Well, SD cards are basically a solid lump of plastic with metal contacts. That's what makes them exceptionally rugged because all the bits are suspended in a plastic/resin enclosure

As for the computers, the SSD data could be recoverable - chip-off data recovery is a thing. Basically you desolder the NAND chips, then use a rig to image them onto the PC.

The PC software then reconstructs the SSD data using the controller algorithms and data tables and rebuilding the mapping tables.

It does require the NAND be intact enough to read.

Also remove the ability to load JavaScript off any host other than the originating one. Right now things are a huge mess because scripts can be pulled from anywhere, increasing the attack surface. It's why things like NoScript default to not running scripts from unknown hosts.

If every website had to host their own JavaScript, it would tighten things up a lot.

Sure it would make some webmasters jobs more difficult because they need to keep pulling in code from Facebook and Google and X and other social media sites as well as from ad servers, but if you want to add that third party junk you should add to your workload.

And it's something browsers can start doing by allowing only single site JS - it will load only the JavaScript from the originating host.

This way you can't compromise one host and simultaneously attack millions of websites.

Opinions change.

In the early days where the dot-com bubble was happening, unions didn't make sense when people were making big bucks for knowing their way around a keyboard. Most anti-union sentiment starts here because the people were the "hot stuff" and seeing everyone else as dinosaurs not wanting to learn the latest "hot stuff" to keep themselves employed.

Unions were seen as a way for the luddites to stay employed doing what they do and avoid the technological revolution that's happening around them.

Of course, then the dot-com bubble popped, millions were out of work and the great disillusion happened where the "hot stuff" could no longer get jobs paying millions of dollars and driving Ferraris, but the jobs fell back to earth. They still paid well so most anti-union sentiment remained.

Fast forward to today, when "hot stuff" tech jobs are finally seeing the pain, and "programming" jobs that pay $10/hr are starting to crop up on job boards as AI replaces them.

It also follows with the whole "learn to code" thing - great at the beginning because it meant luddites were learning the "hot stuff". Nowadays it's seen as a white elephant - training people to lower salaries even more by flooding the market.

You'll find the sentiment generally follows - when the going is good, unions are seen as unnecessary and useless. When the going starts getting rough, then people start looking at unions. The Chinese 996 was fine when you're 20 something making half a million dollars a year. But it's a lot less appealing when you're looking at jobs paying $75k a year and you're 35.

DLL Hell is the reason for snaps and flatpaks and other container formats.

Linux has DLL hell - it's caused by libraries being binary incompatible with themselves. Some libraries, like glibc, pride themselves on binary compatibility which is why programs linked against older glibc still run on newer glibc. But such capability means a lot of code goes into just keeping compatibility. It's why alternative C libraries exist that provide much of the same functionality but with half the size or less - they dump the backwards compatibility guarantees. Of course, they also only work for programs compiled against that library

If everything is properly versioned it all works great, but there's a lot of libraries out there and not all of them are properly versioned. You then end up with programs using incompatible versions of the library

In a fixed Linux system, sure, you can avoid such issues through careful library management and using overrides like LD_LIBRARY_PATH.

But there are also times when random binaries get passed about (in a company say) and it only works on half the Linux systems because the other half runs the wrong version of a library.

Or you compile something against a newer library, but because of odd system quirks it sometimes picks the wrong library version and errors out.

Big, complex programs like GIMP? Well it depends on hundreds of libraries, and chances are you either have to compile it yourself, or it's provided by your distribution because getting a random compiled version to work will likely have all sorts of library versioning issues.

So you can say no, but big complex applications, and even commercial software are adopting such formats so they guarantee the runtime environment and eliminates most of the support calls on missing libraries or libraries missing symbols and other fun things.

It also traps a car in the dead end. Given it's a neighborhood, there's probably not much space so stacking cars in the dead end will also mean neighbors are inconvenienced by having cars blocking their street or just making it much harder to navigate around.

Police radio? CB radio?
If you don't want data to be read. encrypt it. Don't rely on the links to protect you. As soon as your WiFi data gets to the AP, it's no longer encrypted.

Police radios these days are often trunked which is about as best you can do - many places require unencrypted radios because it's your right to be able to audit law enforcement - the same set of rights that let you record the police (audio, video). Many have switched to trunked radio systems which helps get better frequency utilization by finding an empty channel. Though many systems are also digital to allow for even higher utilization, but they have to be unencrypted.

