Microsoft DOS was a horrible, terrible, awful product. Why? It was a single-user product. If more than one user tried to use the system, it couldn’t distinguish them apart, let alone offer them a safe sharing environment (e.g. privacy).

Few realize that all of Wal-Mart stupidly ran all retail purchases on DOS (instead of, just for one easy example, CP/M-86). I can’t emphasize this enough. Wal-Mart intentionally put all its most sensitive customer data on a system with zero ability to protect customers from harms.

So unbelievably, incredibly negligent… Microsoft should have forfeited its profits to the millions of people harmed by Wal-Mart using DOS.

Remember?

None of us here are dictators (hopefully, and I doubt the CEO of Facebook comes here) meaning none of us live in a single-user world, so companies surely know (for over four decades already, or longer if we count time-share computers) they shouldn’t flog digital products that lack basic multi-user safety.

Alas, news is coming of the utterly inhumane and detatched Meta failing with their launch of a dictator-minded headset.

Part of the reason is that many shoppers aren’t comfortable trying one on in a store.

The headsets are prone to collect dirt and grime and smear your makeup. During the peak of the Covid-19 pandemic, people were especially resistant to put them on in stores, even though Meta paid to have cleaners on hand to sanitize the headsets between each use, said a former Meta employee who wasn’t authorized to speak publicly and asked not to be identified.

Dead as DOS.

The irony, naturally, is that Facebook is absolutely terrified of “inauthenticity” or sloppy collisions when identities are time-sharing their software platform. That interferes with profits (advertisers hate paying for duplication, as it’s basically fraud) so engineers have gone totally nuts over carving “real” differences into any software user identity. But then when it comes to human disease and even death from sharing bodily fluids… Facebook is all like “here’s a wipe and spray, who cares just slop your face together with someone else you don’t know”.

This is not the first time I’ve pointed to a major product design culture failure at Meta related to selfish unregulated greed (e.g. their “Incel” edition of RayBan glasses). It’s a deep-seated management problem related to their awful origin story (one man creating an unsafe space where he could coerce and control the thoughts of targeted women).

In other words, don’t enter or use Facebook unless you are the Facebook CEO. That’s a lesson as old as the very first vote to remove tyranny and replace it with representation.

I’ve previously discussed a global focus on Gaza relative to a lack of attention on violence elsewhere. It’s an issue that is having a direct and profound impact on upwards of 6 million displaced people around Sudan. This crisis in Africa, particularly highlighted in a stark new warning from the World Food Programme (WFP), appears to be so overlooked now that a reported 1.4 million people crossing the border to escape Sudan are on the brink of collapsed support systems.

In just the last six months of conflict in Sudan, as many refugees have fled into Chad as had crossed the border in the preceding 20 years starting from the outbreak of the Darfur crisis in 2003. This brings the total number of refugees in Chad to over a million, making the country host to one of the largest and fastest-growing refugee populations in the whole African continent.

[…]

Dwindling funding and soaring immense humanitarian needs, is forcing WFP into making brutal choices. In December, WFP will be forced to suspend assistance to internally displaced people and refugees from Nigeria, Central African Republic, and Cameroon due to insufficient funds. From January this suspension will be extended to 1.4 million people across Chad – including new arrivals from Sudan who will not receive food as they flee across the border.

Chad is one of the poorest countries in the world, and it’s been quietly facing millions of refugees who arrived in just the past few months to escape “ethnically motivated” violence against civilians.

The fighting between two rival military factions that had started in Khartoum in April rapidly spread to other parts of the country, including the western Darfur region where it reignited long-standing ethnic and inter-communal tensions. West Darfur State has become the epicentre of conflict in the region with reports of widespread violence against civilians.

The border town of Adre, Chad this year reported a population of 40,000 people. In just three months after April it had to take in more than 200,000 refugees.

Notably, the level of terrorist violence in the region of Chad is at an unbelievable high, which the Wilson Center earlier this year attributed in some part to… divisive effects of social media platforms as well as the presence of Russia.

The Sahel now accounts for 43 percent of the world’s terrorism deaths—more than South Asia and the MENA region combined. That percentage is on the rise. […] So why is this region particularly vulnerable to terrorism? Many are quick to blame ethnic and religious conflict made more destructive by the growing availability of weapons from outside the region. But there are other contributing factors that are fueling deeper stressors and frustrations within and between communities. Weather extremes, unpredictable growing cycles, desertification, and diminishing arable land all contribute to the sense of declining economic opportunity that many feel—especially the region’s youth. Instead of using their authority to resolve disputes and build inter-communal understanding, many political leaders, armed with social media, appear all too ready to exploit these pressures for their own political gain. […] The Russian paramilitary organization Wagner Group is… suspected of operating—or soon to be—in Burkina Faso and Chad.

To put that in perspective, in fifteen years the latitude just south of the Sahara Desert has risen from barely any terrorist activity to the most in the world. That’s the kind of alarming spread happening without sufficient attention, fueling the humanitarian crises, which I suspect time will show was linked to Hamas’ invasion of Israel and terrorist attacks on civilians.

It’s unclear why yet another known unsafe and dangerous driver was allowed to register a Tesla to operate it as a lethal weapon.

Vasu Laroiya, 24, of Iselin, N.J., faces 8⅓ to 25 years in state prison at his Jan. 26 sentencing under his guilty plea before Albany County Judge William Little. After leaving prison, Laroiya — who has two prior alcohol-related convictions in New Jersey — will have his driver’s license revoked. An ignition interlock device will be installed on his car.

Two prior convictions. And yet… a Tesla operator.

On May 28, 2022, Laroiya was driving recklessly on the northbound lanes of Interstate 87, near Exit 5, when his Tesla reached a speed of 156 mph. At the time, Laroiya was using his cellphone to make a Snapchat video. At about 10 p.m., he slammed his Tesla into Fisher’s Honda Civic.

Making a video of himself while driving recklessly is what the Tesla CEO has become known for as well.

This case reminds me of the infamous Oregon one, where a known dangerous and reckless driver with prior convictions operated his Tesla as a lethal weapon.

If you see a Tesla in public, police say to consider it like a loaded unholstered weapon in the hands of some nut drunk with power. And they are just describing the car’s software engineers…