#microsoft application development services

[qservicesinc]

#QServicesInc offer advanced #MicrosoftAzureDevelopmentServices that encompass development and deployment of apps in a secure cloud environment. https://bit.ly/2Xm4Htl

[andypantsx3]

omg i'm sorry but i need to techsplain just one thing in the most doomer terms possible bc i'm scared and i need people to be too. so i saw this post which is like, a great post that gives me a little kick because of how obnoxious i find ai and how its cathartic to see corporate evil overlords overestimate themselves and jump the gun and look silly.

but one thing i don't think people outside of the industry understand is exactly how companies like microsoft plan on scaling the ability of their ai agents. as this post explains, they are not as advanced as some people make them out to be and it is hard to feed them the amount of context they need to perform some tasks well.

but what the second article in the above post explains is microsoft's investment in making a huge variety of the needed contexts more accessible to ai agents. the idea is like, only about 6 months old but what every huge tech firm right now is looking at is mcps (or model context protocols) which is a framework for standardizing how needed context is given to ai agents. to oversimplify an example, maybe an ai coding agent is trained on a zillion pieces of javacode but doesn't have insider knowledge of microsoft's internal application authoring processes, meta architecture, repositories, etc. an mcp standardizes how you would then offer those documents to the agent in a way that it can easily read and then use them, so it doesn't have to come pre-loaded with that knowledge. so it could tackle this developer's specific use case, if offered the right knowledge.

and that's the plan. essentially, we're going to see a huge boom in companies offering their libraries, services, knowledge bases (e.g. their bug fix logs) etc as mcps, and ai agents basically are going to go shopping amongst those contexts, plug into whatever the context is that they need for the task at hand, and then power up by like a bajillion percent on specific task they need to do.

so ai is powerful but not infallible right now, but it is going to scale pretty quickly i think.

in my opinion the only thing that is ever going to limit ai is not knowledge accessibility, but rather corporate greed. ai models are crazy expensive to train and maintain. every company on earth is also looking at how to optimize them to reduce some of that cost, and i think we will eventually see only a few megalith ais like chatgpt, with a bunch of smaller, more targeted models offered by other companies for them to leverage for specialized tasks.

i genuinely hope that the owners of the megalith models get so greedy that even the cost optimizations they are doing now don't bring down the price enough for their liking and they find shortcuts that ultimately make the models and the entire ecosystem shitty. but i confess i don't know enough about model optimization to know what is likely.

anyway i'm big scared and just wanted to put this slice of knowledge out there for people to be a little more informed.

[korovkabozhya]

ever wonder why spotify/discord/teams desktop apps kind of suck?

i don't do a lot of long form posts but. I realized that so many people aren't aware that a lot of the enshittification of using computers in the past decade or so has a lot to do with embedded webapps becoming so frequently used instead of creating native programs. and boy do i have some thoughts about this.

for those who are not blessed/cursed with computers knowledge Basically most (graphical) programs used to be native programs (ever since we started widely using a graphical interface instead of just a text-based terminal). these are apps that feel like when you open up the settings on your computer, and one of the factors that make windows and mac programs look different (bc they use a different design language!) this was the standard for a long long time - your emails were served to you in a special email application like thunderbird or outlook, your documents were processed in something like microsoft word (again. On your own computer!). same goes for calendars, calculators, spreadsheets, and a whole bunch more - crucially, your computer didn't depend on the internet to do basic things, but being connected to the web was very much an appreciated luxury!

that leads us to the eventual rise of webapps that we are all so painfully familiar with today - gmail dot com/outlook, google docs, google/microsoft calendar, and so on. as html/css/js technology grew beyond just displaying text images and such, it became clear that it could be a lot more convenient to just run programs on some server somewhere, and serve the front end on a web interface for anyone to use. this is really very convenient!!!! it Also means a huge concentration of power (notice how suddenly google is one company providing you the SERVICE) - you're renting instead of owning. which means google is your landlord - the services you use every day are first and foremost means of hitting the year over year profit quota. its a pretty sweet deal to have a free email account in exchange for ads! email accounts used to be paid (simply because the provider had to store your emails somewhere. which takes up storage space which is physical hard drives), but now the standard as of hotmail/yahoo/gmail is to just provide a free service and shove ads in as much as you need to.

