“Kristi Noem’s an idiot, right? Like, she went on TV before any of the facts were in. She made up this story on TV about ICE agents trying to dig their truck out of the snow or something, which was clearly false. Like she didn’t even realize that there was gonna be video of what happened when she went up and gave a false story.”

— Rep. Seth Magaziner (D-RI), quoted by Mediaite.

Collecting fallen (or "shed") elk antlers is a popular pastime in elk-heavy places like Montana, but it's usually a pretty low-tech, on-the-ground affair. That's why last year's story about a US Black Hawk helicopter descending from the skies to harvest shed elk antlers on a ranch was such an odd one.

Was it really possible that US military personnel were using multimillion-dollar government aircraft to land on private property in the Crazy Mountains—yes, that's their actual name—just to grab some antlers valued at a few hundred bucks?

Antler hunt

In May 2025, Montana rancher Linda McMullen received a call from a neighbor. "He said, 'Linda, there’s a green Army helicopter landed on your place, picking up elk antlers,’” McMullen told The New York Times last year. “I said, ‘Are you joking?’ He said, ‘I’m looking at them with binoculars.’”

The local sheriff, who said he was "still trying to figure all this out" at the time, added that this was "the first helicopter I've heard of" regarding shed antler collection.

The Adjutant General for the Montana National Guard, J. Peter Hronek, quickly issued a statement on Facebook "regarding unauthorized use of military aircraft."

In it, Hronek said that he was "aware of an alleged incident involving a Montana Army National Guard helicopter landing on private property without authorization" and that "an internal investigation is underway, and appropriate adverse and/or administrative action will take place if the allegations are determined to be true." The Black Hawk was apparently on a training flight at the time.

The three servicemen on the chopper were eventually charged in Sweet Grass County Court with trespassing. They all pleaded not guilty. This week, pilot Deni Draper changed his plea to "no contest," allowing sentencing to go forward without a trial (but without actually admitting guilt).

According to local reporting, prosecutors had evidence that "no trespassing signs were posted on McMullen's property" and that "Draper admitted to Montana game warden Austin Kassner that he piloted the helicopter and decided to land it." In addition to the neighbor's testimony, "helicopter tire indentations and exhaust marks in the grass" were present at the site of the alleged landing.

The judge has accepted the change of plea and hit Draper with a $500 fine—the maximum penalty. So long as Draper stays out of trouble for the next six months, he will avoid further fines and jail time.

As for the antlers themselves, they are currently held by Montana Fish, Wildlife, and Parks but could go back to McMullen once cases against the other two servicemembers are resolved.

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Recall that Microspeak is not merely for jargon exclusive to Microsoft, but it’s jargon that you need to know to survive at Microsoft.

The term big rocks was introduced by Stephen Covey in the book The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, which I suspect is very popular among senior executives, because senior executives aspire to become highly effective people.

In its original formulation, the concept of big rocks was used as a metaphor for time management: the metaphor is that you have a jar with large rocks inside it, stacked up to the brim. Is the jar full? But you can pour pebbles and sand into the jar to fill the gaps between the big rocks. The lesson is that you were able to fit everything into the jar if you put the big rocks in first. If you had started with the pebbles and sand, then there wouldn’t be space for the rocks. In terms of time management, the lesson is to deal with the biggest, most important things (the big rocks) first. If you spend time on the smaller things, you will find that there’s no room for the big things.

However, that’s not always what it means at Microsoft.

As I look over various types of documents, the meaning of big rocks as top priorities tends to predominate in senior executive documents.

These are the Big Rock priorities that have been determined by senior leadership.

And I was fortunate to find a document that opened with a definition.

The Nosebleed Big Rocks are the top business critical programs in our division.

However, as you go lower in the hierarchy and interact with people who do not keep a copy of The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People on their nightstand, the term big rocks tends to be used to mean the big problems that need to be solved in order for the project to succeed.

