Posts by WolfFan

British Home Office seeks techie to herd nearly 1,000 engineers looking after 600 systems

Bah, humbug

It seems that they got my earlier applications and have moved to exclude deep, deep, deep ex-pats. 'Certain Commonwealth countries', eh? I'll bet that Ireland ain't on the approved list. And Kenya is right out. And must be based in London, Croydon, Manchester, or Sheffield, eh? So I really can't be sipping Cuba Libres while enjoying the 'view' on South Beach? Such a negative attitude. And a mere £120-150k for all that, with no South Beach, no Cuba Libres, and having to be in bloody Sassanach land? For three years, or until the next major cock-up, due in maybe six months? I'd want at least £350k. £450k would be more like it. With a non-refundable £50k signing bonus; if signing bonuses are good enough for footie players and the like, they're good enough for me. And I'd still want to work from South Beach. The view is so much better in so many ways.

Good luck finding someone to take that job, laddies.

Angry devs vow to flee GitHub Copilot as metered billing takes hold

Over on Redit

There are a LOT of subs infested by AI astroturfers shilling for various AI 'agents'. The most common seem to be the anti-TurnItIn bots, trying desperately to convince gullible students that this bot will write all their papers for them, cheaply or for free, and the AI detectors will never spot them, and if by some chance they are spotted, this is how to convince the professor to give you the 'A' anyway.

My current favorite is the extremely obvious bot posting about how it has lost a $45,000 scholarship to a 'private university' because it had a paper flagged as 98% AI when it wrote that paper manually, and how AI detectors are the worst thing ever and it will be suing the university. And, oh, it had a full version history showing that it wrote the paper manually over the course of several weeks but the instructor refused to look at it because the instructor believed his AI detector. There are multiple replies to this lovely bit of AI-generated fiction, all (except for two other bits of AI-generated fiction) saying that this never happened and that having a version history is EXACTLY the first thing that professors look for when a paper gets flagged as being AI, and that a relevant version history is a good indicator that the AI detector has a problem. Many of the replies are from professors who state that when they get a paper which is flagged for significant AI writing (over 50%) the first thing they ask for is a version history... and, amazingly enough the students NEVER provide one. This would be A Clue. Many of the professors state that their universities explicitly request that students turn on version histories and that indeed the universities have pages on their sites showing how to turn on version histories in common word processors, with MS Word, Google Docs, LibreOffice, and Apple Pages being specifically mentioned as apps covered by the instructions. They also asked that the OP produce the name of the university in question. (After all, if the story was true, there's already a lawsuit out there and the OP has nothing to lose by naming and shaming...) Amazingly the OP has vanished softly and silently into the aether. No names, no comments, no nothing. Gee. I wonder why this might be.

AI writing is wildly incompetent and easily differentiated from actual real persons writing. AI is not, at this time, fit for purpose... except to detect AI. It's good at that. And maybe to spot bugs in large code bases. It seems to be good at that, too. Writing good code, not so much. Writing just about anything else, very bad. Those who push AI refuse to believe just how bad their products are, and try again and again without achieving anything except much merriment.

AIs don't like religion – particularly Jehovah's Witnesses, study claims

Re: And they're Surprised?

Laddie... no Jew has ever come to my door on a weekend afternoon to try to peddle their religion. JWs have. In fact, a half dozen JWs ignored the 'No Solicitation' signs and tried to 'save' me less than two weeks ago. When I threw them out and threatened to call the cops and report a trespass, they set up at the traffic lights about a quarter mile away, complete with an A-frame standee full of their nonsense, and proceeded to annoy those stopped for the lights. Two different bunches, with A-frames but much less aggressive, park themselves at the county library on weekends (they're visible from the road) and at the local community college bookstore (again, visible from the road) on weekdays. All three groups try to hand out their little leaflets; the idiots at the lights would go into the road and go car-to-car when traffic was stopped for the lights, but stopped doing that when a sheriff's RMP came by. The sonic boom you may have heard was them scuttling back onto the sidewalk.

The fact that they're creationist cretins is just icing on the cake.

