Control networks were around long before "the internet" existed. Remote sites like these would probably have employed a mixture of strip chart recorders collected at regular intervals (still in use to this day), a VHF/UHF radio link, maybe even a satellite uplink. You probably did less actual control because the link might have been one-way, but if you are running an oil well, there is also storage tank filling up that you needed to get a signal from the high level switch telling you to get your ass out there and empty the tank.

Long ago they just had people making rounds, and tanks just overflowed into berms if you didn't get there in time. I've seen the results myself. But we're all better off with this infrastructure communicating back to a central control.

You clearly have never worked in one of these environments. These PLCs don't just run everything by themselves; in fact, connecting them to an external system is pretty much required. In almost every case, they are monitoring temperatures, pressures, levels, etc and transmitting that information to a SCADA (or similar) so that control operators can make adjustments, call for maintenance, etc. Much of the data they collect is useed for making business decisions and very likely is subject to reporting required by regulatory agencies. Sure, you could try using a local data logger, but then not only do you have to collect that logger, but what if it fails and you don't find out for a month? Permit violation. It's just like operating a chemical plant except the footprint is much larger.

The industry standard is to use a VPN, so whoever is putting these PLCs directly "on the internet" is doing something that everyone has been told not to do for decades. The second "sin" is that the PLC was not in run mode, which would prevent any modifications. I wouldn't be surprised if it was mainly small organizations who just buy some off-the-shelf setup and stick a 2G or LTE modem in it.

Yeah, the assumption that it can be robots all the way down is predicated on a combination of ignorance and a belief in "exponential" improvements in robots, forever. Far more likely to hit a fundamental limit. A more likely outcome might be AI controlled, mostly brain dead meatbots.

I swear I typed ofetch and got autocorrected.

You're not wrong, but unfortunately they made the fetch API so "flexible" that it also requires extra code to do simple things like a timeout or external abort. So you have to spend time writing code on what is the least important part of your application - fetching a remote resoo. Or you can just use axios / fetch / whatever, and save yourself the time.

Right, this is the part I didn't get. How can you fall for "oh you need to install a new codec" bullshit. It's like a rogue plugin from 2005.

Fucking html editor from 1999.

Which is different than "The meeting said something on my system was out of date"

That makes it sound like you joined a meeting and Teams told you to install a malicious plugin, which is not what happened.

Franky, it says something about the developers if they fell for a powershell iwr | execute scam.

I did read the article. To quote:

"The meeting said something on my system was out of date."

The meeting said this? As in Teams? Or the *people* in the meeting. Big difference here.

How does a teams meeting tell you to install software? Some kind of addon?

That's the most ridiculous thing I've read in a while.

There will not be a colony on Mars in the next 1000 years. Anyone who tries to live there is likely to suffer horribly before dying.

This is why open source is important. If the fridge was running Linux, there would be some kind of source available so you could compile your own fridgeos and avoid their spy/ad ware.

Probably. I've always wished Microsoft would have "ported" the Windows UI to basically be like KDE or Gnome, and runnable on any linux distribution. Even being non-free, closed source, I think that would have been a successful product. Obviously it doesn't fit with their profit model of pushing Windows Server, but these days it is even more viable.

... is derived from FreeBSD. Microsoft could have saved the world literally trillions of dollars over the same time frame if they had done the same.

Long live BSD.

OSX is based on FreeBSD. Of course it changed the whole story.