Every time people hear what it actually involves is outrage and opposition, at least all the way back to when Intel first announced that they wanted to hardcode identity numbers inside CPUs in 1999. But the corporations involved have been relentless, and have sunk countless billions of dollars steadily forcing it forwards, and building front organizations to obfuscate and whitewash it.

With Windows 11, Microsoft was finally able to FORCE Trusted computing hardware into every new computer. Not just every new Windows computer, but every computer.

Every new Intel PC CPU has built in Trusted Computing enforcement hardware. Every new AMD PC CPU has built in Trusted Computing enforcement hardware. Every new ARM PC CPU has built in Trusted Computing enforcement hardware. The only processor lines that DON'T have it are the microcontrollers.

There are some unlocked smartphones available, but as far as I can determine it's literally impossible to buy a smartphone that doesn't have hardware trusted computing built in.

I specified that enforcing Trusted Computing at the internet access level is still a long term goal, they couldn't get away with it today. However they are well on the way to success. Virtually all new hardware supporting trusted computing, all the front groups rolling out standards and systems, and as it gets incorporated into things everyone is going to increasingly running into situations where they get locked out of stuff if they're not Trusted Computing compliant. Streaming already restricts you to the worst quality if you're not compliant, and it's only going to get worse as pre-Win11 computers fade out and as more things require it.

I own it, it's just the 25 years of hosting i bought for $12 a year at the turn off the century finally ran out

Generally people keep their solar installs for at least one year, rather than replacing your panels, wiring, controllers and batteries each year, attempt to get two or more years out of them. This should help keep your cost basis down as inflation causes prices to increase

The advantage of sodium battery means anybody can produce it, there's no geopolitical alliances needed to manufacture them. Lithium is super rare by comparison. Any and every country can domestically produce sodium batteries forever. The low temp operating envelope of sodium is interesting, but only 11% of the worlds population lives somewhere that is useful. The big benefit is any country can stick a straw in the ocean and build a battery factory regardless of sanctions. Go look at Iran right now if you want to understand why I keep harping on this point.

I dunno, people on boats and in vans buy this stuff and run it for a decade or more without problems. Name brands like anker and ecoflow have very solid track records and 5-8 year warranty on most of this stuff. It's not fly by night Chinese crap. All this stuff has a very solid track record at this point. I bought my first MPPT way back in 2017 it's still alive and kicking no problem

Well that was with i think 32 panels, breaker box upgrade, and i forget 10 or 20kwh worth of battery. Effectively fully off grid except dec and January for our climate

My roof is about 10 years from EOL so I'm not super eager to install it today as a full system is about $40,000 in my local market. By comparison I can install this in my backyard in about 45 min simply with hand tools. I will do both eventually but i can do this today and cut about 50% of my air conditioning and beat bill today.

California and Texas are some of the biggest adopters of industrial batteries, and the prices keep plummeting. I remember being near an executive power summit in Idaho back in 2016 and all the execs said industrial power was pie in the sky and would never work. It has virtually resolved all of Australia's power "duck curve" problems. Solar + battery is just phenomenally economical today. China is bringing on NaCl batteries this year and shipping cars with them by EoY. Solar panels are made from beach sand and batteries made from ocean water. Couldn't get any cheaper than that.

We have a sunny, south facing portion of our yard. Looking forward to hanging 4 solar panels on the fence and getting 800-1000w (1200w "nameplate" max but reality is closer to 1000w) to offset our daytime use. We both WFH and then the kids are home by 3pm so being able to offset computers, fridge, and part of our AC/Heat bill is huge.
 
A couple of mfg, Anker and Ecoflow both sell a system that you do the standard 4 x 400w panel = 1200w plug in, and then a second 2000w (+5 more panels) into a battery system that discharges a max of 1200w overnight as the sun sets. I think they want like $1600 for the system. That's an instant buy for me when california electricity is $0.50/kwh

I'd hardly call exact date of birth "low information content".

And yes this does reveal exact date of birth, regardless of the bullshit obfuscation that it supposedly only reports age range. The server simply tracks the reported result every time the user connects, and on some specific day the result CHANGES to announce their date of birth.

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This is based on SLSA (Supply-chain Levels for Software Artifacts), brought to you by the same fuckers making Trusted Computing and the TMP (Trusted Platform Module). It's part of the same shitstack to prohibit you from altering your software and to lock you out of your own files, and to send spy reports out over the internet so you can be cut off if you "fail" the Trusted Computing check.

The software can use a TPM's (Trusted Platform Module) Sealing function to encrypt your data such that it's impossible to access your own data if the software is modified. It can then pass control over that data only to software updates that carry a signed security certificate from Broadcom (or any other company using this system).

It is no longer open source, your system no longer works as you can no longer access your Sealed data if you change so much as a single letter of the code. Even recompile unaltered code won't work, unless you magically manage to get your build environment absolutely identical to the company's build environment and get byte-for-byte output. Even that may be impossible with the newer levels of non-deterministic compiler optimizations.

Also, with TMP's Remote Attestation feature can be used to transmit your machine's software configuration over the internet, so that you can be cut off if your system doesn't match Broadcom (or other company's) cryptographically signed certificate.

And then of course there's Network Access Control (NAC) / Trusted Network Connect (TNC). In the long term, the goal is for ISPs to use NAC/TNC to interrogate your computer for Trusted Computing compliance, and deny you any internet access whatsoever if your machine isn't compliant. Software with this sort of "security" certificate would pass inspection, while any attempt to alter the code would be detected as "tampering". You then get "quarantined". What "quarantine" means is that you are denied internet access - with the exception that you do get very restricted access which can only be used to download the approved software to "fix" your computer into Trusted Computing compliance.

I think you're misunderstanding the point: there's a lot of FUD about BE vehicles in north america, not least of which is that battery fires are common, and they may burst into flames at any point. There have been some high-profile examples of badly designed or built cars killing people or lighting on fire, etc. As one would expect, the number of ICE vehicles that this happens to is greater because they're still a larger proportion of all vehicles. But also, as a proportion of their type, more ICE vehicles spontaneously combust than EVs.

The point is that this is not an issue with BEV technology.

Indeed, the intro to the vehicle even says as much:

Emphasis mine.

A million years ago I thought there was probably some synergy between my gmail account and getting better, personalized search results. That never was realized, but oh well. I can't even recall the last time I used google for anything. I use Kagi for search now but even then it's use is pretty minimal. Now that the need for search engines is being replaced.... why would I ever use a google product? What value does the brand "google" even bring to the table in 2026? Other than Kagi I haven't been actively trying to "degoogle" but the lack of interesting or useful products is really striking for such a large company. The last thing I want is yet another google app yeeting marketing telemetry back to the google mothership.

>On the bright side? Maybe watermarks can help AI stop training on AI-generated text.
 
You're living in 2023 if you think any company worth their salt is still scraping the live internet for quality content. Everyone has their own curated library already Nobody has been scraping en masse for at least two years, unless there's a blog article about bleeding edge science research or something. Even then they will probably just scrape the scientific paper itself, rather than coverage of it.

Y'gotta stop cutting education and vaccine funding.