Trending Articles, Demos and tech notes
Five alternatives to the Google Pixel 10a
The Google Pixel 10a, launched in April 2026 as the latest entry in Google's celebrated mid-range line, has already generated serious buzz — and for good reason. With a brighter display, faster charging, tougher glass, and the same Tensor G4 chip as its flagship sibling, it raises the bar for what a sub-£500 Android phone can do. But the mid-range market in 2026 is more competitive than ever, so before you hit buy, it's worth knowing what else is out there.
TL:DR – The Pixel 10a is the standout choice if you're shopping for a mid-range Android right now in mid-2026. Launched on 25 April 2026, it brings a 6.3-inch P-OLED display hitting up to 2169 nits peak brightness, Gorilla Glass 7i front and back, a 5100mAh battery, and 30W wired / 10W wireless charging — all powered by the Tensor G4 chip with full Gemini AI support. At £499 it sits well below the Pixel 10 (£799) and Pixel 10 Pro (£999), and Google's enhanced trade-in promotion runs until the end of June 2026, so if you've got an old Pixel or iPhone gathering dust, now is the time to cash it in.
- Details
- Written by: Angus Fox
Rotating the root of trust — break-glass key rotation
If you sign your extension’s subscription-validation responses with an RSA key, that private key is the root of trust for every copy you’ve ever shipped. So what do you do when it might have been exfiltrated? You can’t just mint a new one and swap it in — the instant you do, every customer’s extension rejects the new signature and in our case drops to the free tier limiting functionality they paid to subscribe to.
TL:DR – This is how I rotated a possibly-compromised signing key across a live Joomla subscription system without breaking the field, plus the one design idea that made it safe.
- Details
- Written by: Angus Fox
Read more: Rotating the root of trust — break-glass key rotation
Linux Formally Embraces AI Code Contributions
Linux Kernel's Official AI Guidelines: What the Rules Actually Say
The Linux kernel project has formalized its stance on artificial intelligence in software development, adopting a policy framework that charts a deliberate middle course between outright prohibition and unregulated acceptance. Rather than banning AI tools or treating them as a free pass for unreviewed code, the new guidelines establish a system of human accountability at every stage of the contribution process.
- Details
- Written by: Angus Fox
Gitea with Let's Encrypt on macOS via Homebrew
Gitea is a lightweight, self-hosted Git service that runs happily on a spare Mac. Installing it through Homebrew with Let’s Encrypt HTTPS takes an afternoon — and then, weeks later, a routine brew upgrade breaks every git push with a baffling “Internal Server Connection Error” while the web UI carries on as if nothing is wrong. This is the full setup, plus the one failure that cost me an evening and the one config line that fixes it for good.
TL;DR – The short version. this is a single line fix in app.ini. The rest of this article is how to get there in the first place.
- Details
- Written by: Angus Fox
Building for One, Part four: £200 tablet just worked
Building for One, Part one: a calm iPad display for someone living with dementia built a calm daily display for someone in the early stages of dementia. Building for One, Part two: what it costs to buy one command spent two days turning it into one command that ships to TestFlight and Play. Building for One, Part three: what a real iPad changeddiscovered, on a real device, how much of the design had been wrong.
This part is shorter and cheaper, and it starts with something that is meant to be a treat in build-in-public writing: a thing that worked first time.
TL;DR – A £200 Amazon Fire Max 11 tablet ran the build with no changes at all. Then we read the real screen numbers off the device, which proved a careful hedge wrong and uncovered a live layout bug in about ninety seconds. The lesson is about the guess, not the bug.
- Details
- Written by: Angus Fox
Read more: Building for One, Part four: £200 tablet just worked
Building for One, Part five: everybody read it before her
Building for One, Part one: a calm iPad display for someone living with dementia built a calm daily display for someone in the early stages of dementia, and Building for One, Part four: the £200 tablet that just worked put it on a £200 tablet. In between, two parts on turning it into one command that ships to both stores and on how much of the design real tablets proved wrong. This part covers the week after that: twenty-five beta builds, and the same app sitting in three review queues at once.
Almost none of that week was spent on the thing the app does. It was spent on the fact that three different people read this app before the person it is for ever sees it (an app reviewer, a tester, and the family member doing the installing), and each of them needs different words.
TL;DR – Getting those words wrong does not produce a bug report. It produces a rejection, or worse, a person reading something about themselves that nobody meant them to read.
- Details
- Written by: Angus Fox
Read more: Building for One, Part five: everybody read it before her
Building for One, Part one: a calm iPad display for someone
This is the first part of a build-in-public series about an app we have been thinking about for a year or more, finally started work on, and are still building. It is called Daysome, although the icon reads My Day. It shows one person, on one iPad, what day it is, what is happening now, what is coming next, and what is for tea. That is the whole thing.