I don't care how nutty their religion is. I care if they try to push their anti-science bullshit on _me_ and won't take 'no' for an answer.

And yes, I agree that AI being anti-JW is a Good Thing.

BOFH: Vibe-coded solutions arrive for problems nobody has

President Xi, the Orange One, and the Muskrat?

Techie claims Trump Mobile website was leaking thousands of people's data

now, now, now... be nice. There's at least one: the Mango Mussolini himself. Assuming that he can read, of course.

Microsoft refreshes Surface for Business lineup, starts AI PC upsell at $1,499

So

MS has created Yet Another almost-iPad, only more expensive and less capable, and tied it firmly to CoPileOfShit. And a laptop as expensive as a MacBook Pro, but again less capable (except for the alleged 23 hours on a charge, which I'd have to see to believe but don't care enough to actually buy one) and again tied to CoPileOfShit. And they're firmly wedded to Win11. I suspect that it would be quite difficult to install a Linux distro on either. All new purchases at the office are Macs or Linux systems; Windows systems are mostly retired. The Fine 3try Level Institution that I do adjunct instructing for is a Windows shop; they used to hand out Surfaces (with keyboard and stylus) to students/staff/faculty. They've stopped doing that and are wedded to Lenovo instead. The Surfaces are gathering dust in the IT offices; no one wanted them. Seriously, students/staff/faculty refused to take the things for free. Students would bring their own Dells, HPs, iPads, and MacBooks, and, in some cases, Chromebooks, rather than use the free Surfaces. The school bookstore has had a 'sale' on iPads, MacBooks (Neos and Airs), and Lenovos starting in January (not the Neos then, of course) and are doing brisk business. Students would rather buy a Neo than get a free Surface.

Time to get out the popcorn.

Americans would rather have a nuclear plant in their backyard than a datacenter

I like nukes

There are two nuke power stations close to where I live: Turkey Point in Miami-Dade and Hutchinson Island, in St. Lucie. Both are nice nature conservatories; Turkey Point has the largest concentration of American crocodiles north of Brazil, and Hutchinson Island has lots of manatees. (That's crocs, not gators. Gators are plentiful in Florida, crocs are not nearly as common.) I like nuke power. It's cheap, it doesn't pump carbon compounds into the air, and did I mention that it's cheap?

AI data centers I don't like at all. The nuke stations don't play silly buggers with the local water supply. They cut power bills. Manatees are fun, crocs are useful. AI data centers cause problems. Give me more nukes. Give me no AI data centers. None at all.

Cloud-managed earbuds sound strange - as a concept, and on a plane

Dell things?

That’s a flat NO. Not ever happening. I have far too much experience with Dell devices to even think about paying vast sums for Dell earbuds. And the thought of depending on Dell software, and Dell’s cloud, makes things worse. I _know_ that Dell’s software will break, at the most inconvenient time. I _know_ that Dell will kill support and scrap its cloudy stuff, sooner rather than later. They’ve done both before, many times. A check indicates that these things are ‘certified for Microsoft Teams’, which means that I now hate them even more, sight unseen. And I suspect that, being Dell, the software which will break soon isn’t compatible with Macs or Linux.

Nope, nope, nope.

Royal Household seeks £3M finance system fit for a King

Re: £86.3 million

Laddie/lassie/whatever, if you want to trade King Jugears for the Mango Mussolini, straight up, we’ll take him. And all his relatives. Even Harry and Randy Andy.

Cops arrest man suspected of being Dream Market kingpin

Huge amounts?

I suspect that there are a few zeros missing. 450 kg of cocaine ain't even one planeload.

My favorite druggie aircraft story remains the time, about 30 years back, when a crashed DC-7 (yes, a four-engined piston-motor transport) was found, by accident, in South Carolina. It had several tonnes of assorted white powders and green leafy substances aboard; apparently it had crashed on landing and had been abadoned because the operators were certain that they'd been spotted, which they hadn't been. A passing motorist called the local county mounties, who made The Biggest Drug Haul In State History (up to that time, the record has since been passed) simply by showing up before the operators came back to remove the stuff.

