Microsoft

Dell XPS 15 9570 is missing BIOS updates

My Dell XPS 15 9570 laptop is currently running the Fedora Linux distribution and receives firmware updates automatically from the Linux Vendor Firmware Service (LVFS). So far so good, but I recently became aware that the same firmware version is not provided on Dell’s drivers and downloads page.

Sex, drugs and no-reply@sharepointonline.com

Is there anything more annoying in this world than dealing with Microsoft support? You might assume that Microsoft would appreciate reports detailing the abuse of its services or even act upon that information. But alas, in both cases you’d be wrong.

Content warning: This article contains mildly sexually explicit text and images.

Did Microsoft just roll out MTA-STS and TLS-RPT?

A few months ago I was complaining about the lack of MTA-STS adaptation with major email service providers besides Google. Recently though, I’ve noticed a new player connecting to mta-sts.paranoidpenguin.net to retrieve my MTA-STS policy.

Outlook.com is no longer blocking my mail server

I’ve been getting quite a few emails from people wanting to know if I’ve made any progress on the deliverability issues I was facing when delivering email to outlook.com. As good fortune would have it, Microsoft accepted my request to delist my mail server from outlook.com’s internal IP blocklist.

Outlook.com is blocking my mail server

Recently, I was trying to respond to an email delivered to me from an outlook.com sender address. Unfortunately, my response immediately bounced back, and I was informed that my mail server’s IP address had been added to outlook.com’s internal blocklist.

Why doesn't www.bing.com redirect from HTTP to HTTPS?

On occasion, I’ve noticed the following HTTP referer when going through my server logs: http://www.bing.com/search?q=your+search&go=Search (notice the HTTP part). I thought it would be interesting to see if this HTTP referer was sent from Microsoft’s search engine as a result of someone performing a search over an unencrypted HTTP connection.

Microsoft Teams for Linux won't open on Ubuntu 18.04

After installing and running Microsoft Teams for Linux on Ubuntu 18.04 for a couple of days, the application suddenly stopped working. Starting Microsoft Teams would load the application menu in the top bar, but it was not possible to get the actual application window to load. Clicking “Open” from the application context menu would do nothing at all.

How to add and modify POP or IMAP accounts with Outlook Office 365

Why on earth would there ever be a need to write such an article one might ask? Well, the current Outlook Office 365 version had me puzzled as I was unable to manually configure an IMAP account according to my preferences. Apparently, “set up your account manually” now translates to let Outlook autoconfigure the account.

Office 365 multi-factor authentication with Google Authenticator

I recently learned that it’s possible to use Google Authenticator (or any other authenticator app) with Office 365 for 2-step verification. That’s great as I’ve always believed it was Microsoft Authenticator or the highway. I’m sure Microsoft Authenticator works fine, but I don’t want multiple authenticator apps on my phone.