>where I work to run a Linux VM with our CrashPlan backup software on it

Yeah.. But Crashplan did similar.
I used Crashplan ( the free, peer-to-my-own-machines-peer version) and quite happily sailed along with that for ages.
And they had an 'Enterprise version' which some folks paid for - got them support and, I suppose, some extra dongles.

Crashplan Free died some years back. I'm guessing you stumped up for the commercial version. A cynic might see this as the writing on the wall...

>It had virtually not games available

Um.. It had Elite!
And some odd caveman game I forget the name of. Not to mention some other platform game where you had to kill a witch by dumping a bucket of water on her...

I owned a speccy. I cut my teeth on its basic. School had BBC Micro's and that's where I learnt 'real stuff'. I recall my first ever 'hacking' success was writing a copier to copy the Elite floppy. Ingenious copy-protection - it had an unformatted sector at the beginning of the disk which meant a regular copy a: b: failed. I ended up writing a little 'sector copier' and just raw copied one disk to another. The dual floppy disk addon that the school practically melted with it being run 24/7 copying those Elite floppies.

My Comp Sci teacher ( no such thing back then, but he kept the computer room happy) hooked up a microphone and wrote the first ever speech recognition thing I ever saw. He could barely get a sentence into it, but it worked. And I hooked up an oscilloscope to one, and reproduced that spinny channel 4 number thing they used to have on telly during breaks. :)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

>PLus, no RAM pack wobble.

Wait, what? Maybe if you were some mucky-muck rich kid who had a Spectrum+
I had a Spectrum 16k, with a 48K rampack stuck on the back of it. I had to stick a book under it to support it so it didn't wobble.

Never saw the dizzy heights of the 128k Spectrum. By then I'd graduated to an Atari ST.

Like many other things 'you get used to it...'

I grew up in the UK, was driven around by parents ( mother was the worst ) who would *regularly* drive down what you'd consider to be a 'single lane road' at 70mph.

You get used to it - I did it myself. I'd *often* find myself on a motorbike of all things, doing 100mph down a little A-road.

Moved to 'merika. Over 15-20 years ( and I'll admit, a fair portion of speeding tickets to begin with ) gotten used to the much slower American speed limits. Returned to the UK and got driven cross country by my mum, who continued doing 70mph on little roads, and was *absolutely terrified*. I was mostly able to just breathe and think back to all the time I had spent doing the same thing, but my 'merikan wife had no such fallback and I eventually had to ask Mum to slow down, 'cos it was giving my wife a coronary.

All that said? Small back roads in the UK tend to be rarely used, and those who *do* use them know what to look for. Naturally, if a local comes up on some dude who's just pottering along with some detour his GPS told him to use? Well, then there's trouble... :P
Additionally, my experience is that UK drivers are *far* more aware of their surroundings and drive more defensively ( although at higher speeds) than their American counterparts. I would NEVER ride a motorbike in the USA, for instance. Drivers just don't 'look'...

I have this....

Several years back I was looking for a call blocker for my landline, since it had started getting irritating amounts of spam calls.
Naturally everything out there was the type where : You press this button and caller iz blocked!!!!
Except, call spoofing. You can press that button a million times and it won't stop a damn thing. Plus.. those type of 'blacklist' devices have a limited memory and once you get past [arbitrary number] just start dropping numbers off.

And, of course - it doesn't actually help. A whitelist is arguably better, but means you have to put 'the plumber, the recruiter, the vets, the diner-where-you-left-your-wallet' on it in advance...

So, after a while and a whole lot of research I found this : https://www.amazon.com/Tel-Lyn...

What IT does is - exactly as you say. If the caller is on a whitelist - lets them through, No questions asked
If they're not, it asks them to provide their name, number, etc etc.. and then it rings your home phone ( doesn't connect them yet) and provides.. their name and number. Press #1 to let them through AND add them to a whitelist, press #2 to let them through this once, press 3# to drop the call, press #4 to send them a nasty message and THEN drop the call.. etc etc etc.

