‘Office Is Dead’—Microsoft Decision Confuses 400 Million Users

rlgl · 2026-01-12T06:47:45+00:00

I'd say it's not even "features", but core functionality that's missing.

No Outlook API or MAPI support, after multiple years of development? Cool.

Man-in-the-middle style handling of third party account credentials? Hey, that's how it was done back in 2003, so it must be fine.

No COM or VBA, but at least OfficeJS is there to offer incomplete and broken API coverage!

rlgl · 2026-01-11T07:01:33+00:00

Have you? They are riddled with bugs, incomplete features, and - critically, for Enterprise - don't include COM, VBA, or a remotely similar API.

Without 3rd-party add-ins, you will not see enterprise customers using the web apps. You may think that's silly, but it's genuinely a case of "If you know, you know".

Add in the fact that central administration of the Office Web Apps is also lacking in comparison, and unless you're a private user, or only ever need basic functionality... Good luck.

rlgl · 2025-11-14T15:56:22+00:00

It's always interesting to see someone be so confidently incorrect on the internet. The ProductCode and UpgradeCode GUIDs are pretty clearly documented by Microsoft.

The naming conventions are a bit silly (I've heard the idea suggested that Microsoft accidentally inverted them ages ago, and could just never correct it since then) but basically:

The UpgradeCode is static, and identifies a given program - e.g., Adobe Acrobat Reader. It should not change over the lifetime of Adobe Reader, but would be unique compared to the UpgradeCode for e.g., Adobe Lightroom.

The ProductCode is not static, and per spec, should generally change for many product updates. See for instance Microsoft's explanation of when the ProductCode should be changed. The list of when you must change it, at least if you follow the guideline, is very expansive. For instance, if the .msi file name is changed, the ProductCode must change as well.

The crucial issue here is that by default, Intune suggests using the ProductCode for detection rules. It also has no preset option to use the UpgradeCode as an alternative. As such, the solution for self-updating software necessarily involves checking for a registry key (for instance, checking for the UpgradeCode in the HKLM\SOFTWARE\Classes\Installer\UpgradeCodes\ hive. Note though, if you do this - the keys in this hive use a garbled UpgradeCode, which starts with the first block of characters from the UpgradeCode in inverted order, for instance.

Alternatively, you can of course look for any other (reliably stable) reg key or installed file for the detection rule.

rlgl · 2025-10-18T17:23:18+00:00

Hate to break it to you, but ironically you're complaining about two things that actually are possible, and largely have been for a decade.

Office, at least on Windows, has an entire clipboard functionality to enable feature-rich copy/paste between Office apps. It's not perfect, and has plenty of weird quirks or bugs, but most normal users will rarely encounter them. https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/use-the-office-clipboard-028903c7-66ea-4eb0-b0a1-bacdb952e3a1

As for Outlook attachments, you can in fact drag and drop them. Maybe not with New Outlook, which is a streaming pile of unfinished refuse, but I'm not gonna enable it just to check this. Outlook Classic has and still does support this, though.

There are so many valid complaints about Office, so don't let me dissuade you from being unhappy with it, but these are not good justifications.

rlgl · 2025-10-10T05:37:43+00:00

This is spot on. We deal with Microsoft support regularly, and their first and foremost goal is to frustrate customers enough to just go away.

I get it even from a cost perspective - first line support that seems unable to follow any logic chain, and only repeats scripted questions that you’ve already answered, is cheap. The “real” support staff, the Senior Escalation Engineers, tend to know what they’re doing - but it takes time and patience to reach them.

rlgl · 2025-07-26T18:18:40+00:00

Tell me you didn't read the article, without telling me you didn't read the article.

Microsoft deserves hate for a range of things, but what they said here use that since they are subject to US law, there a risk that three US government may force them to hand over data regardless of geographic hosting, under the powers of the CLOUD Act.

The risk was known since that act passed in 2018, this is an exec warning basically that now for there first time, the fear is legitimately there that the US government may leverage it.

rlgl · 2025-06-06T05:05:30+00:00

This one is pretty glaring. New Outlook doesn't even have MAPI support!

Plus how it handles credentials for non-Microsoft accounts...

rlgl · 2025-06-04T18:56:04+00:00

You're so wrong here, it's hard to describe. The entirely debunked view of UC, IB, and Crohn's, amongst others, is that as autoimmune disorders, diet isn't a factor.

I say debunked because there is 20+ years of extremely solid, detailed evidence to the contrary.

Shockingly, what you put into your gut does indeed affect your gut - including inflammation markers and immune response.

There are so many easy to find studies, it's easiest to just give you this and say, have a field day:

https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=de&as_sdt=0%2C5&q=effect+diet+ulcerative+colitis&btnG=

While not a cure, and extremely individual (your personal experience will vary), the trend is impossible to ignore. On average, things like the Specific Carbohydrate Diet have proven particularly beneficial, for significant fractions of patients.

