HiWire

It looks like Western Digital is having serious problems with its older SMR (Shingled Magnetic Recording) hard drives. High failure rates of Western Digital Blue and Red drives of 2-6TB have been reported: https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/hdds/wd-launches-investigation-into-problems-with-its-smr-hard-drives-the-same-drives-that-got-wd-sued-in-2021-now-reporting-failure-rates-due-to-fundamental-flaws

Would swapping out the rolling casters with footers improve the sound too?

David Lynch and video games:

Disney's lost special effect process:

Happy Birthday!

"Hello... is it me you're looking for?" https://tinypineapple.com/music/hot-shot-city-is-particularly-good

Nick Knight (1989) The unaired CBS pilot for the subsequent series Forever Knight (1992)

Happy Birthday!

Wild Palms (1993)

Bach Fugue in F minor, BWV 881

Happy Birthdays!

Albinoni & Corelli (Adagios & Concerti) Musica Amphion & Pieter-Jan Belder, conductor

Patrick Leonard - It All Comes Down to Mood

Abandoned Japanese island:

Ubuntu 25.10 was just released (October 9), too - probably worth upgrading the test system eventually (in my experience, new releases are very buggy for the first 4-6 months) - alternatively, Ubuntu 25.04 or the older 24.04 LTS will be more stable: https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2025/10/ubuntu-25-10-new-features And of course, Flatpak doesn't work out of the gate: https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2025/10/flatpak-broken-ubuntu-25-10-apparmor-bug For what it's worth, I am tech-scared too.

Installing Windows 11 without a Microsoft Account - they make it annoying as usual (Windows 11 Pro only):

Old DOS games on PC speaker, Ad Lib, and Roland MT-32 part 2 (skip the long preambles if you lived through the era - yes, we know Macs and Amigas had better sound):

RIP, Dame Jilly Cooper

Chase by Giogio Moroder from the Midnight Express (1978) soundtrack:

Happy Birthday, and I hope you're "back" in action soon.

Happy Birthday!

The high rate of attrition in RTing's long-term CNN torture test makes me leery of buying new televisions:

Valuing an antique violin and comparing it to a Stradivarius - Nora Ali for Dynamo: and pipe organs:

Happy Birthday!

The Ars Technica review of macOS 26 Tahoe - Liquid Glass looks redundant and obtrusive, nothing else seems to be a must-have yet, probably the last version to support Intel Macs: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2025/09/macos-26-tahoe-the-ars-technica-review/