"FinFisher spyware has been updated to evade detection"

and has now been discovered in 25 countries across the globe

Awesome detection evasion there. 10/10.

Dead quick

I have 12.3 running in a VirtualBox VM on the Win7 gaming box. Everything feels faster than the equivalent apps on the base Windows system.

"jam jars with rulers stuck to the side"

And will likely remain so for a while. The main difference these days is that fewer people are required to read the rulers due to the ubiquity of modern connected rain gauges or AWS.

Rain gauges, even the spiffy modern ones, are notoriously inaccurate for several reasons.

NB I did once enquire about a BoM-recommended AWS for home use but was told anything below $25k was a waste of time. If you live in the town with the highest rainfall in Aus (over 7 metres) you tend to pay attention to this stuff..

Good luck

Your articles were always a pleasure to read.

I'll get your coat.

Life moves so fast...

...I can remember the old days when Tesco specialised in horse meat lasagne.

It'll be insurance ads. Thank fuck for Adblock..

I buy more music now than I ever have

Not just music, but films and games too.

Just to clarify, none of this happened because of anything the music industry did to "stop piracy". The most likely reason is that I'm now exposed to more culture than at any time in the past. Not only that but I can choose where, when and what I am exposed to. This is despite the best efforts of the music industry to make the opposite true.

Meanwhile...

...the likes of Amazon, Google and scummy bankers get away with squillions while HMRC are busy with two oiks.

Still, something must be done, eh? Got to keep the Daily Mail readers happy.

He's quite right

The only thing you'll see in a high street in ten years* is a solitary pound shop with a tumbleweed blowing past.

Support your local shops. They have real jobs inside, real people with real knowledge of the products, not just some unskilled drones picking items from the racks in the latest mega warehouse.

*Possibly less.

"The device is called an EyePad not to primarily annoy Apple"

But it will help and that's surely a good thing.

Patents are a wondrous thing...

...because no one invented anything before patents existed.

"I've been hacked"

It's the "dog ate my homework" of the digital age.

Eric Huggers

Eric bloody Huggers. He seems to lurch from one badly thought out tech nightmare to another.

Not just Coke

Drink as little as six litres of plain old water in a few hours and you may die of water intoxication.

"Hey, Turkey...

....do what we say or we'll shut down your country with the flick of a switch."

Coldplay and Kesha?

There should have been an additional $10,000 fine on grounds of taste.

It's a very personal thing...

...But my own preference is Earl Grey left to stew until it's almost cold. No milk or sugar. Great in a hot climate.

Paper wins

I have roughly half a metric tonne of books. Not one has ever failed (apart from one I was reading in the bath and fell asleep). Not one has had a flat battery. Not one has had a blue screen of death. I've never dropped one and thought "shit, I've just lost my entire book collection" as it splintered across the floor. The publisher and retailer don't know when I read their books.

Long live dead trees.

It's good that Mozilla uses WebRTC...

...but Google seem to be using WebOrrrTC.

And do software people have any other adjectives than "great" and "awesome"?

"before returning safely to Earth"

That's not bad for a first attempt. Certainly better than some countries with bigger budgets managed.

Maps, schmaps, who stole my comms?

While the south east corner of Queensland was doing the usual headless chicken routine, the rest of the state was without internet, mobile and landline services. An area containing most of the largest cities outside of the capital were in a communication breakdown for 22 hours, and this is the middle of our nasty natural disaster season.

Even worse was that the media didn't report on this until 2pm when the failure occurred at 6pm the previous day. The only reason we found out then was that a journalist asked the state premier about it. The premier said "we didn't know about it until 6am this morning".

Words almost fail me.

And we had the same weather system hit us with flooding several days earlier.

This is cool

Something that lasts more than a week after the warranty expires.

A translation is required

"Microsoft has an ongoing commitment to collaborate with advocates, industry partners and governments worldwide to develop solutions and promote effective public policies that help protect people's online safety and privacy."

What this means in plain English is "Fuck off, we don't care".