Hello. I flew all the way to the moon and back.
But stuff still happened. So what's up? AI is
up. Let's talk about Microsoft. Microsoft really
wants you to use Copilot. Like they really, really
want you to use Copilot. And the good news for
you is that you can't really avoid it because
if you use Windows or if your job uses Office
365, you just kind of have it. But that's great
for you. Let me explain why it's great for you.
Because then you're using Copilot. by Microsoft.
In a world full of chat GPTs and clods and stuff,
Microsoft's AI offering is called Copilot, and
it's genuinely confusing because there are multiple
different things that are all called different
versions of Copilot, and I assume that that's
just their general brand name. but in addition
to it being a brand name, it is also a product.
It's confusing. Copilot, to me, as somebody coming
from a software engineering background, it refers
to GitHub Copilot, which was an AI assistant
for helping to write code trained on code from
GitHub. GitHub is owned by Microsoft, and that's
gonna come up later, but that's... That's what
Copilot was to me, and then Copilot was also
now a thing with Windows PCs. Microsoft has a
thing where you can get an AI -ready Copilot
Plus PC. Like I'm saying, there's just no rhyme
or reason to this branding. So you've got Copilot
Plus PC, GitHub Copilot, Microsoft Copilot. It's
a mess. But that's what I want to talk about,
is that it... is a mess. And Microsoft has not
been particularly good, especially recently,
at reading the room. They have been on a generational
tear of just L after L after L of just trying
to cram in AI into everything. It very much seems
like there's an order from the top that basically
is like, hey, put AI into everything. And then
we ended up with AI in Microsoft Paint and Notepad.
The AI update to Notepad even added a vulnerability.
And that's not even mentioning recall, which
is the feature that was announced a few years
ago, where Windows is going to take a screenshot
of everything you're doing on your computer to
save it in a database for the AI to review later.
When it was originally announced, basically every
security researcher was like, this is an awful
idea. And Microsoft was like, oh, you know, you
might have a point. We'll tweak it a bit. They
did tweak it a bit. It's not that woke and it's
still pretty bad. Asterisk. You don't really
have to worry about that if you don't have one
of those co -pilot plus PCs, to my knowledge.
So as long as you don't have one of those, you're
probably fine. Famously, people love to have
permanent records of what they do on their personal
computer. What's a browser history? I'm sorry.
Now you might be thinking, Microsoft is a big
boy company with big boy money, and they must
have a reason to be doing this. Surely it's the
case that they're getting a good return on investment,
and they're seeing gains in the market, and that
this is going well for them. It's not. None of
that. Not only do we have senior folks at Microsoft
putting out a blog post being like, hey, everyone,
sorry about ruining Windows. We're going to be
better about that going forward. It's not even
the first time this year that they said, sorry
about ruining Windows. We're going to be better
about that going forward. This is an operating
system. It's like the base level thing that people
have on their computer. It's not something you
just buck around with. And obviously, like, you
know, Windows sucks, and kind of has sucked for
a while, and a lot of people just use it for
gaming, other people use it because they have
to for work, or what have you, but a lot of people
just don't. no other systems, and they just use
Windows machines. And like, that's fine. And
it sucks that Microsoft is so bad to those people.
It goes beyond just having AI crap in Windows.
Because they're Microsoft, and they can't help
themselves, they recently launched a feature
on their coding side of Copilot. The feature
is called Tips. And what it did was insert ads
into people's software development process. Crash
Course. I'm gonna make you a software developer
real quick. When you're working on an app, let's
say you're adding a feature or fixing a bug,
the way that that actually works is you do what's
called checking out a copy of the code base,
which is to say you have your own version of
the app, and you work on that and then you eventually
merge that back in to the actual app. That merging
process involves a sort of a ticket that you
open up to basically say like, hey guys, I wanna
merge in my stuff, can someone review this? That
ticket is often referred to as a merge request
or a pull request. Now, here's, that's all you
gotta know. A software developer was using GitHub
Copilot and said, hey, can you go make a merge
request? Just go write something there. When
they went to go read the merge request that Copilot
had written, there was an ad in it. It was like,
hey, hot tip, y 'all. If you want to easily launch
AI agents, you can use Raycast. Side note, I
do really like Raycast. I don't really use it
for AI stuff. It's just like a productivity launcher.
