AI call taking seems to be getting to be more common and, I guess, very inexpensive.

My plumber (one man and a truck full of tools out working on his own) has an AI answering his phone now. I called him a while back and a woman answered the phone. Ok, I thought, must be his wife answering the phone. She asked what I needed and said that she will pass the information on, then asked a further question that was related to what I had said but that was worded too... "formally", I suppose, for the subject under discussion (an outstanding order for air conditioner part that I was had called for an update on) and I suddenly realized that it's not a person I'm talking to.

And this is a one-man plumbing operation, not a big corporate entity.

Again, this is one guy

"Do you blame the 19-year old airman working the military ID desk"

If you're working for an organization that's engaging in immoral, unjustified and/or illegal activities, and you're not already on your way out the door, then you're part of the problem.

Regardless of whether the organization is governmental or solely commercial. Or both.

Actually, it's exactly the same issue. Just using a different program.

The pdf redaction folks drew black bars over extant text and hid it that way.

The excel chap clicked on "hide this tab".

So both of them used what they assumed was a method to hide the data. It turned out to be nothing of the kind, of course, but in both of these situations they made exactly the same mistake using exactly the same set of expectations and ended up with the same results.

And how many times have "redacted" pdf files been found to have simple black bars draw over text that still exists in the pdf file.

If a student was reading the assignment using something that didn't render html colours then he would read that instruction and figure it's a test to see if he read the assignment instructions completely.

Some bands (Van Halen?) used to do that, and maybe still do. They have multi-page technical specifications for what they need at a venue for equipment or lighting, whatever else, and somewhere in the middle of all of this fine print they'll put something like "We require a bowl with exactly six red jelly beans in the dressing room." Then when they arrive to do the concert if they don't find six red jelly beans in the dressing room they know that their specifications had not been completely read and could then take steps to verify that what really mattered to them had actually been done, whereas if the jelly beans were present then they knew that the specifications had been thoroughly scrutinized and acted on.

The chances of that having happened here are probably nil, of course.

I get the impression that it's the lack of consistency that's the problem.

If you're in a noisy environment where something is being hammered, then that hammering noise continues more-or-less nonstop and unchanged for however many hours.

Traffic noise is constantly changing. Whoosh, whoosh, VAROOM! A few cars, a big truck changing gears or engaging jake brakes, then a smaller truck then truck goes by with a load of metal junk rattlinging in the back, then there's a police siren then... The noise may be constant but it's not consistent. It's ever-changing and unpredictable from one moment to the next.

"the cloud is nothing more than someone else's computer."

The cloud can also be your own computer at home, while you're on the road.

I wonder if or how they could prove there was any data on his phone before they entered that password.

Maybe he reset everything himself before arriving at the border.

Ok, I'll admit that isn't likely what happened but isn't that a reasonable doubt?

"It used to be that most peripherals didn't require much to function, and either software that ran at the user-level with minimal drivers or else features functioned directly onboard said device let it be controlled."

You don't remember WordPerfect for DOS? It came with several disks containing nothing but printer drivers for almost every brand of printer that was available at the time.

Same thing with Amiga desktop publishing software like Pagestream, and so on.

There were drivers on disks or CD's that came packaged with network cards for Windows 3.x and so forth. Usually Trumpet Winsock plus a custom driver for the specific network card.

"I use LibreOffice as my default office application and truthfully I find the fact that I can't set xlsx, docx, etc. as defaults to be the bigger annoyance."

You can.

https://www.howtogeek.com/2811...

According to the article:

"Users can remove LG Monitor App Installer through Windows Settings and disable remaining LG entries under Startup Apps. Windows Pro and Enterprise users can also enable âoePrevent automatic download of applications associated with device metadataâ under Computer Configuration, Administrative Templates, System and Device Installation. Enabling this policy may also block useful companion applications for other hardware."

Living well doesn't mean living extravagantly, and living below your means doesn't necessarily mean living on ramen and never going out of your apartment.

It can also mean taking nice vacations and eating wonderful gourmet meals.

It depends on your personal situation and your preferences.

It's called parenting and teaching your children life skills.

Many people don't seem to do that, which makes me wonder why they had the kids if their idea of parenting is parking the kid in front of the TV (or today, handing the kid a tablet).

A surprisingly large number of people don't seem to understand the basic principle of building wealth and financial security:

Always live below your means. This way you can build your savings and create a financial cushion and if something happens you're not immediately out on the street with a suitcase.

Furthermore, while it's very easy to increase your standard of living, and it's very difficult to decrease it.

I own and operate a movie theatre.

The projector runs on Windows XP.

The control computer that sets up the playlists and tells the projector to start and so on, runs on Windows 10.

The cinema server (the gadget that feeds the movie to the projector) runs on Linux, as does the catch server (the gadget that the movies get downloaded onto from the movie studio/distributor).