The story of Sony’s notorious rootkit deployment, as told by Dave Plummer, the Microsoft developer whose code made the hack possible.
Credit for the deep digging to uproot the rootkit goes to Mark Russinovich, a founder of Winternals. Before becoming one of the voluntarily unemployed, I was very familiar with their Sysinternals Suite of utilities. Russinovich’s work was so outstanding that Microsoft bought Winternals and brought Mark on board.
Here is every retail product that Bose is offering. The Wave music system IV is not among them, except for refurbished units.
https://www.bose.com/c/all-products
So there it is. Confirmation of the fading consumer interest in FM and CD.
The least expensive video projection system with a laser light source is from Epson.
The most expensive digital projection systems with a laser light source are, of course, in movie theaters. I lost track of this link to a story that I meant to post ages ago. When the Covid pandemic hit, Sony decided to abandon the market, rather than pursue lasers as a light source.
https://www.digitalcinemareport.com/news/sony-stop-manufacturing-digital-cinema-projectors
Sony’s home projectors were also affected by the problem of UV light damaging imaging devices. The technology is called LCoS. It’s an LCD variant where light doesn’t pass through the panel, it’s reflected.
UV comes with the visible light from the UHP lamps found in every video projector before LED’s and lasers. When first reading about this problem I panicked, because my JVC projector uses LCoS. JVC issued a statement that their proprietary LCoS panels are not affected. Whew!
After ten years, my JVC DLA-HD750 is halfway through the lifespan of its third 2,000-hour UHP lamp, and I continue to be impressed with the image quality.
Radioactive Drew’s follow-up on 70mm film projection that isn’t in IMAX.
For anyone with any level of interest in the technical aspects of widescreen filming and projection, there is this outstanding primer, as in “prim,” not “prime.”
Plan B for having access to my cable TV DVR from the porch was a total flop. This was Plan B.
I had my doubts about wireless HDMI when first considering it seven years ago, before choosing to buy the OTA TiVo instead, and those doubts have been confirmed. Based on hours of experimentation, in my opinion wireless HDMI is suitable only for a line-of-sight connectivity in the same room.
Communicating through a wall or floor doesn’t work, even when the total distance is only ten feet. Worse, the 5 GHz range of frequencies that wireless HDMI uses for peer-to-peer communication, without benefit of a hot spot or router, can interfere with a 5 GHz Wi-Fi network. Yesterday, while the transmitter and receiver kept trying to establish a connection, devices would disconnect from my Wi-Fi extender. Once I realized that was happening I gave up, disconnected the wireless HDMI transmitter and receiver, and put everything back in the box.
Having been a few years since I returned something to Amazon, today was my first time using the self-service return process at an Amazon-owned Whole Foods. First I initiated the return online and downloaded a QR code JPG to my phone. At the store kiosk I scanned the code, then put the box in a bag and slapped on a label the machine printed before dropping it into the kiosk.
This evening I received a text message confirming the return has been processed, with the refund coming within 7 days. By coincidence, this week’s New Yorker has an article about the business of returned purchases.
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2023/08/21/the-hidden-cost-of-free-returns
Nuclear power as an energy option to reduce fossil fuel dependency? Fuk-U-Shima, no!