It's fabulous. Honestly, it cut our home phone spam down to exactly 0. What's nice about it, ( and important to me) is that it doesn't ring the phone when a non-whitelisted number rings. The crappy thing I had before this would do that 1-ring before the callerID had been sent, then chirp and drop it. But that single ring was still annoying. This thing... it intercepts the call, does its thing and the phone is silent if the caller never goes through the process...

So, you can see from that Amazon link up there, that it's unavailable. It's been unavailable for years. When I was doing my research, it was unavailable, but I *did* manage to find a web site for them where you could order direct. It was unavailable there too.. It wasn't until I was showing a friend 'This is what I wish I had...' some time later, that I found it had a 'paypal' button lit up, and ordered one right there an then. Since then, though.. it was 'unavailable' again, then went 'retired...' and *now* the web site is completely non-existent. :(

I suspect they got some kind of shenanigans dumped on them. sued, or bought or 'something'. A product this good would never just 'go under' and everything just suspiciously 'disappeared'.

Bloody fantastic device. I sincerely hope mine never dies...

>Another data point: you (and everyone else here) saw Star Wars and didn't see Parasite.

Not seen Star Wars... I have a vendetta against Disney - but I get your point.
When the wife an' I were doing the 'well, who wins?' predictions during the break, my answer was : Whichever of those movies I've never heard of and haven't seen...

I've seen Irishman ( her bailiwick not mine), and Ford vs Ferrari - again, hers.. and Little Women. hers.. Jeez, come to think of it - all the movies we've seen lately are 'hers'. Hadn't seen Parasite. Hadn't even heard of it. THAT ONE! Was my prediction..

And yup. There it goes. Fucking oscars are about as far removed from reality as one can get. Every year it's like.. 6 films are nominated for 'everything' and the one who gets it is some goddamn no-name bollocks no-one's seen.

>food grade...

From someone who owns one o' them newfangled 3D printer'y wotsis... which uses PLA, I can be fairly confident in telling you ; Not food safe.
General consensus is : Don't print bowls, sporks, thingies to keep food in...

https://pinshape.com/blog/3d-p...

>Christopher will be remembered fondly.

Not by me he won't. His death will / has been marked with a slightly disgusted, good riddance laugh.

While I'm an avid fan of JR's work, C Tolkien appeared money-grabbing, self-grandiose and altogether entirely unworthy of his name-sake's work.
Constantly 'digging things up' or 'reworking notes' or whatever, he basically stretched out 'The Tolkien Estate' way behind what it *should* have been.

The Tolkien Estate sued many entirely innocent, or fan based, or whatever... entities in order to reap royalties. If you google for 'tolkien sued' you'll end up with about 15 pages of 'warner brothers' and whatever the hell happened over those films, but I'm going back 10-15 years and recalling their interactions with copyright extensions, and swatting people for calling short people 'hobbits'

Whatever.. C Tolkien tainted the name, for me. He's dead? Fine.. good riddance.

Oh yeah? Don't remember that Intel FPU bug?
The one where they said 'Prove that it affects you and we'll send you a replacement fixed one?' ie: You're a bridge builder or whatever?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Well, I do. It's been like 25 years now. Bought AMD ever since.

New Orleans also has 'fairly decent public transport' aswell, btw. This coming from someone who lived in London, and visited NO for 'a while'

They have cabs, buses and additionally.. a quaint above-ground tram system which is pretty extensive too. That's a damn site more than most US cities I can tell you. There's really very little need for an Uber operation in NO unless you're like the poster above and like 'door-to-door' and can't be arsed to wait for a regular cab.

>So I KNOW HIPPA very well.

Not certain you do, actually.

While I profess that I'm NOT an expert in HPPA rules and regulations I *do* have to take those tests yearly as 'a data privacy' thing.
I'm certain that medical data 'can be transferred to parties who 'need to know it'. Like, for instance from your doctor to your hospital, or your doctor to your HMO - *without* your permission.

