Biometrics are not usernames. They are physical identifiers and unlike usernames you can’t change them.

I used to work in a datacenter that required you to go through a mantrap to access. It required three things:

1. Something you have (a card key)
2. Something you know (a PIN)
3. Something you are (biometrics)

To get to the datacenter floor you use a card key to open the door to the mantrap. It’s a small vestibule about the size of a phone booth. Once inside the door closes. You then enter your PIN on a keypad and place your hand on a biometric scanner. Once your hand is recognized the inner door opens and lets you into the datacenter. I was told the mantrap also weighed you and compared that with previous trips through to make sure somebody else didn’t sneak through with you.

Remember how Putin stole a Super Bowl ring from Bob Kraft? He just asked to look at it then walked out of the room with it. I bet Trump would do exactly the same thing with a Nobel medal if he had the chance.

But they didn’t tell bozo, apparently.

Since when do billionaires listen to anybody other than the sycophants they surround themselves with?

It’s very far from a new development. The US first demonstrated the ability to identify, track, and destroy a hostile satellite back in the 1960’s. My dad was an engineer and worked on that project.

Our house is still powered by the panels and/or battery as well. We typically use 1 to 5 kWh, and during these events the batteries are discharging up to 10 kWh. Whatever we don’t use goes to the grid. Last year we received a payout of $1450 for 45 hours worth of energy, probably in the neighborhood of 300-350 kWh.

Even home battery solutions. We have solar panels & a Powerwall. Were part of a Virtual Power Plant along with around 1500 other Powerwall owners in the region. During peak usage in the summer all our PowerWalls feed back to the grid so that our utility provider doesn’t have to spin up expensive (and dirty) peaker plants. We get paid a premium for the power we provide during these events.

I saw articles here on Lemmy just a month or two ago that Tesla successfully tested a VPP in California that consisted of 100,000 PowerWalls.

Thank goodness the west coast states have created their own health consortium and a bunch of east coast states have followed suit. I live in one of those east coast states, and just got a covid booster no questions asked. It is also covered 100% by my insurance.

Which is a rather bizarre claim to make. I travelled to NZ and Australia about 20 years ago. When I went through NZ customs they wanted to see proof of where I was staying and more importantly that I had airline reservations to leave NZ. So they wanted proof I was just visiting and planned to leave in a timely manner.

When I went to Australia the customs officer just stamped my passport and let me through, no questions asked.

Why deal with the hassle of NZ as a stepping stone if I could just go straight to Australia and avoid that hassle?

Exactly. My employer uses Akamai, which is larger than Cloudflare. Akamai provides the ability to block traffic from Tor, traffic from VPNs, traffic from any countries you desire, and so on. They also provide managed lists of countries listed in things like ITAR so you can easily block them if you want.

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So glad I completely gave up on MS after Windows 7.

Unpaywalled: https://archive.ph/REGoa

I still use a Roku that was gifted to me, but only thanks to also having a pihole. The amount of logging & ads it blocks on the Roku is insane. If that ever stopped working I would ditch the Roku in a heartbeat.

I used to be on a team of 10 people that installed & managed roughly 3,000 servers and associated networking gear. We got hit hard in the early 2000’s by the Capacitor Plague and it fell on me to identify around 700 faulty motherboards and manage their replacement.

I don’t miss that at all…

Those new Mexicans are so much worse than the old Mexicans! At least the old Mexicans know enough to stay in Mexico!

Part of the problem is how insanely complex modern cars are. Modern cars can have 30+ different ECUs, and knowing which ECU does what can be difficult to figure out. Programming ECUs is also a bit of a dark art, and a model line of cars can go through a number of ECU versions over time.

I used to own a car that the battery regularly died on. Eventually, after multiple dealer visits, a couple replaced batteries, and hours of internet research, I found two service recalls that described my cars symptoms perfectly. The problem for me was my cars VIN fell outside both recall notices. But I took printouts of both recall notices to a dealer and they agreed to look into it. They confirmed my car had buggy firmware, annd ended up installing updated firmware on two different ECUs. I never had a battery problem again after that. I’ve worked in tech for 30+ years and I wouldn’t have wanted to tackle that on my own…

Bluetooth? I got mine from a dial-up BBS via a 1200 baud modem.

I see no reason not to believe the official story in this case. Bringing him back alive would have served no useful purpose, and would have led to him getting a ton of publicity that would have only inspired his followers. Most Americans were likely happy to see him die the way he did given the 9/11 attacks.

This. I’ll happily buy an 8k TV only if it’s a dumb TV/monitor.

I would ditch my Roku in an instant if it wasn’t for my pihole. The volume of ads, logs, etc. that it blocks on Roku is insane…