webapps can do a lot of things, but they didn't immediately replace software like skype or code editors or music players - software that requires more heavy system interaction or snappy audio/visual responses. in 2013, the electron framework came out - a way of packaging up a bundle of html/css/js into a neat little crossplatform application that could be downloaded and run like any other native application. there were significant upsides to this - web developers could suddenly use their webapp skills to build desktop applications that ran on any computer as long as it could support chrome*! the first applications to be built on electron were the late code editor atom (rest in peace), but soon a whole lot of companies took note! some notable contemporary applications that use electron, or a similar webapp-embedded-in-a-little-chrome as a base are:

microsoft teams

notion

vscode

discord

spotify

anyone! who has paid even a little bit of attention to their computer - especially when using older/budget computers - know just how much having chrome open can slow down your computer (firefox as well to a lesser extent. because its just built better <3)

whenever you have one of these programs open on your computer, it's running in a one-tab chrome browser. there is a whole extra chrome open just to run your discord. if you have discord, spotify, and notion open all at once, along with chrome itself, that's four chromes. needless to say, this uses a LOT of resources to deliver applications that are often much less polished and less integrated with the rest of the operating system. it also means that if you have no internet connection, sometimes the apps straight up do not work, since much of them rely heavily on being connected to their servers, where the heavy lifting is done.

taking this idea to the very furthest is the concept of chromebooks - dinky little laptops that were created to only run a web browser and webapps - simply a vessel to access the google dot com mothership. they have gotten better at running offline android/linux applications, but often the $200 chromebooks that are bought in bulk have almost no processing power of their own - why would you even need it? you have everything you could possibly need in the warm embrace of google!

all in all the average person in the modern age, using computers in the mainstream way, owns very little of their means of computing.

i started this post as a rant about the electron/webapp framework because i think that it sucks and it displaces proper programs. and now ive swiveled into getting pissed off at software services which is in honestly the core issue. and i think things can be better!!!!!!!!!!! but to think about better computing culture one has to imagine living outside of capitalism.

i'm not the one to try to explain permacomputing specifically because there's already wonderful literature ^ but if anything here interested you, read this!!!!!!!!!! there is a beautiful world where computers live for decades and do less but do it well. and you just own it. come frolic with me Okay ? :]

*when i say chrome i technically mean chromium. but functionally it's same thing

[mariacallous]

Iran Warns US Tech Firms Could Become Targets as War Expands

Companies including Google, Microsoft, and Palantir were listed as targets by Iranian media as the conflict with Israel and the US spills in

Major US technology companies have been named as potential targets as the war between Iran, Israel, and the United States begins to spill into the digital infrastructure that powers modern economies.

Iranian state-linked media this week published a list of offices and infrastructure run by US companies with Israeli links whose technology has been used for military applications. According to Al Jazeera, the companies include Google, Microsoft, Palantir, IBM, Nvidia, and Oracle.

Many of these companies operate regional offices, cloud infrastructure, or data-center operations across the Gulf, including in the United Arab Emirates. None have released public statements on this development.

The list was published by the semi-official, Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps–linked Tasnim News Agency alongside a warning that the scope of the conflict could expand beyond traditional military targets.

“As the scope of the regional war expands to infrastructure war, the scope of Iran’s legitimate targets expands,” Tasnim News Agency reported.

Last week, Iranian drone strikes damaged Amazon Web Services data centers in the UAE and Bahrain, disrupting services and exposing the vulnerability of physical tech infrastructure in the region.

The warning followed Iranian reports of an Israeli strike on a bank building in Tehran linked to Bank Sepah. Iranian officials have described it as an attack on economic infrastructure.

Iranian state media said the incident justified expanding potential targets to include US and Israeli economic and banking interests across the region.

“With this illegitimate and uncommon action, the enemy is forcing our hand to target economic centers and banks linked to the US and Zionist regime in the region,” said a spokesperson for the IRGC-owned Khatam al-Anbiya Headquarters. He warned civilians to stay one kilometer away from banks.

