salith @salith@computerfairi.es

Source code for Infocom’s original interpreters released: with little fanfare, Andrew Plotkin uploaded a trove of newly-discovered source code for various 1980s computers to GitHub https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2023/11/infocoms-ingenious-code-porting-tools-for-zork-and-other-games-have-been-found/

Just remembered this amazing quote from Sir Terry Pratchett, about Tolkien and fantasy:

"J.R.R. Tolkien has become a sort of mountain, appearing in all subsequent fantasy in the way that Mt. Fuji appears so often in Japanese prints. Sometimes it’s big and up close. Sometimes it’s a shape on the horizon. Sometimes it’s not there at all, which means that the artist either has made a deliberate decision against the mountain, which is interesting in itself, or is in fact standing on Mt. Fuji.”

It's not much, but I'll take it.

Wanna know what being #disabled is like? Companies making wheelchairs that don't meet minimum durability standards, getting away with it, and charging for constant repairs in a planned obsolescence model while we suffer.

“Independent testing has shown that manual wheelchairs and power wheelchairs commonly do not pass minimum durability standards outlined by ANSI/RESNA (RESNA is the Rehabilitation Engineering and Assistive Technology Society of North America, which creates minimum standards for mobility devices for ANSI, or the American National Standards Institute). One of the big takeaways that was neutral to manufacturers is that, for the 10 most frequently prescribed wheelchair models in the sample, repairs exceeded 50 percent across all of them.”

https://sci-bc.ca/breakdown-blues-wheelchair-repairs/

I see a lot of talk about the benefits of uBlock Origin, but I feel a piece of advice gets overlooked. It's definitely worth enabling the Javascript blocking feature too - it defeats the majority of paywall nagging and other popups. Looks like this in the settings:

I have to tell him that, because he refused to give his CC info to the "subscription cancellation" phone number he called (fake tech support scammers) *after* he let them into his PC, they nuked his files and programs on top of locking out his account with the password hint "call".

Please stress to them that if they let someone they don't know and you haven't vetted connect to their PC, it's already game over.

Folks, if you have any computer-illiterate friends and relatives you're on good terms with, please educate them about fake invoice emails.

The owner of one of my tech support patients tried to reverse a (nonexistent) $400 support subscription charge by calling the 1-800 number on a (fake) Geek Squad invoice.

Having a union in this moment allowed us to bring Epic Games to the table and negotiate over the terms of severance. We successfully challenged the status quo and demanded a more just and fair agreement for our laid-off comrades. We are hopeful that it will allow those workers more security in these frustrating times.

passwords when you don’t enforce changing them every 2 months: Viy$Ehi8sy3&2WQ
passwords when you enforce changing them regularly: password01!? password02!? password03!? password04!? password05!?