Free Blue Screens of Death for Windows 11 24H2 users

Microsoft rewards those who patch early with bricks hurled through its operating system

...

Microsoft is addressing the issue using a Known Issue Rollback (KIR), a mechanism introduced in 2021 that lets the Excel giant quietly undo borked non-security updates without user intervention.

If you're running Windows 11 24H2 on a personal or unmanaged machine, the rollback should apply automatically via Windows Update - though it might take up to 24 hours to kick in. A reboot could help your system grab the fix faster, according to Microsoft.

So... this is all you do all day is it?"

"Most days. Other days Carl or Peter does it."

"Carl or Peter?"

"Yeah, we work shifts - because the market never sleeps."

"So let me get this straight. You don't have any servers, you don't have any real work - AND THERE ARE THREE OF YOU - so you just make problems to keep yourself in a job?"

"Yep, That's pretty much it." //

A minute of silence passes, then finally the geek cracks. There's no server hardware. Nothing. Over the last five years the entire company operation has moved into online services - theoretically leaving our geek with no job.

"So what do you... do all day?" the PFY asks.

"SOME days, I'll take a complete snapshot of our cloud infrastructure," he says.

"Once a month you mean?" the PFY surmises. "So what do you do with the rest of your time?"

"I, um, manufacture outages," he admits.

"Manufacture outages?"

"Yeah, I'll light up the RED lamp on a server and, uh, take a cloud service offline."

"Why?"

"Because then they'll call me and get me to fix it. I'll bring them in here, fire up a linux laptop with the Matrix screensaver, edit a JPEG with a Hex editor, pretend to find a virus signature or an internal consistency error, then 'fix' it and bring the service back online again."

It seems so simple now that he says it.

“I consider Congresswoman Ocasio-Cortez to be the leader of the Democratic Party," Kennedy declared.

He then just killed the room and sent them all off into gales of laughter, “She's entitled to her opinion. I'm entitled to mine. As I've said before, I think she’s the reason there are directions on a shampoo bottle. Our plan for dealing with her is Operation Let Her Speak.”. //

anon-ia42
31 minutes ago
She also the reason for the warning on hair dryers.......do not use this appliance.....in the shower.

Boswell first confronts Johnson with Hume’s ideas in late July 1763, just a few months after his first meeting with Johnson. He spoke of the Politician and agriculturalist George Dempster whose principles had been poisoned by a ‘noted infidel writer’ that is, Hume.

Johnson’s response was that

Hume and other sceptical innovators are vain men and will gratify themselves at any expense. Truth will not afford sufficient food to their vanity; so they have betaken themselves to error. Truth is a cow which will yield such people no more milk and so they are gone to milk the bull.[4]

But what Johnson went on to say is also important:

Everything which Hume has advanced against Christianity had passed through my mind long before he wrote. Always remember this, that after a system is well settled upon positive evidence, a few partial objections ought not to shake it. The human mind is so limited that it cannot take in all the parts of a subject, so there may be objections raised against any thing [5].

So when his "tracker" tried to nail Rep. Tim Burchett (R-TN) with a "gotcha," it didn't quite go as the man would have liked. “Do you trust Trump's national security team to keep our war plans secret?” the "tracker" asked.

Tim Burchett's epic reply, “Do you trust your mother every night to fix your Hot Pockets and make sure your Game Boy is turned on?”

Re: "I think that transducer has incorrect coefficients"
He probably could have said, "I think we should reverse the polarity of the neutron flow" and I bet no one would have been any the wiser! //

Or recognising the half-built Interocitor shoved in a corner.

