I'm fairly sure I didn't have them turned on before that last batch, but they were on when I powered up this morning, and even though I'd turned them off again, the offending update kept trying to install itself and restart my system. I had to remove it again.

Thomas Disch, the sf writer, passed away recently, as many of you will know, and there was much quotage of John Clute on the subject:

"Because of his intellectual audacity, the chillingly distant mannerism of his narrative art, the austerity of the pleasures he affords, and the fine cruelty of his wit, Thomas M. Disch has been perhaps the most respected, least trusted, most envied and least read of all modern first-rank SF writers."

Which I can't help parsing as "his stuff was incomprehensible, uncomfortable, unpleasant and nasty, wasn't he great?" And that is such a typically Clutish sentiment. It certainly explains why I never had the slightest urge to read any Disch (though I can't see any reason I wouldn't have trusted him).

Pleb, me.