Using checkpoints to revert virtual machines to a previous stateOne of the great benefits to virtualization is the ability to easily save the state of a virtual machine. In Hyper-V this is done through the use of virtual machine checkpoints. You may want to create a virtual machine checkpoint before making software configuration changes, applying a software update, or installing new software. If a system change were to cause an issue, the virtual machine can be reverted to the state at which it was when then checkpoint was taken. //

Deleting checkpoints

Deleting checkpoints can help create space on your Hyper-V host.

Behind the scenes, checkpoints are stored as .avhdx files in the same location as the .vhdx files for the virtual machine. When you delete a checkpoint, Hyper-V merges the .avhdx and .vhdx files for you. Once completed, the checkpoint's .avhdx file will be deleted from the file system.

You should not delete the .avhdx files directly.

Optimize-VHD

Module:
Hyper-V

Optimizes the allocation of space used by virtual hard disk files, except for fixed virtual hard disks.

Resize-VHD

Module:
Hyper-V

Resizes a virtual hard disk.

One of the many benefits of virtualization is portability, meaning that you can easily move selected virtual machines (VMs) from one location to another without experiencing downtime or service disruption. Portability within a Hyper-V environment is ensured through the Hyper-V Export and Import functionality, which allows you to easily copy and move a Hyper-V VM to a target location and then restore the VM to how it was at the time of export.

The Flight from Truth: The Reign of Deceit in the Age of Information Hardcover – January 21, 1992
by Jean Francois Revel

A distinguished French philosopher argues that the greatest threat to modern democracy is the dissemination of false information, myths that endanger the viability of freedom and the democratic way of life. //

“Human beings experience all sorts of needs for intellectual activity other than the need to know. The average human being seeks the truth only after having exhausted all other possibilities.’’ //

“For the philosophers of the enlightenment it naturally followed that once the obstacles have been overcome and we are in possession of the truth, we will mold our conduct and the governance of society accordingly.’’ //

“However, the main thesis of this book is exactly the contrary. It is based on the cultural contradiction that separates accessibility to knowledge from the irrationality of human behavior.’’ //

“I do not believe there is an automatic link leading from true knowledge to sound action. I believe this link can be established only through persistent, willful effort, intellectual rigor, mental discipline — in short, that the link is anything but natural.’’ //

“I also think that the hour has struck and that this effort must now be made for the survival of mankind.’’ //

“Knowledge only plays a part when it is not blocked by some sterile prejudice. Error, based on dogmatic ‘principles’ and unworkable ‘solutions’ is generally preferred to effective action based on knowledge and solid information. . . . To understand what is needed to late — at least for taking effective action — is almost the same as not to understand.’’ //

“The history of philosophy can be divided into two different periods. During the first, philosophers sought the truth; during the second, they fought against it. This second period, of which Descartes was the precursor of genius and of which Heidegger has been the most putrid manifestation, entered its heyday with Hegel. Between Descartes and Hegel there were several heirs of the truth seeking epoch, the most pathetically sincere of whom was Kant and the most subtle Hume, who vainly sought a middle way in order to stave off the ineluctable triumph of imposture.’’

Our free VIN decoder can be used to determine everything from vehicle trim level to fuel tank capacity to crash test ratings.

“(Abraham) Lincoln called the introduction of patent laws one of the three most important developments ‘in the world’s history,’ along with the discovery of America and the perfection of printing.”

