Microsoft Tech Community
techcommunity.microsoft.com · Company blog · on HN since 2017
Microsoft's Tech Community hosts official posts from product teams on Windows, Azure, Microsoft 365, Edge, and enterprise administration.
What HN saysHN links it for official technical explanations, such as Kerberos double-hop, Secure Boot certificate expiry, and Azure database product guidance.
738HN people shared it
388linked it in comments
677stories submitted
8.6Kstory points
3 months agolast shared
2017people per year2026
Most-shared posts
- 1Lambda: Turn Excel formulas into custom functions10 people · 243 points · first shared 2020 · 135 comments on HN
- 2Me too: How 15.5M emails are sent in 1 hour (2004)10 people · 8 points · first shared 2020 · discussion on HN
- 3Introducing Buy now, pay later in Microsoft Edge9 people · 52 points · first shared 2021 · 8 comments on HN
- 4Windows Sandbox9 people · 35 points · first shared 2018 · 2 comments on HN
- 5Internet Explorer 11 desktop app retirement9 people · 14 points · first shared 2021 · 2 comments on HN
- 6Microsoft Launches Ion9 people · 10 points · first shared 2021 · 2 comments on HN
- 7Ba p 2931819 people · first shared 2020
- 8Microsoft 365 will drop support for Internet Explorer 11 next year6 people · 38 points · first shared 2020 · 11 comments on HN
- 9OpenHCL: Evolving Azure's Virtualization Model6 people · 14 points · first shared 2024 · 1 comments on HN
- 10Microsoft Teams: Advantages of the new architecture6 people · 5 points · first shared 2023 · discussion on HN
- 11Python in Excel: Combining the Power of Python and the Flexibility of Excel6 people · 3 points · first shared 2023 · discussion on HN
- 12One Windows Kernel5 people · 316 points · first shared 2018 · 225 comments on HN
- 13Analyzing the Limits of Connection Scalability in Postgres5 people · 128 points · first shared 2020 · 19 comments on HN
- 14Satin: Microsoft’s latest AI-powered audio codec for real-time communications5 people · 16 points · first shared 2021 · 2 comments on HN
- 15Windows Insiders can now test DNS over HTTPS5 people · 6 points · first shared 2020 · 1 comments on HN
What HN people wrote when they linked it
junto · 2026-01-25
Microsoft originally bought CitusData and rebadged it as Azure CosmosDb for Postgres Cluster. Microsoft have been recommending partners to now avoid that product. It does not and will not support Entra federated workload identities (passwordless).
The replacement will be Azure Database for Postgres with Elastic Clusters. I think it is still in preview.
Again it’s Citus based, but without the CosmosDb badge and it will support federated workload identities.
https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/blog/adforpostgresql/postgres-hori…
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/postgresql/elastic-clusters/co…
yabones · 2025-09-18
One of the bigger issues is the double-hop problem. It's both an important security boundary, and one of the biggest butt-pains about the protocol.
https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/blog/askds/understanding-kerberos-…
It works great within a single organization hierarchy, but becomes pretty painful for anything we'd consider "SaaS"
mkj · 2025-07-18
It's not just Linux - certificates to sign Windows are also affected in 2026.
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/topic/windows-secure-boot-certific…
https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/blog/windows-itpro-blog/act-now-se…
Really it seems like having any expiry date for these certificates is a mistake. The one thing it might protect against is a compromised signing key, but if you have to wait 15 years for a compromised key to stop being valid, it's not very useful!
Don't worry, the replacement MS certs expire in 2038 (a couple of months after the 32-bit unix time rollover).
justsomehnguy · 2025-04-07
Nope.
Back in the day Exchange offered SIS but in 2010 they ditched it. It's plainly not effective any more. Even regarding the OP' "the jpg signature logo" - it's a part of multipart in the message, not a separate file.
And one more thing - you can't just turn the dedup and be dandy, now you need to check against the hashes to determine if this chunk is unique or you already have it. And with TBs of data you need TBs of hashes to check. Until you have like 99% dedup efficiency, ie 99% of your incoming data is literally the same data you already have - it doesn't worth it.
https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/blog/exchange/dude-wheres-my-singl…
joseda-hg · 2025-03-03
I mean, there's an official way of installing without TPM, I'm pretty sure I can get Windows 11 on some pretty old hardware
https://time.com/3264528/best-laptop-under-500/ This is a 2014 article, for a Budget/Mid Laptop, with a compatible processor and double the minimum RAM
https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/discussions/windows11/help-needed-… Post marked as solution talks about installing W11 on a 10 Y/O Thinkpad
TheRizzler · 2025-02-02
If Windows, there is ZTDNS worth checking out: https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/blog/networkingblog/announcing-zer…
It melds Firewall and DNS to block.
gpm · 2024-12-15
For what it's worth, on Windows Rust is also a Microsoft supported, though "not yet recommended for production use", option.
https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/blog/surfaceitpro/open-source-rust… / https://github.com/microsoft/windows-drivers-rs
pamelafox · 2024-05-30
If you're looking for an example of RRF + Hybrid Search with PostgreSQL, I've put together a FastAPI app here that uses RAG with those options:
https://github.com/Azure-Samples/rag-postgres-openai-python/
Here's the RRF+Hybrid part: https://github.com/Azure-Samples/rag-postgres-openai-python/blob/e30ea…
That's largely based off a sample from the pgvector repo, with a few tweaks.