Raycast is pretty sick. Kind of sucks that they're
at the center of this story. So if you look at
GitHub, which is again owned by Microsoft, and
you do a search for the wording that was put
into this merge request, you'll find... thousands
of merge requests with the same ad injected into
it. Automated gorilla marketing at scale that
isn't particularly gorilla. Anyway, that's awful.
Don't do that, Microsoft. That's so obviously
dumb and bad. If you want to hire me as senior
executive revoker of terrible, obviously bad
ideas, I'm available. Anyway, even with all of
this, Copilot's not doing well. The adoption
rate is abysmal and is probably mostly just people
who have to use it because it's what their office
is making them use. Adoption is around 2 .5 to
3 % of Windows users and it's losing market share
compared to other AI assistants like Google's
Gemini, which I know exactly nothing about. I've
never used it. Anyway, it's a skill issue because
I annoy people to install certain software without
having to be an artificial intelligence. Again,
I'm available for hire. Hey, thank you so much
for being here. If you like what I do and you
want to help me keep this going and not filled
with a bunch of dumb corporate sponsor stuff,
you can head to isupport .dev where you'll find
links to my Patreon, my Ko -Fi. There's a whole
bunch of ways to support me, either monetarily
or just commenting and sharing my stuff. Any
kind of engagement really does help. So thank
you again for being here. Let's move on. Let's
talk about war. We're still doing it. We're still
doing it. We are very much still at war with
Iran despite what our leadership wants to claim.
In my limited experience on this planet, having
a situation that is prolonged where you are exchanging
munitions and losing service members on both
sides generally constitutes a war. There's been
a lot, and the reporting is not great, honestly.
It's very rare that I'm gonna sit here and be
like, ah, the mainstream media is hiding this
from you. Because almost always that's not the
case. You know, a lot of people rail against
mainstream media, and they're saying like, oh,
no one's talking about this, and so on and so
forth, when in reality, they have articles about
it, it's just that they're not floating to the
top of algorithms because whatever reason. That
reason could be because the algorithms are designed
to keep certain things suppressed. That reason
could be because people don't care about the
story genuinely, and it's not until you find
out later on, and find out that you didn't learn
about it in time, that it feels like nobody was
talking about it. In this case... It's kind of
different. We are getting a very slim picture
of what's going on across the world during a
war right now. And it's very clear that everything
that's coming stateside is like a week or more
delayed and is highly editorialized by a US perspective.
And like, duh, obviously. I don't take the words
of any state official at face value. US, Israeli,
Iranian, none of them. I'm trying to navigate
this as best I can with the understanding that
a lot of the reporting from US outlets is gonna
be straight up wrong. But going with what I've
got, so let's talk about what's going on with
the war. Five European nations have made a no
-fly zone for the US. Or at least a no -fly or
if you're gonna fly it's gonna be annoying zone.
Essentially five different countries for different
reasons have said in some capacity, no, you cannot
use our airspace for your war. I'll go through
them, and we'll talk a little bit about each.
Spain says, get the fuck out. Spain's the hardest
one here. They said, you're not using our airspace
for this illegal war. Fuck you. They didn't say...
They didn't say fuck you, but like, in terms
of geopolitics, they said that. France is playing
hard to get. They haven't fully shut down their
airspace, but they are saying like, hey Israel,
you can't use our airspace to transfer weapons
from the US, and so on and so forth. So France
is making it a little bit harder to use their
airspace. Switzerland! is neutral. I feel like
I don't even need to say that one. They're doing
the Switzerland thing, staying generally neutral
and only letting a few aircraft through. Italy
is a bit of a will -they -won't -they. They've
closed the airspace for some cases. They denied
the US from landing certain bombers there. So
it's like airspace, but also ground space. And
Austria's coming in hot. Just recently they were
like, eh, we're gonna go full Switzerland. They're
citing neutrality laws and they're saying, yeah,
no, you can't use our airspace. So that's fine.
