Yeah, you're not understanding what I'm saying: Azure doesn't just host Linux VMs, significant parts of the infrastructure are built on Linux. Microsoft has just as much (if not more) to lose from a resurgent SCO lawsuit than anyone, they aren't going to be the ones rocking this boat.

Even more capable than a pi5, with built-in battery, wifi, bluetooth, no need for cooling, etc, I think it would be more fun to make a cyberdeck that looks like it's built on an RPi but is really hiding an old cellphone inside.

One could argue that no one is doing it in six days without a shit ton of automation support. Some cherubim in ops saved eons when he wrote createstar.pl and it's still running in production today (though it looks like creategalaxy.pl stopped executing some time ago and hasn't been restarted and/or patched yet).

This was a reasonable screed two decades ago (and probably at least somewhat factual) but today Microsoft is one of the world's largest users of Linux. It has no current motivation to harm Linux and every reason to defend it.

When you put up a roadblock, teens will take it as a challenge to get around, even if they would otherwise never have pursued the goal of whatever is beyond the restriction. And teens are very creative; they will break these guardrails in so many ways. It'll be a black-hat/white-hat back and forth for awhile. We'll all learn something, I would hope, without too many casualties along the way.

May I suggest "Variable Star" by Robert A. Heinlein and Spider Robinson. Heinlein's widow found an unfinished manuscript and chose Spider Robinson to finish it. The story does read as if Heinlein wrote it, especially once they leave Earth.

It's where the salty old nerds hang out.

There's really no "need" for Google to have any of this information (they wouldn't have had it if Spirit had been purchased and Google wouldn't have gone out of business as a result).

The article didn't say what Google wants to use the data for.

The data would likely have some value even with removal of all names/email addresses/employee numbers/etc -- i.e., absolutely no way to correlate any record with any other record. Even dates of hire and termination in the HR records could help identify the associated employee so, for example, those fields could not be linked to titles, performance reviews, salaries, etc in any way.

Perhaps that's what is being done but the value of data so cleansed seems pretty minimal for most uses -- but $10M is a drop in the bucket for Google so maybe they bought it on a whim even though it was going to be stripped of most of its value.

This reminds me of a customer we had when I worked at a database company long ago. This customer was almost certainly a government agency but had a bland "generic" name in a genre like "Optimized Marketing Partners" and their installation was in a brick building in Virginia with no windows and surrounded by a barbed wire fence. Anyway, they had a SQL query that was crashing the system and we asked for the query. In response, we got a few pages of fan-fold paper containing a printout of what appeared to be a very long SQL query -- but it was hard to tell because an X-ACTO (likely) knife had been used to cut out every field name, table name, database name, literal, and (apparently) expression. They left the SQL keywords, the periods between database/table/column names (which was impressive given the fragility of the resulting printout), and (IIRC) the comparison operators. It certainly was a fairly secure transmission of the information -- and in doing so it was rendered completely useless in resolving the problem. We never heard about that problem again after we requested more information -- presumably they figured out a way to express the question that didn't cause a crash or decided they didn't care that much about the answer to the question.

Even if obvious PII is removed from this data, that's not likely to add much privacy for many people - esp. employees and regular customers.

This is in part because things like patterns of email would, with fairly high probability, identify some employees in key roles - even without attempting to correlate it with external data sources.

For example using just email where pseudonyms for each person and email address replaced actual names and email addresses (both in metadata and email bodies), one could probably identify with high probably the CEO and all email communications they engaged in. Then, from that, it would likely be trivial to figure out the next layer of reports, etc.

Coupled with outside data sources, such as scraping of LinkedIn data and news sources (esp. for the highest level executives), the certainty of identification could be improved.

Or suppose a person who valued cost over service and therefore chose Spirit whenever possible has an interest in both security and very large databases and regularly attends conferences related to both. It's public information where and when each DEF CON and VLDB conference is held. Even if that person is not a panel member or presenter, one could likely dig through the Spirit traveler data and figure out that person exists and the area they live in (based on what seems to be their home base assuming Spirit flew out of there). Correlating that with comments on YouTube videos by that actual person and/or their gMail data (including "password recovery" emails and phone numbers) could reliably identify that person and their other travel could then reveal other interests (for example, it may reveal that it's likely this person is also a Furry who attends those conferences or that they may have a second spouse or lover in a particular location).

If the data is cleaned enough to prevent such exposure, it would likely be of little use to Google.

As Scott McNealy said over 25 years ago, “You have zero privacy anyway. Get over it”.

Kick your feet!

until it becomes a meaningless glyph.

A digital homunculus will form and take over your life, mocking you as you starve in the cold.

A good description is that they are amplifiers. They magnify everything in your sensorium to the point of distortion. Every thought, sound, emotion; all are pumped up to eleven. You don't have separate senses; they all blend into interacting feedback loops of synesthesia. Your thoughts become tangible, perceivable objects and sensations. It can get overwhelming and almost requires a light-hearted attitude.
It can be enlightening, fun as hell, or deeply terrifying, all depending on your attitude as you go into it.

If he did it alone this was a BIG mistake. Who you are with and in what circumstances is extremely critical for such an experience, even for those not struggling with issues. I suspect your friend didn't provide himself with a safe and comforting enough environment. Which is truly sad and my heart goes out to him.

I apologize. I was speaking from my own experience (my father was medically discharged from a career in the Marines), which is not as extensive as yours. I still maintain that I've heard far more negative than positive anecdotes about the VA and their medical care in particular, but there you have it: Anecdotes.