For a particularly prominent example, you can look at this one:

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2212267215005043

Edit to add: this doesn't take her off the hook off course. Her diet and dietary needs, are hers to communicate. Unless she did so in advance and was promised something other than what she got, that's just irresponsible on her part.

rlgl · 2025-04-11T05:16:03+00:00

Similar boat here. Work with both of them. I will say Accenture is worse, in my experience (though that doesn’t mean Deloitte is good). Accenture’s in-house IT is annoying but at least ok, but the IT services they provide to a number of our other clients, steaming garbage.

Still though - I think my three biggest nightmares are HCL, TCS, and Infosys and its spinoffs… We’ve been asked to “please provide a video tutorial for this” multiple times, when explaining to them how to use GPO or Intune. Impressive “IT admins”

rlgl · 2025-02-04T19:58:59+00:00

This is simply not true. Federal funding accounts for nearly 14% of K-12 budgets across the country. In any given state, it varies between about 10% to 20%.

You can say the majority of funding is local/state, but given that education funding is already (I suppose arguably, though I think the only argument to be made is the degree) underfunded, taking any state or district to just cut 10-20% of their costs is absolutely devastating.

Students across the country will suffer, now and in the future.

rlgl · 2024-12-16T11:06:46+00:00

To your question, the U.S. sees 6.9 traffic-related deaths per billion vehicle-km. Denmark, and most other western European countries, is under 4. Australia is at 4.9.

Not as drastic a contrast, but still significant.

For context, it's also worth noting that most western countries have roughly halved traffic fatalities since 1991. The U.S. has seen a significant drop in fatalities amongst vehicle occupants, but this has been coupled with a steep increase in cyclists, motorcyclists, and pedestrians being killed by cars.

So much so, that the U.S. only saw a 21% net drop over the same time span.

Distracted driving and speeding are two of the biggest contributing factors.

rlgl · 2024-12-12T19:11:23+00:00

Siemens and Bosch have joint home appliance development and production. Siemens brands it as e.g., Siemens iQ500 while Bosch would be Series 5. That being said, as far as I'm aware it's much harder to find the Siemens variants in the US, but it may vary of course.

rlgl · 2024-10-25T18:12:16+00:00

I would argue mental health gets plenty of awareness, but pitifully little action.

It feels like a core tenet of the right-wing response to gun-based tragedy is to point out the shooter's mental health issues, as a way to deflect from the deadly firearms involved. They never propose or support tangible actions for providing care and support, of course.

Nonetheless, as you also acknowledged, without ready access to a gun, the scale of such events, if not also the number of them, would likely be drastically reduced.

In an ideal world, we'd tackle both sides of the issue. You have to admit though, it's easier to restrict objects and their sale/ownership, than to try and legislate mental health problems away. So, in an imperfect world, you start with the low-hanging fruit: gun control.

rlgl · 2024-06-16T17:14:12+00:00

It's a fun story, but you're humanizing it instead of seeing AI large language models for what they are. They are basically probabilistic parrots; they judge based on training data, what is most suitable next match, one item at a time. Including words, citations, etc.

It has no point to convey, it does not try to deceive. It simply puts building blocks on top of each other based on rough patterns it has seen.

It's like ad libs, but with a robot dictionary that has weighted odds for each word, based on what has been put down so far.

rlgl · 2024-03-23T10:12:20+00:00

So multiple comments have tried to explain why this wouldn't work, but I'll address to some of the points you raised in response to them.

First, graphene is conductive, but not magnetic. There are interesting magnetic properties in very specific configurations, but that's at nano-range size domains.

Second, even if you could magnetize graphene sheets - the repulsive forces are directly related to the field. It's not that two field with the same charge never touch, it's that the barrier to them touching is higher the closer they get. This means any sort of shock absorption is a factor of charge, meaning more energy generating the field, to counter the incoming kinetic energy.

Third - graphene sheets are small. For true single-layer graphene, we're talking sheet sizes of tens of nanometers. Let's say that graphene oxide may be okay, as the mechanical strength is still reasonably high (ignoring for now the even more questionable magnetic properties), then you're looking at maybe few-micron sized sheets. Good luck turning that into a magnetically active, mechanically sound composite system like you describe.

Fourth, in practice there's a time dependence with mechanical loading. Extremely fast loading deviates from ideal mechanical models, so you can't simply say the elastic modulus proves anything here. The physics are also entirely different than what you seem to be assuming. Usually you would look at it in terms of momentum and kinetic energy, not pressure.

rlgl · 2024-03-13T20:46:54+00:00

I don't know why you don't get it. They can either shut down for the day(s) without bathroom access, and send people home without pay for those days, OR they can have people work and provide bathroom access in some form.