Again, I was able to find a document that included a definition.

Big Rocks: A list of technical challenges that we need to solve.

Bonus chatter: My theory (which has yet to be well-tested) is that if a speaker uses the term big rocks in a presentation, you can tell which definition the speaker is using by looking at the clip art they put on the slide. If it’s a bunch of boulders, then they use it to mean that it’s a problem to be solved. If it’s a jar, then they use it to mean a priority goal.

Narrator: It’s never a jar.

The post Microspeak: Big rocks appeared first on The Old New Thing.

In 2002, Bryan Fleming helped to create pcTattletale, software for monitoring phone and computer usage. Fleming's tool would record everything done on the target device, and the videos would be uploaded to a server where they could be viewed by the pcTattletale subscriber.

This might sound creepy, but it can also be legal when used by a parent monitoring their child or an employee monitoring their workers. These are exactly the use cases that were once outlined on pcTattletale's website, where the software was said to have "helped tens of thousands of parents stop their daughters from meeting up with pedophiles." Businesses can "track productivity, theft, lost hours, and more." Even "police departments use it for investigating."

But this week, nearly 25 years after launching pcTattletale, Fleming pled guilty in federal court to having knowingly built and marketed software to spy on other adults without their consent. In other words, pcTattletale was often used to spy on romantic partners without their knowledge—and Fleming helped people do it.

When you're sleeping

It's unclear when pcTattletale began marketing itself as a tool for catching cheaters, but Fleming's original business partner left the company in 2011, and Fleming ran things himself from his home in a northern Detroit suburb.

In 2021, Vice reported that pcTattletale was leaking the sensitive data it collected. The story quoted marketing materials about using the tool to catch a "cheating spouse," which required users to know their spouse's "pass-code and have access to the phone for about 5 minutes. The best time to do this is when they are sleeping." The company also provided instructions to hide icons that might reveal that pcTattletale was running on the victim's phone.

A look through archived versions of the pcTattletale site on the Wayback Machine shows that by 2022, pcTattletale had added numerous "cheating" links to its footers and featured multiple blog posts on ways to "catch your boyfriend cheating." These explicitly directed people to use the "unlock code to your boyfriend's phone" to install "the pcTattletale spy app" in order to "watch everything he does on his phone." One entry even noted that people being spied on in this way are unlikely to be happy about it, and users should "expect him to lash back at you over putting the spy app on his phone. It can really turn the tables."

Around this same time, federal investigators in California had launched an investigation into "stalkerware," and pcTattletale was among their targets. It also looked like a site where an arrest might not be too difficult, since Fleming operated out of the US and made no real attempts to hide his location. (Indeed, older versions of the pcTattletale website said explicitly that "Fleming Technologies" was based in Bruce Township, Michigan.) As a government investigator put it, "many of the other [stalkerware] websites under investigation involve targets who are believed to be overseas. For this reason, it is unrealistic to believe that the targets will soon be apprehended."

But Fleming was easy enough to find, and investigators soon obtained copies of his email account. It contained plenty of support requests in this vein: "Also if there is a way to NOT let user know you are taking screen shot that would be helpful too. My husband knows when there is screen shot being taken as it beeps. He is now suspicious of something being on his phone."

Despite being repeatedly told that people were using his product to spy on others without their consent, Fleming helped them with tech support.

A government investigator even opened up an affiliate marketing account for pcTattletale, and Fleming reached out to offer ready-made banner ads with text like “pcTattletale Cheating Husband? #1 catch a cheater spy tracker" and "pcTattletale Husband Cheating? Best Catch a Cheater Spy App."

Fleming noted in an email that pcTattletale was more successful when marketed at women, because "There are a lot more women wanting to catch their man then [sic] the other way around." Financial records showed that Fleming was selling around 1,200 pcTattletale subscriptions a year at anywhere from $99 to $300.

