I remember the problematic PDFs "handled" by "printing" them to a bitmap, then OCR-ing the bitmap. However, that means a ton of stuff is lost.

PDFs are... just weird. You don't just have regular PDFs, you have PDF/a, PDF/x, and even PDFs for 3D models, as well as PDFs with scripting. They are like Word documents where they are a non-standard, standard, that only MS is 100% compatible with. Same with PDF files, in my experience, there are some files that only Acrobat can handle without crashing.

I would say it can be a different story to compare someone's job from 2010 to a job now. Mainly because even there have not been any real major additions, there has been a lot of automation to speed up things. For example, an accountant is likely having a different workflow now than they did a few years ago when everything was manually entered into Peachtree. Similar when development used Visual Sourcesafe versus Git pull requests.

Given the same unit of time, the amount of work done has increased for the most part. Machinist jobs are now augmented with mills that are smart enough to detect bad gcode and give a middle finger rather than slam the end mill into the work at full tilt. Because of this, a workday can end a little bit earlier, and just as much, if not more can get done.

The OS, yes. However, GitHub is a decent environment. The same could have happened with a public BitBucket, Gitea, GOGS, or GitLab cloud server.

Now, other MS stuff, I can agree with the parent, but GitHub is one of the few MS products that has decent support.

I left LP when LMI bought them out. Having had a bad experience cancelling with LMI, as at the time, they only allowed cancelling over the phone, so when LP was bought out, I pulled my stuff out and moved to BitWarden.

Reading that LastPass didn't encrypt URLs at the time (they say they do now, so I'm going to take them at their word), was something that ensured I'd continue to stay away from them. URLs can be used for authentication, and they offer a ton of insight to attackers, and can reveal points to attack. For example, it shows if a company uses a third party service which can be the target of a breach.

My favorite PW manager is probably 1Password because it requires authentication, then after that, it requires a randomly generated 256 bit number, as well as one's secret key. This way, even if 1Password's database is compromised, the only way to access the individual data is to find the key and password on all endpoints.

Another good one is just good ol' KeePass and KeePass apps like Strongbox (which I highly recommend.) Create a keyfile, use a good passphrase, put the keyfile on the devices, and then store the KDBX DB on GDrive or a cloud site, and one has solid protection without a monthly fee, other than the storage provider.

For the enterprise, it comes less to security than to enterprise tier features, which is where I'd point people to Keeper.

tl;dr, probably the best for personal use is KeePass with keyfiles on endpoints, a good passphrase, good KDBX apps, and a decent backend cloud provider.

Maybe take it a step further and have fairly rigorous protection? Trezor and Ledger are proven wallets, but make sure you have a process beforehand [1]. Don't forget to have some "steel wallets" for the BIP-39 recovery code first, and make sure to have some place for those that isn't slapped over social media [2].

Trezor is nice because it works well enough for GPG and SSH, as well as a FIDO token.

[1]: If I am creating a new wallet, what I do is reset a hardware wallet, generate a BIP-39 key. Then nuke and reset the wallet again, restoring that key I generated. This way, I know, 100%, that the recovery key works. I also like having two hardware wallets, so I have a backup before I have to reach for the BIP-39 codes.

[2]: You never know whom is watching, and can come pay a visit to your door. However, this is the price one pays for keeping one's own keys.

I generally am not posting pro MS, but I don't get why it is their responsibility to catch malware immediately. Why should a hosting provider have a responsibility to scan and vet everyone's stuff? MS has done a solid job in general ensuring a clean environment, but statistically, something gets through.

Only thing I can think of is having tiers of repositories and levels of vetting, where a repository can be considered vetted by MS after some paperwork... but even then, all it takes is a compromise of a repository user with permissions to write public releases, and we have another malware incident.

Worse... banks don't get bankrupted if someone swipes their master key, and if they did get bankrupted, stuff is insured.

This is where people need to learn the difference between custodial and non-custodial wallets.

The same services that scan for plagiarism also scan for AI. No need to play AI detective when this has been already done and part of most school's mechanisms now.

I'd say that car companies need as little tech as possible. My current ride piggybacks off of the paired cellphone. Car gets in a wreck? The car sends a Bluetooth command to the phone to call 911. The only thing my old ride has an antenna for is AM/FM, and XM radio. No two way communication. Firmware updates are handled by a USB drive, and the car is smart enough to have a backup of the current firmware.

I don't want useless tech. Every cool new app that is an icon on a dashboard today becomes tomorrow's Edge, Rdio, and other squashed company.

I also don't want iPad-like displays either. Buttons all the way, with a minimum status panel for things like "cylinder #6 is missing a head gasket." error messages when they pop up.

This is something I wonder about. Are newer phone frequencies as good as the old ones for dealing with low power devices, such as a GPS monitor that just sends a signal every so often to a remote place, or a door alarm which stays quiet until the door is opened, then logs an event? From what I know, 5G requires a lot of wattage to work, so backing down to 2G or EDGE may save a lot of power. However, I am sure low power, low bandwidth devices are factored into the design standard.

Can low bandwidth stuff work in 5G/6G, or do we need those old protocols back?

Sort of was surprising to have 1Password to pop up and ask for a permission. This should really never happen unless there is advance warning, and a reason for this, just to make sure it isn't a Trojan or a hijacked update.

I like 1Password, and because of the secret key, they have outstanding encryption, as an attacker has to have credentials, the secret key, and a password to decrypt stuff, but a PW manager isn't supposed to surprise people with things like this. While I'm going to keep using it, for my personal use, I also use Strongbox/KeePass on the Mac side, although I'm not sure what Android apps can handle .kdbx files. (I use one PW manager for passwords, another for 2FA codes, just to ensure if my desktop gets compromised, the app only running on the smartphone is out of their reach.)

Lot of uses for that in the music and video production industry. A tablet being able to handle a lot of tracks (24+ tracks for a basic drum set) is a nice thing to have, especially being fast enough to handle the audio in, as well as give a responsive UI. Tablets are great work surfaces. As an every daily driver, they are definitely not for everyone, but as something to take on a business trip instead of a personal laptop, they are a good alternative, and perhaps more secure, as they have less data on them in general. Of course, this can be argued endlessly.

I've seen people use tablets for 3D sculpting often as well. For tasks like this which require a lot of manual manipulation, they work well.

This would be hard to do. There isn't really a Reprap-like movement that wants to do printers like this.

This is a cool idea, perhaps like Prusas, except for laser or inkjet printers, but you are now circling back to supplies. What open source ink or toner does one use, or do we go to a simpler mechanism like NLQ printers and 24 pin?

There isn't the "scratch an itch" interest in this as with FDM printing. If anything, the best way would be finding a popular model of existing printer, jailbreaking that and putting one's own firmware on that, so it accepts all inks.

It is getting to the point where anything good was made in the past, like the Laserjet IIIs, cars which could be easily repaired, computers with easily servicable items.

You don't have to be a boomer to understand that a 1950s tractor will keep running long after a modern tractor company will stop selling you parts, especially boards and firmware for newer stuff.

Maybe this should be the job of government as well. Governments are the ones that make physical transport, communication, and such possible. Perhaps having divisions to maintain and even perhaps replace software used by a lot of businesses would be a needed thing. For example, things like an OpenPGP program, or OpenSSL should be government maintained, or at least funded to assure a high trust level. Same with things that are needed, but are starting not to have updates. It might be good for some organization to maintain a Linux distribution, if only as a way to ensure that a security hole 20-30 years from now wouldn't affect legacy ReiserFS installs, or some way to convert anything with ReiserFS to another filesystem.

If businesses won't do it, and people can't, that leave the government and the military.