Kind of got to go around. Big ol' hole in the
map. Speaking of airplanes, some of them went
down. The Iranian military shot down a US F -15E
fighter jet. Strike Eagle Jet. There were two
crew members aboard, a pilot and a weapons boy.
The pilot ejected, as did the weapons boy. The
pilot was rescued pretty shortly after ejecting.
The weapons boy was rescued the next day, after
what the US would really like you to know was
a daring rescue mission. The second airman was
lost for quite some time, and did have to do
some personal heroics to stay alive. Also, we're
bombing the fuck out of that country right now.
It's really hard to sit here and be like, oh,
this is a wonderful, uplifting story that we
rescued this service member, because, like, why
are they there in the first place? During the
rescue mission, an A -10 Warthog, another aircraft,
went down, also, but the pilot ejected and is
apparently safe? According to US officials, other
aircraft just took light fire and there was otherwise
just like minor wounds and everybody's back safe.
Iran claims it was a different situation. Iran
claims that they shot down more planes than the
US is saying and they also claim that they took
out five people. There's not a lot of details
about that. Could be a lie. But also they shot
down an F -15 after the US told us that we had
total air superiority and basically took out
all their defenses. So like lies are sort of
the status quo here. Anyway, brace yourself for
the movie in a decade or so. They're gonna do
everything they can to make it look like, oh
man, how could the Iranians have done this to
us? Pete Hegseth. He is somehow the head of the
Department of Defense. He wants to call it the
Department of War. I'm not gonna call it that.
I've spent my entire life surrounded by people
who work in the DoD. I'm not gonna not be saying
DoD. Anyway, dude sucks. I could just say, yeah,
he sucks. Is that good enough? Do I have to say
anything else? Alright, I'll say what I got here.
So in addition to the average run -of -the -mill
Hegseth -ery that we've been seeing, there's
been a bit of an increase in bullshit. I'll start
with the one that doesn't matter as much to me,
which is still pretty fucking dumb. Pete Hegseth
personally got involved to get rid of an investigation
into multiple US service members who flew a helicopter
by Kid Rock's house for like a photo op for Twitter.
I don't get it either. I didn't know people liked
Kid Rock, but this is apparently like their thing
now, is this one guy. So Kid Rock posted a video
to Twitter of him waving at multiple army helicopters,
and he's like, God bless our troops. And then
the army was like, yeah, that's not, that ain't
it. That's not good. Those people are now under
investigation and suspended. Hegseth then chimed
in and was like, no. I refuse, was his actual
quote. His quote was, no punishment, no investigation.
Carry on, patriots. What a cool guy. All the
while, he has fired a whole bunch of generals.
During a war. Including, recently, the chief
of staff of the army. During a war. It's not
something that you usually do. To top it all
off, Financial Times reported that a financial
broker for Pete Hegseth apparently tried to go
to Blackrock and buy securities from a fund that
invests in defense manufacturing right before
the war started. The only reason it didn't go
through is because the fund wasn't ready yet.
The Pentagon denies the claim. Shocking. Ow,
my data center. Iran has been striking data centers
where US companies are operating. AWS, Amazon's
web platform, has multiple regions that are just
hard down right now. What was first reported
as, like, fires at a facility and, like, structural
damage has escalated into, hey, why is the entire
region offline? Let's go back to some definitions.
Again, you're a software engineer already, so
you're gonna get this no problem. It's actually
really simple. AWS, Amazon Web Services. It is
their internet platform. If you're a company
that wants to build an internet service, you're
probably gonna build it on AWS and they have
like global infrastructure for tech stuff. That
global infrastructure is located in a bunch of
different regions so that you can have your stuff...
near your customers. If you want to do global
business, you want to have global data centers.
If you want to do business just in North America,
you're probably just sticking to a North American
data center. AWS offers a whole bunch of different
data centers in different localities, and the
ones around Iran are currently not working. ME
Central One and ME South One, which are Middle
East Central and South locations, are both down.
