I think it's in the hackers' best interests to be honest about this.

If they aren't, and release the data publicly or sell it, or release it in any form after promising to delete it, it tells the world that they can't be trusted, and future ransom demands with promises to delete the data won't be worth the electrons carrying said promises.

They've proved themselves clever enough to crack the security on a relatively secure and trusted platform. They will be looking for the next platform to crack as we speak. When the time comes to make their next demands, the hostages will know that either they can be trusted to delete the data, or not. Being trustworthy means a better chance to be paid $BIGNUM. If their reputation were tarnished, hostages would be less likely to pay, and will take the consequences of exposure of the users' data.

After all, those privacy and security guarantees made when students were required to create accounts, well, no-one is going to be held accountable when the next breach happens, are they? Perhaps some prison terms would be a useful incentive to the next board of management when making decisions on whose software to use.

All those terms and conditions where you have to click "OK" ? Funny how consequences are mostly one-sided - the user. I've never seen T&C where there's any consequences for the other side.

Those things can barely perform when they're hot. Riding off on a cold H-D engine is asking for trouble.

Some people drive to get from A to B. Other people enjoy the process.

I like driving a manual transmission because it gives me pleasure to exercise my skills and judgement, it's not a case of hanging on to outdated tech, it's just fun. There's lot of old tech that we keep, because it's fun.

It's not *just* about the torque.

You don't ride purely for the engine's performance characteristics, there are other factors involved.

I like the noise*. I like the vibration. I like the feedback from the engine and gearbox.

*It's just a Moto Guzzi, not an "enhanced" H-D. It's not obnoxiously noisy.

Been riding since about 1993.

This seems like a lot of fuss. Either get used to the delivery of an electric motor, or stick with internal combustion.

Along with the simulated gear changes, I suppose they'll add some speakers to simulate the noise of of an internal combustion engine, with software subscriptions to make your e-bike sound like the engine of your preference - v-twin, inline four, etc.

Please select from the following:
1. Obnoxious Harley-Davidson without mufflers
2. Four-pot screamer with un-tuned 4-into-1
3. Civilised Italian v-twin

They're talking about companies using on the order of 500 virtualised machines. You bet they're going to look at alternatives to VMWare.

The mainframe solution like all others has its pros and cons, you'd be silly not to include it in a comparison table.

Surprised that a certain vigorous champion of Linux and MacOS hasn't been here yet to boast that this is far less serious than any and all faults in Windows.

Of course there could be downvoted comments lurking below my threshold but I'm not going to unlock it just to see.

Oh, dear.

My daily driver is an 8th-gen i7 with 12GB and it's fine.

I'm not compiling linux kernels or doing CAD, but if I were I'd probably need more.

And the machine I take to site visits is an 8th-gen i5 with 8GB. Again, it's mainly for browsing, RDP, word processing, that sort of thing but it's not hindering my productivity.

Don't forget nine nines of uptime.

Or hot-swapping CPU and memory modules in the unlikely event of failure.

They're not averse to change, they're averse to risk. Banks, insurance, airlines. They can't afford risk.

And they're generally quite smart when it comes to calculating risks to their business. They've figured out that there's nothing else that can do the job for the same price.

that this has been up for more than 5 minutes and there hasn't been a "just install linux" comment yet.

I'd hate to see IBM i die off, it's an operating system like nothing else at that level, i.e. competing with Windows/Linux/Unix.

But you can't run it on x86 or Arm because the OS is designed for the architecture. Mind you, they re-wrote the abstraction layer when they moved from the original CISC CPU systems to RISC. Nobody had to recompile any application software. On the gripping hand, the OS was designed first and then the hardware, to satisfy the requirements of OS400. So I'm not sure if they *could* port it to x86 or Arm.

"Alien compared to PC" is a good phrase for AS/400.

Uptime, granular control of user processes, the ability to compile CL (Control Language, somewhat akin to bash scripting) into native code, dual-abstraction making portability from the smallest to the largest a simple operation of copying the binary to the new machine, I could go on.

Recently set up a cheap TCL for a customer's AirBnB cabin.

Cannot use it for anything other than terrestrial digital TV without it being logged into a google account. Set it up and then log out? Lose all your streaming apps. Leave your own google account logged in for guests? Ha ha. Set up a dedicated google account? Double ha ha. Guests use their own? Sure, let them run through the setup wizard again, and download the latest apps again (rural area, fibre optic not available, it's 4G/5G with a weak signal), before they can watch netflix. Triple ha ha.

I told him his choices - get an AppleTV or similar, or plug an old laptop into the HDMI port, or return the TV for a pricier model without the login requirement. Obviously the first 2 options aren't ideal for a rental, so he took it back.

I offered to find out for him but he didn't want to pay me for something he could clearly do for himself. That's OK, he's going to call me again to set it up.