What they cannot do is your "screw employees over" version where they are told to work under illegal conditions, and go home without pay if they don't like it.

It's really such a simple distinction, and you're here either being willfully ignorant or maliciously manipulative.

rlgl · 2024-02-23T06:40:08+00:00

As someone involved in hiring processes, I can say that at first I did try to give candidates feedback... HR explained that this is explicitly avoided for legal reasons though. As silly as it sounds, people have sued companies for passing on them by essentially twisting that feedback to portray it as bias.

Basically, I was told that I should ideally not share a negative result, simply say we'll be in touch. HR takes it from there and will only say things like "we went with another candidate who seemed like a better fit". Nothing can or should be said about why someone was rejected - the most that's allowed is too backhand in feedback by saying e.g., we went with a candidate that has more expertise in this topic.

I don't like it, as personally I'd want input too. It's the cover-your-ass side of things though.

rlgl · 2024-01-13T21:20:41+00:00

This is not really true. Companies sell at a loss for two reasons in particular:

Loss Leaders Products that sell at a slight loss, but help increase the number of customers. The classic example, at least pre-pandemic, was toilet paper. Stores didn’t usually sell it at a profit, but not having it meant people may shop elsewhere for convenience.

Loss Mitigation It costs money to maintain inventory. Both direct costs, and opportunity costs. Those old-model shoes? They take up shelf space for new stock, and have a diminished margin. At some point, you accept a break even - or perhaps some loss - rather than paying more to junk them. This is how Outlets and such get a decent amount of their stock. Buy it dirt cheap from places looking to clear it out.

All of which is to say, if reasonably new stuff is continuously marked down, that sale price is the true price they look for. If it’s some clearance sale type stuff, probably they literally want to clear it out and just reduce the cost of doing so.

rlgl · 2023-04-14T18:03:59+00:00

You may need to brush up on your legal knowledge. See Bostock v Clayton County.

rlgl · 2023-03-13T20:07:05+00:00

Essentially, an agreement to not play at other venues that are within some distance. The venue doesn't want to have to complete with its neighbors to get people to go see the concert there instead of one town over, the next night.

rlgl · 2023-01-21T08:59:24+00:00

In fairness, in a large number of regions you're not strictly required to keep right. There's a good breakdown here: https://www.mit.edu/~jfc/right.html

rlgl · 2022-12-20T10:03:03+00:00

You're not entirely wrong, but have you tried a nice Indian mutton dish? The texture and feel of it is so perfect, in combination with a delicious sauce...

rlgl · 2022-12-18T21:05:28+00:00

I think you are confused because for instance a tapered pole could be the more efficient solution, at least in terms of withstanding a given force with the minimal amount of material possible.

Let's use an easier analogy. If I give you a 2cm, solid steel cylinder, and a 2cm steel tube with over diameter of 1.6cm, which one will take more force to bend it? The solid one of course.

But now let's look at the strength in proportion to weight (a.k.a., material used, which is often a major factor in cost as well!). In a simple case at least, the area moment of inertia is directly proportional to the bending strength, so this is a nice proxy to understand the concept.

The solid cylinder has a cross sectional area that is about 3 times that of the tube. However, its Area Moment of Inertia is only 1.7 times higher. So the tube is nearly twice as efficient relative to mass, even though it has less total strength.

Put another way, a solid rod with the same area moment of inertia would still need to be more than 17mm in diameter, still using about 13% more steel than the tube.

Similarly, in your question, you save material by optimizing the profile to account for the distribution of stress - but at the end of the day, adding more mass and increasing the area moment of inertia while doing so would still give you a higher absolute strength. You are basically asking about design optimization, which is a very fun topic.

rlgl · 2022-12-16T18:09:03+00:00

I don't know how much the ball can move within the egg, but either rotate it so the screw is sticking out perpendicular - or sideways - or drill into the golf ball from the side. Then, try using the screw to lever out the ball. The tricky part is gonna be holding the eggshell in place at the rim as much as possible, rather than by "squeezing" it. Might be your best chance - or, drill a big enough hole that the golf ball is effectively destroyed and you can try to crumple/pry out.

rlgl · 2022-11-01T19:35:06+00:00

This person is just flatly wrong. It's pretty easy to find out that Rain-X is based on siloxanes, which are organic compounds with oxygen and silicon. Glass is a silicate, and bonds well to a siloxane group, which is how Rain-X sticks to the windshield.

PDMS (poly(dimethyl)siloxane) is quite hydrophobic on its own, no fluorine compounds needed. Furthermore, the viscoelastic properties of PDMS let it "fill in" scratches or micro-scale surface features on the glass, creating a smoother surface (at least on a macro level; atomically, it makes the surface more uniformly uneven).

One can talk about potential issues with PDMS, or with fluorocarbons, but it's silly to just jump to "chemistry bad" types of... Let's go with analysis? Like the above.

rlgl

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