And this comes after those structural problems
and small fires happened. Just taking a quick
glance at, like, developer forums, you'll see
people saying, like, hey, I can't connect to
the data center. What's going on here? Amazon
says that it's currently just down. There's not
really a restoration timeline for it. So, like,
if you had stuff running in these data centers,
you're just up shit creek. But that's meaningful
because Amazon is a defense contractor. Amazon
has dedicated data regions for government utility.
Amazon, Microsoft, Oracle, all these companies,
they all provide support to the U .S. military,
either directly in hosting their systems or indirectly
by way of offering them support. So genuinely,
like, AWS data centers. are objectively military
targets. I'll end this story by saying that the
White House is now saying that for the 2027 fiscal
year, they want to cut non -defense spending
by 10 % and increase defense spending by $500
billion. All right, better news. We went to the
moon. We didn't go to the moon. We're going near
the moon. Again, the Artemis 2 mission launched
on the evening of April 1st. They went to the
sky. They're gonna go around the moon, come back,
and sploosh back down by San Diego on April 10th.
I am not in that spacecraft. The mission is interesting.
They're just looping around the moon to basically
be like, can we land on you later? You down with
that? It's the second mission in the Artemis
line, the first one being Artemis 1, which was
an unmanned attempt to just go around the moon
and be like, alright, can we still do this? We
still got this juice? Turns out we had the juice,
so we put four people on an aircraft and launched
them into space, and they took a really, really
cool picture. Leave it to an astronaut sending
a picture back to Earth to make you be like,
mmm -hmm -hmm -hmm. I am tiny and don't matter.
It's truly, truly incredibly gorgeous. You can
see multiple auroras. You can see the atmosphere.
It's incredible. Of course, no space travel goes
on without a hitch. In addition to having some
toilet trouble in the capsule, they were also
having some technical difficulties with Microsoft
Outlook. At one point, one of the astronauts
was flutzing around with the computer and was
talking to ground control and was like, I have
two Outlooks and neither of them are working.
Which is just perfect. Just chef kiss. So a big
old good luck. Here are the crew members. You
got Reed Wiseman, commander. You got Victor Glover,
who's the pilot. Christina Koch is a mission
specialist. Jeremy Hansen is the good luck Canadian
and also a mission specialist. I want to note
on the topic of space travel. I don't much care
about the space travel part personally. I mean,
I played a lot of Destiny, so I'm kind of good
with not going further out into space to see
what's out there. But, even if you're not somebody
who just wants to see more space travel, this
is actually a pretty good thing for humanity.
In a way. The space shuttle and colonizing space,
that's not what I'm talking about. These programs
happen because countries want to do dick -measuring
contests and the ruling class wants to colonize
more stuff. But if that's what it takes to get
a bunch of money to go into research that produces
some genuinely amazing shit, at least it's a
silver lining. Aerospace engineering and research
gets us a whole lot of stuff. Improvements in
medical technology, improvements in refrigeration
technology, improvements in desalination and
water purification, all sorts of stuff. There
are benefits outside of just going to space and
like that's cool. It sucks that it's also like
kind of in the interests of bad people wanting
to do bad things. Like they're just going to
space because they want to mine it. That's basically
it. But at least in the meantime, we have like
better air conditioning. Lightning round. Oracle
laid off 30 ,000 employees via email at 6 a .m.
SpaceX is filing to go public. It may ultimately
be one of the biggest IPOs in history. Australia
has formally recognized the cultural significance
of the infamous Succulent Chinese Meal Democracy
Manifest video. The National Film and Sound Archive
has officially preserved it. Gold is now the
largest foreign reserve asset in the world overtaking
U .S. treasuries. It probably doesn't mean anything.
Thank you so much for listening to today's episode
of Stuff Keeps Happening. Head to SKH .News for
sources, bonus content, and my review of my time
on the moon, the last time I was there. My name
is Endeavorance. We'll talk again soon. Take
care and be well.