Magnetic platter drives still have the highest storage density per dollar and so they are still heavily in use. Theoretically, overwritten data can be recovered from them by analyzing the magnetic fields directly from the platter. However, this is extremely time and money intensive and requires specialized equipment and expertise. Overwriting a partition multiple times severely complicates this process just by performing multiple overwrites.

Realistically, overwriting once with random data is enough, especially if the drive is to be physically destroyed. You can also use a powerful magnet (top end neodymium in direct contact) to scramble the delicate magnetic fields that encode the data on the platter, but at that point you may as well shred the drive anyways.

SSDs are a fundamentally different storage paradigm that make this kind of recovery essentially impossible. Due to the limitations of NAND memory, data can be written to blocks inaccessible except at the hardware level. To make SSDs secure, modern drives usually implement processes (TRIM) that erase blocks marked for deletion. Or, all data written to the drive is encrypted by onboard hardware (SED), and “erasing” the drive simply deletes the encryption keys.

Is she capable of not lying?

We’re all drinking recycled dinosaur piss from millions of years ago.

He “accidentally” did the whole murder. Oops!

(It’s a juxtaposition of a fun innocent mistake with the seriousness of deliberate homicide, with the implication that it was in fact, not a mistake.)

Microsoft has been built on a 40 year old tech monopoly under which is has fully leveraged abusive anti-consumer and anti-user tactics that have kept it there. It’s amazing they have lasted this long while accreting so much hate. This greed, their creepy starry-eyed cult-like adoption of LLMs, and the destruction of user trust by the outright THEFT of user data will be their downfall. You simply cannot vibe code a good operating system.

Watching one of the largest corporations ever conceived BEG users to use OneDrive and Edge, then surreptitiously change settings and install software to make it so is mind boggling. They simply cannot STAND that you won’t let them train models on your data, glowing bright green with envy at Google and Apple’s closed hardware systems.

I’ll say it again and again, I would have happily paid for Windows 10, but they gave it away for free, then marched an unwilling user base to 11 only for it to be the worst OS since Windows Vista. Extreme wealth breeds insanity.

The “free market” at work, folks.

From the article:

Nest cameras, by contrast, can send clips to Google’s servers even without a paid subscription. Google offers a small amount of free cloud storage — older models store clips up to five minutes long for three hours; the latest models store 10-second clips for six hours. That means some footage is uploaded and stored, at least temporarily, whether you pay or not.

According to Nick Barreiro, chief forensic analyst with Principle Forensics, deleting footage from the cloud doesn’t necessarily mean it’s immediately gone. “When you delete something from a server, it doesn’t get overwritten immediately — the file system is just told to ignore this data, and this space is now available to be used. But if no new data is written over it, it’s still going to be there, even though you can’t see it.”

This is more or less how local storage works as well. The creator of BleachBit, a file cleaning tool made famous for being present on Hillary Clinton’s email servers, has some great insights in their documentation about the methods for destroying data on hard drives. As it turns out, data “deletion” is just a series of operations on your hard disk like any other, and retrieval depends on the methods used - de-indexing, metadata and file structure removal, and overwriting to name a few.

Once, I accidentally formatted the wrong drive in Windows and it ended up being my 20TB platter (oops). I was able to recover 99% of the files on the drive with some free recovery software just because I disconnected and stopped using the drive immediately. The only files lost were large ones partially overwritten by the new blank file system created when I formatted the drive. Windows had only deleted the file system indexing the drive, and all of the file data and metadata was intact, waiting to be randomly overwritten. I had to string together four cheap failing 4TB SATA drives I bought used on Amazon, but it worked.

The point is, if I could do this as an amateur, and storage technology operating on the same principals is in use at enterprise scale, what are the lengths that the likes of the FBI and Google are willing to go to recover old data that has been “deleted”? I’m frankly surprised that Google does not overwrite their discarded data, and it’s probably for reasons like this, beyond the additional processing time it would take. Given their vast resources and storage capacity, it could be some time before “deleted” data is at least partially overwritten, if ever.

If you ever have data that you absolutely need destroyed, overwrite the entire drive with random data more than once, then physically shred the drive completely. And never connect your devices to a cloud storage service. It’s the only way to be sure.

All advertising is abuse.

Rippin’ fat bowls of dark roast

The modern internet: where “fuck” is censored, but fucking your grandma is not.

The diseases that vaccines prevent are so horrible and spreadable that even if vaccines did cause autism, it would still be completely worth it.

Forgive them father, for they know not of stepping on a 2x2 brick at 3am.

Legos my eggos

Hooo boy, that’s a long story.

Generally, I think it’s a discomfort with what is less commonly experienced and accepted, and an inability to integrate other valid experiences and ways of living into more rigid modes of thought. A lack of self-reflection tends to reduce empathy and acceptance.

Economically, reproduction is the traditional way that communities grow and produce labor. Sexuality becomes a means to this end, with love and pleasure being secondary to child-producing couples. Value is determined by how many people you can add to the community, and individual rights are devalued in this sense.

Socially, the LGBT space occupies its own paradigm of culture. Humans organize around shared interest and bond through shared experience, and the LGBT experience is seen as different enough to produce a foreign competitor.

Spiritually, the fear of offending a cosmic being is compelling enough to simply write off the consideration of integrating other views, especially those surrounding sexuality, gender, and relationships, into an ingrained belief structure. It’s simply too much of a cost in mental work or spiritual reflection to risk even when faced with the cognitive dissonance of supporting togetherness while rejecting the other.

Sexually, there is an intense level of projection surrounding attraction. See: the ongoing and vicious debate surrounding pineapple on pizza. People in general get weird about something that is so deeply ingrained as sexuality, and conservative religions tend to push for what grows the religion and enforces compliance. Sex is a primary control mechanism, and LGBT sexuality falls outside that regime of power.

Why is it stupid and petty and myopic? Because humans are diverse, adaptable, social, and capable. The human rights of everyone should be elevated above having babies, sexual control, and base emotional projection when determining how societies should be organized and laws are written. There is no God judging how we have sex, it’s just other people ascribing astrological power to their feelings so that they can seem more important than they really are. If one does ascribe to a religion, sexuality, or whatever mode of being, they should be free to practice it for themselves, but not to legislate it.

In the end, ordering the removal of a flag at a small monument for LGBT history is about as petty as it gets in my mind. All things considered, I suppose we should be glad that is the level of effectiveness they’ve been reduced to.

I think I’m at the point where I can finally understand why they view us as such a threat, but I’ll never be able to respect it. It’s just so fucking dumb, small, myopic, and petty.

Lovers from another brother’s mother.

I feel like the words “I don’t care” should never escape a politician’s mouth. Their entire job is to care. Why are they representing us if they don’t?

Discord is not needed. Quit. Kill it. Watch them BEG to get us back, then say no.

It’s been awhile since over watched the series, but I’m pretty sure Mulder and the X-files are allowed to exist because it provides a conspiracy theory sink that gives the establishment an excuse to wave away and discredit inquiry.