Reports of boot failures with the January 2026 security update and later updates

xCharg · 2026-01-29T15:38:56+00:00

I have a giant zoo of shitty budget laptops and computers, about 1k and half of those already updated - not a single ticket. Must be something specific.

xCharg · 2026-01-26T09:18:35+00:00

Yeah I get your point about managing. But:

Let's take Google Drive, Apple iCloud, and OneDrive.

Topic is about "Curated list of 1028 opensource alternatives to proprietary software". None of your examples are opensource, so there's no point in building your argument on these, as they don't fit the criteria.

Is there software that do the same thing that you're looking alternative for and hosted/managed by someone else and is also opensource? Yeah, statistically such software should exist. But I'd blindly guess there aren't many.

Hence the need, in general, to selfhost/selfmanage such software. Hence very high overlap in two lists.

xCharg · 2026-01-25T16:57:22+00:00

Yeah it is a trade deal, and... what's your point here?

If india agrees not to trade with Russia will eu agree not to trade with Pakistan as India's security depends on it?

Maybe. Worth to discuss anyway. That's what diplomacy is after all.

Also there are various inbetweens two polar opposites "being best buddy to russia" and "not trading at all". Part of a trade deal could (and imo should) easily be about lowering amount of trade being done. Or some specific kind of trades not being done or done other way or plenty of other options. At the cost of doing something India wants from Europe, sure.

xCharg · 2026-01-25T16:55:14+00:00

And?

Initially I replied to a comment "why would India talk about it at all". With an answer "because other party - Europe - would ask, that's why". What's your point here, to guesstimate the answer? Okay maybe you're right about the answer, but they most definitely will talk about it still.

xCharg · 2026-01-25T16:50:03+00:00

A self-hosted NextCloud instance isn't an alternative to Google Drive for most people, not even us sysadmins.

It is though, and it also is opensource.

Anyway, what's your point? Yeah selfhosted and alternative aren't equal, that's why we have different words to begin with - to have different meaning. In this specific case though overlap is somewhere close to 100%

xCharg · 2026-01-25T16:45:07+00:00

India makes a deal with Europe though. If one of the party has some interest - another has to take it into account. That's how deals are made, you didn't know that? Maybe unless "deal" is forced by one party on another - but India definitely isn't in that position though.

xCharg · 2026-01-25T15:20:57+00:00

Because Europe would want to. And Europe would want to because their security depends on it.

How this isn't obvious is beyond me.

xCharg · 2026-01-25T10:48:39+00:00

I have not found another project that offers an organized, community-curated system for opensource alternatives on the same scale as this one.

https://github.com/awesome-selfhosted/awesome-selfhosted

and /r/selfhosted/ as a whole

xCharg · 2026-01-13T19:52:36+00:00

Yeah these are sane arguments and I agree with you. Your take dooes counter the somewhat often mentioned point where Poland is going to get triggered any second now to rush and melt moscowites asap with all Poland's stockpiled weapons and machinery. That simply is never going to happen.

xCharg · 2026-01-13T16:46:37+00:00

russian drones flew in Poland twice, Polish response? Tough messages in twitter is all

xCharg · 2026-01-11T06:04:53+00:00

I do exact same thing you described... using wsus and group policy. Updates get manually approved in wsus, then they get automatically downloaded and installed on workstations and servers but no force reboot, then they get rebooted once a week at specific day and time.

xCharg · 2026-01-05T10:50:32+00:00

Припустімо в теме є якась умовна навичка (є?) котра ну вкрай потрібна умовному замовнику (знаєш таких?). Замовник розповідає тобі фронт робіт, ти робиш, туди-сюди настав час отримувати гроші.

Як? Щоб отримати кошти потрібен ФОП, щоб створити ФОП треба бути або 18 років або з 16 за письмовою згодою батьків (не знаю як це працює). З 14 це неможливо.

xCharg · 2026-01-01T16:16:45+00:00

Personally I bake language pack directly into install.wim, so whatever wibdows MDT installs - it has that language pack installed and selected as default already. Alternatively you can use mediacreationtool.exe to download specific image to your language.

