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Microsoft's Phantom Folders, Sensata's Ransomed Coders, and Nvidia's Trump Card Holders

Plus: What do you call a data center in space? Expensive. What Axiom Space is building anyway..

April 15, 2025 • Estimated Reading Time: 10 minutes

Well, well, well. If it isn't another Tuesday!

It's April 15th, and we're feeling nostalgic. On this day in 1977, the West Coast Computer Faire opened in San Francisco, where a little company called Apple unveiled their Apple II computer. Steve Jobs and Wozniak showed up in their first-ever suits to debut what would help birth the personal computer industry. Without this moment, we might all be doing something sensible like accounting. The horror.

Microsoft's Windows 11 Triple Threat: Empty Folders, Broken Hello, and AI That Watches You Sleep

Microsoft took "triple threat" to a whole 'nother level when their latest Windows updates arrived with the subtlety of someone testing the microphone at a funeral.  The April 2025 patches (KB5055523 for Windows 11 and KB5055518 for Windows 10) are mysteriously creating empty "inetpub" folders on systems that have never even thought about hosting IIS. That's like finding random empty Amazon boxes at your door step.

When asked about this, Microsoft shrugged and said "Yep, we meant to do that" and advised users not to delete it. It's a feature, not a bug—just like that weird noise your car makes after 100,000 miles.

Meanwhile, Exchange admins worldwide are experiencing the joy of HTTP 500 errors when attempting to access the Exchange Admin Center. Microsoft has identified the issue as "an authentication problem in a specific URL path" and is redirecting affected URL traffic as a temporary fix. Their engineers are reportedly reproducing the issue internally, presumably while quietly updating their resumes.

And because bad things come in threes, Windows 11 is also testing a feature that lets Copilot see your screen—because what better way to inspire confidence than giving AI access to your personal information right after breaking basic system features? For best results, we recommend having both the broken update and screen-sharing Copilot running simultaneously. What could possibly go wrong?

Trump Shelves AI Chip Export Restrictions to China After Million-Dollar Mar-a-Lago Dinner

In what feels like a plot line from "Billions," the Trump administration has reportedly shelved plans to tighten restrictions on Nvidia's H20 AI chips to China—conveniently after Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang dropped by Mar-a-Lago for a seven-figure fundraising dinner. (Which honestly raises the question: what was served at that dinner—we don’t need to say it, right?) The policy reversal comes right as Chinese firms are trying to stockpile $16 billion worth of the coveted AI accelerators—a coincidence as believable as your printer saying it's out of cyan when you're trying to print in black and white.

According to NPR, Nvidia promised the administration fresh investments in US-based AI datacenters, which is a bit like telling your parents you'll clean your room next week if they let you have ice cream for dinner right now. The timing has raised eyebrows, especially since it contradicts the administration's otherwise hard-line stance on China trade, with tariffs recently pushed to at least 125% on Chinese imports.

H20 chips are the most powerful processors Nvidia can legally sell in China, making them essential for Chinese AI model builders and cloud providers. While homegrown alternatives exist, many of the companies behind them are on the US Entities List, making it nearly impossible for them to access leading-edge foundry services. Nvidia declined to comment, probably because Jensen was busy figuring out which black leather jacket pairs best with trade policy discussions.

Sensata Technologies Hit By Ransomware, Manufacturing Takes a Holiday

Industrial technology maker Sensata Technologies is having a rough April after a ransomware attack on the 6th turned their manufacturing operations into expensive paperweights. The $4 billion annual revenue company has filed an 8-K with the SEC acknowledging that—surprise!—attackers not only encrypted parts of their network but also pilfered data on their way out.

The company makes sensors and electrical protection components for automotive and aerospace applications, which means this particular attack could ripple through more supply chains than that time someone got a shipping container stuck in the Suez Canal.

No ransomware group has claimed responsibility yet, probably because they're waiting for the perfect moment to ruin everyone's weekend plans. As always, the company "cannot provide a timeline" for restoration, which in ITIL terms translates to "pray for us."

⚙️ Tool Time

We recommend Duplicati.

It's the backup solution that treats your data with more care than Baby Yoda handling a Mandalorian helmet.

What makes Duplicati more impressive than the number of abs on Cristiano Ronaldo:

  • Cross-platform magic: Works on Windows, Mac, and Linux more harmoniously than the Beatles before Yoko

  • Storage agnostic: Backs up to everything from OneDrive to that dodgy FTP server your cousin runs from his mum's garage

  • Encrypted by default: Your data stays more private than Taylor Swift's relationship status

  • Web-based interface: Manage your backups from anywhere like a digital nomad with trust issues

The real genius is that Duplicati uses standard components, so you can recover your files even if Duplicati itself gets Thanos-snapped out of existence. It also features remote verification, disk snapshots, and deduplication.

Shoutout to ByteSize reader TeeLittle for the rec!

👨‍💻 Job Opportunities

Tired of screaming “this should be automated” into the void? NN Data needs someone who automates like a spiteful ghost and treats uptime like a love language.  Bonus points if your blood type is YAML.

This job is for the kind of person who looks at 17 nested JSON objects and whispers, “beautiful.” CitiusTech wants someone who can make sense of payer-provider systems and explain healthcare billing without invoking dark magic.

Oracle's looking for a Principal Engineer who can build healthcare platforms that won't code blue when scaled up. Perfect for those who enjoy the crushing weight of responsibility that comes with code that might literally determine if someone lives or dies—but hey, the 401(k) match is good!

🛩 Industry Moves

  • Waymo's autonomous cars are taking their first international trip to Japan next week. About 25 vehicles will collect mapping data on Tokyo's left-hand traffic patterns while being operated manually by Nihon Kotsu drivers. So yes, technically it's self-driving—if you count “self” as “some guy named Hiroshi doing all the work.”

  • Axiom Space is launching orbital data centers into low Earth orbit by year's end. These nodes will provide computing power to satellites via 2.5Gbps optical links, with plans for 10Gbps+ connections in the future. Because apparently regular cloud outages weren't stressful enough, now we can experience them from space.

  • Google continues its AI comeback tour with Gemini 2.5 Flash deployment in Vertex AI and AI Studio. The model runs faster on simpler prompts and implements “dynamic thinking” that modulates how much reasoning goes into responses—something most managers are still working on.

  • "AWS of fintech" startup Solid files for Chapter 11 bankruptcy after raising $81 million. The company once valued at $330 million now has just three employees and $7 million in cash. Their capital structure reads like a cautionary tale for the "move fast and break things" crowd—except in this case, the thing they broke was their own business model.

💽 Data Upload

If you're in the mood for some actual solutions rather than problems, the Experts Exchange community has you covered:

Service Accounts in MS Entra ID: Are you treating user accounts, managed identities, and service principals like they're interchangeable?

Rules Missing in New Outlook: Did your carefully crafted rules vanish when switching to New Outlook like socks in a dryer?

VMware ESXi Free is BACK!: In a plot twist that has homelab enthusiasts updating their Christmas lists in April, Broadcom has revived the free version of VMware vSphere Hypervisor with ESXi 8.0.3e.

See you next week! Remember to patch your systems before they patch themselves in ways you won't like. May your coffee be strong and your error logs empty.

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