Notoriously multiple small aircraft, DH Twin Otter or so sized, would land on straightish roads on various Caribbean islands at night, drop off cash and firearms and ammuntion, load up a tonne or so of powder or green stuff, and be gone in a few minutes. Certain roads on the Jamaican north coast were _famous_ for this; the Jamaican government put steel I-beams up beside the roadway to make landing aircraft interesting. M'boys bought earth-moving equipment and removed the poles. Yes, really.

450 kg ain't nothing. And the other stuff, together, is just over another 200 kg. Not even chickenfeed. A single Twin Otter could haul 660 kg to Florida in one trip.

Serious druggies would use boats; even a small boat can carry several tonnes of product. In times past the US Coast Guard would roam the Caribbean with a Jamaican, Barbadian, Bahamian, or Antiguan cop aboard, to make the arrest when the USCG boarded. They got a _lot_ of boats. Much more got through.

Now, if that's 450 tonnes, that's more like it.

US Army goes green-ish, wants soldiers munching on plant proteins

Ah

It seems that the most delectible of foodstuffs (if you are careless about definitions), Ham & Lima Beans, a.k.a. Ham & Motherfuckers, is about to make a return. Only with artifical ham. I forsee that this will be popular in military units in the Middle East, where they will be reserved for feeding to POWs. Hoo-rah!

Vietnam to develop domestic cloud so it can ditch risky overseas operators for government workloads

Someone doesn’t read reports from ‘analysts’

Frankly, I’d bet on Vietnam. They are the only country ever to defeat three world powers in 40 years (France, the US, and China) while being the region policeman (they beat China using militia, their army was busy telling Pol Pot in Chambodia that Vietnam didn’t think much of his policies; China _loved_ his policies and objected to Pol Pot getting his head handed to him and invaded… and got throughly defeated, and retreated and declared victory having achieved none of their war aims. Hmm. Now where have we heard of that kind of thing recently…)

Vietnam and India are the future. India may yet decide to ride to the rescue of the Raj… again. (The Indian Army of 1939-45 was the largest all volunteer force in history. It’s sadly not well-known outside of Asia, but the Indian Army handed the Japanese their single biggest defeat ever, over 60% fatalities, not even the Soviets managed that on Reich Forces, though not for lack of trying. And the Sovs were definitely not an all-volunteer force. To be sure the Indian Army had a bit of help from the, ahem, ‘bad-tempered hillmen’ of the British Empire: Scots, Welsh, Nepalese, Kenyans, Ugandans, Nigerians, Burmese, plus a few Chinese and even the odd American. Bill Slim was the best British general of the war. Possibly the best ever.)

dBase debased: Database titan fades to black after 47 years

Ahem

The real _program_ for Ashton-Tate? It appears that El Reg is badly in need of subeditors. I work cheap.

Microsoft gives Windows Update a Ctrl-Z for bad drivers

Oh, goodie

There are about to be patches that kill printing and/or networks Real Soon Now. And MS knows it.

I wonder if any such patches lurk in this month's just releaste, 137-item, Patch Tuesday?

Action stations! All hands, man your action stations! Incoming!

Congress investigates Canvas breach as company pays ransom

I believe them… not

I have email addresses at two Fine 3try Level Institutions (it says so right in the brochures). Both use Canvas. In one case, I haven’t actually worked for them for quite some time, they declined to match the payscale at the other one and lo! I was not available to teach for them. Funny how that works. In any case, both emails still work, Canvas still lets me in, MS Office, including OneDrive, still works… and I got phishing email on both accounts on Monday. Identical phishing emails. IT at the place I actually do work for says they stopped three more phishes. Hmm. Now how would phishers have got both emails, particularly as I haven’t used one in over a year? Is a puzzlement.

Sovereign cloud is only possible if you’re Chinese or American: Gartner

Idiocy

’The Cloud’ is someone else’s computer, connected to yours by a network of some type. I suspect that somewhere in Europe there might be one or two orginizations which can build computers and networks… for a price. The big boys have economies of scale working for them, so that price would be higher, possibly significantly higher, than an equivalent offering from AWS, MS, or Google. It comes down to how serious are the various European countries about local control and how much are they willing to spend to get it.

