When you discover something that’s been missing in your life that you didn’t know you needed.

Welcome to the club!

So … hot air doesn’t float … that’s a thesis right there.

Before you start consolidating, consider what might happen if the switch is in an unexpected state. For example, someone turned off the heater or pump and you were expecting it to be on.

In other words, you need to consider what a “safe state” is for each thing and how your code, when it fails, reverts to that state. This is an example of “failsafe”.

Note that I said “when it fails”. This is true for all software, even on mission critical systems.

Source: I write software for a living.

Removed by mod

All fine and dandy … got any realistic alternatives?

I can absolutely guarantee that you are not the only person to have spent quality time getting to know the intimate backwaters of a codebase tracking down a bug that you introduced whilst tracking down a bug.

Source: I’ve been writing software for over 40 years.

From the article:

A Microsoft spokesperson confirmed the company has been aware of the issue since at least August 2023, but maintains that changing the behavior could break compatibility with existing applications.

• Changing your Microsoft or Azure password does not immediately revoke RDP access for old credentials.
• There are no clear alerts or warnings when old passwords are used for RDP logins.
• Microsoft’s security tools, including Defender and Azure, do not flag this behavior.

So … this article published today, 5 May 2025, says that the Microsoft policy will start on 5 May 2025.

Some questions:

1. When did Microsoft announce this and where?
2. Is this a reasonable rollout timeline that affects pretty much anyone on the planet who does email?
3. As a society we run most of our activities through Google and Microsoft. At what point does this get classified as a utility and get regulated.

Education.

About that.

Just because I’ve done it this way and haven’t had issues, doesn’t mean it’s the best or only way.

You dared to ask a question and the tools to explore answers are readily available.

This is how we as a society make progress.

Please don’t feel like my experience is the final answer to your question … my experience tells me that this is rarely … if ever … the case.

So … please … explore!

If you genuinely attempting to quantify this, you can create a swap file of any size right there on your drive. You could iterate and test every setting for every scenario. You could even change settings dynamically if you wanted to.

That said, I leave it to the kernel to figure out and over the past 25 or so years that’s been fine.

Or you just block them.

I will note that in my experience the bot army from META is by far the most aggressive and destructive. At one point, traffic from their systems was tenfold all the others combined.

I’m guessing in the same way as Bit Torrent and others before it … with big flaming headlines, politicians foaming at the mouth, lawyers rubbing their hands with glee and the world for the general public becoming a little bit more shit whilst the actual miscreants carry on with impunity on some other platform or get funded by venture capitalists who make everything legal but no less palatable.

Source: I’ve been here for a while.

Pretty sure that they already shared it with copilot, so I’m guessing that it’s only a matter of time until everyone has a copy…

I’m assuming you’re familiar with Asahi Linux?

It’s still very much a work in progress.

https://asahilinux.org/docs/platform/feature-support/overview/

At the moment I’m bridging the gap by using homebrew, UTM, ssh into local hardware and shortly remote desktop on EC2.

It’s far from ideal, but that’s where I found myself after my x86 iMac died last year, so I feel your pain.

The news reports I’ve read suggest that it started at 6:33 am, hours before the actual outage.

Edit: I must be remembering this wrong, I can only find references to 9:30 am, not 6:33.

See: https://www.france24.com/en/europe/20250430-what-we-know-so-far-about-the-massive-blackout-that-hit-spain-and-portugal

I’m not sure if you’re being sarcastic, observant, or something else. There have been many a meal where I was asked what I wanted to eat and it’s rare that I go beyond the words “surprise me”, knowing full well that the person asking would eat the same as I was offered, making the “surprise”, less of a risk and more of an adventure.

In this case, OP asked a completely unanswerable question to which there was absolutely no reasonable answer, since we know nothing about the person, their interests, their experience, the hardware they have access to, or anything remotely resembling a needs analysis.

So, even my answer, generic and random as it might appear, was based on how I use a computer, namely, to be productive. I’ve been using them for over 40 years, mostly like that, with some sojourns into art and personal expression, not nearly worthy of public scrutiny, but not specifically “productive” as such.

So … what were you attempting to say?

Whatever you need to be productive.

Only downside is that the 1080p monitor that’s currently got a full screen digital clock on it, facilitated by a recently dying Chromecast, will still be dying and the analogue clock attached to the hole in the Apple TV won’t allow me to see the time from the other side of the room in the dark.

I suppose I could strategically drill the hole and do both, but my hands aren’t that stable and my eyesight is fading, so other suggestions welcome.

As an aside, I just went hunting for the old Apple TV and haven’t yet found it, so there’s plenty of time before I have to commit either way.

You just reminded me that I have one. I’m going to see if I can repurpose it into a clock.