Agreed that Hybrid is the way to go, it's what the Azure AI Search team also recommends, based off their research:
https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/ai-azure-ai-services-blog/azure…
sp332 · 2024-03-04
Check out the first screenshot on https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/windows-server-news-and-best/th… and this new CPU has twice as many threads.
Edit: playing Tetris on an even bigger CPU https://twitter.com/markrussinovich/status/1335651115958894593 (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25343369)
al_borland · 2024-02-29
It’s worth noting that Excel supports Python now as well.
https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/excel-blog/announcing-python-in…
r1ch · 2024-01-16
It's actually restoring state from a snapshot so it doesn't need to fully boot. There's some great technical details at https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/windows-os-platform-blog/window…
latchkey · 2023-12-07
In my eyes, the real problem is that there is no cost effective developer access to high end cards, like the MI300x. This breaks the developer flywheel that you would normally point at consumer cards for.
Where can you rent time on one? Traditionally, AMD has only helped build super computers, like Frontier and El Capitan, out of these cards.
This time around Azure [0] and other CSP's (cloud service providers) are working to change that. I will have the best of the best of their cards/systems for rent soon.
[0] https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/azure-high-performance-computin…
nerdjon · 2023-11-08
I don't understand why you are making such a critical reply. LTS versions of operating systems have been a standard thing for years. Even some Linux distros do it (did? do they still).
Also a simple google search would have shown otherwise. https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/windows-it-pro-blog/windows-cli… Windows 11 LTSC was announced for next year.
Given how Windows 10 LSTC differed strongly from all of the crap they added to normal 10, right now I am leaning towards that Windows 11 will likely follow a similar cut down version of Windows without all of the crap.
LTSC isn't going away, at least not right now. When it does then we can talk about Linux again but right now there is a perfectly valid option without any compatibility issues.
ClassyJacket · 2023-10-30
Yes, I know I've seen someone talk about this before, I think it's their link safety checking thing:
https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/security-compliance-and-identit…
pmc00 · 2023-10-04
Agreed, vector search is great but it's only one of many tools you can use to create a great search solution.
We recently did a bunch of evaluation work to quantify the differences between keyword search, vector search, hybrid, reranking, etc. across a few datasets. We shared the results here: https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/azure-ai-services-blog/azure-co…
Disclosure - I work in the Azure Search team.
hedora · 2023-09-23
In my experience with FIPS certification usually requires some changes that undermine security.
If you need it, then you need it, but having the certification is a mildly bad sign in my opinion.
I’m not the only one with this opinion. For instance, the Microsoft Windows team seems to agree:
https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/microsoft-security-baselines/wh…
canucker2016 · 2023-09-10
They just announced this, but it runs python in an azure container - not sure how it hooks into excel unless excel is also running in the cloud, but a lot of people would want to run it locally instead.
See https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/microsoft-365-blog/introducing-…
nailer · 2023-08-22
Direct link to announcement: https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/microsoft-365-blog/introducing-…
pjmlp · 2023-08-22
First, Azure runs on Windows, using Azure Host OS at the lowest layer.
https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/windows-os-platform-blog/azure-…
Secondly, unless you are doing classical VM deployments, the only thing we care about are type 1 hypervisors.
If the language runtimes are running directly on top of a type-1 hypervisor, some kind of container, or bare metal, it is mostly irrelevant for most languages, with exception of C and C++ with their direct dependency on POSIX related APIs.
Taken to the extreme, on serveless workloads, you can even upload the code, and it get magically transformed into a deployment, mostly using managed languages that are OS agnostic.
At the end of the day, if those type-1 hypervisors are self-contained, or need a guest OS as management node, is completly transparent to the managed runtime workloads.
TheNewsIsHere · 2023-08-13
Hey! I didn’t see this before today, sorry :)
macOS enforces that the sync root remain local, but OneDrive does a little bit of slight of hand to be able to store files on an external drive.
There is a write-up from the OneDrive team at [0] that details some caveats on how this works.
OneDrive technical documentation can be difficult to follow since they like to disclose version/dated changes as blogs instead of something more formal and managed.
I believe this is still possible, but experimentation with non-critical data might be advisable.
