On a general note I would say for the individual consumer it doesn’t matter so much if they keep releasing yearly, we just don’t have to buy yearly.

It’s kind of a waste of resources for the manufacturers supporting more models than necessary. If that leads to shorter support schedules that’s when it impacts us. But as you observed they seem to be lengthening at the moment.

I’m currently on a Pixel 6 from 2021, that I bought used from someone who was chasing the latest and greatest. I have no reason for changing yet. After October 2026 when support ends I’ll see if I have to migrate to Graphene OS or something. If no secure path forward exists I may have to get newer hardware then.

From what I can tell, the only OEM that does this currently might be Fairphone.

Does what? I don’t see anything in the sentences before that “this” could refer to.

I wouldn’t say it’s in trouble. It’s about to be retired by ICANN. But there isn’t any trouble, just standard policy processes.

Repeated surgical corrections for your ever growing earlobes

That makes sense. He’s old enough and close enough thematically to have seen a few of these tech hype cycles.

You’d think the secret service were better at opsec than random soldiers getting their helicopters blown up.

Pretty good disclosure text. There are much bigger companies that don’t manage to be this clear.

The only nitpick I have is saying “encypted” with bcrypt, even though they clearly know that bcrypt only hashes things.

Repairing things helps reduce the endless resource expediture and trash creation. Ice cream machines are just a random example. As you can read in the article they were going for much more, and more significant stuff, but got denied.

Ah this bit is sad. The exception only covers bypassing DMCA protections to fix your own stuff not distributing the tooling for it.

It is still a crime for iFixit to sell a tool to fix ice cream machines, and that’s a real shame. The ruling doesn’t change the underlying statute making it illegal to share or sell tools that bypass software locks. This leaves most of the repair work inaccessible to the average person, since the technical barriers remain high. Without these tools, this exemption is largely theoretical for many small businesses that don’t have in-house repair experts.

Another angle: Those were some of the first dual-core x86 processors, released 2006 and 2005 respectively. (Intel had the Pentium D as its first in 2005).

I don’t remember which I had for sure. I’m leaning more towards Core 2 Duo. It was my first PC, I was 12 and built it with my father.

I still got a Ryzen 1600, that would be just fine for when my flatmate needs a PC for working remotely, but his company reqires Windows 11 :-(

You can bypass the requirements

Not all of them. Windows 11 stopped booting with Update 24H2 on CPUs that don’t support the Instruction POPCNT. But that’s only an issue for really old CPUs like Intel Core 2 Duo and AMD Athlon 64 X2

A move from Ireland to the Netherlands doesn’t really change much in that regard.

I didn’t see him until your post, so thanks.

Typical dual-use problem. The best you can do is try and close any black import routes you find, and try to disable or disconnect base stations moving faster than 150 km/h.

Similar to how commercial civilian GPS clients shut off when moving at high speeds, except even better if you can do it from the satellite, so the client can’t be modded as a workaround.