Seriously, did anybody get the full set of screwdrivers needed for that thing? //

You forgot about the "Retro-Encabulator" See: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RgaKjVXK0KA. //

Obviously no one tried re-routing the power conduits. //

Reroute power from life support in the marketing department, they've been a waste of oxygen for several quarters. //

Nothing wrong with a well built Retro Encabulator but I'll take a good old Turbo Encabulator any day. Perhaps a bit more faff in keeping the girdle springs in check but far fewer problems with the dingle arms https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ac7G7xOG2Ag. //

It's the reciprocating dingle arm. It's always the bl00dy reciprocating dingle arm. //

Or the Diagonal Steam Trap ? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vgBtOKu81iY. //

I'd go with throwing open the switches on the sonic oscillator and stepping up the reactor power three more points.

Salcedo: "You have a manner about you that gets to the nub of an issue, but you do it with a smile on your face in a classic way as everybody can see, very much in the style, in my opinion, of Benjamin Franklin. I think we need more of you and less of the Squad, and that's your liberty-loving Latino's opinion here.

What is the proper role, in your opinion, of those in government if they're playing by the John Kennedy playbook?"

Kennedy: Just tell the truth and say what you believe. The American people are plenty smart. Now they don't read Aristotle every time 'cause they're busy earning a living, they're busy getting up every day and going to work, paying their taxes, trying to do the right thing by their kids.

But they can figure all this out. And we saw them figure it out in the last election. You know, I've got this adage that I try to live by: Always be yourself unless you suck, you know, and if you suck there's nothing you can do about it.

I just try to be myself, and I mean it, I don't hate anybody. When I say my prayers at night, I ask God, "Don't let me hate." You're entitled to your opinion, I'm entitled to mine. The difference between me and many of the loon wing of the Democrats is that I trust the American people to figure it out on their own, and they always do. ///

Senator Kennedy -- challenging the status quo, like Noah.

"All the fact checkers died" is savage 🤣

We've noticed that some of our automatic tests fail when they run at 00:30 but work fine the rest of the day. They fail with the message

gimme gimme gimme

in stderr, which wasn't expected. Why are we getting this output?

Answer:

Dear @colmmacuait, I think that if you type "man" at 0001 hours it should print "gimme gimme gimme". #abba
@marnanel - 3 November 2011

er, that was my fault, I suggested it. Sorry.

Pretty much the whole story is in the commit. The maintainer of man is a good friend of mine, and one day six years ago I jokingly said to him that if you invoke man after midnight it should print "gimme gimme gimme", because of the Abba song called "Gimme gimme gimme a man after midnight":

Well, he did actually put it in. A few people were amused to discover it, and we mostly forgot about it until today.

I can't speak for Col, obviously, but I didn't expect this to ever cause any problems: what sort of test would break on parsing the output of man with no page specified? I suppose I shouldn't be surprised that one turned up eventually, but it did take six years.

(The commit message calls me Thomas, which is my legal first name though I don't use it online much.)

This issue has been fixed with commit 84bde8: Running man with man -w will no longer trigger this easter egg.

Simon then started running clips of "Gutfeld!," which hypocritical MSNBC apparently believes qualify as "insult conservatism." One example, which was said by Greg in a monologue:

"According to a new survey, nearly 10% of U.S. adults identify as LGBTQ. The other 90 percent identify as who gives a [expletive]."

Again, Gutfeld was unfazed:

What I meant to get at is that nobody cares. I actually have a very serious, I guess, philosophy about identity politics. I think it's a terrible thing to lead with. I am all for being an individual. And when you start talking about these characteristics that define you, it's actually not defining you at all. And you can see the misery on people's faces who kind of buy into identity politics.

Again, how true — with the best example being the "self-identity" focus of a so-called "transgender" whose "self-identity" is defined by a homogenous group.

After going back and forth about "racist" this and "racist" that, Gutfeld tried to explain his show to Simon — to no avail.

See, this is what's great, is I'm explaining - I have to explain this show to you, which is actually more entertaining to me than anything. It's like, I don't find this funny at all. That's the point. You need to get outside your bubble, Scott — and have some fun.

Ahh, and not to nitpick with Greg, but leftists are incapable of having fun while spewing bilge about President Donald Trump or anything conservative. As the late conservative political commentator Charles Krauthammer observed:

Conservatives think liberals are stupid, and liberals think conservatives are evil.