Based on all this, the government obtained a search warrant in late 2022 and raided the Bruce Township home where Fleming lived.

In 2024, TechCrunch reported that pcTattletale was hacked and much of its data was leaked. Apparently, hackers had gained access to the company's private keys for the Amazon Web Services account where most of the video data created by the app was stored. Fleming claimed at the time that his company was “out of business and completely done” after the breach.

The feds eventually charged Fleming with selling a product while "knowing or having reason to know" that the software was "primarily useful for the purpose of the surreptitious interception of wire, oral, or electronic communications." This week in California, Fleming pled guilty to a single count and was released on his own recognizance while awaiting sentencing.

One piece of stalkerware is off the market; unfortunately, many others remain, and their owners and operators are often harder to find.

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I’m no sociologist, but it feels like eating in the car is one of the most American things a person can do. From nostalgic drive-ins to omnipresent drive-throughs, the car and food have long shared a link. While Kirby’s Pig Stand pioneered the concept of four-wheeled dining, In-N-Out’s introduction of a drive-through two-way speaker system laid the blueprint for grabbing a bite on the road. However, without a tray, eating in a car can be messy. Before the fold-out armrest table in the Ford F-150, before the Fisker Ocean’s taco tray, there was the fourth-generation Toyota 4Runner and its clever pair of little tables.

It’s no surprise that some foods are easier to eat on the go than others. A couple of years ago, we ran a test of the best and worst foods to eat while driving, and it shouldn’t be surprising that say, a McDonald’s cheeseburger fared a lot better than biryani. Really, eating anything behind the wheel is a bit distracting, so the safest way to grab a bite in the car is to park up. However, depending on what you’re eating, you’ll want room to spread out, and Toyota thought of this.

The fourth-generation 4Runner was a landmark model in many ways. It was the first and only 4Runner to be offered with a V8, the first 4Runner to feature available third-row seats, and the first 4Runner to offer hydraulically interlinked dampers. However, the real innovation we’re talking about today is a pair of elements that enhanced everyday quality of life.

If you look carefully at the lid of the center console, you’ll notice a horizontal gap running across it. Subtle, but if you fold the front section of the console lid towards the front of the vehicle, you reveal a modestly sized flat surface. Textured to provide a little bit of grip and about the right size for a Whopper, this little touch meant owners didn’t have to eat their fast food out of their laps. Sure, a maximum rated capacity of 2.2 pounds isn’t enormous, but it should be enough for a regular slop bowl or even a KFC Double Down. That’s a huge deal in the realm of in-car dining.

Even better, rear seat passengers weren’t left without a tray of their own, provided there was nobody in the middle seat, and the 4Runner in question wasn’t equipped with a third row. Tucked away beneath the armrest-mounted slide-out cup holders sat a slide-out tray, built mightier than the one up front. This tray was rated to support 4.4 pounds, which meant it could take the weight of even an enormous burrito.

Of course, the second-biggest challenge to eating in a car beyond preventing bits of food from getting everywhere is having a tidy place to store any leftover packaging. Unsurprisingly, Toyota thought of that too. On the back of the center console sat this fold-out hoop with a couple of hooks in it, which seems strange until you approach it with a plastic bag. Yep, it’s a trash holder, and the handles of a plastic bag are meant to fit in the hooks of the hoop. This way, you should be able to avoid having a McDouble wrapped with a melted glob of cheese on it slide deep beneath the front seats to the point where it’s smelled before it’s seen. Oh, and the requirement of a plastic bag prevents any weird residue issues the little bin in the later Volvo XC40 might invite.

So, shoutout to the 2003 to 2009 Toyota 4Runner for its contributions to the act of dining on the go. While I’d still choose a picnic blanket and a scenic vista whenever convenient, a tray or two does sound nice when it’s absolutely pelting down with rain or snow and the nearest dining room isn’t exactly a place you’d like to be.

Top graphic images: Cars & Bids Bally/Midway

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