For ntsc vhs players it wasnt a component in the vcr that was made for copy protection. They would add garbled color burst signals. This would desync the automatic color burst sync system on the vcr.

CRT TVs didn’t need this component but some fancy tvs would also have the same problem with macrovission.

The color burst system was actually a pretty cool invention from the time broadcast started to add color. They needed to be able stay compatible with existing black and white tv.

The solution was to not change the black and white image being sent but add the color offset information on a higher frequency and color TVs would combine the signals.

This was easy for CRT as the electron beam would sweep across the screen changing intensity as it hit each black and white pixel.

To display color each black and white pixel was a RGB triangle of pixels. So you would add small offset to the beam up or down to make it more or less green and left or right to adjust the red and blue.

Those adjustment knobs on old tvs were in part you manually targeting the beam adjustment to hit the pixels just right.

VCRs didn’t usually have these adjustments so they needed a auto system to keep the color synced in the recording.

It was clearly an attack. By who is unknown.

Notably this was in 2003 before git (2005) so linux source was in a central bitkeeper repo. So a commit with no associated data about who did it should not have been possible.

Here is a more detailed article. https://lwn.net/Articles/57135/

It was caught and never made it in the kernel.

Years ago there was a commit to the Linux kernal that strangly had no author. This got some attention of several of the developers.

Looking into the code that had to deal with network transmission. there was a section that if you tried to get network access in a unusual way had a check that was written something like this.

If (usr_permission = ROOT) … Instead of If (usr_permission == ROOT) …

The first giving the user root if invoked and the second checking to see if the user was root.

It’s widely thought this was the NSA or some other intelligence agency trying to backdoor lin Linux.

Taxes in the US for crypto are easy. I sold some crypto I had and just put the amount in the other income box and paid the tax.

If you are trying to steel credentials from people with power and money passengers in first class are a good target.

Where else are you going to find a cluster of people like that that are using the wifi and are going to be there for hours. It’s about as optimal as I can think of.

Even better if you are targeting a spefic company. Just pick flights out of the headquarters for that company.

If you want to attack say Microsoft pick a flight from Seattle to DC. Pretty good odds of a Microsoft high up being on the flight and wanting to use the wifi for work.

Tesla is not private. He borrowed a huge amount against his Tesla shares to buy twitter. That’s one of the reasons he wanted that giant bonus. He needs the money to keep paying off the loans.

Yeah should have that. Mornings are hard.

Electrolytic capacitors use the chemistry to make a very high dielectric allowing the plates to get very close and increase the capacitance and decrease the size.

A cell in a battery is a capacitor then converts the charge on the plates into chemical energy and vice versa allowing much more energy storage and a flat operating range as the plates charge is replenished by the chemical reaction.

This article doesn’t go into details but it sounds like the breakthrough is a much better dialectic then storing energy in a chemical reaction.