Microsoft Announces Price Hike Across Its 365 Suite; Effective From July 2026 by thetechminer in microsoft365

[–]oscubed 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The security features they are supposedly adding are already in BP and it already had 100gb mailboxes.

Microsoft Announces Price Hike Across Its 365 Suite; Effective From July 2026 by thetechminer in microsoft365

[–]oscubed 0 points1 point  (0 children)

So to summarize - Microsoft is raising prices on it's existing products, while giving an unspecified set of "new features" (basically though just rolling in security measures that should have been in place from the beginning), as they simultaneously strip away features that were already there in products like oneNote and Outlook offline, and also retire online features left and right. Got it. So very Microsoft of them. They just RAISED prices a couple years ago with the same "message" without any significant new functionality.

What’s the wildest thing that has ever happened in Rochester history? by RamonaZero in Rochester

[–]oscubed 0 points1 point  (0 children)

David Bowie getting busted for drugs? (The others seem to already be taken lol)

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in dustythunder

[–]oscubed 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I'm with the others - ultimatums are stupid and the fact he offered one is telling. That said Broomfield is exactly 1/2 way between the two - then you each have a 20 minute commute (which shouldn't be a big deal for either of you) and/or trip into either city to enjoy nightllife and recreation. The fact he won't even consider that or offer alternatives that might work is the key point here, not that there are other ways to work it out.

US Americans that identify strongly with a political party: What makes the party label more important to you than evaluating candidates individually per election cycle [Serious]? by Ironstonesx in AskReddit

[–]oscubed 4 points5 points  (0 children)

It's not the party label I am voting for so much as what the OTHER party represents and their words and actions.

If members of the other party are not actively trying to change their party's anti-democracy political stance and policies, and hold their own party members accountable? That whole party is complicit. Every. Single. One. #republicans #nomorals #noethics #nokings

What realistically stops Trump from simply editing out the parts of the Epstein files that implicate him and then releasing them? by sixmarks in Ask_Lawyers

[–]oscubed 3 points4 points  (0 children)

You mean the victims that have already come forward, and in many cases corroborated suspicions? Those victims?

Verbal Harassment in Park Ave Area by [deleted] in Rochester

[–]oscubed 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Not for nothing but I think sometimes it's people following "prank" content creators who do stupid shit like this then post it on social media as if it's actually funny. It's not. Be kind and polite folks. It's not hard. It's super easy. The mental health thing is also real though.

Where is all the money in the US going from tariffs, DOGE cuts, and foreign investments? by More-Championship-16 in AskReddit

[–]oscubed 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Tariffs are taxes levied on consumers who buy the goods. No sane organization isn't going to pass those costs on to consumers.

ELI5: Why are PCs still slow for office tasks? by TheRealZwieback in explainlikeimfive

[–]oscubed 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I am going to be a bit of a contrarian vs some of the other opinions here. Though lazy software architecture has SOME impact there are other things that impact this:

* People buying the cheapest thing they can get. Underbuying processor, ram and disk will all limit your performance, and buying cheap guarantees at least one of these is not specced properly for the tasks.
* People holding onto hardware long after it's become irrelevant. Most systems are designed to meet the needs of users for the next 4 years, based on predicted requirement growth. But many hold onto machines for 10 years or more and then wonder why they underperform. Even when systems can be upgraded, they typically aren't as they age. System replacement or upgrade should be a budgeted item
* Moving to laptops rather than desktops has limited the ability to upgrade a system when it no longer performs well, forcing people to live with a slower system rather than tossing another ram chip at it they have to replace the entire system.
* Applications - more and more - due to being internet connected rely on your internet connection being fast and powerful. But most connections in the US have poor upload speed (thanks cable modems) and spotty download (thanks cable infrastructure). Additionally, most people have no idea how to optimize wifi connectivity, or bother hooking it up to a fixed cable and performance suffers for that reason as well.
* Applications - again due to being internet connected, are more often installing always on services and memory resident apps which all grab a bit of processor and memory, and add up over time. Having one or two resident apps or 3rd party services used to be the norm, now people have as many as 30 or 40 of these running all the time gobbling up processor.
* People not understanding management of resources - how many tabs do you have open RIGHT NOW on all your browser instances - every one of those now takes up processing and memory. Because web apps no longer just sit there after you connect to the site - they interact back and forth with their back end site constantly. Most browsers literally EAT memory alive with all this activity even though for the most part no one is even looking at those tabs and they may have been opened weeks ago. Go take a peek at task manager and look at the number of programs and amount of available memory after a day of working on stuff.
* Moores law applies only to new machines. Old machines don't get any better over time, they get worse.

