buran77

Microsoft remembers that just a few short decades ago you'd pay a coin that was usually worth more than today's quarter to play at the arcade and got far less than an hour for it. You owned nothing and were happy for it.

A lot of big tech companies want to bring back those time because they believe the few decades in between where people owned and controlled their devices and software in a very open computing ecosystem were a mistake. So the aim now is to give you a device you pay for and use but never fully control, and software or media that you rent but never own.

> You can't make it illegal. The first amendment protects it.

I'm not a legal expert but the first amendment doesn't generally give the right to secretly record people, especially in places where there are already laws about hidden cameras, recording, privacy, etc.

It's not about the shape as much as the intention and execution.

> people are listening full blast to their phones with no headphones - I find this about 100x more obnoxious than filming

Two very different concerns. One is annoying in that very moment and has no lasting consequences. The other can have all kinds of consequences depending on what was secretly recorded, and where that recording was used.

> Was it ever not a meme?

Must have been on the first attempts, right? As the name suggests, a meme (mimesis) is about imitation but also propagation at scale, otherwise everything would be a meme. The first attempts count as original. Once it gets traction others could very well be genuine technical achievements but in an "also ran" format.

It's like a series where every episode follows the exact same blueprint with very minor changes to the details. It doesn't get old from the first couple of episodes, but it sure does in a few more.

And I was thinking exactly of the "Doom on pregnancy test" example myself but that's worse than average. If my memory serves me, that was a case of using just the plastic shell of a pregnancy test and replacing all the hardware.

At this point "runs Doom" is a meme and it runs its course.

To be clear I don't think the defrost schedule is the way the hackers enabled this or else every device would be affected. The older devices probably connect to the SaaS server in an insecure way and could be exploited en-masse.

> Surely the personnel on site are the ones best equipped to schedule the defrost cycles of their equipment?

The purpose of the automation is the same as always, to run at peak effectiveness and reduce human error. Most of the workers in this industry much like the fast food one, are low paid, low skill, receiving only basic training, with a high turnover rate, across tens of thousands of locations from major cities to somewhere in the sticks. Even a disgruntled employee can do a lot of damage that's only obvious too late. So this extra work is taken out of their hands. You should really see a lot of the machines the big fast food chains use, you'd be amazed.

This kind of decision was never left to the store manager. In the past they'd get a printout and probably fail to follow the instructions occasionally, which may or may not cause damage or increases operating costs across the entire fleet. Now it's done over the network like everything else, for better or worse.

> Adding fringe features that aren't actually necessary (or desired) has become a strange industrial compulsion.

> More features, generally, means more failure modes.

Here's the kicker, they are necessary and desired by the customer and the failure scenarios were almost definitely factored into their calculations. I know you had a solid 5-10 minutes of though on the topic but for supermarket chains that's how they manage to operate cheaper, that's how they don't increase the cost of the food.

And normally I'd agree (more) with you but the small scale of the hack makes me think they've done a decent job at securing them so far. Spending more on people and security to avoid any hack (right?), or losing efficiency over tens of thousands of locations costs more than the spoiled food.

> This still shouldn't be online.

This line suggests the units themselves were targeted individually with a hack:

> Danfoss said the affected cold units were older models whose security software could not be updated to ward off a risk they had identified.

But the problem with networked devices spread across tens of thousands of pretty much unguarded locations, surrounded by unvetted employees, but taking orders form a central location is that there is no such thing as "not online". They'll talk to the management server used to set up the nightly defrost schedules across the fleet. Even if they are in an isolated VLAN, it's always one step away from someone connecting a Pi to that network and off they go online. There's only so much zero-trust, NAC/802.1x and segmentation can do when some devices will be too old to support these and their network will be the entry point to the management server, then to the whole fleet.

I'm honestly very surprised that a couple of things things haven't happened yet: the central server for managing these fleets getting hacked and allowing access to the entire fleet, and/or the companies realizing that the only way to limit the reach of an attack is to physically not have the hardware needed to do remote control.

> When was the last time you changed the temperature setting on your fridge or freezer?

Then again when was the last time you opened your freezer hundreds of times during one day, letting humid air in and building ice at an accelerated rate? These units actively heat up the back of the freezer (evaporator plate) nightly to quickly melt the ice without warming up the food.

There is no reason to directly trigger it remotely but they probably work on a customizable schedule, to account for different store opening times, timezones, or freezer size and model. The hackers could target that schedule to make the defrost last longer.

Angry people are more likely to want to make themselves heard. But Windows' problem isn't technical, like performance, stability, compatibility, etc. It's actually great in some of those aspects. The problem is that Microsoft is working hard to shovel shit on top of what could be a great OS. That shit is the part aimed at extracting more from users for MS' benefit. That's not what an OS is supposed to be, certainly not a paid one.

"Only 7.89% of gamers unlocked this".