Category: Computer nerdism

Where does JetBlue get its programmers?

by philg

Here’s an interesting Labor Day example of laboring in the Web development mines. Trying to book four tickets on JetBlue.com:

After multiple retries, I called the 800-number and the automated system said to expect a 2-minute wait, but suggested going to jetblue.com/chat to resolve the issue and save $25 per person in telephone service fees. After about 20 minutes into the 2-minute wait, I decide to try it. Here’s what happens when you click to “start the conversation” in a Google Chrome browser on Windows:

(the chat window never populated with any text or UI)

Given the importance to an airline of being able to sell tickets, how can this happen? I tripped over at least three bugs in three different systems while attempting one transaction. Did Amazon hire away every programmer capable of building and maintaining a functional ecommerce site? And, if JetBlue can’t keep a competent programming staff together, what hope is there for smaller companies?

The number of people majoring in computer science is up, but is the number of people who can write a functionally correct program going up? How many of today’s fresh CS graduates will actually be working as programmers 5 years from now?

(I eventually got the tickets after a 46-minute phone call. The agent who finally picked up promised that the four of us would be together in one row, charging an extra $250 for the privilege, but booked 3A, 3B, 3C, and 4E. She insisted that 4E was an aisle seat and that it was directly across the aisle from 3ABC (contrary to SeatGuru and my lived experience on JetBlue). Even if we accept the row misalignment, that raised the obvious question “Where is seat 4D if 4E is the aisle?”, but, perhaps due to her not being a native English speaker (thick Spanish accent), I couldn’t get an explanation of her thought process. She dropped Senior Management’s known traveler number on the floor. Although I had given her my TrueBlue number, she left the required mailing address and phone number fields of the reservation blank. I spent about 15 minutes on the “Manage Flights” part of the JetBlue site correcting the known errors, leaving only the unknown errors. If we count the 15 minutes that I spent trying to get the site to work to buy a ticket, the whole process took about 75 minutes. Maybe it worked better in the good old days when U.S.-based prisoners handled the phones for airlines (NYT, 1997, whose headline is weak compared to “Booking the Penthouse From the Big House” (LA Times, 1998)).)

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TP-Link Omada: like a mesh network, except that it works (alternative to UniFi)

by philg

Kind readers let me know that there was an alternative to UniFi (multiple wireless access points around your house or hotel or whatever, generally hard-wired back to a power-over-Ethernet switch). See UniFi versus Araknis versus Ruckus. Due to UniFi being unavailable, I decided to see what would happen if I spent half as much and got immediate delivery of a TP-Link Omada system.

To use Omada access points, you don’t need any Omada switches or routers. Nor do you need their hardware controller device. You can download some software for your Windows desktop and configure everything from the Windows machine. If you then shut the computer down, the access points keep going.

I am running everything from a Netgear GS116PP switch that is theoretically capable of handling 50C temps in the garage and also pushing out a tremendous amount of PoE power (183 watts total). Arris is the only brand of cable modem that I could find rated for 50C so I got a SURFboard SBG8300 to use as the cable modem/router and turned off its WiFi. [Update: The Arris SURFboard proved to be a disaster on Xfinity. After 3-14 days it typically suffers a brain freeze and has to be power-cycled to restore connectivity. The software can be updated only by Comcast (this is part of the DOCSIS standard I think; modems are not to be touched by the consumer or the manufacturer but only by the ISP). The software/firmware versions on the device are the same as in a 2020 forum posting about the same problem (i.e., Comcast has not pushed an update for the purportedly supported third-party device). Maybe the answer is that if you’re stuck with Xfinity you need to rent their modem because that’s the only way to get software fixes.]

Once everything was plugged in, the Windows controller found all of the access points within seconds and it took just a few minutes to configure the system with SSIDs and passwords for private and guest networks. The hardest part was figuring out how to change the names of the access points. “Device Name” is displayed, but, in a failure of user interface, there is no way to manipulate it. You click on the device to bring up a “Properties” window on the right and then click on “Config” to change the name:

If not for that step, it wouldn’t have taken longer than setting up a standard single-point WiFi router.

What if you’ve plugged in 10 access points and have no idea which default name in the controller corresponds to a particular physical device? There’s a map pin-shaped “locate” button that causes the LED on the front of the access point to flash.

Our house has Cat 5 wires coming out at wall plates, so the most sensible solution was the EAP615-Wall, which doesn’t take up any outlets and looks like it belongs. There are three RJ45 jacks on the bottom if you want to run some hardwired gear. If you’re wiring a house from scratch, it probably makes more sense to use EAP660s on the ceiling. The outdoor device in the TP-Link Omada WiFi 6 series is the EAP610-Outdoor, which is not quite available to buy.

