It was recently announced that in 2025, Microsoft had given BitLocker Recovery Keys to the FBI that were stored on their servers as part of a criminal investigation. Bitlocker is enabled by default on every Windows 11 device, and with the requirement to use a Microsoft Account on every default installation of Windows 11, the recovery keys should not be considered secure.

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Today (mostly) marks the end of support for Windows 10 for the average consumer. Businesses that use the LTSC versions will have support for longer, as well as companies who are willing to pay for updates. Windows 10 was a major change from Windows 8 (8.1), and several of the changes were due to customer feedback. Despite the initial issues and reputation of Windows 10, it has become the next Windows 7 in people not wanting to move on to the next supported version.

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On July 19, 2024 an incident occurred where approximately 8.5 million Windows computers were taken offline due to a bad definition file being deployed to the CrowdStrike Falcon product. Due to the way that the definition file was formatted, the way that Windows does not allow bad drivers to be bypassed at boot time, and the way that Windows handles Antivirus products in general all contributed to the outage. It has been a year since this incident and I wanted to go over what has changed, and if it is still possible for this issue to occur in the future.

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I have been stuck in a loop for a while using multiple services from different providers to get things done in my daily workflow. I have been looking for ways to consolidate and simplify those services as much as possible, as I am tired of dealing with multiple providers for everyday tasks. I have written about this several times on this website, and I have made a lot of efforts to reduce the number of services that I am using. Obviously, this is not a problem for a lot of people, and they have no issues switching back and forth between services, but I find it to be quite annoying and distracting. After going back and forth and tracking my usage, I decided that I no longer need Microsoft 365 at all, and it was time for it to go. The Microsoft 365 services that are offered can be provided elsewhere, and that was what I wanted to investigate.

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I have been following Raymond Chen’s blog, The Old New Thing, or several years and he recently posted about the process that Windows 95 used for installation. The installer was unusual since it booted into a limited MS-DOS environment, then a limited Windows 3.1 environment, and then finally into a Windows 95 environment. I had heard several reasons for this strange process for years, so it was nice to finally hear the reason from someone at Microsoft.

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Windows Server 2025 was released to manufacturing on November 1, 2024, after being in public preview for most of the year. This is a major release, and there are many changes to the core features of Windows Server. This is also the first version of Windows Server to be available on the ARM architecture, which will allow for some interesting deployment options for the operating system. Windows Server 2025 is a LTSC (Long-Term Servicing Channel) release and will be supported until October 10, 2034.

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Microsoft announced last year that on July 29, 2024, the Xbox 360 Marketplace would be shut down for good. The Xbox 360 console would continue to operate normally, but the ability to purchase new games through the Xbox 360 Marketplace would be permanently removed (existing purchases would still work). It marks the end of an era for the Xbox 360, which was released in the fall of 2005, and was supported for almost 20 years. Microsoft supported the Xbox 360 for almost 8 years after the console was officially discontinued, which is impressive considering how the Xbox division has been doing in recent years. At the end of the day the Xbox 360 sold 84 million units worldwide, which is in the top 10, so not bad for a console. Despite the early hardware issues, it was a successful console with a great legacy.

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I woke up on Friday July 19, 2024, and read that there was a massive IT outage in progress that was affecting airlines, financial institutions, and various other businesses worldwide. I was aware of CrowdStrike prior to this outage, and it was not surprising to me at all that something like this finally happened at this scale. While I have never been a customer of CrowdStrike, I have used products in the past that worked in a similar manner, and they always made me nervous how they deployed updates. These updates have the potential to cripple all workstations and servers in an organization with only one minor issue, and that is exactly what happened.

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