[0] https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/microsoft-onedrive-blog/inside-…
david_allison · 2022-09-22
I love 2:58's reference to the Sony rootkit scandal:
> It’s never safe to unload a driver that patches the system call table since some thread might be just about to execute the first instruction of a hooked function when the driver unloads; if that happens the thread will jump into invalid memory.
https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/windows-blog-archive/sony-rootk…
motherfscker · 2022-09-22
The fun part is that this functionality already has been added to teams (for over a year now), it’s just disabled and hidden by default. Might be worth enabling it if you use multiple orgs. https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/microsoft-teams/tracking-down-t…
sohkamyung · 2022-09-12
Interim guidance from Microsoft [1]
>Microsoft plans to release an update to support this change; however, there may be insufficient time to properly build, test, and release such an update before the change goes into effect. In the meantime, we recommend that organizations with devices in the Republic of Chile temporarily disable automatic DST adjustments in Windows to reflect the correct local time between September 4, 2022 and September 11, 2022.
[1] https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/daylight-saving-time-time-zone/…
unilynx · 2022-08-26
I was actually looking for a test site that could do that, like we have dnssec-failed.org - saves me setting up the target servers themselves
DANE requires a provider to validate DNSSEC. I know not all of them do that. DANE takes it even a step further, so I'm going to assume even fewer providers implement that
Microsoft specifically announced it last februari for Exchange Online (not really a SMTP SaaS like eg. send grid) so it's special enough that it's worthy of an announcement - https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/exchange-team-blog/releasing-ou…
I emailed postmark if they supported STARTTLS/DANE, they replied they supported opportunistic STARTTLS. Not an outright "No" but might be a failure to understand the questions
So plenty of reasons to not assume DANE is implemented unless a provider can actually confirm it is.
isp · 2022-06-15
All versions of Windows Server are (for now) unaffected, i.e., Internet Explorer 11 continues to run [1].
There is also "Internet Explorer Mode" in Edge, which uses iexplore.exe under the hood.
Additionally, if somebody were _really_ desperate to launch iexplore.exe itself, then there are unsupported means to do so.
For example, via manually modifying the registry key "NotifyDisableIEOptions" under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Main\
My favourite hack though, which should not be used by anyone ever, is launching via the COM object interface, which bypasses the registry key check [2]. I have personally verified that this works(!)
[1] https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/windows-it-pro-blog/internet-ex…
[2] https://twitter.com/aaaddress1/status/1523590203658862592
why-el · 2021-12-30
Postgres's dominance is well deserved, of course. My only concerns with it, both are actively worked on, are bloat management (significant for update heavy workloads and programmers used to the MySQL model of rollback segments) and the scaling of concurrency (going over 500 connections). Bloat was taken over by Cybertec[1] after stalling for a bit and is funded (yay), while concurrency was also enhanced out of Microsoft [2]. All in all, an excellent future for our beloved Postgres.
[1] https://github.com/cybertec-postgresql/zheap
[2] https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/azure-database-for-postgresql/i…
dragonwriter · 2021-12-28
Sometime before 2008 (and, since the change isn't the kind MS tends to do during a major OS version lifecycle, probably with or prior to the release of Vista in 2007) though the documentation on it (not just when it happened, but how to use them best) seems to be well-obscured. But here's a post originally from 2008 covering Windows Vista which is the least-bad coverage of ProgramData/AppData I can find:
https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/windows-blog-archive/where-shou…
(My personal recollection is that it is much earlier, at least back to XP, but I could be wrong, so I’ll go with what I can find documented.)
technion · 2021-11-13
It's actively supported by a company who themselves recommend against it and described its use as technical debt (in 2019)
https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/windows-it-pro-blog/the-perils-…
lowleveldesign · 2021-10-15
Sysmon [1] is a popular monitoring tool on Windows. It is based on ETW and its custom driver and provides great details on what is happening in the system. To make the logs relevant, we need to configure it (SwiftOnSecurity created a good base config file [2]).
Yesterday, MS released the first version of Sysmon for Linux and made it open-source (MIT license)[3]. It is based on eBPF. In [4] they show how they use it in Azure to collect events from the Linux VMs.
- [1] https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/downloads/sysmon
- [2] https://github.com/SwiftOnSecurity/sysmon-config
- [3] https://github.com/Sysinternals/SysmonForLinux
- [4] https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/azure-sentinel/automating-the-d…
dvtrn · 2021-10-07
If only their tech stack was at the same level.
No joke. Sometimes I appreciate the way Azure has chosen to differentiate itself in terms of developer experience.
Then there are times using it when I want to walk into an ocean.
Interestingly, those times seem to be anytime I have to deal with Application Insights or LogAnalytics. Azure, if anyone working on those two products are reading this, y’all need to go read up on this thing called ‘correlation’ because the Azure native logging and APM is…
whistles
boy.
It’s something. I just love waiting 5-15 minutes just to see a log line, if I even see it at all with how routinely problematic and unstable their logging infrastructure is[1]
[1] https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/azure-monitor-status/bg-p/Azure…
(We’re already looking to get away from LA though)