The case is probably made in Trumpestan. And the power supply might be made in Malaysia or Vietnam. And the thing might be assembled ‘with care’ in Trumpestan. Everything else is probably China, though allegedly Dell is following Apple’s lead and putting some production in India. I try to stay as far away from Dell (and HP) as I can, so I’m not certain. And don’t actually care.

60% of MD5 password hashes are crackable in under an hour

Quite correct. I recall that MD5 had been proven to be less than useful as far back as 2008. That’s nearly _two_ decades ago. Why is it still being used?

Chrome silently installs a 4 GB local LLM on your computer

Hmmm

I have been a Firefox user for a Very Long Time. I do not, and will not, have Chrome installed on any of my machines. Apple devices have Safari, the very few MS machines left have Edge (which is rarely used), and all systems have Firefox.

There are several reasons why I have never installed Chrome. This is just a new one.

The network password was a key plot point in one of the most famous movies of all time

Re: Oh FFS

I see that you did a search for 'rosebud' with safe search turned off.

whatever you do

don't do a search for 'rosebud' with safe search turned off. You have been warned.

Home Office seeks three CTOs to keep borders, passports, and core IT ticking

Re: Too many chiefs...

I understand that Vlad the Invader and Pooh Bear Xi are both hiring.

Re: Too many chiefs...

The Master Chief, of course.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Master_Chief_(Halo)

Re: Cheap Technical Officers?

I'll do it if they'll let me work remotely from Flori-duh. Cuba Libres on the beach while sorting out the Home Office's woes... yes. Especially as I'd keep my regular day job.

What, they want someone to RTO, _in London_, for that? With that level of responsibility? Really?

I'll be applying again, to do one of those jobs remotely from a beach in Flori-duh. If they're only offering part-time money they should be happy with a part-time, remote, hire, right?

I may try out a few LLMs to see if I can automate the position, should I get hired.

What happened when AI ran into the cold hard reality of the legal profession

Re: The Law compaired to Software

You’re saying that the state sentencing act was written by Microsoft’s Windows and Office guys?

1 in 8 employees totally cool with selling work credentials

Re: IT, take notice

Err… you do know that spoofing MAC addresses is… trivial, don’t you? And has been for decades?

Future holiday horror: ‘A robot lost my luggage in Tokyo’

Re: Airport robots

Aeroflot still has aircraft that can actually fly? Be still my heart.

Microsoft Outlook for iOS still down and out for many after 'service change'

Re: MS strikes again

And I just got yet another report about a password problem with an outlook.com account with Apple Mail under iOS. It’s 14:00 Eastern. Apple Mail on macOS is fine. Thunderbird under macOS and Windows is fine. Even Outlook on Mac and Windows is fine. It’s just iOS/iPadOS, and Apple didn’t make any changes at their end. MS ain’t fixed this nonsense yet.

I’ve asked the user if he had a beta installed, Apple just pushed out a new beta update, 26.5, I think. He didn’t. He is considering joining Apple’s beta program just to see what happens. (After making a full backup, just in case, of course.)

We need Thunderbird for iOS/iPadOS. Badly.

MS strikes again

So I’ve been getting a LOT of reports about problems.

1. Outlook.com and MS Exchange accounts connected to Apple Mail on iOS/iPadOS need to have their passwords re-entered. Repeatedly. In one case, five times in 125 minutes for one particular account.

2. MS Outlook app on iOS/iPadOS has similar problems with outlook.com and exchange accounts... and Gmail. And Apple's icloud.com. And Zoho mail. And Yahoo mail. You may be noticing a trend.

3. The problem with outlook.com and exchange was still there as of 06:00 Eastern time this morning. It's been two hours since last report, maybe it's finally fixed. Maybe.

4. The MS Authenticator app hiccuped a few times, but that wasn't repeatable under controlled circumstances, so may be unrelated.

We were moving from MS suites at the office anyway, this will merely accelerate the process. One of those reporting problems was in the C suite and he was most irrate that he couldn't get his email. He is looking favorably on doing a full out rip and replace of the last MS stuff on the net. Congrats, MS.