In the eyes of Greg Gutfeld, both sides should be able to "have fun" while disagreeing.

Unfortunately, the left disagrees. //

Red blip in a blue city
a day ago
Hilarious, "insult conservatism". The lib late night shows + SNL have been a non-stop hatefest on all things right of Teddy Kennedy for going on 25 years. //

NavyVet Red blip in a blue city
21 hours ago edited
When Greg jokes about leftist lunacy, he's poking fun and getting laughs. If they are insulted, it is due to lack of intelligence.

In contrast, when the media(D) insults us with labels like "racist" "fascist" and "Nazi", they are doing it in hate and deliberately insulting us with the intent that it offends and angers us.

While the media(D) tactics continue to offend, they no longer anger, because they have been doing it for so long, that we have been desensitized. We just consider the source, and recognize that it is projection, therefore they are describing themselves, not us. //

Jim Stewart
a day ago
Old Scott nearly wet his diaper over that joke about Asians not being able to drive. Come on pal, lighten up.

I love jokes about white people!

Why are white prison gangs the scariest? Because they had a fair trial and still ended up in prison.

Why is it called white noise?
Because if it wasn’t white, it’d be called disturbing the peace.

Sure, white people can't say the "N word" but at least we can say things like, "Thanks for the warning, Officer" and, "Happy birthday, Dad."

Although the Easter egg was discovered on Android 6.0 Marshmallow’s stock dialer, it still works on modern Android phones, provided you use the Phone by Google app. To activate the Easter egg:

Open the Phone by Google dialer on your device.
Punch in 0118 999 881 999 119 725 3 like a phone number.
After entering the “3” the Call button will flash blue and red, like a police car. Your phone should also vibrate rapidly.
Remember that the feature only works on the Phone by Google app or the stock Android dialer.

The late great FOSTER BROOKS roasting DON RICKLES in 1974.

Kellie Meyer
@KellieMeyerNews
·
Follow
Our @JoeKhalilTV was able to catch up with @JohnFetterman after @NewsNation confirmed he is going to Mar-a-Lago to meet with President-elect Trump.

Fetterman joked he wants to be appointed the “Pope of Greenland”. //

But Fetterman might have one problem with being Pope to Greenland. It's really cold there and I think he would have to wear long pants. So he might not get the appointment.

Brandon Morse @TheBrandonMorse
·
That time Chris Farley, impersonating Newt Gingrich, came to congress to swear Gingrich in as the Speaker of the House.

What a great time in entertainment/politics when we could all laugh together.

3:53 PM · Jan 8, 2025

Retired Professor
4 hours ago edited
A big, big part of this was Fani's failure to take a cross-appeal, as well as her prior failure to even preserve a proper record in the trial court for later use on appeal. This underscores what I've been saying for months about how Fani is not a very good lawyer, among her many other shortcomings, such as lack of judgment, etc.

Nevertheless, this is a very good outcome, and further ensures we have heard the last of this sham proceeding, as far as its impact on President Trump is concerned. But I'm sure Fani will continue to waste taxpayer money (as well as costing all the defendants more attorneys fees) by dragging this matter up to the Georgia Supreme Court, just to try to cover her eponymous anatomical part.

I hope all the defendants sue her and Nathan Wade for all they're worth when this is over.

"Do you often like the tweets you don't agree with?" Kennedy asked.

"Those were not my words," Keys insisted.

"You can't make this cat walk backwards," Kennedy finally declared. //

Kennedy cuts through the palaver and gets down to the nitty gritty again in pointing out the difference between what witnesses say and what they do. He's not shy about holding their feet to the fire and exposing hypocrisy, and it's a great thing to see. //

Michael Piz
a day ago
My favorite Kennedy quote is "Kale tastes like I'd rather be fat.". //

Dennis
a day ago
Kennedy is the Mark Twain of today. One could literally write a book of quotes, funny and epic exchanges that man has had in the past decade alone

DailyLlama
That reminds me of "The Plan"
The Plan

In the beginning, there was a plan,

And then came the assumptions,

And the assumptions were without form,

And the plan without substance,

And the darkness was upon the face of the workers,

And they spoke among themselves saying,

"It is a crock of shit and it stinks."