CB radio, by its very nature must be unencrypted - it is illegal to encrypt because it's given to the public to use and you're not allowed to monopolize it.

Lots of other stuff are unencrypted as well - usually things distributed on a one-to-many format. Aircraft use ADS-B, ships use AIS, which are all unencrypted because they're meant to be received by everyone in an area to decode and display - it's a literal broadcast. Sure you can spoof things, so it's also unauthenticated, but there's no way to encrypt things so anyone and everyone can authenticate it without anyone and everyone also having the key rendering the whole exercise moot.

Many satellite transmissions are unencrypted on purpose - weather satellites often transmit their data in the clear, as are satellite fax transmissions (again on a one-to-many transmission so you can send weather data to many vessels at the same time)

Much of the data is unencrypted because of its nature. You can encrypt it, but everyone getting it will then need the key to decrypt it and now you have a key distribution problem.

Funny enough, the commercial side of things is where stuff is encrypted - DBS satellites (e.g., Dish, DirecTV), satellite radio, etc.

Banning pornography is a key part of Project 2025, mind you. How that comes about is a bit up in the area, but it's coming. It's one of the bigger unfulfilled parts that Trump hasn't touched yet.

And the way individual states are doing things to make abortion illegal in all states, even in states without such laws.

It's all laid out in the book, everything that's happening, how it's happening is right there

"repairable"? Its a system on a chip. For the most part ... either it works or it doesn't. There's not much to repair. That said.. yeah, I've got an intellivision flashback that died pretty quickly - so i guess its a valid concern.

I'm disappointed in the game selection on the Spirit. It doesn't have the Dungeons and Dragons games (which also go by minotaur and crown of kings to avoid licensing the DnD name).

It does say it sports a usb port for "game expansion" - so maybe there's a way in there. (official or otherwise).

HDMI and wireless are nice though. I really can't be bothered to hook the original one up with its its whole ancient antenna hookup system. The flashback was nice while it lasted because it was at least RCA. I use jzintv now on a PC.

I currently have usb adapters for both the original system controllers and the littler ones that came with the intellivision flashback a few years ago - works very well.

But wireless would be nice, so I might still buy it for the controllers if someone figures out how to get them working with a PC.

as long as the topic is not controversial and political.

The problem is that the Wiki mods are VERY VERY biased. Not just a little. I have run into this personally just trying to make very simple edits. They would not accept simple facts that I had backup sources for.

This was just for movie credits for an actress that at some point had turned conservative...

So for anything political, Wikipide will be factually wrong, sometimes (or often) egregiously so.

But that's ok if it's only for political content right???

But there's the trouble you see. It affects what is political TO THEM in ways you cannot comprehend, so ANY page might be touched by the corruption of the Wikipedia moderator biases. I wouldn't think a simply actress filmography would be affected yet it was. No visitor other than that page would ever know it was inaccurate or incomplete.

So you can trust absolutely nothing from Wikipedia without extensive checking of what facts they refuse to list. Which makes the entire body of work garbage - I have not used it for years now.

Back about two decades ago when e-ink screens were all the rage, foldable e-ink screens were a thing. Tri-fold devices were common as a way to "roll up" the big e-paper screen in a small form factor.

Of course, the development units we had rapidly developed dead lines and such because the wires flexed too many times started developing breaks. Plus the bonding between the screen lines and the flex cables wasn't perfect -

I'm surprised that Alphabet has done as well as they have in the era of LLMs. They're as much an AI company as anyone in big tech, but I've always heard that search is they lynchpin of Google, and LLMs must have decimated that.

Only decimated if you think AI can replace search.

Given that AI makes stuff up, search is even more important than ever because you can't tell if it's true or not.

Look at all the lawyers getting caught out using AI. They could've spent 5 minutes with Google making sure their citations were correct. It wouldn't surprise me if the lawyers were caught because the other side decided to Google the cases and found they were wrong or invalid - it's not something hard to do or require a law library.

About the best AI can do for Google is to be able to make more approximate searches - say you want to know the name of a movie that featured a certain plot - an AI would help you do such a content based search even if you don't know the name of the characters or the star - it likely will be able to find you the names of movies featuring such a plot and then the regular Google search will take you to the movie details themselves.