Two men charged over series of arson attacks on 5G masts

Re: Technical insight

Look for the Jolly Roger flying from the uppermost antenna.

In the beginning was the Bork: 'Heart of the Earth' exhibit reveals Raspberry Pi in existential crisis

Re: In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with Bork, and the Word was Bork

Huitzilopochtli finds your lack of faith… disturbing.

Americans who masterminded Nork IT worker fraud sentenced to 200 months behind bars

Re: Wangs get hard time?

Please, no teabagging.

Textbook titan McGraw Hill on ransomware crew's reading list after 13.5M records exposed

Ah, yes. McGH strikes again. I was kind of wondering why some McGH content was... not accessable... over the weekend. Fortunately the creds I use for McGH stuff are restricted to just McGH, a quite specific username and a 15 character password, two capital letters, two numbers, two symbols, rest lower case letters. I think that I'll be changing the password, though. Changing the username may be... difficult... due to the way that McGH operates.

Let's just say that I am totally unsurprised by McGH screwing up. And that McGH is actually better at security than Cengage, or, God help us, Wiley. This is not to say that McGH is good at security; it's just that the competition is pretty bad.

Windows Update is a torture chamber for seldom-used PCs

Err… when I have to update Apple stuff (and I have a lot of Apple stuff at home and the office) I just let the update process download in the background. Once the download is complete, there’s a little red badge on System Preferences/Settings/whatever, telling me that the update is ready. I can tell the system to apply the update when I want to. Note that because the update is downloaded in the background while I’m doing something else, it literally doesn’t matter how big it is; it’s an issue only if there’s a shortage of storage on the target system, and the installer will put up a dialog box requesting permission to temporarily remove some applications, which will be automatically restored when the update is done. And if storage is that short, there are other things that need fixing. I have had the little red badge on System Prefs/Settings for over a month on occasion. And when I finally tell the system to update, the procedure takes a few minutes and a maximum of one reboot.

Ubuntu also behaves well. Updates are just not a big deal.

Meanwhile, over on Windows…

Amazon rewards loyal Kindle devotees by closing the book on old e-readers

Re: Kindles are the Windows of e-readers

He’s then Goliath of Gath.

They thought they were downloading Claude Code source. They got a nasty dose of malware instead

Blast from the past

Many years ago Microsoft released MS Office 2004 for Macintosh. (Yes, 2004, not 2003.) For reasons unknown, a large number of people wanted it. For obvious reasons, a large number of those who wanted it didn't want to pay for it. There were lots and lots of Office installers on various 'file sharing' sites. And lo! it came to pass that one of these 'installers' was about 112kB in size; the full MS Office 2004 installer was over 600 MB in size, but allegedly the 112kB installer would reach across the Internet and download directly from MS Servers. And so it was downloaded, many times, by many cheap charlie would-be pirates. And lo! it came to pass that instead of installing MS Office 2004, it erased the cheap charlie's hard drives. And MS denied that they had anything to do with it. And some of us laughed long and loud when we heard of the drives being erased, and again when we heard MS's denials. I, for one, laughed particularly hard when a cheap charlie showed up asking if I clould restore his hard drive. For free, of course. And he didn't have any backups. He was most offended and stormed out, never to darken my doorway again. Win-win-win.

One has to wonder if a certain vendor didn't, ahem, poison the well in this case, too...

Boyz'n'grrlz, if you must be naughty, be careful...

Forking frenzy ensues after Euro-Office launch sparks OnlyOffice backlash

That’s why there has been a ‘Compact & Repair’ button in Access for a Very Long Time (2007? 2003? Earlier?). If you hit that button, the database would be resized, usually but not always smaller, sometimes a LOT smaller if someone had put in a lot of Short Text fields under 50 characters in size, and, more importantly, the corruption would be rolled back. A bit. In Ye Olden Daze I would have a look at all Access databases I had access to in rotation. This would typically mean that (or, later, a minion) would hit Compact & Repair maybe once a month. And, of course, if we had access to the Access databases, those databases were being backed up. We would make a point of recommending, in writing, to the ysers that they give us access, or, failing that, they they hit Compact & Repair themselves on a regular basis and make their own backups. Some users, of coure, Knew Better. They usually regretted it and came to us to try to recover their corrupted database. Usually we couldn’t, and if there was a complaint to higher-higher, would point to the wriiten procedures which the users had Known Better than to follow.

