well, you just described a way to tweak an algorithm.
wouldn't even have to go to a 256 bit key. Doing that into MD5 would probably foil anything less than a concerted financial attack.
No media outlet could afford the computing power to attack that.
I used the same approach, with some further tweaks to secure financial communications a decade ago.

Lack of understanding security doesn't surprise me. I'm an engineer who does. I designed and wrote a suite that passed a 3d party, hostile, security audit.

nope, it has to do with the key. given a tag # and license # you can dictionary attack the hash. especially since the the source data is known, easy to break.

they didn't pre-anonamize the keys

You've elegantly described why stiff federal penalties are needed.

Interesting that when a direct line to someone's pocketbook is defined everyone gets on board, but when it's just a chance someone's drinking water would be tainted with cancer causing chemicals most can't find the connection.
Corporate malfeasance comes in all forms.

Small problem.
Taxi Hack numbers are available in a publicly accessible data base.
A determined individual probably could find license numbers, they may be publicly accessible.
Failure to understand the vulnerability is the design failure.
A simple solution would have been to order the hashes numerically and re-number them cardinally. ie. 1,2,3 ...
Would take less than a minute, for someone than knew how.
Perhaps a few hours if the right person had to be tracked down.
Never release source data.

Using any public hash exposes you to dictionary attacks. Especially when you publish which one you've used.
The quality of the encryption is irrelevant.
Security through obscurity, using a custom algorithm, is the only way.
Taking MD5, it's published, and tweaking a few points (though who ever did this needs to be very competent) would have been sufficient.

Some manager probably said any work for addition security wasn't worth the cost. Ooops!

OK, my subject is an exaggeration.
The ship is still sinking.
Apple isn't winning the desktop space. But Microsoft is still losing. Linux never really made the field.
I won't go into the mobile space, where desktop is going, but MS is losing badly there.

US campaign laws are tissue paper.
SO thin you wouldn't want to wipe with them.

You're confusing the Commodore version with the Apple version.
Admittedly, the gun always aimed. You just had to fire at the right time. And in some cases have the correct weapon

I may be an old fart.
The first FPS is Wolfenstein, around 1981 on the Apple II.
It was very good at that time.
How times have changed, and how they haven't.

That sums it up precisely.

I work with some high end graphics software
The Mesa drivers don't work.
A prolonged and nasty install of the Nvidia drivers is req. for the software to work.
Not a good user experience on Linux

You don't quite understand the problem.
ESPN and CNN are forcing cable to bundle, not the other way around.
Did you know ESPN is owned by Disney? They force sports fans to get Disney kids ....
Works both ways.
Putting pressure on the cable companies does nothing. Write congress, not much likely to happen there.
Drop to basic service if you don't want bundles.