Tech in Warfare

The tech companies listed by Iran have all been accused of supplying their technology for use by the Israeli military to different extents, though most have refuted these claims. Palantir openly agreed to a strategic partnership with Israel to “help the country’s war effort,” including supplying “advanced technology in support of war-related missions,” Palantir executive vice president Josh Harris told Bloomberg.

Outside of potential military applications, many of the named companies operate cloud platforms, artificial intelligence tools, and data systems used by large organizations in the region.

As warfare becomes increasingly dependent on digital systems, from satellite data to AI-powered intelligence analysis, the infrastructure behind those systems has more strategic significance.

But the cloud is not the only digital system being pulled into the conflict. Across the region, electronic warfare targeting GPS signals has surged, disrupting navigation systems used by aircraft, ships, and everyday smartphone apps.

Technology companies operating in the region have already begun adjusting their operations. Several US firms with offices across the Gulf have asked employees to work remotely or limit travel as the conflict escalated, according to media reports. Some companies have also activated contingency plans following infrastructure disruptions linked to drone strikes and airspace closures.

[probablyasocialecologist]

What comes after the AI crash?

The end of the boom won’t end generative AI’s harms

Once the AI bubble bursts, that doesn’t mean chatbots and image generators will be relegated to the trash bin of history. Rather, there will be a reassessment of where it makes sense to implement them, and if attention moves on too fast, they may be able to do that with minimal pushback. The challenge visual artists and video game workers are already finding with employers making use of generative AI to worsen the labor conditions in their industries may become entrenched, especially if artists fail in their lawsuits against AI companies for training on their work without permission. But it could be far worse than that. Microsoft is already partnering with Palantir to feed generative AI into militaries and intelligence agencies, while governments around the world are looking at how they can implement generative AI to reduce the cost of service delivery, often without effective consideration of the potential harms that can come of relying on tools that are well known to output false information. This is a problem Resisting AI author Dan McQuillan has pointed to as a key reason why we must push back against these technologies. There are already countless examples of algorithmic systems have been used to harm welfare recipients, childcare benefit applicants, immigrants, and other vulnerable groups. We risk a repetition, if not an intensification, of those harmful outcomes. When the AI bubble bursts, investors will lose money, companies will close, and workers will lose jobs. Those developments will be splashed across the front pages of major media organizations and will receive countless hours of public discussion. But it’s those lasting harms that will be harder to immediately recognize, and that could fade as the focus moves on to whatever Silicon Valley places starts pushing as the foundation of its next investment cycle. All the benefits Altman and his fellow AI boosters promised will fade, just as did the promises of the gig economy, the metaverse, the crypto industry, and countless others. But the harmful uses of the technology will stick around, unless concerted action is taken to stop those use cases from lingering long after the bubble bursts.

16 August 2024

[jakke]

Amazon cut more than 1,800 engineers in record layoffs, despite saying it needs to innovate faster

Nearly 40% of the roughly 4,700 positions Amazon eliminated across Washington, New York, New Jersey and California were engineering jobs.

Amazon CEO Andy Jassy has been on a multiyear mission to transform the company’s corporate culture into one that operates like what he calls “the world’s largest startup.” He’s looked to make Amazon leaner and less bureaucratic by urging staffers to do more with less and cutting organizational bloat.

When covid hit, the shift in Big Tech to remote work made interviewing cheaper and easier but also made it more difficult for VPs and directors to gain visibility and get promoted without first building an empire of as many minions as possible, and this kicked off a really unprecedented hiring boom where thousands of applicants were streaming through an eleven-step interview process to a bunch of new roles that didn't really make sense. Now Big Tech employees are back in office, which means that middle managers have better strategies for raising visibility, and also economic times leaner, which means there's pressure to not just hire indiscriminately. This has led to massive layoffs at e.g. Microsoft and Meta and above all else Amazon which has been absolutely hemorrhaging employees.