If the users were halfway competent there would be Excel or RTF files of some of the tables/queries/etc, so the DB could be rebuilt fairly quickly. However, quite a few of those who Knew Better didn’t have anything other than the DB. How sad. Too bad. Not my problem.

ServiceNow allegedly says salesman 'overachieved' and is not entitled to comp

Ah. The Circuit City Solution

For those who don’t know, Circuit City was once a major electronics/appliance/damn near everything else retail chain. It went boom over a decade ago. Why? Because management were IDIOTS. What did they do?

They looked at the bottom line and noticed that payroll was a major expense, and that certain people stuck out as pulling down a LOT of cash. This was because sales staff were allocated a base pay (something like $8-9/hour, a.k.a. not much more than Federal minimum wage at the time) plus commissions on every sale. Some of their really good sales staff were making an order of magnitude more than their base pay because of commissions. So management fired the top 10% of these overachivers. For some reason this did not have the desired effect on the bottom line, so they fired the top 10% of those remaining, and offered to rehire them, a month later, at something like $7/hour base pay and reduced commission rates. There was an exodus of good sales staff to Best Buy (still around) and CompUSA (no longer with us). Management also decided to stop selling large appliances (refrigerators, ovens, etc.) literally months before the great housing boom of the early 21st century massively increased home appliance sales. Management also spun off CarMax (still around) and some other subsideraries, mostly still around. Management was surprised that their bottom line contined to fall. Management tried for Chapter 11 bankruptcy; it didn’t work. They went Chapter 7; the guys who had bought CompUSA bought their inventory and website and dumped the brick-and-mortar retail sites. Circuit City now exists only as a web site which looks amazingly like the CompUSA and Tiger Direct, two other brands bought by SystemX, sites.

Amazing how firing the 10% best sales guys for being too good at their jobs, then doing it again, really motivates sales guys to go out and sell. Really. Truly. Or maybe not…

I look forwards to the Great ServiceNow Implosion. I’m getting my popcorn ready.

Nothing screams casual career pivot like joining the UK Ministry of Defence for a cool £162K

For some reason…

the last time I tried for one of these UK government jobs, they were upset by the thought that I might be doing them remotely, from Florida. I’m sure that I could do at least as good a job as Kier Starmer. I could probably do _his_ job better than he can. And I could do it while sitting on a beach sipping Cuba Libres. If necessary I would move to the Bahamas or Jamaica and so be in the Commonwealth. Not Canada, it’s too bloody cold up there.

Microsoft breaks Microsoft account sign-ins in Windows 11 with latest update

Fortunately…

I no longer use Win11 on my personal devices. I do have it on a laptop belonging to the Fine 3try Level Institution that I do some adjunct instruction for; I haven't started that device up since I was last on campus, on Thursday. I will probably start it up on Monday. Maybe. I have an ancient copy of WinServer on one machine; it is due to be retired Real Soon Now and is no longer (badly) supported by MS anyway.

MS Office is also gone from my devices, again except for the school laptop. Which is turned off. LibreOffice and Apple iWorks both work just fine.

OneDrive (from the school copy of MS Office) is available on my Apple systems (Mac, iPad) and seems to be working, no doubt because MS couldn't reach into macOS/iPadOS and fuck with it, and the school laptop is updated by the school admin, and only when turned on and connected. As the laptop is turned off and the school admin hadn't run any updates (still!) as of Thursday, there probably won't be a problem. And the school laptop is on the school Active Directory, not a MS account. (The school is a MS shop; the school admins take their time running updates, letting someone else be MS's QA. They would dearly love to scrap MS but can't, manglement wants MS.)

The office machines are almost all Ubuntu and macOS. And every time I see something like this article, I am very thankful.

