Eric S. Raymond wrote "The Cathedral and the Bazaar", which inspired Mozilla to make their browser open source. For some reason, this means they name their extended support releases after him.

"The whole network" hasn't been copper-based since the late 20th century. Long-distance phone connections went microwave in some areas by the 1970s and were largely fiber by the '80s or early '90s.

When people talk about "copper based" these days they typically mean either from the local traditional telco switch to the premises, from the neighborhood "box" (typically a fiber-to-copper conversion box, but possibly a radio-to-copper converter) to the premises, or from somewhere on the premises (e.g. your cable television or fiber-provider's VOIP-to-analog modem) to the analog telephone device, depending on context. The bottom line is to the end user, it "looks like" plain-old-telephone-service to a device that works on a POTS (analog) line, preferably with a cost that is no higher than a POTS line would be.

In the areas that are truly cost-prohibitive, nobody else will want to do it without some kind of subsidy.

OK, I'm picking nits.

Have you considered cell service with an analog-phone-to-cell-phone adapter? That will give your kid a phone he can call in or out on along with reliable 911. If long power outages are a problem, keep the phone on a charger 24/7 that's plugged into a UPS with enough juice for several days.

Even simpler: a "kiddie cell phone" that can only talk to parent-approved numbers plus 911.

If you have land-line-cable-TV available, you should be able to get a cable-tv-analog-telephone-adapter that has a several-hour battery in it. As long as the cable-tv-provider doesn't lose power you'll be good to go.

In the short term - like maybe for 10-15 years - allow AT&T to use satellite and terrestrial radio technologies as the backhaul for copper-to-your-house and bill you the "normal" land-line rates. In rural areas this might be nothing more than a satellite- or cell-to-copper conversion box sitting outside your house.

Sure, they will lose money (possibly hundreds of dollars per year) on every customer but it's far cheaper than maintaining a copper plant in hard-to-reach areas.

Eventually though the regulators will have to tell customers "sorry" to regulated-low-cost service in expensive-to-serve area: If you wan to live in a hard-to-reach area, expect to pay a lot more for services or possibly even not have them available at all.

This doesn't solve the problem for providing affordable communications to people who live in areas where satellite and terrestrial radio can't reach. I'm not sure if there is a feasible solution for these customers.

Yes, and no.

In many places the cost of putting in new fiber even where the poles and other infrastructure exists is cost-prohibitive. In those places, other options including satellite, fixed-wireless, and wireless-backhaul-with-fiber-to-the-premesis should be considered.

In a few very remote areas where even satellites can't reach, the only economical answer will be "tough, when the copper fails you will be without service" because it may cost hundreds of thousands of dollars to put in what amounts to new service to serve maybe one residential customer. I don't know of any such places where people actually live in the continental United States, but it's possible that there are a few.

If you want "as dumb as possible", the search keyword for that is "static site generator". Then you can redirect /wp-admin/ to Automattic's front page.

Potentially, but not necessarily more than they're going to spend on the work.

Maybe Apple sees it as just the right thing to do. Apple has access to enormous volumes of data that they could monetize if they wanted, but they don't. They jumped through a bunch of hoops to make Lockdown Mode that, if the user screws it up, means that everything is lost. They are unlikely to be making money on that, especially since it limits some app installations and functionality, and they're not going to get fined by anyone for not having it. There is, in fact, a real risk that someone is going to fine them for being unable to recover the data.

People still develop new games for the Master System (which uses a Z80), the Genesis (which uses a Z80 as a sound coprocessor), and especially the Game Boy (whose Sharp SM83 CPU isn't exactly a Z80 but is similar). And they're selling these games both as ROM filess on itch.io and as cartridges.

- Johny, Johny
- Yes papa?

It holds a legal and fiduciary duty to act in the best interests of its shareholders. Tim Cook rather famously told off an Apple shareholder who asked him to commit to pursuing only programs that would be profitable, saying, "When we work on making our devices accessible by the blind, I don't consider the bloody ROI."

That's just one small example by a powerful CEO after a shareholder initiative was shot down 98-2, but most companies spend money on things that reduce profits or are not profitable. Look at the sprawling HQs with fancy buildings that are set up by so many companies when they could have gone with simple brutalist architecture. There are companies that pay well because it promotes long-term stability even at the expense of short-term profits.

I get that these big companies don't deserve blind trust, but understanding what their obligations are is much more helpful than oversimplifications.

Huggingface has disclosed a security incident in which AI driven infiltrant (17k actions over a couple days) chained vulnerabilities to move through the infrastructure.

The responded with AI-driven analysis, but Anthropic and OpenAI models refused to perform that analysis because their "safety" features didn't distinguish it as a defensive measure.

So they had to fall back to an open model (GLM 5.2).

In short, attackers have unshackled AI at their disposal and if you don't have your own open models running you are ceding that to them as purely their advantage.

Sometimes I wake up and start doing new science. But usually I just roll over and go back to sleep.