Notices by Ed Bott (edbott@mastodon.social)

Microsoft's most important anti-piracy platform has been cracked. Anyone can get free activations for Windows and Office, thanks to some open-source PowerShell scripts.

https://www.zdnet.com/article/can-you-really-get-windows-and-office-for-free-these-hackers-say-yes/

You're going to see a bunch of stories today based on Statcounter monthly reports. Here's why you shouldn't believe them.

(Tech reporters who write this stuff really need to take some basic statistics courses.)

https://www.zdnet.com/article/its-time-for-another-round-of-statcounter-stories-heres-why-you-shouldnt-believe-them/

I am happy to see a mainstream media outlet covering Trump's insane blathering about budgets and properly labeling it as "outlandish promises."

(gift link)

https://wapo.st/3AUCFLg

The rollout of Microsoft's new AI-powered Recall feature was supposed to be a triumph for the new Copilot+ PCs. Instead, it's been a colossal embarrassment, and the latest schedule change isn't helping.

https://www.zdnet.com/article/as-microsoft-breaks-awkward-silence-around-its-controversial-recall-feature-privacy-questions-remain/

How it started / How it's going

2002: CNET buys Ziff-Davis for $1.6 billion

2024: Ziff-Davis buys CNET for $100 million

Your modern media landscape in a nutshell.

"Peter Thiel started the bank run. All of his companies got their money out. Most of their competitors did not get their money out. Many of those competitors might not have survived the week of the FDIC hadn’t stepped in. ...

"I’m not saying he nefariously intended to bring the bank down in order to gain an advantage over his competitors. ... But the practical outcome would have been a massive, literal bank error in Peter Thiel’s favor."

https://davekarpf.substack.com/p/three-thoughts-on-silicon-valley

@briankrebs

Even if you had made it through the first five episodes, Episode 6 would have destroyed you.

(FWIW, I think the show is a masterpiece but I also understand how it could be painful for some.)

@glennf @sfoskett @briankrebs

Brian and Glenn, you might want to watch The Bear S2E4, "Honeydew," as a palate cleanser. It is an absolutely gorgeous, unstressful, almost meditational episode, directed by Ramy Youssef, with one character (Marcus) going to Copenhagen to learn some chef skills and getting more in the way of life lessons while he's there. After a small amount of stress at the start of the ep, it's all Zen.

There's shameless, and then there's this:

"The [Georgia Republican] party’s new first vice-chair, conservative talk show host Brian Pritchard, has claimed the 2020 election was 'stolen' even as he faces charges of voting illegally nine times while serving a felony sentence. He’s said he's done nothing wrong."

They didn't have room for these other headlines from last night:

"1 dead, 6 injured in shooting at Mississippi restaurant"

"One dead, five injured as a result of shooting in Chico, California"

Maybe a picture will help.

Good morning from the land of guns. This is the front page of today's Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Look at what's at the bottom of the page.

This exchange about content moderation on Substack Notes is almost painful to watch. What's even worse than the embarrassing flailing is the fact that Substack CEO Chris Best wasn't prepared with an answer to a question that every online publisher should expect to have to deal with daily.

https://www.tiktok.com/@decoderpod/video/7221602731998498094

Once again, @JuliusGoat has written something worth reading.

"It’s almost gotten to be boring, the degree to which people believe that what they refer to as 'free speech' should not only allow them to say whatever they want (which it does), but should also prevent other people from understanding them to be the sort of person who says those things."

"People like Scott Adams claim they're being silenced. But what they actually seem to object to is being understood."

https://armoxon.substack.com/p/the-case-for-shunning

It was the best of times, it was the ...

No. Wait. It wasn't the best of times at all.

Down for everyone or just Elon?

One thing I have learned in 30+ years of covering the tech industry is that there are two immutable truths:

* Change takes longer than you think it will.

* The change that looks like it will happen will happen, eventually, and it will be more dramatic than you think.

Twitter is going to collapse, thanks to its new shitlord.

I would really like to quote-tweet this, adding my 2 cents and amplifying Taylor's words.

But I can't. And that's unfortunate.

One of the greatest "How it started/how it's going" examples, EVER.

(via Peter Kafka)

I loved @mmasnick's takedown of the "Twitter Files" story. My only complaint is that it's too long for the target audience.

So I did a tl;dr version:

https://edbott.substack.com/p/everything-you-know-about-the-twitter?sd=pf

Nice work, Jack. Your buddy Elon has turned Twitter into 8Chan.