Whatcha doin????

Orange man bad.

your question are certainly rhetorical as the narrative is pure Godbels

 

We could only be so lucky if a Jack or Mark were replaced with a Mustapha. Alas.

 

I have no idea what it has, it dates from 2012 and I've never opened it up (it's a laptop rather than a desktop so everything is pretty compact). I thought I bought it in 2011 but the BIOS says it's copyright 2012 so presumably I bought it in 2012.

 

Trusted Platform Module. It's what's used for things like Bitlocker -- either your mobo has a slot, your processor has it built in, e.g. if you have Ryzen, and so on. If we're talking 2012 though, you're probably looking at other options, like a USB key https://www.howtogeek.com/262744/how-to-use-a-usb-key-to-unlock-a-bitlocker-encrypted-pc/. It's a ~9 year old device though, so ymmv.

 

I did buy the laptop when Windows 7 was current and if I recall the top-end version of Win7 came with some kind of drive encryption. It doesn't look like booting from USB is an option but booting from a network device apparently is.

From doing some more reading it looks like having BIOS support for authentication keys isn't necessarily a good idea. Apparently some of them hash the AK and use the hash, which means if you need to put the drive into another device you may never be able to read the data. Which kinda defeats the point of having a key to unlock the data.

Kingston has a drive management software that looks like it may provide a boot partition that does enough to mount the drive, then resume booting. It doesn't work with Windows 7 - it requires 8 or higher. It looks like Samsung's software will work with Win7 so maybe that's an option. I guess a lot of people with self-encrypting drives aren't bothered about encryption because just finding out how it works seems to be like pulling teeth. It's looking more and more like the manufacturers are just ticking a box to say they offer it, but then not doing anything to make it accessible.

 

Got a run in this afternoon. Had church in the morning, and it was good to be meeting in person again. Recording in pieces and posting it online just isn't the same.

The other day when I went for my walk around town everything in me wanted to break into a run. Today I wanted to run it and felt like I was at war with myself, with my legs wanting to pace faster and my lungs wanting to just give up and go home. In the end I posted a time about a minute slower than my personal best, which I thought was pretty good given I just didn't seem to be able to hold a pace for very long.

Now the comfort of my recliner calls....

 

Couple of walks and a short ski with the dog for me today. The other day the kids and I were playing ice hockey on the local outdoor rink. I learned I had some muscles in places I did not know.

 

I got in a 2 mile walk yesterday

 

Orange man bad. I think that's about it.

Since the Capitol building was involved those on the left, who were remarkably silent about the summer's riots that involved lots of, you know, actual destruction of property and livelihoods, get to throw around words like "sedition" and "insurrection" which sound a lot more ugly than "mostly peaceful protest".

I can't help thinking had Trump won and the left-wing protestors torched the Capitol building the same media howling about insurrections would be saying how justified they were because Trump was obviously in bed with the Russians who rigged the election again.

Interestingly, looking at the whole situation developing with Parler it seems like freedom of speech only works if you're an approved provider of free speech. It's OK for Twitter to host hotbeds of bile and hatred but as soon as someone else does it their moderation policy is blasted and their app is pulled. The recurring cry is that Facebook, Google, Apple etc keep each other in check and if you don't like it you can build your own platform. But then when Parler did just that and built their own platform Big Tech rallied to shut it down.

Of course since Donald Trump is a fascist dictator it stands to reason that a private company can shut him out of the public sphere with no risk of any comeback and that his political opponent can see him voted out of office. Because that's what happens to fascist dictators, apparently.

(Content somewhat borrowed from the New York Post and Babylon Bee)

 

Um that sounds like main stream American press and the RINO's to me...

 

Parler would most likely self destruct fairly quick. Not saying thay to justify Amazon pulling their platform.
I joined just to have a look. As far as I could see it was almost purely conservative political personalities.

 

I've had a number of friends move from Twitter and Facebook to Parler.

 

The Babylon Bee has an article praising Donald Trump for accepting the election results 4 years faster than Hillary Clinton did

 

Isn't it interesting how that works out?

- 2016, Trump and his supporters are told to accept the election results. He won't lose because of their conspiratorial election hacking!
- Post-2016 election, Clinton and the Dems pursue specifically Russian election hacking for Trump's entire four-year term.
- 2020 election, Trump and the GOP claim election fraud.
- Post-2020 election, Biden and the Dems once again refer to these fraud claims as conspiratorial. It was a free and fair election. The big bad wolf Russia was doing something else, I guess?
- Everything old is new again https://observer.com/2016/11/the-lefts-miraculous-change-of-heart-on-accepting-election-results/.

Moreover, have we heard anything about how the 2020 election nullified the Russian election hacking campaigns or were Russia's attempts for some reason limited to the 2016 election, despite Trump also running in 2020? I'm aware of the articles and nods towards Russia's attempts to hack the election, but isn't it just amazing how immune this latest election was to those attempts? Gee golly.

And, in their latest bid to unify the country, the Dems:

- Continue to label Trump's voter-base as racist, *phobic, sexist, misogynistic, etc.
- Impeach a second time for inciting 'insurrection'. Because calling for peaceful demonstrations is insurrection (now Guiliani, on the other hand). Here's some info https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-55640437. Straight to insurrection huh? Not more election lawsuits? Not more protesting? No, insurrection? Uh huh. Full transcript of the speech in question https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/1/11/full-transcript-donald-trump-january-6-incendiary-speech.
- Insurrection that involved the deaths of 5 people, with insurrectionists who uh... took pictures?
- Oh hi Portland. Do you think the Portland rioters are going to go on AOC's list?

And then there's 'Big Tech': the censorious foundation of the online 'public' sphere. Wonderful. Not so different from China, just a bit more subtle, for your safety and protection, and truth, and facts (that they decide matter). It was fun while it lastest.

What started as disdain for the constant idiocy of the Democratic party - really, Hillary? - has turned into deep and significant national divides at the instigation of the Democratic party, who did everything they could to insult, deperson and disenfranchise 'the Right' . How could the Right do this to America! And the Left, high and mighty in their certainty of moral rightness and superiority, will be forever oblivious to what they actually are.

Left vs. Right, how stupid.

 

Let’s just say it’s dark where the left in the US keep their collective heads... and malodorous.

 

Yep. Tried and true by both left and right, same outcome in either event, just a matter of which side executes less poorly than the other.

 

If the ole American politik has got you down, here's some Eagleton and Scruton having a discussion.