#hardware-bricking

#hardware-bricking

The fix, he told me, was temporary - he didn't have the right part and couldn't get it. This experience revealed a broader shift in how modern products are designed, sold, and owned - one that increasingly treats repair as optional and replacement as inevitable.

By January 2026, over a quarter of Americans will live in states with right-to-repair laws, and that number should rise to more than 35% by fall 2026 when Connecticut and Texas join in. The European Union also passed a Right to Repair Directive in 2024, which will apply to all EU countries by July 2026. These rules make manufacturers give consumers and independent repair shops the tools, parts, manuals, and software needed to fix their own products.

The presence of a notch made the floppy write-protected, so you started with a write-enabled floppy, and if you wanted to protect it, you punched a notch at just the right spot.

As vehicles become platforms for software and subscriptions, their longevity is increasingly tied to the survival of the companies behind their code. When those companies fail, the consequences ripple far beyond a bad app update and into the basic question of whether a car still functions as a car. Over the years, automotive software has expanded from performing rudimentary engine management and onboard diagnostics to powering today's interconnected, software-defined vehicles.

The CERT warned that OpenClaw has "extremely weak default security configuration" and must therefore be handled with extreme care. The CERT is worried that attackers can target the tool by embedding malicious instructions in web pages, and that poisoned plugins for the agentic tool can put users at risk. China's cyber-advisors also point out that OpenClaw has already disclosed several severe vulnerabilities that can result in credential theft.

Just weeks after raising the price of its RAM modules, Framework has announced that it's also increasing the price of its desktop PC in response to the global memory shortage. The Framework Desktop with 32GB of RAM and an AMD Ryzen AI Max 385 chip now starts at $1,139, instead of $1,099. "We held off on it for as long as we could, but we had to update our Framework Desktop pricing today to account for the massive increase in LPDDR5x pricing from our suppliers," Framework says in a post on X.

Steve Syfuhs, a Principal Engineering Manager at the Windows behemoth, managed to release the magic smoke from a Raspberry Pi 5 in five minutes, he says. Outside his day job dealing with authentication, Syfuhs is not averse to a bit of tinkering. He's not alone. Microsoft has more than its fair share of curious people, keen to poke hardware to see what it does.

AI-driven memory and storage price hikes have been the defining feature of the PC industry in 2026, and hobbyists have been hit the hardest-companies like Apple with lots of buying power have been able to limit the price increases for their PCs, phones, and other gadgets so far, but smaller outfits like Valve and Raspberry Pi haven't been so lucky.

Ring has launched a new tool that can tell you if a video clip captured by its camera has been altered or not. The company says that every video downloaded from Ring starting in December 2025 going forward will come with a digital security seal. "Think of it like the tamper-evident seal on a medicine bottle," it explained. Its new tool, called Ring Verify, can tell you if a video has been altered in any way.

According to an eagle-eyed Register reader, the screen normally shows the next few stops, but now it is only displaying a baleful blue screen and a warning that Windows is very unhappy about something. "Your PC/Device needs to be repaired" is not the message a bus's passengers expect to see. The display on the bus is quite a bit more up to date, with a recovery screen that looks like something thrown up by Windows 10.

Your mobile phone is a treasure trove of personal and confidential information. That's why it's a prime target for hackers who want to compromise or steal your data. Through malicious apps and websites, phishing attacks, and other threats, an attacker can gain control of your device through spyware. But how can you tell if your phone has been hacked or tapped?

Retail point-of-sale systems today offer a wide range of options for peripherals and hardware. Their technical specifications play a major role in selection, and big retailers often choose multiple vendors to reduce a single point of failure. This gives them an advantage to negotiate price or support as well. Technically, these peripherals also require updating with new models and may have new feature sets. This necessitates the redevelopment of point-of-sale applications, increasing development costs.