https://archive.is/2026.02.09-140317/https://www.theverge.com/tech/875309/discord-age-verification-global-roll-out

All corps will KYC you at first opportunity if given social acceptance. Your role is to not give it to them. What do you expect to happen otherwise?

It also reminds me how a friend wanted to buy a phone from Amazon and they wouldn't let him xD Thankfully it was their loss.

To anyone developing an exploit (chain?) for this, make sure to claim your authorship on release so that no one takes the undeserved credit. Even if you don't care if it's attributed to you.

Either way, diff the manifests and bootloader branches. OEMs worried about this are unlikely to be any more bothered than they are now.

And to OEMs: bootloader unlocking won't be a news-worthy vulnerability if you streamline it and make it official (you'll also lessen the incentives of public exploitation in first place). Take note of HMD constantly trying to block it only to fail again and again, it's a bad look, for no good reason. Open source is widely understood as healthy for privacy and security, any sign that you're in favor of it, even if only as symbolic as allowing unlock and releasing squashed kernel modules, is a good business. Let people wait two weeks since activation, display a nag screen, it still won't hurt you.

❯ fastboot oem set-gpu-preemption "1 androidboot.selinux=permissive"
OKAY [ 0.001s]
Finished. Total time: 0.001s

This is fun

If you thought Google achieved enough regressions in notification panel density over the years, flash A16 QPR2.
Each notification now has a big app icon on the left at the cost of content visibility.

I'm late to the party, but don't blame me, blame the enthusiasts who were early and didn't rage enough about it.

Lightroom Mobile started spilling some ultimate corpo phrases. The setup had no login wall skip button for years already and yet they decided to troll people who went the long route of installing a super old version (3.3 from 2018) to pass it? That feels personal, who else was doing that besides me?

This will have catastrophic consequences for my social credit score.

<int name="delayed_susi_export_count" value="-99999" />

Yes, it's literally a free program and I'm not using any paid features, they're just very desperate to make you login, their login-less traffic is already so huge that I don't know what are they even transferring in there on every use (0.40~1.5MB). Would be funny if it's something privacy invasive and someone takes a look... Not me, right??? (Yeah, someone please do this, I'm literally not importing any photos of myself because of it on a phone without internet toggle)

Pixel 10a seems to have the largest (not to confuse with large) sensor format yet in a flat camera "bump", it's 1/2.0".
Tablets are getting much smaller sensors and are desired to not wobble on flat surfaces, and yet...

https://piunikaweb.com/2026/02/26/google-pixel-wallet-severe-security-issues/

This is actually adds more context.

Massive news if true, I'm speechless and can't comprehend the implications (not a joke)
https://youtube.com/watch?v=_c5o5tIzCag


Tldr: major OEMs tend to not be very eager about sharing their own internal resources with third parties to a degree required to execute hardening all around the codebase. Motos are also recognized from a mandatory wait since the moment of activation (week?) and bricking if bootloader is locked in a state that isn't strictly the one expected (you end up with AVB red and flashing_locked, which is the non-factory lock state, that prevents their tool from working). In other words, unless Motorola happens to do a great job at their part of collaboration, Nothing would feel like a much more realistic partner, as their scale would make it more likely for proper codebase collaboration to exist.
By my standards, getting rid of third party blobs (usually related to audio, camera, display) is a major part of hardening one should be aiming at. After all, it makes it easier to keep all components up-to-date, thanks to lesser dependencies. But then, you get new responsibilities, things have to still work while you drifted apart from the default distribution. Time will tell what we'll actually see.

From the uncommented caption in the vid: There's an unnoticed Easter egg too, a "bloatware-free" business edition. Curious if it refers to GOS or to a variant of stock. Probably the latter.

https://fixupx.com/wr3cckl3ss1/status/2027484909082694116
Common sense (not because Samsung is nice, duh) implies a fake. Addressed to a Telegram channel, printed and teleported. Unnecessarily long (DMCAs and C&Ds usually aren't). One could surely list more.

Even a lying machine says it's a botched job of another lying machine xD

https://fxtwitter.com/vnchocotaco/status/2028491223154216997

What's frightening is that some may think it actually works, even despite the clue on the screen.

https://www.cnblogs.com/hicode002/p/-/unlock-your-qualcomm

Personal commentary:
Devices only unlockable with exploit are the superior choice to ones unlockable through bribery.
On Mi 17 Pro, compared to Mi 17 or Mi 17 Ultra, there won't be naggers constantly fizzling about the need of installing the latest OTA of stock (which may break the exploit-unlock), that could otherwise be so tiresome on devices that tend to be bought overpriced (global) and topped with paid unlock.
Disclaimer: you may still have to pay for EDL session.