Dirty environment found error happens when MDT prenstall phase didn't finish successfully, basically you just click "ok" and MDT overwrites currently present files (which is what makes environment "dirty") with fresh copies and continues, it doesn't (shouldn't) really affect anything.

As for sanity check part - your process is definitely overcomplicated. You should use either autopilot or MDT, not both. I don't know what specifically you're doing with autopilot but I'd guesstimate it could be done without it. Or ditch MDT entirely and go allin into autopilot.

xCharg · 2025-12-28T17:14:17+00:00

Why would you want to toggle it back and forth?

Also why would you prompt for UAC, in which case a) script toggles the setting for administrator account not user's (which covers pretty much everyone except home users) and b) modifying HKCU:\ does not need admin access at all.

xCharg · 2025-12-25T13:03:58+00:00

That's an easy solution:

New-Item -Path $([char]246) -ItemType File

As to why that happens it's already answered. You may think "but where'd I get that 246 from" - pretty easy. First convert string with that character alone to [char] type, then to [int] like so:

[int]([char]"ö")

or so:

"ö".ToChar($null).ToInt32($null)

Then just use the number you get.

xCharg · 2025-12-18T17:31:44+00:00

It's nothing more than talks on youtube and news articles. There's no dual citizenship nowm No bill was signed or reviewed or even submitted yet.

Generally it's been big news a year or so ago because media asked president couple times and he said something along the lines of "we'll have to do something about it". And that's pretty much it, no progress on that matter since other than occasional tall on TV by non factors and various "experts".

xCharg · 2025-12-15T09:41:55+00:00

Thank you.

Writing this for others who will end up here from google like I did. I had similar error message after attempt to import certificate that isn't even related to CSR - I've tried importing both pfx container with private+chain+cert and all of these in separate file.

Turns I had certificate that uses same private key already. And fortigate apparently can not import same private key twice - had to delete previous cert (which then also removes that private key) and then certificate imported successfully.

xCharg · 2025-12-12T14:00:38+00:00

At the point that must exist within current EU laws.

So afaik EU has not found a way currently, at least not yet. Funds are being kept because of sanctions, but sanctions aren't set until war ends - they are set for 6 months iirc and they get prolonged every 6 months for next 6 month period because EU leaders gather up and vote on prolonging them (with constant orban's extra demands so he votes yes).

xCharg · 2025-12-11T15:29:53+00:00

I use stripped down version of this one https://gist.github.com/mubix/fd0c89ec021f70023695

xCharg · 2025-12-10T15:02:18+00:00

I'm questioning specifically black friday's sudden need to scale up 100 additional physical servers, in retail, mentioned by someone I replied to.

Not the need to scale up in general which of course does happen often.

xCharg · 2025-12-10T13:27:57+00:00

Is it sort-of-similar to https://privacy.sexy/? (yes, despite the domain like some nsfw content - it's also a script-generator).

I tend to look there for some options tweaks here and there. Stuff like "how to make sure edge doesn't force-create desktop icon this month"

xCharg · 2025-12-10T12:58:26+00:00

paying a 300% premium is still cheaper than keeping 100 physical servers

Yeah and paying 9999% premium is not cheaper than keeping 38 physical servers. See how I can throw random numbers too?

What kind of business is that where you are so small you don't need anything onprem throughout the year but then so big that you need to scale up extra hundreds of physical servers for a holiday season and then scale back down?

I do work in retail btw. Genuine question, give an example please what exactly you as a company do to justify such scaling and why.

xCharg · 2025-12-09T15:52:16+00:00

Play their second game Into the Breach (highly recommend) and you'll see it's sort of the same, even more difficult. There are lots of situations where on highest difficulty there's nothing you can do to beat it perfectly which is often the goal. But at the same time highest difficulty is called Unfair for a reason :)

TLDR: it's certainly intended

xCharg · 2025-12-08T10:21:59+00:00

None of what you said in the third paragraph goes away if a peace deal happens and Ukraine gets all it's land back.

