SirEDCaLot

Yeah this is why I don't use Plex.

At one point I installed it on my NAS. It goes through the setup, and then says I need to make a cloud account. Wtf? I am running locally hosted software on locally hosted hardware to access locally hosted files. Why do I need any cloud for this?

I don't. I uninstalled it.

Yeah exactly. I tried to set it up once, installed it on a NAS box, and it starts talking about me making a cloud account. Why do I need a cloud account to log into my own hardware on my own network?

I do not want the cloud
I do not need the cloud
I will say it very loud
No cloud, no cloud, no cloud.

But apparently it's set up so the only way to log into your own locally hosted software on your own locally hosted hardware is with an external cloud account.

To that I said no thank you and uninstalled it.

Oh of course. For them and their OEM partners too. Nobody else benefits from throwing 2-5 generations of perfectly functional hardware in the fucking trash.

That all said though, Microsoft has been one of the biggest pushes behind replacing passwords with more secure authentication. And TPM does play a role in that. Certainly not the driving factor for throwing away millions of perfectly good computers though.

This is true. But that's also true of almost any execution method. IE, someone who would die of lethal injection would move in the restraints and try to make it hard to inject them.

Actually with nitrogen it's not tricky at all.
Gas chambers use toxic cyanide gas which is extremely painful to breathe in. After the execution the corpse has to be decontaminated so it does not poison mortuary workers. This is not a good system.

The air you are breathing right now is about 80% nitrogen (and 20% oxygen). Nitrogen is all around us. You breathe it with every breath. It is harmless and non-toxic.
Execution by nitrogen does not kill the prisoner because they are breathing nitrogen. It kills the prisoner because breathing 100% nitrogen means they are not breathing any oxygen. Our bodies need a constant flow of oxygen to survive. Remove that, even by simply displacing all the oxygen with a harmless substitute, and the person dies.

Thus if done correctly, all you really need is a breathing mask. You can have other people right next to the prisoner during the execution and they will suffer no ill effect as long as the room is generally ventilated.

For somebody that actually wants to be dead, nitrogen is the most painless method I am aware of. The key is breathe 100% nitrogen little or no recycled breath or atmosphere air, and have this continue for several minutes. There is no choking sensation or pain. You just get light-headed and pass out and eventually die of hypoxia.

Look at this video. This guy is training to be a fighter pilot. They put you in a high altitude chamber to create hypoxic effects so you know what to recognize when you're in the air. Fighter pilots breathe pure oxygen delivered through a series of regulators, gang load your regulator means manually select maximum flow rate on all regulators. So the point of this training is to recognize when you get hypoxic so you can crank up your oxygen.
Point is though, that guy isn't suffering. He's having a blast. He will keep holding up the wrong card and calling it four of spades all day. But that is what happens when the brain is starved of oxygen. If they reduce the oxygen level even farther in that chamber he would pass out, high enough and he would eventually die from it. Breathing 100% nitrogen at sea level does the exact same thing.

One assisted suicide group built a sort of death pod around this concept. I'm sure you can find it on Google. But the basic concept is it's an enclosure and when you push a button on the inside, a liquid nitrogen tank in the base starts delivering gaseous nitrogen to the pod in enough quantity to push away any CO2 you exhale. They put a ton of research into it, like it has safety interlocks and override switches and I think it can even play music.

For whatever it's worth, I hope you never have reason to make use of this information. I believe all life is precious.
But I also think that for somebody with a degenerative disease who's quality of life is going downhill who absolutely 100% is not going to get better, I think the option of choosing to die with dignity rather than suffer for a few more years in an expensive hospital in constant pain is something that should be available. I think that's a very personal decision and there's nobody on the fucking planet who has any right to make it for anyone other than themself.

I really wish there was something regulatory that could be done about this. There are millions of perfectly good fully working computers that are going to go in the fucking trash because of this. I understand the desire for a TPM on every machine. It makes sense in a way. But the pure environmental impact is just indefensible. All of those computers had a significant environmental footprint to build them and ship them and again to dispose of them plus building and shipping their replacements.
If Microsoft had such a hard-on for TPM, they should have worked with computer manufacturers to make some sort of retrofit system or way of easily determining if a TPM can be added to an existing computer

Absolutely 100%. I think basic self-defense should be a required course in middle school or high school, especially for women. And I would encourage any woman or any person for that matter to take charge of their personal defense, in whatever way is most comfortable for them. Carry a gun, carry a taser, carry pepper spray, take martial arts classes like Krav, etc.

There's two things going on here.
As a pilot, I'm familiar with hypoxia and how it works. I or pretty much any other pilot could very quickly write a completely bulletproof execution protocol that would guarantee a 100% painless death every time. It would involve a non-rebreathing 100% nitrogen mask so every lungful taken is 100% fresh nitrogen. In this mode, you just get drowsy and euphoric and pass out with no physical pain.

If they ask me to write it, I don't care if they offer a million dollars I wouldn't do it. I think the death penalty is barbaric and the way we have applied it is even worse, given how there are numerous instances of people executed despite evidence they were innocent being blocked by court procedure and prosecutors. I'm not saying there aren't people the world is better off without, there absolutely are. But if we are going to kill people, we need to be absolutely 100% totally fucking sure beyond any doubt regardless of procedure. So I will not support the death penalty.

And that brings us to the two issues.
First is that very few people who actually understand how to do it have any interest in writing good execution protocol. Thus a lot of the protocols are written by people without understanding of human physiology. And quite frankly, I would rather that be the case, if only so it is easier to challenge capital punishment.

Second, is that I think some of the people who write these protocols actually want to cause suffering. I say I'm a pilot so I have understanding of hypoxia, but none of my knowledge is unique or difficult to obtain. A quick Google for 'painless death nitrogen' would tell you everything you need to know.
So when I hear that the condemned is breathing his own CO2 from a bag, I conclude that either whoever wrote the protocol doesn't have Google, or they are intentionally writing a protocol that will look good on paper but cause suffering in reality. Or the protocol is being implemented in such a way to cause suffering, for example if the nitrogen flow is not enough. An executioner could easily prolong suffering by simply using less nitrogen, causing the prisoner to breathe CO2 and thus feel panic reaction.

But I think that further illustrates why the death penalty is a bad idea. The fact that the entire stack from prison guard up to Governor isn't 100% focused on a humane death sense to me we need to clean our own house before we start burning others.

Problem starts earlier in life. I know someone who is a teacher in lower school. Ask the kids to make a presentation and literally in 90 seconds you will have a PowerPoint with 15 slides full of pictures and embedded video. Ask them to write one slide of text and they'll struggle to put three sentences together.

Reason is pretty simple, a lot of the parents never read to their kids. They grew up on iPads. Video is the medium they are accustomed to. And so they struggle with written information.

This is disappointing for Rossman. I like his content a lot and he's on the right page, but I think he's big enough that he needs to start adopting some journalistic standards. For example, if he reads that some company is doing something stupid, at least bothered to call them and ask for a comment before he drags them through the mud on his channel.

Exactly. I would extend that and the article's premise to say, tech isn't innately good or bad, it is just a tool that can be applied in good or bad ways. For example at his cafe, a QR code ordering system could have been optional for those who prefer it, and could be easily implemented without collecting any personal data. And that could actually be a positive thing for those who want to reorder without getting up or who have social anxiety. But by forcing all customers into this confusing and privacy invading system, the tech becomes a bad thing.

The villain of that story is not tech. The villains are the online ordering company that decided to make a data grab, and the cafe owner who decided to buy tech so he wouldn't have to pay servers.