The other fun thing that we installed (“we” being the electrician) was a Leviton Structured Media Center cabinet. This fits between studs in the garage and has room for a patch panel, the switch, the cable model, a TV splitter, a small UPS, etc. It will cost about $500 to do everything the Leviton way, but the end result looks clean. Buy some extra pins because they’re easy to break and Leviton includes only the minimum with each accessory.

By popular demand, the cabinet…

And what was there before…

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Good alternative to Windows File History? (backup tool for Windows that saves every version)

by philg

I’m almost recovered from the failed Seagate drive debacle (solution: buy Western Digital; send the Seagate to the nearest gun range to serve as a target). When I try to get Windows File History going again, however, it chokes on someone else’s vomit within a few minutes. There are some filenames especially within the Dropbox area of the C: drive that it doesn’t like (why can’t it back up anything that NTFS was willing to accept?). I tried excluding the entire (SSD) C: drive so that I could at least get backups of the two big hard disks, but even after “C:\” was excluded it kept trying to back up folders with the C: drive and shutting down (why skip files when you can terminate and leave the entire computer unprotected?).

Has anyone had good luck with a Windows tool that will do what Microsoft’s built-in Backup/File History is advertised as doing, i.e., saving every version of every file, presumably with hooks into NTFS’s journaling mechanism so that it runs shortly after any modification is made. I can just dedicate one disk to be the target of this third-party tool.

I’m already running the Synology Drive Client to push files out to the NAS. Maybe there is a way to tell this program to also copy everything to a local file? (If so, I haven’t found it yet.) Synology actually got stuck as well. It was in an infinite wait for some files on OneDrive that appear in the file system but aren’t actually on the disk, I think.

I’m also already running CrashPlan from Code42, which hasn’t choked on the cloud drives (Dropbox or OneDrive) as far as I know. I think it is possible to tell the Code42 app to write to both the cloud and a local destination (below, the data should go to both the CrashPlan cloud and a local drive).

How well does this work? Here’s the CrashPlan software trying to back up detritus left by the Synology software. The estimate is 1.6 years before the three local hard drives are copied to the new 16 TB internal backup drive. So, assuming a little downtime for Florida hurricanes, now I just need a letter from God promising that there won’t be any drive failures until an 82-year-old Joe Biden is celebrating his/her/zir/their reelection (we don’t know what Dr. Biden’s spouse’s gender ID will be in 2024).

Related:

  • “The best Windows backup software” (PC World) likes R-Drive Image 7 (but I don’t really want to make images of the disk!) and Acronis
  • “The Best Backup Software and Services for 2022” (PC Mag) likes ShadowProtect, which would make a full image of the disks and then store years of incrementals (I guess the 16 TB drive is big enough to hold a second full image of the three other drives on the PC so in theory I could do a full backup every couple of months and the software would throw out the obsolete one after it was complete (but maybe reading 100% of the data off these drives every two months would actually result in their premature death?))
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Special PIN to delete some applications and data when the police or school demand an unlock?

by philg

Some friends and I were discussing a kid who was kicked out of a school in Maskachusetts:

kids were caught vaping at school. Their phones were searched. The Man saw they bought it from [the kid who was kicked out]. Also an administrator suspended another kid for 1 day because the kid has called him a name in a text to the other kid.

This kicked off a discussion:

  • Me: The state that says marijuana is essential complains about vaping?
  • Friend 1: Private school. [A kid] was taken from school in handcuffs.
  • Friend 2: How’d they get into his phone?
  • Friend 1: They told the kids if they don’t let them search their phone they will be kicked out.
  • Ukrainian friend: so they searched and kicked them out! they are like the Russians
  • Friend 2: Use third party app. Delete that app when compromised.
  • Ukrainian: ambush PIN. if compromised, give out a special PIN to law enforcement, then pre-set up set of apps are erased in the background.

The “ambush PIN” idea seems to have been implemented to some extent on Android. See “Privacy Lock adds disk wiping unlock code to your Android device” (2015). But it leaves the phone in a suspiciously empty state. If the vape enthusiasts had agreed to use Signal or Telegram, for example, and these apps got deleted with their “ambush PIN”, the school authorities would find a typical teenager’s phone full of photos and innocent text messages.