What's different about these Amazon layoffs, though, is that they're surprisingly skewed towards removing the engineers who make the products rather than removing the layers of management and bureaucracy. During Meta's big layoffs, for example, they gave a bunch of newly-promoted managers the choice of returning to doing actual production work or getting laid off. Laying off a bunch of engineers doesn't really make a ton of sense when Amazon makes more profit from Amazon Web Services than all its other business lines combined - like, that seems like the part of the company that's successful, and where you'd want to be investing money.

I think a big part of what's going on here is the long slow death of the tech industry business culture and specifically a shift away from subject matter expertise and technical proficiency and towards the intuition and handshakefulness of MBAs and seasoned executives. As the centre of attention and investment in the tech industry shifted away from technical improvements and toward reductions in business friction and/or regulatory arbitrage (think AirBNB, Uber, DoorDash) a whole new cohort of management arose whose impression of the whole sector was that it focused too much on improvements to software and algorithms and not enough on dealmaking and financial optimization and a general air of Doing Business - and this gave us a decade of follies like blockchain, which feels like finance but is actually nothing. There's a world where LLM development could have really reoriented the tech industry towards technical innovation, but this current crop of executives see it as a way to replace the expertise and proficiency (which they don't understand, and which they encourage each other to think of as mindless peon grunt work) and free up cash flow, and so you get Amazon announcing they'll be innovating faster by laying off the people who could conceivably do that innovation.

[4okra]

my term paper written in 2018 (how ND games were made and why they will never be made that way again)

hello friends, I am going to be sharing portions of a paper i wrote way back in 2018 for a college class. in it, i was researching exactly how the ND games were made, and why they would not be made that way anymore.

if you have any interest in the behind the scenes of how her interactive made their games and my theories as to why our evil overlord penny milliken made such drastic changes to the process, read on!

warning that i am splicing portions of this paper together, so you don't have to read my ramblings about the history of nancy and basic gameplay mechanics:

Use of C++, DirectX, and Bink Video

Upon completion of each game, the player can view the game’s credits. HeR states that each game was developed using C++ and DirectX, as well as Bink Video later on.

C++

          C++ is a general-purpose programming language. This means that many things can be done with it, gaming programming included. It is a compiled language, which Jack Copeland explains as the “process of converting a table of instructions into a standard description or a description number” (Copeland 12). This means that written code is broken down into a set of numbers that the computer can then understand. C++ first appeared in 1985 and was first standardized in 1998. This allowed programmers to use the language more widely. It is no coincidence that 1998 is also the year that the first Nancy Drew game was released.

C++ Libraries

          When there is a monetary investment to make a computer game, there are more people using and working on whatever programming language they are using. Because there was such an interest in making games in the late 1990’s and early 2000’s, there was essentially a “boom” in how much C++ and other languages were being used. With that many people using the language, they collectively added on to the language to make it simpler to use. This process ends up creating what is called “libraries.” For example:

          If a programmer wants to make a function to add one, they must write out the code that does that (let’s say approximately three lines of code). To make this process faster, the programmer can define a symbol, such as + to mean add. Now, when the programmer types “+”, the language knows that equals the three lines of code previously mentioned, as opposed to typing out those three lines of code each time the programmer wants to add. This can be done for all sorts of symbols and phrases, and when they are all put together, they are called a “package” or “library.”

          Libraries can be shared with other programmers, which allows everyone to do much more with the language much faster. The more libraries there are, the more that can be done with the language.

          Because of the interest in the gaming industry in the early 2000’s, more people were being paid to use programming languages. This caused a fast increase in the ability of programming. This helps to explain how HeR was able to go from jerky, bobble-headed graphics in 1999 to much more fluid and realistic movements in 2003.

Microsoft DirectX

          DirectX is a collection of application programming interfaces (APIs) for tasks related to multimedia, especially video game programming, on Microsoft platforms. Among many others, these APIs include Direct3D (allows the user to draw 3D graphics and render 3D animation), DirectDraw (accelerates the rendering of graphics), and DirectMusic (allows interactive control over music and sound effects). This software is crucial for the development of many games, as it includes many services that would otherwise require multiple programs to put together (which would not only take more time but also more money, which is important to consider in a small company like HeR).

