'll be left with perhaps 10Gb free, or more. All grown-up OS-es have a version of the "update will change size on disk from x Gb to y Gb, temporary storage needed for install is z Gb"

It's a bit rich, having Apple tout the ability to offload apps, but to install this massively bloated OS update (a separate topic), I somehow have to yield more than a quarter of my storage for a temporary installation? How trivial would it be to just implement a "move large app blobs to cloud […]

For the first time in my life I'm actually interested in a printer! I still don't need one, so I can't imagine buying it, but if you need a printer, then this open source, DRM-free, repairable printer should be on the top of your list […]

I have a new Windows 11 laptop. (Long story, no choice, long time Fedora user have dozens of Linux machines, decades of sysadmin experience) I find myself needing to create a number of directories. I search various search engines for the shortcut key. All results are garbage. I ask ChatGPT […]

"The global building stock is set to roughly double by 2060. The materials we choose now, across millions of buildings, will determine whether the built environment becomes a part of the climate solution or continues to be one of its largest contributors. " 2