The days ahead were bright but vexxing.
People I knew at IBM, just up the road a few miles in Armonk or at the Watson lab a little farther away in Yorktown Heights, had all moved around. The famous “Blue Ninja,” Lee Reiswig (whom I just found out died a few months ago; RIP) was nowhere to be found. The IBM people I could get on the phone, young, enthusiastic, soulless IBM drones, were now saying to use Windows of all things.
The idea of trying to build a privacy-respecting television box took root when I heard of something called Plasma Bigscreen. “Plasma Bigscreen is an open-source user interface for TV's [sic]. Running on top of a Linux distribution, Plasma Bigscreen turns your TV or setup-box into a fully hackable device,” says its website, linked above. “A big launcher giving you easy access to any installed apps and skills. Controllable via voice or TV remote.”
Your television is spying on you, as mine is spying on me. This is true unless you are watching only programs via broadcast signal and receive them through an antenna — and maybe you’re having your information collected even then.
In the spring of odd-numbered years, it’s my task to upgrade the operating systems on my computers. It sometimes goes uneventfully.