Another round of the semi-annual link clearance.

• Testing informercial workout systems.
• Understanding the Galaga No-Fire cheat.
• Fixing E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial for the Atari 2600.
• Reasons My Son Is Crying.
• A technical look at the Win32 thread pool.
• Creative usernames and Spotify account hijacking. This is a fascinating security issue caused by a helper library erroneously assuming that the Unicode specification will never change. It’s also one of the nightmare scenarios for backward compatibility: A change in behavior silently introduces a security vulnerability into existing code.

And, as always, the obligatory plug for my column in TechNet Magazine:

• The $700 pagers
• Hiding in plain sight
• Respect the brand
• The mystery key

The retirement of TechNet Magazine also spells the end of the Windows Confidential column, so this is the last of the obligatory plugs, at least until I have some other obligatory thing to plug.