Bit by Bit: Tracing the Truth in Every Byte

  Microsoft Destroys Decades-Old Hierarchical Scoped Settings For over four decades, Microsoft built its empire on a foundation of consistency, reliability, end-user trust. There is an established hierarchical configuration model that has been in place for years and adopted by the entire software industry. The scenario is simple, a machine level (top) layer of settings meant to be applied consistently to all. This developer works with several clients, each with different requirements in their application, so without disturbing the configuration of any other project, he makes the adjustments to the solution layer. Now to add complexity but certainly a common situation, one project manager in this solution has his own requirements. The developer creates another configuration file with the new requirements. This is a perfect example of a typical large-scale project, not an edge case exception. If there is a setting in the lower level (project) that exists in a higher (machine) level...

 Microsoft Implements Training Wheels 🛠️ When the Tool Fights the Technician Why Visual Studio 2026’s Schema Lockdown Is a Step Backward for Developers Who Know What They’re Doing I didn’t set out to break anything. I wasn’t trying to override the system, exploit a loophole, or hack around a limitation. I was trying to fix a broken feature—AI documentation suggestions triggered by /// comments—that used to work just fine. And when it failed, I did what any disciplined developer would do: I opened the settings file and tried to restore it manually. That’s when Visual Studio 2026 Insiders erased my configuration. No warning. No fallback. No grayed-out keys. Just silent deletion. 🧭 The Regression Nobody Asked For In previous versions, if you added an unsupported key to settings.json , Visual Studio would ignore it gracefully. It might gray it out in the UI, or skip it during parsing—but it wouldn’t punish you for trying. That behavior respected developers. It understood th...

            Performing a simple task in Windows GUI should be a straight forward task. However, lately simple and Windows are drifting farther apart than most users are aware of. So being a cautious and detail oriented Admin, I enlisted Copilot as a precaution.                My AI coding pal and I have crossed this path before during development of an application and I had some issues attempting this before. A common practice is to move users home and/or profile folders off the boot drive to keep it clean and lean.  I expected some secondary steps, but I was not expecting the answer I got from Copilot. Important note on AI: I have been working with AI on a forensics grade Windows Configuration application so the level of detail it provides me is not necessarily what a normal user should expect. I possess no special access, think of it as a friend that knows my capabilities and usual focus.

Asking the Right Questions Part I — The Binary Foundation At first glance, asking a question of an AI seems simple. You have something in mind, so you type: “Do X on Y” or “How do I make a widget?” But there are important facts to remember when dealing with an AI system. AI is not human, and it cannot think like a human. Humans can look up from the keyboard and take in the natural world. We have feelings that shape our interactions, whether we like it or not. We also have imagination — that unquantifiable trait that ensures no two humans are ever truly equal. AI models, all AI models , are nothing more than mathematical engines. When you break down any computer, AI model, or even a calculator, there is one guiding law that makes it all work: Everything is binary. In computer science terms, binary is simply on/off or true/false . Every machine operates on this principle. Even though we dress it up with interfaces and let it “talk” to us, AI is still a machine at its core. Thi...

Back to Binary Truth: Why the Neato Factor Will Collapse The Red Flag in the Web of Bits It starts with something deceptively small: a ghost folder under Libraries , a duplicate “ Pictures ” that nests inside itself, a junction that looks like a directory but isn’t. At first glance, it’s just clutter. But when you zoom out, you realize these aren’t isolated annoyances—they’re symptoms of a deeper disease. Modern computing has drifted from its binary roots into a stitched‑together web of abstractions, junctions, and “virtual” paths. From a forensic engineer’s perspective, this is a red flag. Because in computing, truth is binary. A bit is set or it isn’t. A file exists or it doesn’t. When you replace that determinism with “maybe here, maybe there,” you’ve already broken the contract that made computers trustworthy in the first place. Binary Truth: The Bedrock of Computing The reason computers took off wasn’t because they were flashy or “neato.” It was because they were predict...

  🧠 From INI Files to Reparse Hell: A Systems Engineer’s Retrospective I started with a Commodore 64 , a couple 28800 baud modems , and a passion. Like most nerds my age looking back, you realize how much has been accomplished in our lifetime. It is bitter sweet these days watching technology progress and digress at the same time. I shifted from system design and repair to IT and on to programming because it was empowering. You told the computer what to do—and it listened. No middlemen. No abstraction layers. Just raw logic and the thrill of control. Back then, every config file was sacred, every registry tweak a rite of passage. You weren’t just using the system—you were commanding it. I earned my MCSE on Windows 2000 . That wasn’t just a certification—it was a badge of honor. Knowing the differences between Windows 3.1 , 95, NT , and 2000 was the holy grail. It separated the engineers from the users. The architects from the button-clickers. And I was proud to be at the to...

Severe decline of policy  As a software developer I have worked with Microsoft's software as well as their Certification processes for decades. They have had a long history of strict policies concerning software certified for use on Windows systems. It appears they have not only changed their design policies, but they have also violated our trust. Why? Money, why else, they have taken the control out of the hands of the user, so they can sell it to the Government.  There are many more subtle changes that I have discovered recently, like putting training wheels in VS. But today is the final straw. You can see from the screen capture below that Windows Defender Antivirus has been disabled via group policy. System was rebooted to ensure policy refresh and enforcement. However that is not the case you can see that it is still running.  To add insult to injury, it has flagged it's own control policy as a threat! And yes tamper protection is disabled. Here is what Microsoft's A...

  Unveiling the Power and Pitfalls of AI New Series Announcement Over the coming weeks/months, I’ll be sharing a series of posts aimed at helping you get successful, consistent results when working with AI —whether you’re a developer, IT professional, or just curious about how to make these tools work for you instead of against you. This series, Unveiling the Power and Pitfalls of AI , will explore the practical realities of working with AI in real-world, high-stakes environments. I’ll cover not just the “wow” moments, but also the subtle traps, edge cases, and workflow quirks that can make or break your results. We have seen all the recent articles condemning in most cases, how the non-technical housewife (or househusband) have used AI to guide their life direction or even as substitute therapist. That's all well and good as long as you keep in mind Where These Insights Come From I’m not just theorizing—I’m actively designing and building an enterprise-level AI-assisted IT ...