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Xfinity xFi Pods mesh network review

by philg

One of the worst things about having moved from an apartment to a single-family house is that we were kicked out of the AT&T fiber 1 Gbps symmetric paradise and plunged into the dark pit of Xfinity cable Internet service (more money, 1/30th the upload speed). The good news is that the xFi Gateway (modem/router/WiFi base station) seems to provide reasonably good service through three walls, at least when one is not experiencing a complete service outage from Comcast. Beyond three walls it gets dicey and our old-school laser printer requires a Cat 5 connection.

Enter the xFi Pods. This is an official ISP-sold and -supported tri-band mesh network. Even more exciting, the pods include RJ45 jacks for dinosaurs who have laser printers requiring Cat 5 connections. At two for $200, the price is lower than shutting down the Xfinity WiFi network and building a new network with Eero or Netgear or similar. Carriers need to make everything idiot-proof so I imagined that setup would take mere minutes.

In case it helps others, this post is to report that the Xfinity system is

  • about one hour to set up (multiple attempts at configuration and repeating the same process about 6 times finally resulted in the Pods both affiliating with the Gateway)
  • not great at connecting clients to the closest wireless access point to the point that a phone will drop off WiFi altogether because it was trying to connect to the far-away Gateway and never discovered the alternative of a nearby Pod
  • prone to complete failures where both Pods will be offline and the only way to fix is to unplug everything, including the Gateway, and apply power sequentially

This is on top of the overall fragility of Xfinity, which fails at unpredictable times and fails hard after brief power outages (power cycling the gateway is insufficient; one needs to call Comcast and have them send a reset signal).

On the plus side, the Xfinity app is easy to use and it is easy to see which devices are connected to which access point (Pod or Gateway). Also, the Xfinity app gives you alerts when someone new connects.

With or without Pods, a deficiency of the whole Xfinity system is that, unlike with AT&T and Verizon fiber standard gear, there is no way to set up a guest network. Every service person who comes to the house will need to be supplied with your private network password (since Verizon doesn’t see fit to cover Jupiter, Florida, except on its fictional coverage map).

Here’s a question for network nerd readers: does the heavily promoted WiFi 6 standard have better protocols for ensuring that a client, e.g., smartphone, is always connected to the best wireless access point in a multi-point (but same SSID) system?

Related:

  • UniFi versus Araknis versus Ruckus (updated to reflect the fact that a lot of this stuff is certified to work only up to 40 degrees C and therefore shouldn’t live in an unairconditioned garage)
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UniFi versus Araknis versus Ruckus

by philg

Our old apartment was small enough that the AT&T Fiber-supplied modem covered the entire space with awesome WiFi. The new house is just a little too big for a single base station to cover reliably and is currently suffering from Xfinity cable Internet with two Xpods (Comcast’s own mesh networking device, comparable to Eero; so we have three access points including the modem/base). The system does not seem reliable and oftentimes devices are not connected to the nearest pod, but rather are trying to talk to the base station.

The house was built in 2003 and has a fair number of CAT5 runs, many of them never terminated. My plan is the following:

  • return the rented Xfinity modem/WiFi router and replace with a Motorola MB8611 that can be mounted to a wall near where the cable comes in and the CAT5 wires gather (don’t want to put this in a cabinet because it can draw 15 watts)
  • install a compact 16-port Power-over-Ethernet switch in the A/V wall cabinet where the CAT5 wires come in (the cabinet is 14″ wide by 19″ high and 3.5″ deep; it has a cover that can be left off for cooling, but has no provision for airflow); The UniFi Switch Lite is an example of something that would fit (only 7×7″) and will drive half the ports with power.
  • give the Xpods away to a neighbor
  • install three WiFi access points inside the house and one outside, all driven by PoE; maybe something like the UniFi “mesh” access point?

The neighborhood is packed with busy physicians and dentists who apparently aren’t capable of watching TV or getting an iPhone online without significant assistance. (By contrast, none of our neighbors in the apartment building reported any trouble getting everything that they wanted from AT&T!) It is common to see A/V service providers’ trucks, therefore, and when I ask them what they install for network hardware the answer is always “Ruckus and Araknis,” never the brands that I’ve used before (Cisco, Netgear, Linksys). One installer said that the Ruckus gear is used by municipalities to provide public WiFi (not by the Palm Beach County Schools, apparently, since the other night the guest network was non-functional and also Verizon mobile data was unusable, as is typical in Jupiter) and that he likes it because his company logs in every morning to each client’s house to make sure that all of the equipment is operating properly and has the latest software updates applied.

