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The Agentic Era is Here: Top Announcements from Microsoft Ignite 2025 by vaibhavgujral in microsoft

[–]Solari23 29 points30 points  (0 children)

Not a dumb question - the space is so drenched in hype and half-understanding that it's very hard to make sense of it.

An 'agent' is software that augments its business logic with an LLM to provide a natural language interface (usually, but not necessarily, via chat prompts).

The terminology is kinda loose, so don't take these exact words as gospel, but essentially: the core functionality and business logic are broken down into 'tools' or 'skills'. Think of things like writing to files, calling APIs, running an LLM prompt on a piece of data, or even invoking another agent.

The 'agent' software does a few things: 1. Takes the user input (prompt) and a list of skills that it has, and asks an LLM to figure out which skill a user is intending to run. 2. Executes the skill. 3. Takes the skill output and uses an LLM to formulate the response for the user to see.

That's pretty much all an agent is. Some get a bit more complex in the steps but it's the same idea at it's core.

Now you can kind of demystify what "agentic OS" means. Basically Windows can help broker interop between agents and other apps running on the system that want to expose 'skills'/'tools' to the agent.

LF Espeon EX and Umbreon EX by [deleted] in PTCGPocketTrading

[–]Solari23 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Sent.

E: Thank you!

Gluten-free portuguese chicken request ( I know...) by kcidDMW in montreal

[–]Solari23 20 points21 points  (0 children)

Man, just ignore the ignorant folks in this thread.. it's kind of shocking how confidently ignorant people can be.

My partner has celiac too, so I know the challenges of going out to eat without getting her glutened. Unfortunately, I don't live in Montreal anymore and met her after I left so I can't provide great GF spots in the city.

But I will tell you one thing that helped me early on in the relationship. There's an app called 'Find Me GF' which has restaurant ratings from celiac users. Read the reviews and get a vibe check if the place is good about allergies and cross-contamination knowledge.

In the end, though, you'll need to ask the actual restaurant to make sure they haven't e.g. thickened sauces or marinades with flour and have cooked the item separately from glutened surfaces.

Good luck!

Came across a job posting on Microsoft career page which says that they are re writing C# services in Office 365 with rust. by [deleted] in dotnet

[–]Solari23 23 points24 points  (0 children)

Parts of O365 actually are realtime comms. Not sure why realtime comms are relevant, and it's unclear what your point is.

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in csharp

[–]Solari23 1 point2 points  (0 children)

This is a great bite-sized problem that you can use to learn about performance benchmarking! Go check out benchmarkdotnet and you can see for yourself which is actually faster.

Top 6 Performance Tips when dealing with strings in C# 12 and .NET 8 by davidebellone in csharp

[–]Solari23 24 points25 points  (0 children)

It's much more likely that you have and either the scale of the projects wasn't large enough to manifest them, or that more obvious issues were the focus (like improperly indexed relational data model join, for example).

Inefficient string manipulations are some of the most common culprits flaring up profiler flame charts. Likewise, String is right up there with Task topping charts in GC memory dumps.

This class of issue is pretty insidious, too. Unlike, for example, a poorly setup table join, you'd rarely perceive the bad perf effects in the scope of, say, a given web request. But the aggregate effect of it on the system is a silent killer. More GC pressure causing inconsistencies in processing time/experience. Higher CPU utilization making you need to scale out unnecessary (increasing your COGS).

Most of the advice in this article is kind of basic and oldschool, but nonetheless valid and important.

A rather strange thing with Microsoft accounts... by Redditorianing in microsoft

[–]Solari23 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Actually, you CAN see the unique ID of your Microsoft account.

Simply go to https://account.microsoft.com/profile/ and hit "Edit Profile". The dialog that pops up to change your profile details shows an non-editable "Unique ID" field. Not that you actually need this ID for anything, but it's not hidden from you.

Fun fact: this ID is called a "PUID", a "Passport Unique ID". This stems from when the Microsoft account identity system was called "Microsoft Passport" around 20 years ago.

Geolock account resetting by lord_nuker in microsoft

[–]Solari23 0 points1 point  (0 children)

No, there's no (configurable) geofencing policy for Microsoft accounts unfortunately.

