I thought they were all independent contractors!!!

Assume there's a legitimate company out there that will verify driver's licenses. Do they really need to store everything "online"? No, they do not.

They can store it "offline" with a 1- or 2- minute delay to access the data, caching it in "online" systems for maybe 15 minutes.

This, plus alarms when large amounts of data is being moved from "offline" to "online" in a short period of time, would've either made this leak slower than it was or, more likely, led to this year-long leak being discovered and plugged long ago.

Is this inconvenient? Sure, but it's not a practical impediment for "batch jobs" like employment identity verification.

For "real time" things like renting a car, the vendors will have to begin the verification process, do things to "kill time" like review the auto-rental contract or go with the sales clerk to inspect the car, then tell the customer "you are good to go" or "we need more information to verify your identity."

For situations like a bank where you can't "fill the time," the bank can set up a highly-secure on-premises id-verification computer that can act as a long-term cache. Everyone whose ID isn't locally cached will need to "step aside" for a minute while their ID is verified. Or better yet, they can start the ID-verification process before getting to the front of the line.

I think AT&T (pre-1984) and the "Baby Bells" (1984 on) stopped putting lead shielding around copper cables in the 1970s or the early 1980s.

Legacy Lead-Sheathed Telecommunications Cables: Status and Issues for Congress is a report from 2023 that says

The report is light on details though. It's also not clear what part of the modern AT&T overlaps with the pre-1984-breakup version of AT&T.

Look at the xkcd comic. In most* cases, important thing - the thing that makes xkcd xkcd - is the dialog. The drawing is literally a bunch of stick figures.

Coding can be similar. Parts of your code can be boring simplistic things that are the code-equivalent of stick figures. But if you want anyone but your "proud family" to appreciate it, it better do something interesting.

* the xkcd fans reading this - and that will be most of you - know there fantastic exceptions where the artwork is, well, fantastic

Bring a laptop that displays a GOATSE or other "MY EYES, THEY BURN, MAKE IT STOP" image if you power it on without pressing "magic keys" that enable a normal boot.

If you are worried about people stealing things for the value of the parts, equip it with hardware-self-destruct that goes off when the cover is removed (but have some way to deactivate it in case you need to remove the cover).

I see a future where travelers going to high-risk areas use laptops with everything soldered onto the motherboard AND where the motherboard won't work unless a specific device is within radio range or plugged in. Think Apple-iPhone-style "parts paring" but for laptops, and one part can go in your pocket.

My guess is they knew of the name's history. There's a case to be made that it's an homage, but IMHO a stronger case to be made that the confusion outweighs any merits of this name. "Multikernel Linux" would've been better.

from SMALLNUM lines of C and pre-processor code.

When it works well, AI-generated code is almost* just raising things to a higher level of abstraction.

* if only it were just that. Unfortunately, "vibe coding" gives you unreproducible/non-deterministic output, merely raising to the next level of abstraction should give you consistent output. It would be like compiling C code where your headers and libraries change out from under you unpredictably and with every build.

I would prefer not having these cameras at all. If you need to read license plates, hire people to do the jobs. If it's that important, it's worth paying for.

But that's not going to happen.

So, I can live with destroying all images within seconds unless there was an actual need to keep them, then keeping them and the data gathered from them in an encrypted, non-network-accessible location only for as long as they are needed, with strong oversight to make sure images really are deleted when no longer needed. Any supposed "need" to keep these images beyond, say, the time it takes to send out a you-didn't-pay-your-toll-bill invoice and give the recipient an opportunity to pay or protest should require court oversight.

In rare cases where the police are "on the lookout" for car matching a general description ("driver in green station wagon kidnapped small child from Springfield Kwik-E-Mart, no license plate"), keeping all images within a small targeted search area for hours instead of seconds may be tolerable, with the police keeping only those images that are useful for the investigation after the several hours have expired. In any case, keep the images offline.

In any case, keep the images encrypted and offline. I don't want some overseas black-hat group collecting a dossier of my car's travels.

You are confusing the police department's FLOCK camera with my across-the-street-nosy-neighbor's doorbell camera that stores data unencrypted on a weak- or no-password-required web site that the cops happen to be watching and recording 24/7.

There are ways to do just that. Minimal drivers, all compiled in. No loadable modules. Secure/trusted boot environment. Minimal access to I/O with strong input sanitization and very likely a read-only filesystem so a reboot is a true fresh start. This won't be your general-purpose computer though.

Comprehensive testing is expensive.

Formal verification is also very difficult, but at least one formally verified microkernel, SeL4, is in production. Having a formally verified microkernel is NOT the same as having a formally verified computing environment.

Interestingly, just this week a major American fast food chain is offering a "be a beta tester for our app and get a discount on your next order" promotion.

The developers may know about them but don't have the resources to fix ALL of the known bugs.

More likely, the developers are careful not to go on an internal "bug hunt" that will find bugs faster than they can fix, because someone out there will be "injured" by the one bug they prioritized as "fix later" and sue. "Because lawyers."

If you write your diary on paper owned by someone else and the rental agreement says they are allowed to look at it and report suspicious content to the police ....