avazhi (u/avazhi) - Readit News

avazhi commented on Welcome to the Room: A lesson in leadership by Satya Nadella jsnover.com/blog/2026/02/... · Posted by u/dnw

avazhi · 3 days ago

Nadella and Microsoft are both clowns. His enduring legacy will be fumbling the window Microsoft had two years ago to catapult itself into AI-assisted search and Microsoft was primed to be at the front.

Today? All anybody except for Microsoft’s C suite execs want Copilot to do is turn itself off.

He’s an idiot. Ballmer 2.0, except even Ballmer got some cloud stuff right.

avazhi commented on Yawning has an unexpected influence on the fluid inside your brain newscientist.com/article/... · Posted by u/MDWolinski

CGMthrowaway · 5 days ago

It is detrimental though. It is socially impolite to yawn in public.

Edit: why am I being downvoted for this?

avazhi · 5 days ago

> why am I being downvoted for this?

Because you don’t know what detrimental means in this context and clearly don’t understand evolutionary timescales?

avazhi commented on Anki ownership transferred to AnkiHub forums.ankiweb.net/t/anki... · Posted by u/trms

infotainment · 7 days ago

On the plus side, the actually good mobile Anki client, AnkiDroid, remains out of the hands of this potentially questionable new entity.

(AnkiDroid has always been run independently, which is good, considering the state of the iOS client, which has always been neglected.)

avazhi · 7 days ago

What’s so bad about the paid iOS client? I remember it being expensive when I got it but it works fine for my use case (mix of getting me through part of med school, all of law school, and the just general shit I’d like to remember and learn). There’s definitely never been anything jarring about using it vs the Mac or windows clients but I’m happy for somebody to point out the problems I’ve been missing!

avazhi commented on The Codex App openai.com/index/introduc... · Posted by u/meetpateltech

avazhi · 7 days ago

ChatGPT can’t even write me a simple working AutoHotKey script so I’m not sure why I’d trust it with any actual coding. As I’ve done for about the past year with OpenAI showcases like this, this elicited an ‘Oh, that’s kinda neat, I’ll just wait for Gemini to do something similar so it will actually work’ from me.

avazhi commented on Notepad++ hijacked by state-sponsored actors notepad-plus-plus.org/new... · Posted by u/mysterydip

the_fall · 7 days ago

First, you're getting upset at a random person on the internet for expressing their political views. Second, your objection almost certainly has nothing to do with this attack. It targeted some specific subset of users of Notepad++, not the maintainer.

avazhi · 7 days ago

You think the developer/publisher/maintainer of software as ubiquitous as Notepad++ is some 'random person on the internet'? Or are you referring to the commenter I was replying to?

I definitely am not upset at the commenter I replied to, and while I'm definitely upset at the maker of Notepad++ I don't think he qualifies as some random person on the internet. If you publish software that security conscious people use (and certainly Notepad++ is used by tech savvy security-conscious people) then you, really by definition, aren't some random person - that's kinda the whole point. Security conscious and tech savvy people tend not to install things from random people on the internet.

Notepad++ was a trusted website/trusted developer, and they got caught with their pants down doing some truly dumb and lazy shit, and then they published a blogpost that doesn't explain much of anything. So yeah, that's pretty infuriating my friend.

avazhi commented on Notepad++ hijacked by state-sponsored actors notepad-plus-plus.org/new... · Posted by u/mysterydip

freitasm · 7 days ago

The writeup says it right there:

"The security exper’s analysis indicates the attack ceased on November 10, 2025, while the hosting provider’s statement shows potential attacker access until December 2, 2025. Based on both assessment, I estimate the overall compromise period spanned from June through December 2, 2025, when all attacker access was definitively terminated."

avazhi · 7 days ago

Yeah, that refers to the MITM attack on the update server. We have no fucking clue what they actually did while they were in the middle - whatever exploit code was running may very well be running right now on compromised machines. Nobody knows what the compromised exes actually did.

Thanks for your nonanswer, though. It was about as unhelpful and unspecific as the original blogpost for this.

avazhi commented on Notepad++ hijacked by state-sponsored actors notepad-plus-plus.org/new... · Posted by u/mysterydip

the_fall · 7 days ago

That's the most honest assessment you can expect from any small-scale developer. What do you expect them to say or do? Their adversary is presumably a national intelligence agency of a superpower.

The odds may be better if you operate the way OpenSSH does: move slow, security first, architect everything to be very difficult to attack. But if you're building a text editor, it's not your mindset, and probably never will be.

avazhi · 7 days ago

> The odds may be better if you operate the way OpenSSH does: move slow, security first, architect everything to be very difficult to attack. But if you're building a text editor, it's not your mindset, and probably never will be.

I mean, if you look at the Notepad++ website this developer seems just as concerned at spamming political messaging all over everything as much as he is with writing the software he's distributing. It's pretty crazy he apparently didn't think to take more basic precautions given he is basically permatrolling Russia and China with his messaging. Big brain moment for him. And meanwhile, after reading that disclosure nonsense none of us even know what's going on - like, should we be formatting machines that were affecting during that timeframe? Was the attack targeted and specific only? Who the fuck knows!

avazhi commented on Notepad++ hijacked by state-sponsored actors notepad-plus-plus.org/new... · Posted by u/mysterydip

tjpnz · 7 days ago

I wouldn't brush off Taiwan or Ukraine as "political". In both cases it's about survival, and in one it's a literal fight.

avazhi · 7 days ago

That’s political, lol.

avazhi commented on Apple Platform Security (Jan 2026) [pdf] help.apple.com/pdf/securi... · Posted by u/pieterr

baxtr · 9 days ago

Apple sells some ads yes. But it’s a tiny fraction of their revenue.

Would Google or Meta go bankrupt if they stopped selling ads? Yes. Apple wouldn’t.

avazhi · 9 days ago

What does whether they’d go bankrupt or not have to do with whether they’re an ad company?

They sell third party ads: companies unaffiliated with Apple pay Apple to advertise on Apple platforms.

They’re an ad company. Just because it’s currently a small slice of their total revenue doesn’t make it untrue.

avazhi commented on Spanish track was fractured before high-speed train disaster, report finds bbc.com/news/articles/c1m... · Posted by u/Rygian

clort · 14 days ago

Ok so, devils advocate view here. Russians could do this exactly because Spain is on the fence and they would rather they were more antagonistic. They actually want war with Europe, so they can do whatever they like and claim it is Europe's fault for being aggressive. Don't forget, they don't really believe that they are losing the war in Ukraine. They could also be hoping to get Europe embroiled in its own conflicts.

It sounds unreasonable sure, but tbh I am not convinced that the Russian government is reasonable.

avazhi · 14 days ago

The Russian government isn’t reasonable (nor is it particularly competent), but neither is blaming the Russians for every bad thing that happens in the world. Sometimes trains derail. A track buckling due to shit maintenance is the Occam’s Razor most likely answer here.

You can call out the Russians for being pieces of shit without making them the boogeyman for literally everything. Doing the latter just makes you seem like a conspiracy theorist.