Depending on exactly how Google has positioned themselves, they're likely to have inserted themselves into one of those entities who doesn't have to ask for permission. Or.. maybe they haven't. And they're like WebMD and you get to look at a little clickbox that says 'by clicking this you allow us to expedite your medication prescriptions and you'll reduce your copay from $900 to $8. Plz click here' etc etc etc.

They almost certainly are.

Take for instance WebMD - that fount of all things medically sound and a comfort ( or not) for looking up 'My nose hurts, Have I got Ebola?"
My insurance 'required' me to talk to these folks. For some $'s off my health insurance I got to take blood tests, and fitness tests, talk to some 'health coach' nutjob who sympathetically tells me I need to walk more and eat less meat.

It's all utter bollocks. In their yearly screenings, I magically turn from a fitness fanatic who walks miles per day, into a vegetarian who slobs on the couch, into a meatosaurus who magically grew 6 inches in the last year, etc etc etc.
I treat their 'life-coach' calls with disdain - which is to say I lie through my teeth, and then explain that to the poor soul who's job it is to tell people they're too fat, or whatever. At the point they come to read me their transcript and ask me if the email address I provided them is correct? They understand.

All that said -WebMD has *something* on me. Drug screenings or watever, which as the article explains.. is now in the hands of Google.
Your hope is misplaced...

Where your definition of 'totally legal' includes : being sued by major broadcasters for not being legal :

https://www.usatoday.com/story...

Take that with a pinch of salt, mind. And full disclosure : I 'subscribe' to locast. The wife loves it, but without paying the $5 / month 'donation' you get rather horrendous ads (begs for donations) ontop of the regular actual TV ads that are on the channel you watch, and which 'suspend the service' and dump you back to the guide selection screen - on my Roku's.

It's beyond annoying, it's positively aggravating, but the $5 / month 'donation' makes that go away :P

I have not an app, but a device ( on my home landline :P)

http://www.tel-lynx.com/index....

It's a wonderful device which has a *major* benefit - and the reason I bought it.
A call comes in, the device looks at the number. If it's one you've previously let through ( Gran'ma, wife, sprogs, etc) then it simply passes the call through to your phone.
If not - it plays an announcement, asks the caller to press a number, identify themselves ( by voice ) and THEN rings your phone with the provided info.
On picking up your own phone, you get to either a) let the call through b) send it to voicemail c) send a 'fuck off' message and drop the call

Since robo-calls can't press #6 when asked to identify themselves, it effectively drops ALL robo-calls and the big thing is : IT NEVER RINGS YOUR PHONE.

Marketing peeps who are people, recruiters who *really* want to offer you a job etc etc - can identify themselves and get through.

The only time I've found where it doesn't work well is where you have one of those web-ex meetings and choose the 'call me on my number' option for sound - you get an automated telephone call to your line but which cannot identify itself. The device has the ability to turn off call screening for a period of time (say an hour) to cope with that too.

It's leaps and bounds ahead of all the other 'call blocker' things I could find. All of which seem to work on a 'get a call you don't want? Press this button - gets added to a blacklist. Blacklist is 1000 numbers long!!!!" - but we all know, that's worthless since spam calls are just spoof'd local numbers which continually change.

Sadly... the product itself - while absolutely awesome - is now incredibly hard to source. Amazon had it listed as 'out of stock' for months and months when I first found it. Their web page also had it out-of-stock for the longest time, and I only managed to get one because I was showing a friend and the 'buy' button was lit. I snapped it up straight away.

I suspect shenanigans - shortly after and even now - they are all listed as 'retired'. I suspect someone whapped them with a frivolous lawsuit or they simply got bought out by someone who's interests are... shady.

I'd posit that it's a *better* solution.

Nuking an existing site simply results in a second popping up - all cockroach like.
Whereas - making the *business* of placing spam calls untenable - due to everyone you call wasting your 'employee's time' talking to robots.. effectively ends the *business* of robocalling.