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2026-03-11

Week 270: Foot soldiers of Yankee tech imperialism

It’s hard to focus on work sometimes when there’s so much war going on. It’s not helped when the end of our fixed mortgage term is coming up and we have to remortgage while the future is complete chaos. I did some work with spreadsheets trying to work out what the various deals will actually cost us, what the effective cost is when you count in any upfront fee, and how they work out with overpayments.

The summary is that because we’re already overpaying, even with a much worse rate than we fixed five years ago, we’d still be overpaying. So as long as we can get everything sorted before they yank the current deals, we’ll be OK.

The Big Tech lackeys at iSmash refused to replace my phone battery. “What is this sir? Is your phone rooted?” “No, it’s not rooted, it’s running GrapheneOS.” (And anyway, what business is it of yours? Why do you care? I only need you to change the physical battery.)

The trade of a marginally slimmer phone in exchange for a glued-in battery was always a bad deal, but at least an ecosystem has grown up of people who can perform the fiddly steps required for you. Except when they won’t, just because you don’t want a US Big Tech company to spy on you and shove ads and AI slop in your face all day long. Why anyone would choose voluntarily to be a foot soldier of Yankee tech imperialism I do not know, but that’s what they’ve chosen.

I could get the battery replaced if I first reset it to a stock Google operating system, but setting up a new phone is hours of work, and it’s even harder if you don’t have the old one for reference. I might as well buy a new (to me) phone, so I’ve ordered a Pixel 8 to replace it. It’s second-hand, because buying brand new is unconscionably profligate, but I did pay the extra £25 to guarantee at least 95% battery life left. I’d rather have eked the remaining year and a bit of support out of my Pixel 6a, and I’d probably have managed it if the battery wasn’t defective and deliberately limited after 400 cycles. Even though I’m prepared to undergo quite a lot of inconvenience for my principles, there is a limit.

In order to make my trip over the river to Canary Wharf not entirely pointless, I wandered round the London Museum Docklands for a few hours. I always enjoy visiting.

On the walk back from the station I got completely soaked. A mixed bag of a day.

I fixed the slow puncture that had been annoying me for weeks. It was so slow that topping up the tyre every morning was enough, and even once every other day would have been tolerable, and so while the weather was wet and cold I elected not to mess around repairing it. But Saturday morning was clement, and I had time. It was a very quick job: the cause was obvious, and easy to patch. A metal spike was stuck through the tyre into the inner tube. It’s the second time that’s happened to me (although the spike was bigger and easier to see this time), and these inner tubes seem very good at keeping air in even when they’ve been punctured.

Hebdomadal links:

• Dear Meta Smart Glasses Wearers: You’re Being Watched, Too. “[S]ensitive and personal footage captured by the devices—including people going to the bathroom, getting dressed, and having sex—is being reviewed by contractors who see all of it uncensored.” The Pervert Glasses are working out as you might reasonably have expected.
• Safe Airspace. “The Conflict Zone & Risk Database provides a single, independent, and eternally free resource for all airspace risk warnings”. There aren’t many safe ways to fly from Europe to Asia these days.
• The first lesson of war is ‘know your enemy’ – and Britain’s enemy now is Donald Trump. “This is Trump’s war of choice. But Britain has choices, too. Two hundred and fifty years after the American colonists broke free of empire, it’s time for a British declaration of independence.” Says Simon Tisdall, who was right on Iraq back in 2002, too.
• Tricked and bamboozled into war. “Constantly, patronisingly and without shame, the west’s warlords sing the same, deceptive siren song […] One day soon, this undemocratic war will start.” Simon Tisdall in 2002, four months before the start of the Iraq War.
• A GitHub Issue Title Compromised 4,000 Developer Machines. With AI agents, any input can be a malicious command!
• The Culture War Over Sex Markers on IDs Is Causing Chaos. Here’s How We End It. “Passports exist to confirm identity, not reinforce rigid classifications. […] Sex markers on passports have outlived their original purpose because that purpose was never legitimate in the first place.”
• Hanafuda: How a Banned Game Defined the Pre-Pokémon Era. “The public refused to quit. It turned into a centuries-long game of cat-and-mouse. Every time the [Tokugawa shogunate] banned a deck, the people invented a new version with different pictures to hide the numbers. Finally, they created hanafuda – the ultimate ‘visual camouflage’.”
• Everything Else. “There are hells on earth and Dubai is one: an infernal creation born of the worst of human tendencies […] it provides normal people with the chance to buy the purest form of the most heinous commodity: the exploitation of others. If you want to know how it feels to have slaves, in the modern world – and not be blamed openly for this desire – visit Dubai. But know that you will not be blameless for doing so.”
• On The Turing Completeness of PowerPoint.