Sorry, Amazon, you couldn't pick a worse time to bring a phone to market: IDC analyst

It can’t possibly be as bad as

the Microsoft Kin. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Kin

Or can it?

Popcorn time.

Hotpatching goes default in Windows Autopatch whether you like it or not

Re: I'm so glad

I have never yet seen an Apple update kill printing, network access, or security; perhaps you can point such problems out to me. I have seen MS updates kill all three _within the last 18 months_. There is a significant difference between updates which work and updates which break things. MS has form on breaking things. Apple does not; corrections invited.

Critical Microsoft Excel bug weaponizes Copilot Agent for zero-click information disclosure attack

Claris (a.k.a. Apple) FileMaker (Pro) works on Mac and Windows and does what you want.

Flying cabs, next-gen aircraft cleared for takeoff in 26 states

Re: Taxi!

I _really_ want to see how taxis in Paris, France, Rome, Italy, and, of course, Mexico City, home of the Jaguar Knights, behave once they can fly. Mexico City VW taxis are mostly airborne and can approach the speed of sound as it is…

Retro tech fan views LaserDisc movie data with a budget microscope

Re: laserdiscs

Possibly. However, IIRC, one reason why VHS won instead of the technically superior Betamax is because VHS had porn and Betamax didn’t; the no-porn on Betamax was because of a decision by Sony higher-higher. Pornless recordable LaserDiscs might have made things difficult for Betamax; the last major market for Betamax and derived systems were professional audio-video people at places like TV stations and the like, the techs liked the superior abilities and weren’t (offically) playing porn at work. A high-end recordable LaserDisc system would have been quite nice for the pros, as apparently the picture quality was superior on LaserDisc. Especially after the tapes got a bit of abuse, which absolutely would happen. Recordable LaserDIscs which had porn would compete, seriously, with VHS. A major reason for DVD’s success was because of the flood of porn on the format (Sony learned from Betamax, or at least listened to Phillips); already existing LaserDiscs would have competed there, too.

Many years ago I had a LaserDisc player and a VHS recorder. One of my projects was making a copy of a LaserDisc movie (Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, a.k.a. The Best Star Trek Movie Ever Made) onto VHS. The picture quality of the VHS simply didn't compare to the quality of the LaserDisc. Possibly this was due to the method I used to make the recording, but I doubt it. Recordable LaserDIscs would have been... interesting. And probably expensive. I remember how expensive recordable DVDs were when they first came out, this would have been at least as bad.

Bug that wiped customer data saved the day – and a contract

C&W are Completely Worthless, and always have been.

US state laws push age checks into the operating system

I got an Apple address which wasn't an address (it wasn't an email address at all) in the late 1990s, and an @mac.com address thanks to Mobile Me. Apple has been trying to erase both for a very long time. My ancient not-an-address still exists, it's just difficult to use; my @mac.com address is now, officially, an alias to an @icloud.com address. (Other aliases include @me.com) I never use anything except the @mac.com address, as I've been using it for over two and half decades, and frankly, fuck you, Apple, I'll use it until it dies. A very long time ago I put a 'payment method' on it: a debit card with under $10 US on it, except when I want to buy something and I put enough to pay for the item, make the purchase, and drive on.

I wonder what will happen when the OS can't tell how old I am because I won't say, but the AppleID account is well past voting age...

US struck Iran with copies of its own drones

Re: Proof this was long planned

That’s called the Kissinger Gambit. It worked for Henry…

Bootleg Windows, Office scheme crashes, triggers 22-month lockup for Florida woman

So… she gets a two-year vacation in Club Fed (when Wesley Snipes was in Club Fed for tax evasion, he at the Club Fed at Eglin Air Force Base, in the Florida panhandle; among the lowlights of his time in durance vile was that he, and the others in that Club Fed, had to be grounds staff at the officer’s golf course at the base. And could use the course when the officers weren’t using it. Those Feds, they’re harsh.) and she pays $50k… and, unless there’s something not mentioned in the article, keeps a whole lot of cash from selling tens of thousands of copies of various MS crapware. Sounds like a deal to me…