AI LLMs are good at such "approximate" searches where their parameters help them locate other terminology that might help you better. Likewise if you can describe a concept AI can help you find out what it's called so you can improve your searches based on the term itself.

There's three different power ratings for USB-C cables, 60 watts, 100 watts, and 240 watts.

No, there are two power ratings for USB-C cables. 3A and 5A.

All USB C cables must be rated for 3A by default. 5A cables have the "e-marker" chip that indicate they can handle 5A of current.

That's it.

To get 240W, you increase the voltage - 240W is 48V at 5A. You cannot increase the current because wire ampacity depends on the cross-sectional area and it's expensive. Voltage is easy to increase by adding cheap insulation, but at 48V it's pretty much already covered by the standard PVC insulation on the wire.

(the other voltages are 20V for 100W, and it goes down from there).

240W is however the max for USB-C because once you go over 50V you get into electrical code issues as you stop being a "low voltage" device.

IIR losses are the big factor - the more current you carry, the loss of power int he wire goes up by the square of the current - going from 1A to 2A means you increase your losses by 4 times which is why it's always preferable to increase voltages over current - notice IIR losses do not depend on voltage - so a line carrying 10V at 1A has the same loss as one carrying 20V at 1A even when the latter is carrying double the power.

The problem is that the ISPs have demonstrated that they can block it if they want to. Some don't allow P2P apps, most block outgoing email. Legally that makes it a choice to not block file sharing, which then forces them to defend that choice. The old "Linux ISOs" argument probably isn't going to help them there.

Blocking email is easy - you just block outgoing port 25 connections to anywhere but your own server. You can block some P2P apps by blocking ports as well, but most P2P apps aren't so easy - they often run on random ports.

In the past, where the past was 15 years ago, you could - they made traffic shaping boxes that could deep packet inspect for bittorrent and such and deprioritize such traffic. Which is why most bittorrent traffic is now encrypted by default. And those companies making those boxes aren't making them anymore.

Basically unless they work on a specific port, it's extremely difficult to filter traffic these days. Data flow rates are just too high even for an NGFW (next generation firewall - basically a box that does more than basic packet filtering and stateful inspection but goes up the stack even to layer 7, and often using MITM techniques to inspect encrypted traffic).

ISP filtering these days isn't really an option short of installing filter boxes at every customer because that's about their limits on speed when you have customer internet connection speeds of over 1 gigabit being common. Even top end NGFWs, the ones costing tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars are only good for up to 100G, and ones good for 2.5/5Gbit are in the thousands of dollars range.

At the data flow rates a consumer ISP is seeing, the hardware routing systems are limited to packet headers - you aren't going to deep inspect packets. You're stuck with what layer 4 can provide, and it isn't much beyond the UDP/TCP headers at those flow rates.

About the only thing an ISP can do is implement IPv6, because IPv6 lets you go back to an individual machine. An IPv4 address only gets you a household or coarser - it's not sufficient legally to charge anyone with anything.

But if you can get down an individual PC - you can then find who's the actual person using that PC and then get back to suing teenagers again.

Maybe that's the intent - force ISPs to implement IPv6 so we go from a household and reasonable doubt of who committed the crime, to an individual user so Sony and the RIAA can go back to suing people again.

All the more to want to have NATv6 back again so you can put many people behind one IPv6 address again.

Technology goes both ways, after all. IPv4 has issues, and NAT has issues, but legallly it also hides the originator of traffic. IPv6 doesn't have that limit and now you can identify who's responsible for the traffic.

One of the most fascinating aspects of H2O is the sheer number of forms it can take under different conditions.

The problem is the Big 3 aren't making vehicles the world wants. In their pursuit of profit, they built bigger and bigger vehicles tot he point where a pickup can have a 20 foot blindspot... in the front. Tall hoods let you hide a whole car and a half.

Sure, they're making profitable vehicles, but the imports are eating them in the areas they abandoned because they didn't make so much profit. And when they try to compete now, it's a hot mess.

If you like pickups and SUVs, sure, the Big 3 are making tons of money. if you want a sedan or other vehicle that maybe stretches your gas dollar a bit more, an import is what you want.

China heavily invested in EV production and batteries, and CATL is one of the leading manufacturers of batteries as well as investing heavily in sodium-ion technology to produce safer, cheaper and better for the environment batteries.