Readers who are networking experts: What is the correct solution for a standard McMansion like ours? UniFi, Araknis, Ruckus, or “other”? We don’t want to pay an A/V firm to log in every day and, in fact, don’t need any capability of remote management (though maybe it would be nice if we have a house-sitter and the network fails?).

A Reddit thread on this subject:

Ruckus is professional wireless networking. Good stuff but you pay for it.

As for Araknis I have to ask how you even heard of it. Are you dealing with an A/V installer? If so they are trying to scam you. Araknis is mediocre quality gear sold only through “dealers” at crazy prices. They target people who want to throw money at problems instead of doing any research.

An advantage of UniFi for me is that a friend has a big setup and is an expert on configuration. At a minimum, I think that I want to pay an A/V company to do the CAT5 terminations and clean-up in the A/V cabinet. A degree in electrical engineering does not imply skill at CAT5 crimping compared to someone who does it all day every day.

From a security point of view, is remote management a feature or a bug? Xfinity can presumably log every web site that we visit, but why create additional opportunities for individuals or governments to see that, for example, household members are viewing misinformation on a Muskified Twittter?

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Laptop with off-center keyboard due to numeric keypad

by philg

After digesting reader advice in response to What is the best 15-16-inch laptop right now? I decided to go with the $1200 LG Gram 16 2-in-1 from Costco. I’m setting it up now and already somewhat at war with the device because the keyboard is off center. Why isn’t the QWERTY keyboard that I want to use in the middle of the device? Because LG crammed in a numeric keypad, which I will never use.

For the Apple zealots, I will note that even their biggest (16″ pro) has the keyboard smack in the center:

They don’t bother with a numeric keypad because bookkeepers aren’t going to need a $3,000 notebook computer.

Who has used a laptop with an off-center keyboard like this? Did you get used to it?

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What is the best 15-16-inch laptop right now?

by philg

It is time to replace my 5-year-old Dell XPS 13. Despite multiple return trips to Dell for service, the computer has never worked properly, refusing to sleep when closed or even to sleep when “sleep” is selected from the power options at lower left (the only way to prevent the battery from being drained is “shutdown”). It lacks whatever mojo is required to run Windows 11:

I probably could have predicted this given that the machine runs out of CPU zorch on Zoom calls and warnings about compromised audio quality pop up. Also, having the camera at the bottom of the screen is an unbelievably bad idea for Zoom (others on the call will see your fingers as you type and, thinking that they’re on mute, will say “that guy has more chins than the Shanghai lockdown registry”).

The experience of being a Dell customer was traumatic, so I don’t want to repeat that. I’m not ready to abandon my love for all things Microsoft (the keyboard, the folding mouse, Windows itself) so I can’t join the young, hip, and stickered with MacOS. I haven’t enjoyed the 13″ screen, despite the high (3200×1800) resolution, but lugging a 17-inch laptop in the old days wasn’t fun.

[My 17-inch HP laptop died to support a worthy cause. A friend and I had it almost completely apart so that we could remove a failed component. Another friend walked in the door wearing a “women in STEM” T-shirt (“Maker Girl” or “Girls Code”?). She decided to assist us and, confused by a zero insertion force connection, rather than flick the male part out with a pinky, snapped the female portion off the main board (surface mount and therefore not field-repairable). (Are “male” and “female” terms for connectors obsolete in our 2SLBGTQQIA+ world? If so, what are the new names?)]

Back in 2019, I selected an LG Gram 17-inch laptop for Senior Management (see What laptop for Senior Management? and 17” laptop for seniors (note that Senior Management is not a senior!) and notice the lack of progress in specs; the LG Gram 17 had 16 GB of RAM, which is still the prevailing standard for higher-end laptops three years later). The machine is still functional, despite some abuse from the kids, and no tech support has been required either from LG or the Domestic IT Department (me). This machine will be used for travel and I like having a touchscreen, which LG still doesn’t make in a 17-inch version. So I am thinking about a 16-inch version. Last year’s model, which includes an 11th generation CPU, is marked down to $1200 at Costco (the newest 12th gen version isn’t quite available):

Given the feeble progress that I’ve noted in GPUs, for example, is there a practical difference between 12th and 11th gen Intel CPUs?

The Surface Laptop Studio direct from Microsoft is probably a great product, but the screen is only 14.4 inches in size. It is $1,550 with a 512 GB SSD (the minimum for me) and over $1,800 with the “i7” CPU. It also has the 11th gen CPU and a similar resolution (2400 x 1600).

