I hope Skullcrusher gets a bigger role.

USA: Prison

Canada: Antisocial Prison

Italy: Camp

France: Dirty Prison

Sweden: Ikea showroom

Switzerland: Monochrome Minimalist

Norway: Winter shut-in

Denmark: College dorm

The economy Microsoft’s lunch.

Al-Qaeda trained in Afghanistan, Sudan, and had ties to people in Pakistan. 15 of the 19 hijackers were Saudi, although 3 of the 4 pilots (who were the leaders and apparently the only ones who knew the plan was a suicide mission) were not Saudi; those were from Egypt, UAE, and Lebanon.

In the immediate aftermath, as details first came out about the identities of the hijackers, there was a lot of anger towards Muslims in general and Saudis in particular, especially after it became public that the Bush administration had allowed several members of the Saudi royal family to fly out of the US while all US airspace was supposed to be closed. In the intervening years, whether because of active rehabilitation efforts by the Saudis or by wider acceptance of Al-Qaeda as a pan-Arab organization, I feel like that anti-Saudi sentiment has cooled.

I was going to make a joke about the band taking aim at Palantir instead of a cybersecurity incident, but then I read the article and saw that satire is dead. Cool idea, though.

I have a good deal of shelving to clean up, but I should install some pegboard too…

The FBI going undercover to infiltrate communist organizations.

They literally rebranded Office to The Copilot App. I’m just waiting for them to complete their descent and rename Windows to Copilot Desktop or something.

Good.

Totally unenforceable. You going to prevent people from downloading open-source, noncompliant Linux from Asia or Europe? Good luck.

If only he had a lifetime history of pathological lying to serve as a warning flag.

We run CVEs through our software inventory and configuration and come up with a new score that measures how bad it is for us.

What’s an update?

Notepad++ gang, rise, claim your kingdom.

Yeah, I mean when you have a European power colonize a native area, then the locals take over for a while before the noisy neighbor to the north re-colonizes it, then rebuilds on the labor of people that were already there (Surprise! You’re Americans now!), there’s going to be some back-and-forth culinary Frankensteining going on. For example; the California burrito.

Same here.

I’ve noticed that more things are using USB-C for DC connections, which is awesome and an unexpected side-benefit. Maybe someday I’ll be able to retire my universal DC power brick with its collection of barrel tips.

White glass.

We shall see. My current Whirlpools are 15 years old and have their fair share of issues.

Refrigerator: randomly thinks the doors are open because the compressor is having to work too hard to maintain temperature which causes a beeping alarm that won’t stop, freezer drawer gets stuck sometimes, freezer light hasn’t worked in years, ice maker hasn’t worked in years, the “stainless steel” doors have a big section below the in-door water and ice dispenser that is rusted and flaking away (when the ice maker worked, it would often spit out a cube or two after the person walked away, which would sit in the little tray and melt, next person would open the door not noticing the water in the tray, causing the water to slosh onto the front, promoting rust).

Dishwasher: black kickplate has totally rusted away, rinse agent dispenser broke a long time ago and can’t be fixed, replaced control panel board once already and it needs it again (the lights to indicate which cycle it’s in or when it’s done don’t work).

Oven: 25 years old, exposed heating elements that burn drips, just basic (original with the house) and old.

Lots of cookies, turkey, and Mac and cheese for the holidays.