One thing that ultimately allowed the impact of this event to be greatly reduced is that Android devices do not check the expiration date of the Root CA Certificate when establishing trust in the certificate chain... This means that it is still possible to anchor on the expired IdenTrust Root CA, and those Android devices would work, //

The 'New Default Chain' still ultimately anchors on the IdenTrust Root CA, meaning compatibility with Android devices that won't check the expiration date, but it passes through the new Let's Encrypt ISRG Root X1 CA which more modern clients will have in their trust store. This means those modern clients will stop the chain there and accept it as trusted too. Win-win. //

One interesting side effect of this though is that you can then modify the Root Certificates in the trust store and because no signature validation is taking place, meaning no integrity check is taking place, the modified Root Certificate will be treated as perfectly valid. This is the part that I'd never thought about. //

When first thinking about this issue, I felt a little bit like I did when I first found out, all those years ago, about signatures not being validated on roots and how that seemed ridiculous. Once you think about this more though, you realise that it does make sense and that it just doesn't seem logical upon first thought. In order to make this change and it actually have an effect on the client, you need to have access to that client with administrative privileges to change the root store. If your concern is that an attacker might do something like this, well, I'd suggest you have far bigger issues to concern yourself with given that the attacker has admin/root and is on your device!

I admit up front I’m a fan of Bond, James Bond. I’ve seen 24 of the 25 Bond movies over these past 58 years, most of them several times. I loved them all, sometimes more on third viewing than first.

So, who will be Eon Productions No. 7 007?

The producers must find a new leading man for their evergreen gold mine based on the character from Ian Fleming’s initial James Bond novel in 1953, “Casino Royale.” Or must it be a leading man? //

To some of us, a Yankee James Bond is an oxymoron. He’d become Jimmy Bond with cool dance moves. He’d hire someone else to do the chasing. He’d favor some obscure craft brew but would get in on the wrong side of an Aston Martin. //

Sean Connery was a raw, virile Scottish bodybuilder when Albert Broccoli picked him over David Niven, Ian Fleming’s favorite sophisticate. “I’m looking for Commander Bond,” said the initially unimpressed Broccoli, “not an overgrown stunt-man.”

Connery and Roger Moore each played the Bond role seven times. Craig did five times, Pierce Brosnan four, Timothy Dalton two, and David Niven and George Lazenby one each. Niven was in a Bond parody with Woody Allen, the first “Casino Royale.”

Lazenby, an Australian model and actor, generally gets a low Bond ranking, but interested me as a less slick secret agent, rather like I think I would be. And he wore a kilt. //

Sean Connery remains my favorite actor – in that and pretty much any role. Until Craig, my second favorite was Lazenby.

Now retired Craig, who brought a more nuanced secret agent to the MI6 role, has offered the opinion that a woman should not seek the James Bond role. Producers, he said, should instead create stronger parallel female characters.

Barbara Broccoli, the longtime producer, has issued her opinion. And, quite honestly, polls aside, it’s the only opinion that counts:

James Bond is a male character.

From the tech reporting sector, Google is taking blow after blow after blow. There are massive security vulnerabilities in what they offer you and I every day, and those privacy issues are going to start becoming enough of an issue to make the government look a little more closely at them.

So how do they keep the government from looking at them? They announce something that they know enough people in government will like and take credit for their “brave” stance and business policy. //

The latest tracking nightmare for Chrome users comes in two parts. First, Google has ignored security warnings and launched a new Chrome API to detect and report when you’re “idle,” i.e., not actively using your device. Apple warns “this is an obvious privacy concern,” and Mozilla that it’s “too tempting an opportunity for surveillance.” //

they are also banking on Congress and its ongoing fascination with trying to regulate Facebook that they can keep a low profile on all this privacy stuff and not have to worry about a Congressional investigation.

So that’s why they are choosing right now to go after so-called “climate deniers.” They are shifting the focus away from them at a time when it’s very easy to distract their users and Congress. But Google is going to find itself in increasing trouble before too long, and Congress had better start looking deeper into these security issues because Google is going to cause an insane amount of identity theft before too long.

Fox News celebrated 25 years on Thursday, as my colleague Brad Slager beautifully reported. While Slager talked about its inception, growth, and other media’s meltdown response to this milestone, I’ll focus on why Fox News’ formula has been different, why they missed an opportunity to discuss the scandals that have shaped them, as much as their unique entry into the world of news.

If your Kindle Paperwhite won’t turn on, a frozen screen is the most probable cause.

