I want to clarify something that you hinted at in your post but I’ve seen in other posts too. This isn’t a cloud failure or remotely related to it, but a facet of a company’s security software suite causing crippling issues.

I apologize ahead of time, when I started typing this I didn’t think it would be this long. This is pretty important to me and I feel like this can help clarify a lot of misinformation about how IT and software works in an enterprise.

Crowdstrike is an EDR, or Endpoint Detection and Response software. Basically a fancy antivirus that isn’t file signature based but action monitoring based. Like all AVs, it receives regular definition updates around once an hour to anticipate possible threat actors using zero-day exploits. This is the part that failed, the hourly update channel pushed a bad update. Some computers escaped unscathed because they checked in either right before the bad update was pushed or right after it was pulled.
Another facet of AVs is how they work depends on monitoring every part of a computer. This requires specific drivers to integrate into the core OS, which were updated to accompany the definition update. Anything that integrates that closely can cause issues if it isn’t made right.

Before this incident, Crowdstrike was regarded as the best in its class of EDR software. This isn’t something companies would swap to willy nilly just because they feel like it. The scale of implementing a new security software for all systems in an org is a huge undertaking, one that I’ve been a part of several times. It sucks to not only rip out the old software but also integrate the new software and make sure it doesn’t mess up other parts of the server. Basically companies wouldn’t use CS unless they are too lazy to change away, or they think it’s really that good.
EDR software plays a huge role in securing a company’s systems. Companies need this tech for security but also because they risk failing critical audits or can’t qualify for cybersecurity insurance. Any similar software could have issues - Cylance, Palo Alto Cortex XDR, Trend Micro are all very strong players in the field too and are just as prone to having issues.
And it’s not just the EDR software that could cause issues, but lots of other tech. Anything that does regular definition or software updating can’t or shouldn’t be monitored because of the frequency or urgency of each update would be impractical to filter by an enterprise. Firewalls come to mind, but there could be a lot of systems at risk of failing due to a bad update. Of course, it should fall on the enterprise to provide the manpower to do this, but this is highly unlikely when most IT teams are already skeleton crews and subject to heavy budget cuts.

So with all that, you might ask “how is this mitigated?” It’s a very good question. The most obvious solution “don’t use one software on all systems” is more complicated and expensive than you think. Imagine bug testing your software for two separate web servers - one uses Crowdstrike, Tenable, Apache, Python, and Node.js, and the other uses TrendMicro, Qualys, nginx, PHP, and Rust. The amount of time wasted on replicating behavior would be astronomical, not to mention unlikely to have feature parity. At what point do you define the line of “having redundant tech stacks” to be too burdensome? That’s the risk a lot of companies take on when choosing a vendor.
On a more relatable scale, imagine you work at a company and desktop email clients are the most important part of your job. One half of the team uses Microsoft Office and the other half uses Mozilla Thunderbird. Neither software has feature parity with the other, and one will naturally be superior over the other. But because the org is afraid of everyone getting locked out of emails, you happen to be using “the bad” software. Not a very good experience for your team, even if it is overall more reliable.

A better solution is improved BCDR (business continuity disaster recovery) processes, most notably backup and restore testing. For my personal role in this incident, I only have a handful of servers affected by this crisis for which I am very grateful. I was able to recover 6 out of 7 affected servers, but the last is proving to be a little trickier. The best solution would be to restore this server to a former state and continue on, but in my haste to set up the env, I neglected to configure snapshotting and other backup processes. It won’t be the end of the world to recreate this server, but this could be even worse if this server had any critical software on it. I do plan on using this event to review all systems I have a hand in to assess redundancy in each facet - cloud, region, network, instance, and software level.
Laptops are trickier to fix because of how distributed they are by nature. However, they can still be improved by having regular backups taken of a user’s files and testing that Bitlocker is properly configured and curated.

All that said, I’m far from an expert on this, just an IT admin trying to do what I can with company resources. Here’s hoping Crowdstrike and other companies greatly improve their QA testing, and IT departments finally get the tooling approved to improve their backup and recovery strategies.

The subtitle of the article says it’s not available in the US -

PC Manager app is only available in some regions, but could come to the US eventually

https://github.com/microsoft/MS-DOS/blob/main/v4.0/src/DOS/CTRLC.ASM
; The user has returned to us.
So ominous.
; Well... time to abort the user.
Goodbye

Those look great together. You won’t notice the line up difference once it’s all done.
We have the floor tiles on the wall in our main bathroom, but they’re extra long so it doesn’t look same-y. Plus the shower glass breaks up the tile so it doesn’t immediately look the same.
In the other bathrooms, we have the same style of square tile on the floor and wall, but the wall is a smaller tile to be more stable while the floor is larger tile for the style we wanted.

I have been addicted to making ramen eggs (ajitama) for lunches lately. I eat one or two eggs over rice with some furikake or toasted seaweed and that’s all I need to power through the day. You could pair the dish with more veggies or a miso soup if you’re feeling fancy. The nice part is making half a dozen eggs squares me away for the week, so I hardly have to think about what to do.

Another dish I like is Korean steamed eggs (gyeranjjim). It takes not even 10 mins to cook on the stove. Making rice takes longer, and you can make a lot of rice to reheat later in the week. I would cook the eggs fresh each day though , I’m not sure how reheating them would go. The broth that goes with the eggs keeps me fuller than I ever expect.

Baba ghanoush is so tasty when you make it yourself. This requires more effort up front to roast the eggplant, but the dip is good all week. I eat it with carrots, cucumber, cauliflower, and some pita chips.

Regular tuna salad or this chickpea “tuna” salad is always easy to whip up. I always have celery, pickles, and bread on hand so if I’m feeling up for it, I crack open a can of tuna or chickpeas for an easy lunch.

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It’s unlikely but if she wants Japanese riichi mahjong and not solitaire style, Kemono Mahjong is a really solid app. No ads or micro transactions (the only in app purchase is to optionally support the dev for $1/month), full feature, minimal to no tracking (email address for online game purposes). It’s not open source or free but it’s only $3 one time purchase.

I don’t have any suggestions for solitaire/tile matching mahjong, unfortunately. Microsoft’s app is not malware but will be datamine galore. It also has ads unless you pay per month. Anything else, id be leery of the security of the app and your data.

I’ve used HyperX’s Alloy Elite for a few years now and it’s still going strong: https://hyperx.com/collections/keyboards-mice/products/hyperx-alloy-elite-2-mechanical-gaming-keyboard?variant=41031691468957.

Has most of the features you’re looking for. One thing is Linux - I’m not sure if it has “Linux” support like you’re looking for, but it does work like a normal keyboard on Linux. I’ve never used macros or any customizing features for it on Windows, and thus don’t use anything like that on Linux either. Media controls work perfectly fine on Linux.
The other concern is hot swapping switches - I’ve never done that either, I have stuck with my brown switches since I got it. Only real customizing I’ve done is to change the keycaps to pudding style.

A group of friends and I jumped into a family plan and it’s far more manageable. For 6, it’s $3/month/person or $36/year/person if the owner pays yearly.
The value we’ve all gotten out of it is outstanding. Being able to push and pull certain websites in results is amazing in today’s era of AI generated website shit. And all of my technical searches have been 1000x better on Kagi than they have been on Google in recent years. Everyone in our group says the same thing, it’s that much better than what we’ve been enduring with Google.

Relevant: https://youtu.be/Aa0PSuUDxM0?si=GWefPCiX2HRNE-t6