Written by The TLDR version of this, is that we can’t do the show tonight because of a data storage problem on the main broadcasting computer. We’ll plan on being back Monday, if not sooner, and this time I will absolutely promise to make up the episode.
We really don’t take it lightly to cancel a show, but as I’ve been devoting less time to the project, maintenance tasks have gone neglected and these are emerging in the form of debilitating technical issues.
More specifically, in the ongoing saga of Radical Agenda tech problems, regular listeners may recall an issue with a hard drive failure some months back.
The drive is not actually physically damaged (we hope) but a problem occurred with the Bitlocker encryption, which required us to find the encryption keys to recover data from the drive.
This proved challenging, because at the time the drive was encrypted, and thus we were prompted to save the keys, we wanted to make sure the keys would not be readily found by a determined adversary with access to the studio and its equipment.
Months go by, shit happens, you need a thumb drive for one purpose, you find it has stuff on it, you say “Ah screw it we’ll straighten it out later” and next thing you know, your encryption keys become difficult to find.
This was not the end of the world because we had most of the stuff on that drive actually backed up, so while the drive has yet to be recovered, we were able to back burner that and continue production.
Wednesday night, after the SurrealPolitiks Member Chat, the computer that does most of the production work required an update to the Windows operating system. This update required a reboot.
When the reboot was completed, we were met with a prompt to provide bitlocker encryption keys again, this time for the operating system drive. Without these keys, the computer would not boot.
So we went through every thumb drive and SD card in the studio looking for them. We found several encryption keys, but none for the operating system drive.
We then tried to get the show prep done on a separate Windows installation, but some pretty important information was stored on that drive, and as the hours tick by and we go from one workaround to another, it becomes obvious that this is just not going to work tonight.
So, for tonight, we are going to postpone this episode. I will make it up, without fail. I am sorry we have had to do this so many times in recent months, but things being what they are, our options have become fewer and less appealing.
See you Monday at the latest.