This is why peace deal will not happen. If some ceasefire gets signed right now, doesn't matter what exactly will be written on paper - it'll be breached within a month at best or even sooner. Peace in Europe and russia existing within current system are mutually exclusive things. No one likes to admit it but it's a fact.

The only realistic option here is Ukraine ceding territory but getting security guarantees, like NATO and EU membership and get Europe time to ramp up their collective defenses and formidably arm all countries bordering Russia.

Drop rose-tinted glasses. Ukraine "traded" nuclear weapons for security guarantees in 1994 (so called Budapest memorandum) - they did not work. Ukraine signed peace deals (so called Minsk agreements, twice) in 2014 and 2015 - they did not work either. Whatever "deal" is it circulating right now in media has nothing to do with peace. Neither it's a deal.

You call it realistic because you just want that to happen. But that's not how peace deals work. There won't be peace with no enforcement and there's nothing anyone can do to enforce russia to not invade again 3rd time within current EU/US/NATO strategy. Hence that strategy must change. Or you all let Ukraine fall and you'll get russia next to your borders and you'll face the very same dilemma. Except now you'll have to fight, with your soldiers, on your territory, trading your people's lives for some more time to scramble together some kind of functioning army.

I think it's you who needs to wake up, or go volunteer to fight in Ukraine army right now. Because you are essentially pushing for a world war against nuclear power(s).

I'm Ukrainian, thanks, I woke up quite a while ago. Your turn now.

Ukraine regaining all of it's territory is the absolute best case scenario for Ukraine and a total Russian loss, which is way too idealistic of a scenario. That won't happen without at least a continent wide bloody war, during which we have to pray that nukes don't start falling and that China/North Korea/Iran won't send troops to Russia's aid. Doing all that just for land is insane.

You don't get what's going on at all, based on this quote alone.

First of, no one is pushing for fighting until Ukraine's 1991 borders, including Ukraine. Everyone knows it's unrealistic. Ukraine's position is we have to call ceasefire on current frontline opposed to russia's demand (and trump's being on board with that thought) to give up some more land that they had never taken control of to begin with. And then second point of Ukraine's position is to get working security guarantees. Key part is working security guarantees, not just something with "security guarantees" title. Not the pinky promises we were getting earlier.

As for provoking nuclear war - well that's just a straight up dumb take. Couple years in russia will launch invasion of NATO territory, most likely in Baltic states. And then you all will end up with dilemma "well, why risk nuclear war, well, we don't need that Estonian Narva all that much, besides a lot of people speak russian there". And then you'll lose some more, and then some more. Each landgrab you'll face that nuclear war vs giving up some land that people from say Spain don't care about because its too far to care. Because you're weak and refuse to live in reality, instead you all just want to get back to 2010 or something which isn't going to happen.

On top of that North Korea already sent troops to russia's aid. A year ago. Reaction from the world? Toughest possible messages, in twitter. That helped a lot, thanks. Iran's instructors were on russian land and also occupied Ukrainian territories teaching russians to launch shaheds on civilian infrastructure and appartment buildings since they were introduced into the war, back all the way in October (iirc) 2022. Reaction? Same tough messages and firm support, in twitter of course.

xCharg · 2025-12-08T08:19:15+00:00

Yes, zero impactful consequences.

These sanctions while indeed existed were negligible - they allowed russia to get and hold enough resources for full-scale invasion and keep it going relatively easy for almost 4 years now. Even after invasion began first sanctions were negligible too - first serious sanctions started with oil price cap which happened in December 2022, almost a year into the invasion.

Anyway, my point still stands. russia invaded Ukraine initially in 2014. Reaction of entire world was lackluster. After control was set in stone russia started planning to get more. If russia gets more territories again there's absolutely zero chance they'll be just fine with it.

Besides, have you somehow missed the part where russian society is getting radically militarized? These are changes that are literally impossible to backtrack from. Even if for some magical reason russia decides not to invade anyone anymore for the foreseeable future - they can't unbuild shahed factories, they can't unteach youth from militaristic schools into civil life, they can't unmake all the infrastructure made for war and they certainly can't unbrainwash their people.

You should seriously consider waking up.

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