MaDeuce

You're spot on. The IBM XT was introduced immediately after I graduated and went to work. My employer's employees got a 20% discount from IBM, as IBM was a client. I bought an XT (PC + 10MB hard drive) for $4K (list price $5K). A lot of money then for a new grad. The contrast between then and now is stunning.

And software costs... this was also the era when every "application" (think accounting software: accounts payable, payroll, accounts receivable, word processing) was $495 per application. A small business could easily pay $2-5K for basic software to run their business. And then, of course, it was a nightmare to setup and use and almost impossible to pull off without a "consultant".

But VisiCalc -- it was such a game changer. A totally different way of using a PC that enabled the "ordinary" non-computer person to become an order of magnitude more productive. I think Lotus 123 was the pinnacle of golden era of keyboard-driven spreadsheets, but it was only an incremental improvement over VisiCalc. The journey into the abyss began with Lotus Symphony.

I do like Excel and use it on occasion. But I pine for the days of lean software that did one thing exceptionally well.

One of my favorites is "Zippy the pinhead" quotes (M-x yow). I believe this has been removed due to copyright issues, but it is still available if you look. Zippy's quotes could be sent to the doctor via M-x psychoanalyze-pinhead.

Not the OP, but my experience with Lyme 25+ years ago in New Jersey was similar. I took oral and IV antibiotics over multiple years. The antibiotics I recall taking are Claforan, Ceftin, Augmentin, Penicillin, Ampicillin, Rocephin, Doxycycline, Azithromycin.

While my symptoms would often improve during/after a course of IV antibiotics, they would always return. I don't ever recall thinking that one of them was what cured me. It was more like the symptoms gradually tapered off over years. I do, however, credit my MD's willingness to aggressively treat the symptoms with my eventual recovery.

Interestingly, both my MD and his wife (also an MD) had Lyme, as did at least one of their children. My advice to people who think they have Lyme is to seek out a physician that has experience in treating Lyme and a willingness to do so. At the time, there was a lot of pressure in the medical community to simply give two weeks of oral doxycycline and then tell the patient that they have to live with whatever remains.

Nor did I. I've been using gimp a few times a year for 15+ years -- i.e., never enough to build much muscle memory. Your suggestions will make a huge difference for me.

Probably not. A hardware description language (HDL) is used to program the behavior of the FPGA (that's the FP in FPGA). The HDL is usually stored in flash or EEPROM. As you mention, flash supports a finite number of writes; I'm not sure about EEPROM behavior. The bottom line is that the typical FPGA can only be programmed a fixed number of times (e.g., I think Altera is ~100). Some FPGAs can only be programmed once.

Same thought here. I was imagining that some sort of timing analysis / fingerprinting could possibly be going on.

But to what end? A valid password is a valid password whether it comes from user that takes 2 minutes to type it in, a password manager, or a bot.

In my opinion, the title is a little unfortunate. I almost didn't click on it, as I was expecting a video of someone putting an apple laptop in a blender or some such. It isn't that at all.

Rather, it's actually quite interesting and well done. The presenter goes through the process of diagnosing and repairing a dead keyboard and trackpad on an apple laptop. The owner was quoted $750 for the repair. He determines that the problem is caused by a single bad resistor. There is good, high quality microscope video of him removing and replacing the SMD resistor.

If you aren't familiar with how all this is done but have an interest, it's worth a watch.

The laptop is really a bit of a red herring. If the person is the sort that would be inclined to retaliate against the company, they could have taken a copy of the pii whether or not the laptop was in the picture.

You could offer them payment for signing a severance agreement. You would do this in recognition of their significant contributions to date. The agreement would reiterate that they are bound by their existing NDA, explicitly state that they have fully deleted any company info/files that they may have had in their possession, acknowledge that disclosure of any private company info could have significant negative impact on the company, and could possibly include non-disparagement wording.