What about gaming laptops for someone like me who mostly carries a machine into a conference room or a hotel room? Do they offer big advantages for sound quality, Zoom, etc.? I wouldn’t actually play games, though I would love to have (a) the time, and (b) the skill.

The old HP worked great until its encounter with Women in STEM and HP allows customers a certain amount of configuration flexibility. Maybe it is time to consider HP? Like LG, they won’t sell you a high-res 17-inch touchscreen, at least not on the Envy models. Maybe there is a conspiracy over in Asia to deny Americans 17-inch touchscreens? For $4,000+, HP will sell a laptop for “creators” with similar specs to the LG that I purchased in 2019: 16 GB of RAM and 256 GB SSD: HP ZBook Studio G8 Mobile Workstation. It has a 15.6″ screen.

I poked around on the Lenovo site and didn’t see anything comparable to the LG. They don’t seem to make 16-inch devices, for example, and their 17-inch laptop is low res (HD) and non-touch. Perhaps their specialties are 14-15-inch business laptops and gaming laptops?

Maybe this is why Apple is so beloved. Since they’re the monopoly hardware supplier, consumers don’t have to cope with a paralyzing array of choice.

Readers: Please help! I want to make sure that I have a good laptop in time for Hate Week in case I am traveling then! (prediction based on what I’m hearing right now here in Washington, D.C.: Ron DeSantis and Kathryn Kimball Mizelle will be featured)

(Separately, I tried using a supersized iPad and keyboard as a Windows substitute on one trip and was unsuccessful. I couldn’t figure out how to use Dropbox and Office 365 together effectively and found myself missing the Windows File System(!), despite having previously raged against the tyranny of a single hierarchy.)

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GPU performance improvements since 2015 (and why not just use motherboard graphics?)

by philg

Moore’s law says that we should get GPUs twice as fast every two years (GPUs are inherently parallel so adding more transistors should add performance). Huang’s law says that GPUs get 3X faster every two years.

Because everything desirable in this world is being scooped up by the Bitcoin enthusiasts, my seven-year-old desktop PC makes due with a seven-year-old ASUS STRIX GTX980 graphics card. It was purchased in April 2015 for $556 from Newegg.

A similar-priced card today, exactly seven years later, should be at least 10X faster, right?

The 2015 card’s benchmark:

It can do 47 frames per second with DirectX 12.

Let’s look at the $1,050 RTX 3080 for comparison. Using the same inflation rate as Palm Beach County real estate, $1,050 today is a little less than $556 in 2015 dollars.

It can do 98 frames per second with DirectX 12. Even the cards that sell for $2,000+ are only slightly faster than the RTX 3080.

I pride myself on asking the world’s dumbest questions so here goes… if building a new PC for activities other than gaming or video editing, why not use the integrated graphics on the motherboard? The latest motherboards will drive 4K monitors. The latest CPUs have a lot of cores, especially AMD’s, so they should be competent at tasks that are easy to parallelize. Back in 2020, at least, a graphics card was only about 2X the speed of AMD’s integrated graphics (Tom’s Hardware). Intel, it seems, skimps in this department.

One argument against this idea for those who want a fast desktop PC is that the fastest CPUs don’t seem to come with any integrated graphics. The AMD Threadrippers, for example, say “discrete graphics card required”. The Intel Core i9 CPUs with up to 16 cores do generally have “processor graphics”, but does it make sense to buy Intel? AMD’s CEO is frequently celebrated for identifying as a “woman” (example from IEEE, which does not cite any biologists) while Intel’s CEO identifies as a surplus white male. Tom’s Hardware says that the latest Intel CPUs are actually faster for gaming: “Intel holds the lead in all critical price bands … In terms of integrated graphics performance, there’s no beating AMD. The company’s current-gen Cezanne APUs offer the best performance available from integrated graphics with the Ryzen 7 5700G and Ryzen 5 5600G.”

Is the right strategy for building a new PC, then, to get the Ryzen 7 Pro 5750G (available only in OEM PCs; the 5700G is the home-builder’s version) and then upgrade to a discrete graphics card if one needs more than 4K resolution and/or if the Bitcoin craze ever subsides? The Ryzen 7 fits into an AM4 CPU socket so it won’t ever be possible to swap in a Threadripper. This CPU benchmarks in at 3337 (single thread)/25.045 (the 5700G is just a hair slower and can be bought at Newegg for $300). The absolute top-end Threadripper PRO (maybe $10,000?) is no faster for a single thread, but can run 4X faster if all 128 threads are occupied. What about the Intel i7 5820K that I bought in 2015 for $390? Its benchmark is 2011 for a single thread and 9,808 if all 12 threads are occupied.