And the workers went unto their Supervisors and said,

"It is a pile of dung, and we cannot live with the smell."

And the Supervisors went unto their Managers saying,

"It is a container of excrement, and it is very strong,

Such that none may abide by it."

And the Managers went unto their Directors saying,

"It is a vessel of fertilizer, and none may abide by its strength."

And the Directors spoke among themselves saying to one another,

"It contains that which aids plants growth, and it is very strong."

And the Directors went to the Vice Presidents saying unto them,

"It promotes growth, and it is very powerful."

And the Vice Presidents went to the President, saying unto him,

"This new plan will actively promote the growth and vigour

Of the company With very powerful effects."

And the President looked upon the Plan

And saw that it was good,

And the Plan became Policy.

And this, my friend, is how shit happens. //

http://www.catb.org/~esr/jargon/html/S/SNAFU-principle.html. //

ichael H.F. WilkinsonSilver badge
Thumb Up
"organic factual compost"
Sheer genius, especially after the amuse gueule of "a light dusting of the chicken manure of sales", and "the dump truck of male bovine excrement" as main course.

Superb episode, once again

Now, I know what you’re thinking: “But synthetic stocks are more durable!” Sure, if you’re planning to drop your rifle off a cliff or leave it in the rain for a week, plastic might hold up better. But durability isn’t the end-all, be-all of a rifle’s value. Wooden rifles weren’t designed to survive a zombie apocalypse; they were made to connect the shooter to something deeper—the land, the tradition, the story. If your only concern is having a rifle that’s “indestructible,” you’re not looking for a rifle. You’re looking for a shovel.

Let’s not forget the charm of modularity—the argument that a modern rifle can be Frankenstein-ed into whatever you want it to be. Adjustable stocks, interchangeable grips, tactical rails galore. But let me ask you: Does a Lego set stir your soul? Because that’s what these modern contraptions are—a mishmash of parts with no heart, no spirit, and no connection to anything but your wallet. A wooden-stocked rifle, on the other hand, is a piece of art. It’s a singular creation, made with purpose and integrity. It’s not a platform; it’s a rifle.

In the end, the difference is simple: a wooden-stocked rifle has a soul. It’s a rifle in the truest sense of the word—a tool, yes, but also a companion, a legacy, and a reminder of what matters. A rifle without wood? It’s just another tool in your toolbox, wedged between the cordless drill and the crowbar. And if that’s what you want, fine. But don’t call it a rifle. Call it what it is: a plastic imposter.

It's April Fools' Day, which means... a long, ludicrous poem about screens!

To be clear, there really are 12 black dots in the image. But (most) people can’t see all 12 dots at the same time, which is driving people nuts.

"They think, 'It’s an existential crisis,'" says Derek Arnold, a vision scientist at the University of Queensland in Australia. "'How can I ever know what the truth is?'" But, he adds, scientists who study the visual system know that perception doesn’t always equal reality.

In this optical illusion, the black dot in the center of your vision should always appear. But the black dots around it seem to appear and disappear. That’s because humans have pretty bad peripheral vision. If you focus on a word in the center of this line you’ll probably see it clearly. But if you try to read the words at either end without moving your eyes, they most likely look blurry. As a result, the brain has to make its best guess about what’s most likely to be going on in the fuzzy periphery — and fill in the mental image accordingly.

""It’s an existential crisis.""

That means that when you’re staring at that black dot in the center of your field of view, your visual system is filling in what’s going on around it. And with this regular pattern of gray lines on a white background, the brain guesses that there’ll just be more of the same, missing the intermittent black dots.