If you turn on Bitlocker manually, sure. Not if Device Encryption turns on automatically.

https://support.microsoft.com/...

Obviously she knew it at one time. The computer doesn't stop working when device encryption turns on. For the average user, the first time they realize it's even on is when it fails to unlock automatically due to an update / corruption and asks for the recovery key. This could be years later.

I think you're missing the purpose of this. Should every country take action now? Yes. Should the average citizen be worried? No. Emergencies like this are more about the governments taking the correct actions, not causing a panic. This means, for example, tracking who is coming into the country from people who have been in contact with the infected.

They were doing a ground-up rewrite of the shell to eliminate technical debt and use newer graphical APIs that can handle things better like display scaling and acceleration.

That's fine. The problem is that the new standard is to introduce something new that's only half-finished while removing the old and then slowly over years add missing features back. It's the same problem with Classic vs "New" Outlook. For some reason, the Control Panel is still here after 10+ years of trying to get the Settings app to be feature complete so I don't know why they thought they had to fully remove the old start menu / explorer.

The TPM is supposed to rely on a hardware signature match before unlocking. Booting from alternate media would fail that test and the TPM won't hand over the keys. And in fact, YellowKey does require you to boot from the internal drive into the recovery environment. Apparently the recovery environment unlocks the drive and relocks it.

Looking further, it uses some kind of pending file change tool in the System Volume Information folder to put a file on (I think) the mounted recovery system while the drive is unlocked so that it doesn't break the signature. Apparently Windows shipped the PE with an option to read an .ini file and just not re-lock the drive if an option is set.

This wouldn't be possible if you were modifying a binary because it wouldn't match the signing keys. But since they included an option to trivially set an .ini file, you are good. I'm betting you could manually create the file in the recovery environment too. The theatrics of the PoC with the flash drive seem to be more to obfuscate things.

Microsoft does store the key to your Microsoft account for non-managed computers. What it doesn't do is tell you the email address you used to create that account on the recovery screen.

At least for Macs, most Mac users have an iPhone that is signed into the same iCloud account and is also a trusted device that can be used to reset the password for that account.

You buy a computer with Windows 10/11 Home.

You sign in with a Microsoft account.

Microsoft backs up your encryption key and starts encrypting the drive. Yes, they call it "device encryption" and not Bitlocker, but that's only semantics because they had already branded Bitlocker as a Pro feature.

That was the whole reason. A lot of people don't know that.

That's why Elon left and made Grok.

It certainly does make sense. After all, mosquitoes primarily look for flower nectar and only go after blood for egg production. The two signals getting crossed just makes you look even better to them.

They might be talking about a laser powered one. I'm talking about something not much more complex than a robot lawnmower plus a couple cameras to make sure it's not trimming crops. Blades are cheaper than lasers.

Glyphosate is cheap enough, but are the resistant seeds?

Even that is probably more than needed. Ground-based drones could just trim back anything that isn't your preferred crop to near the ground. Leaving a short trimmed layer of weeds would probably help with soil erosion problems.

Most of that electricity gets converted back to heat. One thing that temperature differentials do is create wind. It doesn't really get completely taken from the system.

National infrastructure is a natural monopoly and should never be in the control of any corporation. I get your point about the free market, but why are we still leaving it in the hands of whichever company got there first? The grid should be just a transit network and the "buying." There is no "market" because it isn't economically feasible to build multiple sets of infrastructure.

We don't have state/federal highways that are run by private companies. Actually, that's not true. The Chicago Skyway is a "toll bridge" that is still considered as part of the federal Interstate highway system. There are a handful of others.

They're producing solar panels faster than they can use them domestically. Their energy needs are still rising faster than they can build out solar so of course they would need more coal too. They are maximizing their energy output, not prioritizing one type over another.