Maybe an unpopular opinion, but I am missing the old Microsoft these days. How did we end up in the world where technologies like Windows Installer are replaced with PowerShell scripts that downloads software from the Internet?

Writing a script has always been simpler than making a proper installer, because you need to adhere to various transactional rules, implement a proper rollback mechanism, worry about making your components have correct keys that still work after an upgrade. And e.g. if you need to install a Windows service, most of the standard options (even those provided by Wix) don't cover all cases out of the box. So to some extent using a script means replacing a more complex, but complete solution with an ad-hoc thing that may work in general, but fails a lot of corner cases.

Also it takes quite a lot of effort to understand how windows installers work because it’s far from intuitive and you get to learn all those tools that make no sense. This is not something that a person working on project like docker itself for example would want to spend their time on. They’d rather make a script than an MSI.

One quite convenient thing is that Windows Installer packages can be installed via Group Policy, making deployment for new nodes work like a charm. How is a sysadmin supposed do this with scripts?

What has changed since these days of Microsoft? I’m pretty sure when it came to setting up complicated systems, you had to follow a 158 pages document with all dialogs you had to click to (if you’re lucky enough to have a document like this)

In this sense a predictable powershell script is IMO an improvement

May be it's a fashion? Like using Electron/Edge for Start Menu.

Haha, I might have written almost the same thing but late by 2 minutes :)

As far I remember NAND/NOR memory (used for SSD) is very slow to *erase*. The erase operation can be performed only by big chunks, requires higher voltage etc.

SSD vendors circumvent this by adding several layers of write buffers to achieve good test results.

I recommend to look at Kärcher RCV 5. High quality.

https://www.kaercher.com/us/home-garden/robot-vacuums-and-mo...

You could try VisualDrive Server (self-hosted OneDrive server): https://www.axiorema.com/visualdrive-server/

It's a no-brainer: if you query less, it works faster. Especially in post-spectre world.

It seems Azure FrontDoor is affected, because our private VM works fine in different regions.

For me the same. It's very confusing that status page [1] is green

[1]: https://azure.status.microsoft/en-us/status

That status page is never red. Absolutely useless.

> There are currently no active events. Use Azure Service Health to view other issues that may be impacting your services.

Links to a page on Azure Portal which is down...

It's red right now.

Only for the Azure Portal, despite Front Door also being down but showing as green on the status page.

Heh, now it says Front Door and "Network Infrastructure" are down. That second one seems bad.

They added a message at the same time as your comment:

"We are investigating an issue with the Azure Portal where customers may be experiencing issues accessing the portal. More information will be provided shortly."

I think there is relatively cheap way to reduce such scams: make it mandatory for banks etc to perform “training” of the clients. Regularly make a call to clients asking for sensitive data. Then block account if client provides this data.

This is definitely propaganda comment: eating mushrooms in Russia is never considered as risky.

Is it a sarcasm? We have tens of people dying from mushroom poisoning each year. Usually with stories like "grandma fried some mushrooms, whole family died, dad in coma".

No. I don't say about real statistic date. I say only about people's *perception* about risk.

Ah. Here in Russia there are many things that are not considered risky:

swimming in the ice hole in frozen river

eating like everything from nearby forest

driving without seatbelts

not going to doctor when it hurts

While one most likely will go away with it, these things still can be deadly.