(For haters who are willing to pass up chips from a company led by a strong independent woman, the Intel i9-12900KS is about $600 and includes “processor graphics” capable of driving monitors up to 7680×4320 (8K) via DisplayPort. It can run up to 24 threads.)

These seem like feeble improvements considering the seven years that have elapsed. I guess a new PC could be faster due to the faster bandwidth that is now available between the CPU and the M.2 SSDs that the latest motherboards support. But why are people in such a fever to buy new PCs if, for example, they already have a PC that is SSD-based? Is it that they’re using the home PC 14 hours per day because they don’t go to work anymore?

Related:

  • Best Integrated Graphics (from Feb 2022; AMD Vega 11 is the winner)
  • ASUS “gaming desktop” with the Ryzen 7 5700G and also a GTX 3060 graphics card (could this ever make sense? Is there any software that can use both the GPU packaged with the CPU and simultaneously the GPU that is in the graphics card?)
  • William Shockley, who needs to be written out of transistor history: “Shockley argued that a higher rate of reproduction among the less intelligent was having a dysgenic effect, and that a drop in average intelligence would ultimately lead to a decline in civilization. … Shockley also proposed that individuals with IQs below 100 be paid to undergo voluntary sterilization”
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Would Hunter Biden have sent his failed hard drive back to Seagate?

by philg

Distilling from the comments on An internal hard disk disappears from Windows, but is still apparently working:

The good news about my $500 9-month-old Seagate (now available for $300) is that it carries a 5-year warranty. So I can send it back to Seagate and they will fix it or send me a new one, rather than spend $300 on a new Seagate or 8X-more-reliable WD (maybe the Western Digital drives are reliable because they are actually designed and engineered by the Hitachi team that WD acquired? WD is still using Hitachi’s old “Ultrastar” brand name to some extent).

Here’s a question for April Fools’ Day… what kind of a fool takes up to 14 TB (formatted capacity of the disk fraudulently marketed as 16 TB) of his/her/zir/their most personal information and sends it to strangers at

Seagate RMA
United States CSO Service Center
Seagate Technology c/o Agility Logistics
21906 Arnold Center Road
Carson, CA 90810

? Who is Agility Logistics, you might ask? Wikipedia says that there is a large Kuwaiti company by this name, but the company’s web site doesn’t show any U.S. facilities. Google says that the Agility Logistics in Carson, CA is a “freight forwarding service”. Where does the failed disk actually go? Asia?

What does the tax-domiciled-in-Ireland Seagate say?

In order to protect your privacy and other interests in data, you should delete all data, or as much as possible, prior to returning any product to Seagate. Seagate realizes, however, that you may not be able to erase certain data on returned products. In any event, Seagate will take the steps described in this statement to protect the physical security of such products and, if applicable, overwrite data as early as possible on products recertified by Seagate.

The first sentence is ironic. If your disk were working well enough that you could delete all data why would you be returning it for warranty repair or replacement?

One argument for trusting Seagate, despite the fact that they won’t tell you anything about where your disk might go after the “freight forwarding” is complete, is that if you tried to dispose of the failed disk yourself and wanted to make sure someone didn’t get hold of your data by sifting through garbage you’d have to take it apart and work to destroy each individual platter. Seagate presumably has some sort of super shredder that they can use.

But, on the other hand, Seagate has the tech skills necessary to recover all of the data if they want to and look at it, post it on the Internet, etc. Who is to say that a rogue worker at Seagate won’t grab personal data and send it to a confederate overseas who will then blackmail the hapless hard drive buyer with messages such as “We need 100 Bitcoin for The Big Guy”?

WWHBD?

(And imagine how much better off Hunter Biden would have been if he’d fed his liquid-damaged MacBook into an industrial shredder rather than tried to recover its $1,000 of residual value. Daily Mail:

Files found in Biden’s personal computer included emails showing shady business dealings by the current US president’s son with foreign officials, and texts that showed him repeatedly using the ‘N-word’ and accidentally overpaying a prostitute $25,000 from an account linked to his dad.

Given that the stripper-turned-plaintiff got $2.5 million after having sex with Hunter Biden in an officially determined family court process, I’m not sure that it is reasonable to characterize $25,000+ to a prostitute as an “overpayment”)

And, even more important than WWHBD, what should I do? Ask one of our neighbors with a pavement-melting Ford Bronco to run over the failed disk 10 times?

Related:

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