You can fix this yourself by following the steps below:

1. Press and Hold the power button for 40 seconds then release.
2. Press and Hold the power button again for 3-5 seconds to reboot the device.
3. The device should now boot up and display the Kindle logo. //

If you happen to leave your Kindle for any extended period, the device’s battery may dip below its operating voltage necessary to run.

Your Kindle will display an exclamation mark when the battery charge gets critical. If it goes beyond this, you get a completely blank screen and the Kindle Paperwhite will look dead. //

If the battery is completely dead, the Kindle will need to pre-charge the battery at a much slower rate, also known as “trickle charge”, so not to overheat or damage the battery. This can take up to an hour to get to a safe voltage level before switching to a normal charge rate.

As a benefit of your Microsoft 365 Family or Microsoft 365 Personal subscription, you can create a personalized email address that's associated with your Outlook.com mailbox. For example, yourname@example.com. 

Getting started

1. Sign in to your  premium feature settings in Outlook.com

2. Under Personalized email address, select Get Started.

Tip: If you have a Microsoft 365 Family subscription, people you've shared the subscription with can also set up a personalized email address with your connected domain. After you've set up your domain, people you've shared with will see an option to add a personalized email address in the premium features section of Outlook settings.

"You're taking the halon away?!" the PFY gasps.

"We have to," the Boss responds.

"It's the Montreal Protocol," the fire engineer says. "You shouldn't even have halon in the first place."

Well, the Internet Apocalypse came and went! Due to the recent expiration of the Let's Encrypt intermediate and root certificates, I saw more widespread issues than I was expecting, but on different devices and for different reasons than I thought. Let's take a look at what happened and why. //

many people look at that and think how can it be so fragile or so simple to totally break stuff?

One thing that's certain is that this event is coming again. Over the next few years we're going to see a wide selection of Root Certificates expiring for all of the major CAs and we're likely to keep experiencing the exact same issues unless something changes in the wider ecosystem. //

https://expired-r3-test.scotthelme.co.uk/

Former Border Patrol Chief Rodney Scott revealed on Tuesday that the Biden administration is paying contractors not to build a wall on the southern U.S. border and that “for a while, it was almost $5 million a day between DOD and DHS.”

In an exclusive interview with Fox News’s Bret Baier, Scott said that after Joe Biden assumed the White House, he issued a presidential proclamation that paused U.S. border projects for 60 days. Now more than 250 days since the inauguration and thanks to the Biden administration, Scott says many of those projects are still on hold despite contractors still being paid and having the materials to work on border security.

According to Scott, all that remains of former President Donald Trump’s border wall efforts are “stacks and stacks” of panels, “hundreds of miles of fiber-optic cabling,” and “hundreds of cameras” that are just “sitting there.”

“There’s no action being taken,” Scott explained. And despite Border Patrol telling the Biden White House in briefings that the border would suffer “unmitigable disaster” if Trump’s policies end, the Democrat administration’s position is simply, “We’re not building more wall.”

“There’s no conversation. There’s no adult dialogue, if you will. It’s just a black-and-white decision. The administration said we’re not doing it, so we’re not doing it,” Scott continued. “And that money is just trickling away to those contractors for not doing work each day.” //

Before Biden ousted him from his law enforcement role on the border, Scott witnessed people caught from 150 different countries coming through Mexico to try to reach the United States.

Disk2vhd is a utility that creates VHD (Virtual Hard Disk - Microsoft's Virtual Machine disk format) versions of physical disks for use in Microsoft Virtual PC or Microsoft Hyper-V virtual machines (VMs). The difference between Disk2vhd and other physical-to-virtual tools is that you can run Disk2vhd on a system that’s online. Disk2vhd uses Windows' Volume Snapshot capability, introduced in Windows XP, to create consistent point-in-time snapshots of the volumes you want to include in a conversion. You can even have Disk2vhd create the VHDs on local volumes, even ones being converted (though performance is better when the VHD is on a disk different than ones being converted).