Bink Video

          According to the credits which I have painstakingly looked through for each game, HeR started using Bink Video in game 7, Ghost Dogs of Moon Lake (2002). Bink is a file format (.bik) developed by RAD Game Tools. This file format has to do with how much data is sent in a package to the Graphical User Interface (GUI). (The GUI essentially means that the computer user interacts with representational graphics rather than plain text. For example, we understand that a plain drawing of a person’s head and shoulders means “user.”) Bink Video structures the data sent in a package so that when it reaches the Central Processing Unit (CPU), it is processed more efficiently. This allows for more data to be transferred per second, making graphics and video look more seamless and natural. Bink Video also allows for more video sequences to be possible in a game.

Use of TransGaming Inc.

          Sea of Darkness is the only title that credits a company called TransGaming Inc, though I’m pretty sure they’ve been using it for every Mac release, starting in 2010. TransGaming created a technology called Cider that allowed video game developers to run games designed for Windows on Mac OS X (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Findev). As one can imagine, this was an incredibly helpful piece of software that allowed for HeR to start releasing games on Mac platforms. This was a smart way for them to increase their market. 

          In 2015, a portion of TransGaming was acquired by NVIDIA, and in 2016, TransGaming changed its business focus from technology to real estate financing. Though it is somewhat difficult to determine which of its formal products are still available, it can be assumed that they will not be developing anything else technology-based from 2016 on.

          Though it is entirely possible that there is other software available for converting Microsoft based games to Mac platforms, the loss of TransGaming still has large consequences. For a relatively small company like Her Interactive, hiring an entire team to convert the game for Mac systems was a big deal (I know they did this because it is in the credits of SEA which you can see at the end of this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q0gAzD7Q09Y). Without this service, HeR loses a large portion of their customers.

Switch to Unity

          Unity is a game engine that is designed to work across 27 platforms, including Windows, Mac, iOS, Playstation, Xbox, Wii, and multiple Virtual Reality systems. The engine itself is written in C++, though the user of the software writes code in C#, JavaScript (also called UnityScript), or less commonly Boo. Its initial release took place in 2005, with a stable release in 2017 and another in March of 2018. Some of the most popular games released using Unity include Pokemon Go for iOS in 2016 and Cuphead in 2017.

          HeR’s decision to switch to Unity makes sense on one hand but is incredibly frustrating on the other. Let’s start with how it makes sense. The software HeR was using from TransGaming Inc. will (from what I can tell) never be updated again, meaning it will become virtually useless soon, if it hasn’t already. That means that HeR needed to find another software that would allow them to convert their games onto a Mac platform so that they would not lose a large portion of their customers. This was probably seen as an opportunity to switch to something completely new that would allow them to reach even more platforms. One of the points HeR keeps harping on and on about in their updates to fans is the tablet market, as well as increasing popularity in VR. If HeR wants to survive in the modern game market, they need to branch outside of PC gaming. Unity will allow them to do that. The switch makes sense.

          However, one also has to consider all of the progress made in their previous game engine. Everything discussed up to this point has taken 17 years to achieve. And, because their engine was designed by their developers specifically for their games, it is likely that after the switch, their engine will never be used again. Additionally, none of the progress HeR made previously applies to Unity, and can only be used as a reference. Plus, it’s not just the improvements made in the game engine that are being erased. It is also the staff at HeR who worked there for so long, who were so integral in building their own engine and getting the game quality to where it is in Sea of Darkness, that are being pushed aside for a new gaming engine. New engine, new staff that knows how to use it.

          The only thing HeR won’t lose is Bink Video, if that means anything to anyone. Bink2 works with Unity. According to the Bink Video website, Bink supplies “pre-written plugins for both Unreal 4 and Unity” (Rad Game Tools). However, I can’t actually be sure that HeR will still use Bink in their next game since I don’t work there. It would make sense if they continued to use it, but who knows.

