#chromebooks — Public Fediverse posts on home.social

David Boles @[email protected] · 2026-09-03 · 12:03 UTC

Free Buses, Dark Screens

On the Thursday before Labor Day, the principals of New York City's public schools opened a memo from the Education Department. The free T-Mobile internet service built into 350,000 student Chromebooks would end that Sunday, August 31. Classes begin September 10. Four days of warning, ten days of scramble, and then the school year opens on machines that still power up, still glow, and can no longer reach anything. The laptop survives. The world inside it has been repossessed. During the pandemic the city handed out some 725,000 devices and never tracked how many still function; the Chromebook program was the sequel, the do-over, the one arriving with a plan attached. The plan lasted a year. […]

https://bolesblogs.com/2026/09/03/free-buses-dark-screens/

#ailiteracy #aimoratorium #artificialintelligence #broadbandaccess #chatgptban #chromebooks

DoomsdaysCW @[email protected] · 2026-08-16 · 17:09 UTC

#USPIRG - #ElectronicWaste Graveyard

Expiring software or server support is responsible for up to 1.7 billion pounds of #EWaste over past decade.

by Nathan Proctor, Lucas Gutterman
April 10, 2025, Updated Jul 14, 2026

"Increasingly, we’re pushed to trash tech that should still work, such as #Chromebooks, phones, and smart home devices, just because the software has expired or lost support. This database lists more than 100 tech products that have stopped working after manufacturers dropped support. It calculates the total weight of all these dead devices which have joined the 68 million tons of electronic waste disposed of each year.

"When software expires, or web cloud services end, consumers and schools are pushed to replace devices that should still work. For example, our 'Chromebook Churn' report found that tens of thousands of laptops were being replaced by schools because the software had expired. Since the graveyard was released in 2025, we have tracked a wave of new product shutdowns, some affecting a handful of niche gadgets, and one, Microsoft’s end of support for Windows 10, affecting 400 million computers at once.

"We now estimate that up to 1.7 billion pounds of electronic waste has been created by expired software and canceled cloud services since 2014. The largest contributor by far was the expiration of #Windows10 resulting in up to 1.6 billion pounds of electronic waste from PCs that can’t upgrade to #Windows11.

"13 #AmazonKindle models have also joined the graveyard this year. On May 20, 2026, Amazon cut off store access for 13 older Kindle models released between 2007 and 2012 — devices that, in many cases, are still being used daily by their original owners more than a decade later. The e-readers still turn on, still display books already downloaded, and still hold a charge. What they can no longer do is buy or download anything new, effectively ending their useful life as e-readers for many owners. Amazon’s shutdown means these e-readers can’t even borrow books from users’ local public #libraries.

"For the planet, this lack of support results in a death by a thousand server support cuts. This e-waste adds up. At the very least we need lifetime transparency for tech—we should know how long manufacturers guarantee the tech we buy will work before we buy it."

#SolarPunkSunday #RightToRepair #RightToRepairLaws #PlannedObsolescence #FixIt #ReuseRepairRestore

#uspirg #electronicwaste #ewaste #chromebooks #windows10 #windows11

Brad Linder @[email protected] · 2026-02-03 · 22:01 UTC

Lilbits: ChromeOS isn’t dead (yet), Amazon blocks installation of Fire TV apps used for piracy

The lines between Android and ChromeOS have gotten blurry over the years. While ChromeOS was originally positioned as a laptop and desktop operating system that was distinct from the company’s Android software for touchscreen devices, Google eventually added support for running Android apps on Chromebooks while also expanding Android to work with smart TVs, smart glasses, and other devices.

So […]