It will create one VHD for each disk on which selected volumes reside. It preserves the partitioning information of the disk, but only copies the data contents for volumes on the disk that are selected. This enables you to capture just system volumes and exclude data volumes, for example.

Virtual PC supports a maximum virtual disk size of 127GB. If you create a VHD from a larger disk it will not be accessible from a Virtual PC VM. ///

Hyper-V does not have the 127GB limitation (?)

Disk2VHD is a practical free tool by Sysinternals, since 2006 a subsidiary of Microsoft Corporation. Sysinternals is well known of their wide range of free tools to manage, troubleshoot and diagnose Windows systems and applications. As the name already tells Disk2VHD is a tool to create a Virtual Hard Disk (VHD) file of an existing Windows system. This VHDfile can then be used to create a virtual machine in Windows Virtual PC (Windows 7) and Hyper-V (Windows 8 and later).

In this tutorial we will download and install Disk2VHD on an existing Windows 10 computer, use it to create a VHD of the current Windows 10 installation on that computer and use the resulting VHD to create a virtual machine on Windows 10 Hyper-V. The virtual machine will be an exact copy of the original Windows installation apart of some hardware and drivers, Hyper-V replacing some hardware with its own virtual devices.

The virtual machine will be fully functional and contain all software, user profiles and settings which were installed and present on the real physical computer and Windows when the VHD creation process was started.

One of the most lamentable things in our society today is the lack of communication. It’s the source from which many of our problems stem and benefit no one but those in positions of power. Lack of communication only breeds ignorance and those on the left have made it clear that communication isn’t just frowned upon, it’s punishable. Even Kasparian, one of the most leftist figures in the culture, isn’t safe from this kind of isolationist mentality being enforced.

She probably knew that going in and did it anyway, and for that, I salute her. Moreover, it took some bravery to go up against Shapiro, one of the leading minds in conservatism today and a man famous for his debating skills.

I hope more debates like this happen, and not just between Shapiro and Kasparian. I hope more people step forward and allow respectful debate to happen. I’d like to see more of what the left has to say in situations where they have to answer hard questions and confront real facts. No softballs to save them, just naked debate. It’s a big part of our national identity that we’ve been missing for some time and seeing it again made me feel like something lost had returned.

Ana Kasparian, I salute you.

The Vinland Map, once believed to be the earliest cartographic depiction of the New World, has been proven to be a modern forgery, confirming long-held suspicions. A team of conservators and scientists at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, conducted an in-depth analysis of the purported 15th-century map, determining that it was drawn with 20th-century inks.

“The Vinland Map is a fake,” Raymond Clemens, curator of early books and manuscripts at Yale’s Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, said in a statement. “There is no reasonable doubt here. This new analysis should put the matter to rest.”

Yale acquired the parchment map for the library as a gift from Paul Mellon in mid-1960s and unveiled it to great fanfare in 1965, publishing a scholarly book on this view of the North American coastline southwest of Greenland, labeled as “Vinlanda Insula.” Making the front page of the New York Times, it was hailed as support for archaeological evidence that the Vikings had visited North America long before Christopher Columbus. //

For the first time, they used X-ray fluorescence spectroscopy (XRF), a non-destructive technique, to scan the entire map, not just studying specific areas. The titanium was found to pervade the entire map, and the ink contained little to no iron, sulfur, or copper—the elements that make up the iron gall ink typically used by medieval scribes. //

All in all, the map’s anachronistic anatase was a close match to ink produced in Norway in 1923, making it unlikely that the compound had somehow occurred naturally. //

But even though the Vinland Map is fake, Yale plans to keep it.

“The map has become an historical object in and of itself. It’s a great example of a forgery that had an international impact,” Clemens said. But, he added, he hopes that experts can focus further research on authentic works. “Objects like the Vinland Map soak up a lot of intellectual airspace. We don’t want this to continue to be a controversy. There are so many fun and fascinating things that we ought to be examining that can actually tell us something about exploration and travel in the medieval world.”