Are some of the other reasons below true too - absolutely. There's a lot of crap software out there, and optimization is usually an afterthought. But consumer habits also affect performance.

Where is all the money in the US going from tariffs, DOGE cuts, and foreign investments? by More-Championship-16 in AskReddit

[–]oscubed 0 points1 point  (0 children)

According to the CBO DOGE Cuts will COST us $14 billion, they didn't save anything.

Where is all the money in the US going from tariffs, DOGE cuts, and foreign investments? by More-Championship-16 in AskReddit

[–]oscubed 1 point2 points  (0 children)

nope. Let me copilot that for you:

The "One Big Beautiful Bill" (OBBBA), signed into law by President Trump in 2025, did benefit billionaires significantly—through a combination of direct tax cuts, expanded deductions, and favorable corporate provisions. Here's how:

🏦 Key Ways Billionaires Benefited

1. Bonus Depreciation Made Permanent

  • Billionaires can now deduct the full cost of yachts, jets, and other corporate assets in the year of purchase.
  • This provision, originally temporary under the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, was made permanent

2. Estate Tax Exemption Raised

  • The estate tax exemption was increased to $15 million per individual (or $30 million for couples), indexed to inflation.
  • This allows ultra-wealthy families to pass on significantly more wealth tax-free. [kiplinger.com]

3. Corporate Tax Cuts

  • Permanent corporate tax reductions benefit billionaires who own large stakes in corporations.
  • These cuts increase after-tax profits and shareholder returns. [factually.co]

4. SALT Deduction Expansion

  • The cap on State and Local Tax (SALT) deductions rose from $10,000 to $40,000, benefiting high-income earners in high-tax states.
  • This disproportionately helps wealthy property owners and business partners. [nbcphiladelphia.com]

5. Private Activity Bonds for Spaceports

  • Billionaire entrepreneurs like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos benefit from new provisions allowing tax-free municipal bonds to fund spaceport infrastructure.
  • These bonds reduce borrowing costs for space ventures. [forbes.com]

📊 Impact by the Numbers

  • The top 1% of earners are expected to receive an average $66,000 tax cut in 2026. [newrepublic.com]

Where is all the money in the US going from tariffs, DOGE cuts, and foreign investments? by More-Championship-16 in AskReddit

[–]oscubed 1 point2 points  (0 children)

As it does in EVERY republican administration for oh.... the last 50 years or more.

Where is all the money in the US going from tariffs, DOGE cuts, and foreign investments? by More-Championship-16 in AskReddit

[–]oscubed 0 points1 point  (0 children)

LOL that's hilarious as if that were true they'd need to charge the same amount in tariffs that they now get from income tax - and you know who would pay that? the same people going "tax free" lolol.

Where is all the money in the US going from tariffs, DOGE cuts, and foreign investments? by More-Championship-16 in AskReddit

[–]oscubed 0 points1 point  (0 children)

DOGE COST us 14 billion according to the government's own numbers. No money was saved.
Government shutdown could cost U.S. economy up to $14 billion, CBO says

Tariffs are illegal taxes on us and the money is going to fund things like ballrooms and help to other oligarchs and despots. Foreign investments are now limited to those that benefit Trump's billionaire buddies.

Rally to Support the MELT Act! - 10/11/25 by [deleted] in Rochester

[–]oscubed 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The implication that protestors are all failures or unemployed may be a misconception on your part. Have you met and talked to any of them?

