How Should an Elderly Homeowner Defend Himself?

If he doesn't have a firearm, what is he supposed to do? Homeowner shoots man who allegedly broke into his Montrose home, police say | KENS5

He kicked in the front door, in the middle of the afternoon.

An HPD officer at the scene told KHOU 11 that the man appeared to be a stranger to the homeowner. According to the officer, the homeowner, described as an elderly man, repeatedly told the alleged intruder to stop and leave the home.

The homeowner was able to retrieve a 38-caliber handgun, and he shot the intruder.

For more details and excellent commentary, see Colion Noir's video Elderly Texas Man Shoots Intruder After His Front Door Gets Kicked In

There are a lot of bad decisions a person can make on a Wednesday afternoon, but breaking the front door of an elderly man's house in Texas has got to be sitting somewhere near the very top of that list.

The video is 5 minutes long.

Sheriff Discontinues Use of Flock Cameras - Another Cop Caught

This seems to be a thing. Sheriff: Franklin County detective fired for misuse of Flock Camera system :: WRAL

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? Who will guard the guards themselves.

Sheriff Kevin White of Fraklin County, North Carolina, has stopped using Flock cameras after a decade because of violations of privacy.

The Franklin County Sheriff's Office has stopped using Flock surveillance cameras after it found an investigator used the cameras to track an unnamed person.

Detective Janet Leonard was fired after using the system to “track every movement of a single, private citizen,” White said in a release sent to media outlets Friday morning.

I would think more than firing is in order, but I am more interested in the ending the use of Flock cameras.

“This is unacceptable, unconstitutional, and a complete violation of privacy by someone whose entire career should have been dedicated to protecting the public,” White said.

Franlin County, North Carolina, is about 15 miles northeast of Raleigh.

Click thru for the details. And thank you to Sheriff White.

So You Decided to Trust Microsoft With Your Data

That didn't work out for a group of nonprofit organizations. From The Register: Microsoft tells nonprofits their deleted M365 data isn't coming back

Microsoft accidentally wiped some nonprofit customers' M365 data before their retention period expired – and now says it cannot tell them what disappeared, or even whether they lost anything.

Microsoft was hosting data for a group of nonprofits subject to a grant. The grant ran out, so Microsoft gave a date by when the data needed to be moved. And then they deleted the data before that date. No backups available. Oops.

The problem arose after the subscriptions were deactivated. In an email to one affected customer seen by The Register, Microsoft admitted that, "due to an error," it had deleted remaining data before the retention and export window closed. Attempts to recover it had failed.

"We have now investigated the recovery options, but unfortunately, the data cannot be recovered," Microsoft said.

Professional management. Industry-leading process control. Or something.

If you have asked (or paid) someone to back up your data, how sure are you that it is backed up? How sure are you that you can get it back when you need it? How secure is it in the face of hackers? How sure are you that an accounting glitch won't cause it to be permanently deleted? What is you recourse it if is.

No one cares about your stuff as much as you do.

Don't Buy a Refrigerator That Needs Internet Access

I feel sad that I even need to type that title. Ars Technica brings us a story of insane use of tech, and the mishaps it causes. Owners mourn spoiled food after firmware update bricks Samsung smart fridges - Ars Technica

Samsung released an update for their "Smart Fridges." It bricked the fridge. It didn't just kill the internet access for the fridge, it killed the freezing and cooling function.

Affected fridges “suddenly lost power and stopped functioning immediately after” trying to issue a firmware update through SmartThings, Samsung’s smart home platform, per Star News Korea. The SmartThings app then showed the devices as offline. Some users said that their fridge’s internal display was stuck showing the message “Checking SmartThings app during update.”

This seems to be limitied to Korea, but they were stupid enough to release the update right before a Korean holiday.

The complaints seem to originate only from Korea, where the problem has been made worse because it’s happening during a major Korean holiday, Chuseok, which celebrates the autumn harvest and starts Thursday.

“Customers only trusted Samsung Electronics and made an official update, but it is so absurd and embarrassing that they can’t even use refrigeration and refrigeration functions before the Chuseok,” a forum user wrote, per a Google-provided translation.

Samsung's "support" initially said that options were limited due to the holiday. That was before they realized they shot themselves in the head.

I don't want a smart fridge. I don't want a washing machine that connects to the internet. I want appliances that last, though as Keon notes in the video (see link below) that is from a bygone era. My position is summed up by the image below.

The hat tip goes to Kneon at Clownfish TV and the video Samsung Smart Fridges Made WORTHLESS by Update...

Why? Why? Why are we putting AI into our refrigerator?