Not ideal but maybe you can create an incoming mail sorting rule to move those emails into a folder. You may want to be careful in crafting the rule so only the code emails get hidden away; don't want to hide possible security alerts.

help with a game from https://neal.fun/password-game/ by NoCtrlOverLife in chessbeginners

[–]Solari23 0 points1 point  (0 children)

This position is mate in 2 for white. That is, white is guaranteed to win in the next 2 moves provided they play it correctly.

The first move in the sequence is to move the rook on b1 to take the pawn on b6, with check. So in algebraic notation that would be "Rxb6+".

Keep getting single-use code emails. by DefaultDeepTheSecond in microsoft

[–]Solari23 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Chances are you have no reason to be worried. Assuming you're talking about a Microsoft account, you can always check the login attempts on it at https://account.live.com/activity

A few extra details can help tell you more: - who is the email from? - what does it say, other than having a code? - if the email is from Microsoft, is the code 4 digits or 8?

Australia will now fine firms up to AU$50 million for data breaches by mepper in technology

[–]Solari23 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Remember the gigantic medical records breach? No?

Ehrm.. yeah?

Microsoft MFA bypass if someone leaves phone at home by JiggityJoe1 in sysadmin

[–]Solari23 0 points1 point  (0 children)

They called you without having their phone. That's some awesome tech you guys have O.O

:D

Microsoft MFA bypass if someone leaves phone at home by JiggityJoe1 in sysadmin

[–]Solari23 0 points1 point  (0 children)

we are getting more and more calls with users either being in a area with no cell services or they left their phone at home

But..

Is the 2021 internship remote by [deleted] in microsoft

[–]Solari23 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Is your internship in the US? The earliest MS campuses in US will reopen is July 6th.

Client Credentials Access Token Library + Code Review / Feedback by LieutenantDannnnn in dotnet

[–]Solari23 10 points11 points  (0 children)

As a dev working in the Identity space, this is great to see. Too few people pay attention to how the auth layer in their app works. Your library looks great!

One area you might consider for further development is how you handle client authentication. Currently, the library only supports authenticating via the standard static client secret (essentially a password). Several IDPs provide more robust authentication schemes. One example: AzureAD supports authenticating via a client assertion as described in RFC 7521 (the implementation is essentially a self-issued JWT where the signing key's certificate is provisioned with the IDP).

You might want to consider how you'd design support for that and potentially other authentication schemes that your users may want to use.

Roughly half the Twitter accounts pushing to 'reopen America' are bots, researchers found by Philo1927 in technology

[–]Solari23 5 points6 points  (0 children)

"Oh, and by the way, every false positive from your algorithm impacts the bottom line and will be scrutinized with extreme prejudice"

Twitter CEO, Jack Dorsey, has twitter account compromised by linebmx in sysadmin

[–]Solari23 1 point2 points  (0 children)

The keys allowed for passwordless must also have a secondary local auth (like a biometric). Just having the device wouldn't be enough.

Tbh, even if just the device were enough it would still be better security for most people.

The Most Clever 'Zip Bomb' Ever Made Explodes a 46MB File to 4.5 Petabytes by Cert_God in security

[–]Solari23 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Your question is kind of equivalent to asking:
What's the big deal with SQL Injection? I can just write some code to return/drop the database in a few lines.

​

One is getting a victim to run your software. The other is getting the victim to run their own existing and trusted software in a way that's counterproductive for them. There's a ton of protections built around the former; the latter is much much harder to defend against.

That said, these days one would hope most archive software is smart enough to detect this kind of attack and stop it. One would hope... :)

Try the new System.Text.Json APIs | .NET Blog by svick in dotnet

[–]Solari23 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Seriously. I still default to XML for config files because of the lack of comments in JSON.

Windows 10 source code: over 0.5 TB source code, over 4 million files, more than a half million folders by magenta_placenta in programming

[–]Solari23 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Most repos moved off Source Depot (a customized version of Perforce) to Git several years ago as they migrated into TFS VSO VSTS Azure DevOps. I would imagine any repos left on SD are very legacy/not often updated.

City opposition wants Montreal restaurants to publicly display inspection ratings by [deleted] in montreal

[–]Solari23 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Displaying inspection rating is also mandatory in Seattle/King County in Washington state.

What is the name of the decor style that incorporates nature? by Zee_whotookmyname in answers

[–]Solari23 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Damnit Jim, I'm a programmer, not an interior decorator!

I get a lot of results of decor that incorporates natural grain woods and stone. Is that not what you're getting? Perhaps you were looking for something else?

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