The Unknown Universe

I’ve done something I genuinely thought I’d never do again: I installed Windows as the primary OS on my main handheld device, my ROG Ally X. To be clear, my desktop and laptop remain dedicated Linux workstations. I still use CachyOS as my daily driver on my desktop PC, which doubles as my gaming rig. I am a firm believer in FOSS and privacy, but when it became a choice between my principles… Source

Watching a Prime Minister resign in a flurry of headlines is a classic British distraction. While the news cycle fixates on who’s moving into Number 10, the laws they actually passed aren’t going anywhere. The “Nude Ultimatum” and the Online Safety Act were bought and paid for long before the tears started on the Downing Street steps. To understand why a new leader won’t just fix this… Source

I’ve spent the morning staring at the news, and I’m honestly just exhausted by it. The UK government is basically banking on us being too comfortable to move. They’re betting that because we’ve spent years building our lives on a few giant corporate platforms, we’ll just shrug and hand over our passports or a biometric facial scan because “that’s just how it is now.” I’m here to tell you that… Source

We use the AUR for the convenience of native builds without the restrictive containers or overhead of Flatpaks and Snaps. However, that integration comes with a significant security trade-off: we’re trusting a stranger’s PKGBUILD with root access to our systems. The “Atomic Arch” campaign is a clinical reminder of why that trust needs to be audited. Between June 10th and 12th, 2026, over 1… Source

The UK government has officially gone off the deep end, giving Apple and Google a three-month ultimatum: build device-level scanning to detect “illegal images” or we’ll pass laws to force your hand. They’re playing the “child safety” card because it’s the perfect shield. If you point out how technically broken this is, they just frame you as being Pro-Evil. But let’s be real, this isn’t about… Source

I’ve been a Plex user since 2012. Back then, I paid around £50 for a lifetime Plex Pass. It felt like a bargain. Plex was a genuinely useful piece of software that solved a problem many of us in the home lab and self-hosting community had: how do you access your own media collection easily from anywhere? For years, Plex was exactly that. I pointed it at my media library… Source

Forget the tidy PR spin for a second. Luna’s announcement that it will bin third-party stores and stop a‑la-carte purchases in April 2026, followed by the removal of access to those streamed purchases in June, is a glaring reminder of a miserable truth. In 2026, the word “buy” has been hollowed out. You hand over cash, you get access, and you keep it only as long as it suits a platform’s shifting… Source

Docker is great for tinkering, slap containers together and off you go. Then you add Vaultwarden or JumpServer and start worrying about security. Don’t panic: small, sensible tweaks close the easy doors. Most containers run as root by default. Use an unprivileged UID/GID and chown your data directories first. Then, in your Docker Compose file… Source

In my ongoing quest for digital sovereignty, I recently replaced Tailscale with a plain WireGuard setup that I control myself. No third-party control plane, no extra SaaS layer, no mystery glue in the middle. Just WireGuard, config files, and a layout that fits what I actually need. I did briefly try Headscale first. It is not a bad project, but I bounced off it fairly quickly. Source

A 3-2-1 backup rule is the industry standard for data survival, dictated by the logic that any single point of failure is a guaranteed disaster waiting to happen. It requires keeping three copies of your data on two different media types, with one copy stored offsite to protect against local catastrophes like fire or theft. By decoupling your backups from your physical location… Source

I started my home lab in 2021. It began with some basic Home Assistant automations and, over the last few years, has spiralled into a proper stack of VMs and containers. I’m self-taught, which is a polite way of saying I’ve learned most of what I know by breaking things and then stubbornly refusing to go to bed until they’re fixed. This morning, I found a hole in that logic. A kernel bug… Source

Mitchell Hashimoto is moving Ghostty off GitHub. For a developer who has been on the platform since 2008 declaring it no longer a place for serious work is a massive indictment of how Microsoft has handled the service. The decision follows a month-long log of GitHub’s dismal performance. Mitchell has been tracking outages that directly stall development, marking almost every day for a… Source

When you first get into self-hosting, the jargon can hit you all at once. Hypervisors, VMs, LXC, Docker/Podman. People talk about them as if they are interchangeable, but they are not. They sit at different layers and solve different problems. If you understand the difference early on, it becomes much easier to choose the right tool instead of copying whatever the tutorial says and hoping for… Source

I have been using Brave Origin Nightly as my main browser for a week now, and the short version is that it has been excellent. Fast, clean, and, crucially, it has stayed out of the way. That is generally what I want from a browser. I do not need it to be clever for the sake of it; I need it to load pages, handle video, and not do anything annoying. Before this, I was on the standard stable… Source

It started at 5am. I was up before the rest of the family, so I did what any sensible person with poor sleep habits and a mild obsession with privacy would do. I turned on the TV, opened SmartTube, and had a quick browse through YouTube. One video in my recommended feed from Techlore caught…

I wrote recently about moving to Linux and why it has become a more realistic option for people who are fed up with Windows getting in the way. Zorin OS 18.1 is not the distro I use day to day, but it is one I can see as a very sensible starting point for people…

Windows has been getting in the way for years. It’s not just about telemetry or what’s happening “under the hood”, it’s the forced adverts in your Start menu, settings that reset themselves after updates, and the sheer audacity of an OS that forces unwanted features on you, all while pretending it’s for your own good.…

Another month, another Linux kernel release. This time we’ve hit the big 7.0, which sounds like a massive milestone. In reality, it’s just business as usual for the people who keep the engine room of your computer running. If you’re the sort of person who just wants to turn on your laptop and have it…

It is 21:45 on a Saturday evening. I am the only person actively online in the house. My phone is the only device I am using. The kids’ tablets are on charge, and the Alexa speakers are idle. Or so I thought. My AdGuard Home query log tells a different story. In the space of…

The arrival of Little Snitch on Linux is a sign that the mainstream is finally waking up to the "chatty" nature of modern software. But we do not need to import the proprietary culture of macOS to stay safe. We have better, more open ways to build our walls.

After a string of posts about age verification, DNS safety nets, and Google’s ongoing war against sideloading, it is probably time for something slightly less “heavy.” Many people rely on digital “comfort blankets” that provide a false sense of security. These tools aren’t entirely useless, but the marketing surrounding them often obscures the technical reality…

I’ve spent years banging on about Linux being the only sane escape from Big Tech’s constant overreach. It’s not just theory, either. My sister recently handed me a 2020 MacBook Air she’d been given but had basically given up on because it was so sluggish and fussy. I wiped it, threw Fedora on there, and…