We are writing this up as we go rather than after the fact, partly because the interesting decisions are the ones that get forgotten once a product looks finished, and partly because we are looking for a small number of families and care professionals to test it on real hardware. If that might be you, there is a note at the end.
Daysome - a calm iPad display for someone living with dementia
TL;DR – Part one covers the first few days: where the idea came from, why we chose the stack we did, how the requirements arrived, one small development tool that saved more time than anything else we built, and the point at which we put it under version control and pointed it at TestFlight, Apple's app testing system for the App Store.
- Details
- Written by: Angus Fox
Read more: Building for One, Part one: a calm iPad display for someone
New rules to protect children online in the UK
The UK Government Draws a Line in the Sand on Social Media for Under-16s
On 15 June 2026, Prime Minister Keir Starmer announced that the United Kingdom will ban children under the age of 16 from using a range of social media platforms. The move follows one of the largest public consultations ever conducted by the current government.
TL:DR – The ban raises profound questions not just for parents and policymakers, but for anyone involved in building digital products.
- Details
- Written by: Angus Fox
Why Chrome couldn't reach my LAN web server on macOS, and
Chrome Local Network Permission on macOS
What It Is and Why It Can Be So Hard to Diagnose
Starting with Chrome 130, Google introduced a new permission prompt that asks users whether a website should be allowed to access devices on their local network. This change aligns Chrome's behavior with the privacy goals outlined in the Private Network Access specification, a W3C proposal designed to prevent malicious websites from reaching routers, printers, smart home devices, and other hardware that sits behind a firewall.
On macOS, this permission works alongside the operating system's own network permission layer, which means users and administrators can find themselves troubleshooting problems that involve two entirely separate permission systems at once. The result is a diagnostic challenge that is easy to underestimate.
TL:DR – If you find this because Google sent you here after a few hours of staring at `ERR_NAME_NOT_RESOLVED`, `ERR_ADDRESS_UNREACHABLE`, or `net::os_error: 65` (ENETUNREACH) when Chrome can't reach a host on your own network, scroll to "The fix" at the bottom. The first 80% of this post is the diagnostic journey, because the journey is the lesson: the obvious suspects were all innocent, and the real cause was a quietly broken state in macOS itself.
- Details
- Written by: Angus Fox
Read more: Why Chrome couldn't reach my LAN web server on macOS, and
GitHub Copilot’s Data Policy Shift: What It Means for
A recent communication from GitHub signals a notable shift in how user data may be leveraged to enhance its AI tooling, specifically GitHub Copilot. From 24 April 2026, interactions with Copilot, covering prompts, generated code, snippets, and contextual metadata, may be used to train and refine AI models unless users explicitly opt out.
At first glance, this reads as a standard product improvement notice. In reality, it introduces a set of material risks that warrant closer scrutiny, particularly for developers working within commercial, regulated, or security-sensitive environments.
TL:DR – For organisations, this is not merely a developer preference setting. It is a governance issue.
This update is not unusual. It is, however, consequential.
AI-assisted development is rapidly becoming standard practice. But convenience should not quietly erode control. The default settings of tools rarely align with the risk tolerance of serious organisations.
A small configuration choice left unchecked can have unintended consequences
Act accordingly.
- Details
- Written by: Angus Fox
Read more: GitHub Copilot’s Data Policy Shift: What It Means for
Why the New Low Cost MacBook Neo is a Game Changer
Apple redefined the entry-level laptop market with the introduction of its new low cost MacBook Neo. This model not only aims to attract budget-conscious consumers but also fills a significant gap in Apple's existing product range, which has traditionally focused on premium devices. The new models target students and first-time Mac users who require reliable technology without the high price tag typically associated with Apple products.
TL:DR – Game changing new MacBook is likely to be hugely successful with far better price performance and appeal than competitive Chromebooks and low end Windows machines for education users, general business users and budget conscious iPhone users.
- Details
- Written by: Angus Fox
Read more: Why the New Low Cost MacBook Neo is a Game Changer
- Working headless RDP with GNOME Remote Desktop on Ubuntu
- From Local Builds to Production DevOps: Automating Joomla
- Running Homebrew Apache with Let's Encrypt SSL on macOS
- Beyond the glimmer of Liquid Glass is a sparkle concealing
- Refactoring a Node.js app with Gemini CLI
- MacBook Pro pick of the month
- Disk Recovery Success Using GNU ddrescue on Ubuntu Linux
- What a Joomla developer learned modernising a WordPress site
- Building for One, Part six: four names for one app
- Building for One, Part three: what a real iPad changed
- Building for One, Part two: what it costs to buy one command
- Really loud alert from my phone