Conclusions and frustrations

          To me, Her Interactive is the little company that could. When they set out to make the first Nancy Drew game, there was no engine to support it. Instead of changing their tactics, they said to heck with it and built their own engine. As years went on, they refined their engine using C++ and DirectX and implemented Bink Video. In 2010 they began using software from TransGaming Inc. that allowed them to convert their games to Mac format, allowing them to increase their market. However, with TransGaming Inc.’s falling apart starting in 2015, HeR was forced to rethink its strategy. Ultimately they chose to switch their engine out for Unity, essentially throwing out 17 years worth of work and laying off many of their employees. Now three years in the making, HeR is still largely secretive about the status of their newest game. The combination of these factors has added up to a fanbase that has become distrustful, frustrated, and altogether largely disappointed in what was once that little company that could.

Suggested Further Reading:

Midnight in Salem, OR Her Interactive’s Marketing Nightmare (Part 2): https://saving-face.net/2017/07/07/midnight-in-salem-or-her-interactives-marketing-nightmare-part-2/

Compilation of MID Facts: http://community.herinteractive.com/showthread.php?1320771-Compilation-of-MID-Facts

Game Building - Homebrew or Third Party Engines?: https://thementalattic.com/2016/07/29/game-building-homebrew-or-third-party-engines/

/end of essay. it is crazy to go back and read this again in 2025. mid had not come out yet when i wrote this and i genuinely did not think it would ever come out. i also had to create a whole power point to go along with this and present it to my entire class of people who barely even knew what nancy drew was, let alone that there was a whole series of pc games based on it lol

[cyber-sec]

Daily Cybersecurity Briefing – 11 November 2025

Aleksei Volkov, a Russian national, pleaded guilty to operating as an initial access broker for the Yanluowang ransomware group, which targeted multiple United States companies between 2021 and 2022. Court filings indicate he gained unauthorised access to victim networks and sold those credentials for ransom proceeds.

The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) directed all federal agencies to patch a Samsung zero-day actively exploited in LandFall spyware attacks against WhatsApp users. The flaw enabled remote monitoring on affected Android devices.

Researchers from Volexity linked new spear phishing operations to China-aligned threat group UTA0388, using artificial intelligence tools to craft more convincing phishing messages. Simultaneously, a new phishing-as-a-service platform named Quantum Route Redirect was discovered targeting Microsoft 365 users worldwide via over 1,000 malicious domains.

A report by Wiz revealed that 65% of leading artificial intelligence firms leaked sensitive credentials and model data through GitHub repositories. Exposed secrets potentially compromise proprietary assets valued at hundreds of billions of dollars.

Cybersecurity researchers identified the GlassWorm malware spreading through compromised Visual Studio Code extensions, infecting thousands of developer systems. Meanwhile, ClickFix-style phishing attacks resurfaced, targeting hotels with PureRAT malware delivered through malicious emails.

The Open Worldwide Application Security Project (OWASP) updated its Top 10 web application risks, adding two new categories reflecting emerging threats in application security. Additionally, Mozilla enhanced its Firefox 145 release with stronger anti-fingerprinting protections to bolster online privacy.

Today's advisories highlight multiple high-severity vulnerabilities across the Linux kernel, Red Hat, and Ubuntu, including the VMSCAPE flaw affecting virtualised environments. Critical issues were also patched in Samba, Samsung Android (actively exploited), and Intel microcode, while coordinated updates spanned Python, OpenSSL, and libTIFF, indicating a broad focus on foundational open-source components.

Highlights of the day:

GlassWorm resurfaces via infected OpenVSX extensions: new wave compromises three developer plugins and GitHub repos, using hidden Unicode and Solana blockchain C2; victims include a Middle Eastern government entity.

Booking.com phishing hijacks hotel accounts worldwide: attackers abused legitimate business logins to send PureRAT-laced messages to guests, enabling large-scale credential theft and financial fraud.

OWASP updates Top 10 for 2025: revised list introduces “Software Supply Chain Failures” and “Insecure Design” while reaffirming “Broken Access Control” as the top web application risk.

AI firms leak secrets on GitHub: Wiz found 65% of Forbes AI 50 companies exposed API keys and credentials across deleted forks and personal repos, revealing weak secrets management.

Russian hacker admits role in Yanluowang ransomware: Aleksei Volkov pleaded guilty in the US to selling stolen access and laundering ransom payments, facing prison and $9.1 million restitution.

Source: CyberSecBrief