Ab-so-fucking-lutely.

For a job that requires a lot of reminding people “that’s not your laptop, that’s the companies’ laptop”, a lot of people get awful invested in “their servers”. Just let it go.

I know their business decision, however misguided, was very personal. Prove their mistake, which they will never know or care about, by moving on to the next job. Not by trying to be the sub-villain in a B-movie.

That feels like a very… hopeful interpretation. Instead of “In my expert opinion there is no non-malicious use of this component, and SysadminX was the only one with possible access.”

Intent is not always necessary, it depends on the charges.

Computer Forensics isn’t a new discipline at this point. People have literally gone to jail for putting in kill switches. It’s possible SysadminX is actually smarter than teams of people that are dissecting what happened after they were fired and is a real life Keyser Soze, but it’s extremely unlikely.

The Judge and Jury don’t have to know how a kill switch works. The Judge and Jury have to believe the expert testimony that one was placed and caused damage.

Sam Bankman Freed didn’t get jail time because the judge and jury understood the nuances of cryptocurrency and financial scams.

For that they’re waiting on the paperwork to go through with Apple.

Half of windows settings is a button that says “additional settings” that opens up the full settings window that hasn’t changed since Win95. It’s absolutely insane that in a decade they haven’t managed to even replicate full functionality.

In the US a few decades ago the big rail companies were given the ultimatum to upgrade their safety infrastructure or have a national speed limit of 79 mph imposed on them.

Guess which they did?

Cloudflare’s counterclaim system didn’t open a ticket when the notification email was replied to.

That’s the kind of nonsense you expect from a local municipality hosting solution. Not one of the biggest on the Internet.

It is, but this isn’t. The DMCA doesn’t mention Trademark. That’s a separate section of law because copyright and trademark are different things.

Crowdstrike submitting a DMCA takedown for alleged Trademark infringement isn’t how it’s supposed to work at all. Likely because they know this isn’t actually a Trademark infringement case.

Cloudflare’s automated system not being smart enough to see that is fine. Their abuse/counterclaim process being broken isn’t. ( Not that that’s new or unique )

It just seems like it’s dug it’s own grave so effectively that there’s no way to climb out.

In theory I love their aim of player retention, but they focused on it so exclusively that it became a challenge to start playing, or to come back. The new player experience isn’t just bad or non-existent, it’s basically actively hostile. Most of the story content isn’t accessible anymore, so you’re depending on dozens of hours of Youtube videos to catch up on a decade of in-jokes that you can’t experience. It’s like Eve, but worse because it was written, not just player interaction lore. Even as someone who played D1 and the first few years of D2, looking at current screenshots and trailers is alienating. They’ve revamped and juggled currencies and what power levels are so much that basically nothing is the same.

The pivot to seasons/microtransactions while ignoring recruitment of new players was a wild choice.

It does and it doesn’t.

Any microwave with the door rigged open is a super effective Wi-Fi jammer. Everything coalesced on 2.4GHz instead of licensing their own radio spectrum making absolute mountains of overlap. It’s harder jam nearly everything else. ( Not much harder, software radios are super cheap, but you at least need more electronics knowledge than a screwdriver and tape. )

It’s a sentiment at least as old as the first things that we now call computers.

On two occasions I have been asked, “Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?” … I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question.

—Charles Babbage

Sure.

GPT4 is not that. Neither will GPT5 be that. They are language models that marketing is calling AI. They have a very specific use case, and it’s not something that can replace any work/workers that requires any level of traceability or accountability. It’s just “the thing the machine said”.

Marketing latched onto “AI” because blockchain and cloud and algorithmic had gotten stale and media and CEOs went nuts. Samsung is now producing an “AI” vacuum that adjusts suction between hardwood and carpet. That’s not new technology. That’s not even a new way of doing that technology. It’s just jumping on the bandwagon.

Last time I looked at Jellyfin server setup was fine. It’s getting non-techies to a place where they can access it that was rough. They’re getting better with 3rd party app support but Plex has a huge head start.

As fun as it might be to harp (ha) on them. It’s unlikely that a 30 year old atmospheric research station is a bond style earthquake machine.

It’s not a mystery which of the car might’ve been available in East Germany.

Trabants aren’t exactly known for being long lasting.

It’s been at least since the “big iron” days.

Technician comes out to upgrade your mainframe and it consists of installing a jumper to enable the extra features. For only a few million dollars.

He let the crazy veil slip a bit during the Thai cave rescue drama, but Covid seems to have really pushed him over the edge.

So you just didn’t read the article?

One person hired a metal detector to hunt down the wedding ring they lost when camping in Sussex and found it within 20 minutes. Another rented a planer at £11 a day to fix two doors in her flat

A handheld pressure washer is £12 a day, while garden shears are £3.50

Renting is the “subscription” you’re complaining about. You’re right that rent-to-own is a scam at best, but unlike most digital subscriptions you’re using the thing to do something. Like with all rentals there’s a break even line where you would’ve been better buying the thing if you use it often/long enough. But the service existing is not itself a bad thing.

This isn’t new, everything has it’s place.

We rented a trench digger for the day from Home Depot in the 90s instead of buying one for thousands of dollars. That trench didn’t magically go away when we returned the tool. That we didn’t have access to the tool anymore was the plan.

Renting a U-haul for a move is incredibly more efficient than daily driving a giant box truck. Somehow, the things stay moved once the truck is returned.

The working solution being 5 child comments deep on a wrong solution flagged as correct is my favorite.