Unfortunately devices like the VuPoint - while low cost and accessible - deliver impressively terrible results. It’s a composite to usb converter which will fail to handle delinterlacing and get the colors wrong.
The best bet for people who aren’t going to build a domesday duplicator (which decodes the VHS signal in software), is to stick to technology from the era. Such as later released VHS players which had FireWire out or could even burn a dvd.
Apple has, AFAICT, never required automatic updates. I just checked the iOS 26 settings, and sure enough, I have both download and install automatically turned off. So it is possible.
Another interesting thing about WW2 mail - they would photograph letters onto microfilm, then reprint them on the other end to save valuable shipping capacity.
If your phone supports WiFi calling and dual SIM, you can get a data-only eSIM for the country you're visiting and you'll receive texts for your primary line over the data connection of the secondary eSIM.
It is not a win. In a recent study, Robinhood with Citadel has the worst price improvement (execution quality) of any brokerage on the market. I’ve personally observed this - Robinhood might “improve” by 1/10 of a cent from NBBO while Fidelity is frequently closer to the mid.
One example of it being useful is unchecked std::variant access in c++ - there isn’t any api to access it like a union (if you already know the type) but you can mark the wrong type path unreachable to the same effect.