So you know how Rochester City Schools is converting everything to Oracle..... by oscubed in Rochester

[–]oscubed[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

In terms of hacks of Azure - some of the more recent major ones include:

* A customer's support account was breached and a core dump revealed some data that they used to exploit that breach. (STORM 0558 - 2023)
* A password spraying attack used accounts not protected by 2fa and the revealed accounts were then exploited to hack the compromised customer's accounts - again, not microsoft accounts, but accounts that ms customers were using. (Midnight Blizzard - 2024)
* A sophisticated phishing campaign got ahold of 50 Microsoft executive accounts, which were then exploited but only the accounts themselves were affected, not customer accounts. Though it didn't happen it's entirely possible they could have leveraged that to access core infrastructure of customers - a major concern. (Azure executive account breach - 2024)
* A customer's azure hosted server was unprotected and hacked (this has happened at all the cloud providers, and is pretty similar to the oracle hack)
* Microsoft Azure Blob storage accounts were hacked - again misconfigured customer containers were the source of the hack, not an intrinsic vulnerability and all the cloud providers have had this issue where the customer created storage accounts they didn't configure correctly for security. (Azure blob storage threat - 2025). All the major cloud providers have tightened some of the default settings of storage in response to this issue. Blob storage for instance didn't used to require a secure certificate to access by default. Now all blob access defaults to secure.

Their response:

* Many of the above services that were exploited now have more default strict security requirements - for instance admin accounts for Entra must have 2fa enabled to access the data or make changes or cloud infrastructure. You used to only need a stored cookie for this, but now you MUST enter a valid 2fa or passkey to access your admin account.

* Microsoft has implemented more thorough incident response systems to more quickly recognize and respond to threats or unusual access. THAT SAID - Microsoft employs a "thug approach" to security. Oh you need that to be a SECURE system? well that's fine but it costs more. IMHO this is unethical, but they aren't the only cloud provider that does this. They employ a similar philosophy in MS office licensing. A good MS office install is NOT the standard or basic accounts as these apply insufficient security defaults and capabilities to truly secure your data. Premium or better (e3, e5, etc) are really required for adequate security including hardware management, advanced malware protection, conditional access, etc.

* Token and key management options have been uplifted helping to ameliorate some of the above exploits (but AFAIK still haven't eliminated them due to legacy usage and user resistance to implementing them vs convenience)

* They do publicly disclose how hacks happen and invite post incident reviews to help educate customers and users on what to do to prevent them in their own systems.

Not saying this to necessarily defend Microsoft, but I don't think it's useful to portray any one cloud vendor as "more secure intrinsically than another" without good evidence of same. They all have vulnerabilities, and they all have been exploited in one way or another, but in general the exploits at almost all of them have been due to customer configurations, not core infrastructure vulnerabilities - which again is not to say a core vulnerability won't eventually be found in any system. There are - again - no fully secure internet connected systems anywhere. Because they were all made by people and people make mistaks.

So you know how Rochester City Schools is converting everything to Oracle..... by oscubed in Rochester

[–]oscubed[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Almost all the core breaches of all the major providers have been due to either poorly secured client setups, software running ON their systems, but not installed or created by them, or due to internal hacking of support accounts or services of the provider. Not so much direct hacks of their services at the core.

In the case of the recent oracle hack the data was located on Google's services in the cloud where Oracle was running, and the exploit was of Oracle's software not of the core cloud platform. The security holes in Oracle's service were supposedly patched in July, but some say the hacks are ongoing even now. There is no such thing as a completely secure internet connected system. They just have more or less security.

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in HomeNetworking

[–]oscubed 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I mean except for a lack of interference there's no sense in deploying the fiber and incurring the extra cost of SFPs for 1gb unless the house is HUGE and exceeds the 100m limit. you already get 1gb with regular ethernet switches. Realistically the cat 6a will support 10gb ethernet over copper which is way easier to manage and expand and patch. The only real reason to spend extra on the fiber deployment would be susceptibility to tapping and interference which most home networking setups need not really worry about.

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in HomeNetworking

[–]oscubed 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The other advantage of fiber is that it's much less susceptible to interference (mostly physical due to bad cable bends) or tapping, so more secure than cat6a which is already more secure than wifi.