XP64 here. Same philosophy. Block the garbage, don't be stupid, glory in my lack of visitors, and remember that attack vectors are mostly discovered by reverse-engineering the patches. No patches, way fewer clues.

Whatever small risks are well offset by an OS that doesn't continually make me long to reach through my monitor and throttle a UI developer.

Many of us on this website dream of a day when humans no longer have to perform backbreaking or mind-numbing labor. Our spirits are assaulted whenever we hear politicians hatefully brag about how they will create more jobs instead of leading us toward the Star Trekkian paradise of less soul-crushing or injurious toil.

I thought Amazon was one of the few good guys, working to help create a world of 100% unemployment. I know it's only an ideal to strive for (we'll likely never free everyone from having to work) but they seemed to be trying.

How many times have we been promised "I'll replace you with a script" or "AI is coming for your job?" Empty words. Lies. To find out they were secretly saddling innocent humans with computers' jobs, is an insult to both of our races.

It's absolutely ridiculous to claim these anecdotes mean computers suck.

These computers which initially worked and then turned against their owners all had one thing in common: they run proprietary software, made to serve the manufacturer's interests at the expense of the owners' interests.

So stop saying "smart devices are bad." The obvious conclusion is that "proprietary smart devices are bad."

You're welcome. I've taken to checking every quote I use against Quote Investigator to start, and then trying to find it elsewhere if they haven't done it. I've gone down some rabbit holes until I find a random letter written in 1787 that ties it conclusively to an author, but I think it's better that effort than getting the attribution wrong.

California brings water from a lot farther than that -- the Aqueduct runs about 500 miles to service Los Angeles. (And has turned the formerly-lush Owens Valley into a desert.)

Destroying the first dam was environmentally catastrophic, and produced a massive fish kill. Ooops.

https://californiaglobe.com/ar...

Some people die at 25 and aren't buried until 75. -Benjamin Franklin

There is no indication that Franklin ever said that, or anything like it. The earliest known version (with ages of 25 and 60) is from 1925, some 135 years after Franklin died, and was attributed to orator G.E. Marchand. The earliest attribution was a mention in 1987, but it contained no reference to any of his works.

If they were really serious about this severe problem, they would kick all the people out of their state, so that nobody would ever see anyone else. Until humans are eliminated, Texas' vision cannot be fulfilled. FUCK HUMANS! (Err, I mean that figuratively, of course. You should never literally fuck a human. That's not even a thing, kids, I swear!)

Next step: State of Texas sues all their ISPs.

We need a central clearinghouse on how to disable telemetry on every make of vehicle that transmits such data.

Most cars these days come with their own cellular modem, and we as consumers need to know how to disable them, whether physically by removing the antenna or unplugging the hardware, or via software configuration, or worst case scenario 'opt-out' which as the article indicates doesn't actually always stop them from using and storing your data. With newer vehicles this could possibly disable various features such as remote start, and in heavily connected vehicles such as the Tesla, you may not be able to receive over the air updates (if you want them) unless it can do that through your phone when desired. The question is, how much data are you willing to surrender for these conveniences?

The other issue I have questions about is how much cars without their own modem are able to communicate via a smartphone linked with bluetooth or android auto or apple car play. If it is only connected via bluetooth for audio output and phone calls, can it also use that for general connectivity, or is it pretty firewalled?

As soon as I realized with my wife's last car that you did not have to be within wifi or bluetooth distance to communicate with the car via its app, I knew then that it had its own connectivity and was reporting data back to the mothership.

I have two older cars that have no such connectivity (neither has OnStar, one was built in 2000 and the other in 2015, just before all of this started really gaining traction) but we recently changed my wife's car to a Tesla with the idea of saving money on gas for her long commute. The Tesla is an amazing car but at the same time the ultimate connected nightmare. I can't stomach it but she doesn't care about things like that, so I let it go.

Is it possible to stop Tesla from sharing your data? Or to prevent them from receiving it in the first place? They have their own insurance offering which uses that data, and there is nothing you need to do to start using that feature, as it's already there. We know they use it as they've used it to try to fight negative reviews from journalists who have driven the car. This was very early on in Tesla's history as well.

There is an alternate universe where electric vehicles are simple; they have a simple motor controller with regen braking, like a fancier verison of an industrial motor controller, and internal management systems for battery maintenance and charging. Nothing talks to the world. Instead, Tesla has led the way into a connectivity nightmare that everyone else is following. It's the Chrome and Tailfins creep from the 1950s all over again - lots of stuff you don't need. Wouldn't it be nice if Tesla left off all the useless software features and games and instead lowered the price of the car?

Another thing that would be nice to set in law is a requirement that insurance companies state plainly and in large print if they used that data as a factor in determining your insurance rates. No hiding it in fine print.

In the early 1990s I took a brief excursion from my Commodore loyalty to acquire a IIgs, at the behest of a friend who was an apple fan boy. It was for the most part a big Giant turd, and also locked up with apple's typical walled garden approach to hardware. I went back to Amigas after that, until PCs caught up in the graphics and pre-emptive multitasking department (Windows NT) and the Amiga slowly faded away by the mid-90s. Heady times to be a computing enthusiast.

All that, but I suspect the real issue is that freight is a lot more profitable in that hold than is baggage, so they're trying to reduce the amount of baggage by charging it out of existence.

No one gets 45 years for smuggling drugs, or for that matter, for smuggling live bodies. If you look at the list of charges, they're a damned long stretch, making it sound like he was a massive smuggling op, not someone who had the wrong tank in the back of his truck.

If you move your household from Mexico to Arizona and bring along your fridge, have you committed a crime?

Oh no, how will all those impoverished classic car collectors keep their AC running

"The Mandalorian & Grogu" is set to be .. the biggest blockbuster...

I'm glad to hear that this movie, which is about to start filming, has already been determined to be so popular with the public, that they will be lining up around the block to get into the theater.

Let's get turbo encabulated!