This is an extremely important post. The wellbeing of tech workers is not important to anyone. Only short-term profits matter. Sustainability is irrelevant.
I believe, he might have stored some solvent in the vicinity of the cable.
Anyway it won't affect the optical performance of the cables. It's just the loss of mechanical protection.
The disintegrating sheathing could be repaired by shrink tubing, which is more convenient than by wrapping it up in tape.
Ingenious! Now imagine an M$ ad:
"Are you forced to work with Linux?
Do you miss the convenience of Microsoft spying on you and keeping track of everything?
Fear not! This amazing tool will bring back all those great Windows Recall features that you have been missing: WINDOWS 11"
I don´t see the relation to this debate. HAM Radio communications do not need encryption, as they have a fully different purpose. You would not discuss private/sensitive matters anyway as the whole thing is just a hobby/learning/experimentation or sport. Your life´s important decisions don´t depend on this type of communication.
Besides, I think one of the most important motivations behind this restriction is to avoid misusing frequencies for commercial purposes.
I´m living in the middle of a city, and PM2.5 levels get very high at times. We are way above the yearly 5ug/m3 recommendation. So I just bought a lot of air purifiers (just HEPA, everything else commercially available is useless) and they get switched on if the levels get high (via HomeAssistant). I have a device in the garden and another inside, so I am monitoring the difference on a regular basis. I optimize (manually, no fancy data crunching) for low noise produced by the filters and low <2-3ug/m3 PM2.5 values indoors. I don´t have forced ventilation, so I need to know how much do I open the windows to get humidity and VOCs down, while not letting in too much smog. Sounds more complicated than it really is.
You can get the same measurements and even more from AirGradient. Those are a bit cheaper and much more solid devices. Not so focused on design, but rather on accuracy:
https://www.airgradient.com
I´m not affiliated with them in any way, but I´m using their indoor and outdoor sensors since a few years by now, and I am very satisifed. Btw. their HW is opensource and you can choose between their SW or can flash anything else.
The measurement data of my outdoor sensor is publicly available:
https://explore.openaq.org/?location=2070168#13.21/48.22244/...