Month: July 2026

Windows Defender Auto-Updates Fail

Windows Defender is supposed to automatically update itself. But I periodically experience these updates getting ‘stuck’. To force an update from the CLI:

cd “C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows Defender\Platform”
dir
# REM cd into the latest iteration
cd 4.18.26060.3008-0
MpCmdRun.exe -removedefinitions -dynamicsignatures
MpCmdRun.exe -SignatureUpdate

  • -removedefinitions -dynamicsignatures removes only the dynamic security intelligence/signature content already present on the box. In practice, this is a rollback/flush step. It is commonly used when you want to clear bad/poisoned/cached dynamic detections.
  • -SignatureUpdate does the fetch/install step: it contacts the configured update source and downloads the current antimalware definitions/security intelligence.

If all else fails, download latest from https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/wdsi/defenderupdates and manually install it

Fedora: Disk Cleanup

Useful commands for disk cleanup …

Subfolder size excluding specific folders

[root@FVP05 ~]# du -shx --exclude=/mnt --exclude=/proc /*
0 /afs
0 /bin
312M /boot
2.1M /ca
8.0K /cacert.pem
4.0K /careq.pem
0 /certs
0 /crl
0 /dev
48M /etc
37M /home
0 /lib
0 /lib64
0 /media
0 /newcerts
0 /openhab
954M /opt
4.0K /private
457M /root
1.2M /run
120K /SampleCode
0 /sbin
0 /srv
0 /swapfile
0 /sys
227M /tmp
8.2G /usr
14G /var

List the largest n RPM installs

[root@FVP05 ~]# rpm -qa –qf ‘%{SIZE}\t%{NAME}\n’ | sort -nr | head -10

488208897 azure-cli
248737290 java-latest-openjdk-headless
238259971 glibc-all-langpacks
182326049 mesa-vulkan-drivers
147275895 llvm-libs
127750222 gcc
106627293 kernel-core
106091788 kernel-core
105915244 nvidia-gpu-firmware
105470864 kernel-modules

And clean up the journal logs

journalctl --vacuum-size=100M

 

Corporate Greed?

Corporate greed is an easy, convenient answer to why things are so expensive … but I’ve tracked profits and revenue for the global “big oil” companies for a while now. Other than Armaco, and generally Petrobras, profits are under 10% of revenue. “Record profits” seem, generally, to come from record sales. We’re not going through record high profit percentages.

Now, a company that “only” profited five billion dollars on 380b isn’t doing badly and could probably have gotten by if they only made 2 million – but that makes for an interesting study. Say oil is $100 per barrel. 380 billion dollars is 3.8 billion barrels sold (yes, I know many of these companies have other lines of business. This is a thought experiment, not a regulated financial filing). If they earned three billion dollars less that year, the price per barrel would only drop $0.79. Under 1% change. Now, if Armaco had only profited 3.4 billion last year instead of 93.4b, that would be a $20/barrel drop.

Raw data:

Company 2025 2024 2023 2022 2021 2020 2019 2018 2017 2016 2015 2014 2013 2012 2011 2010 2009 2008 2007 2006
Revenue ($B) Net profit ($B) Revenue ($B) Net profit ($B) Revenue ($B) Net profit ($B) Revenue ($B) Net profit ($B) Revenue ($B) Net profit ($B) Revenue ($B) Net profit ($B) Revenue ($B) Net profit ($B) Revenue ($B) Net profit ($B) Revenue ($B) Net profit ($B) Revenue ($B) Net profit ($B) Revenue ($B) Net profit ($B) Revenue ($B) Net profit ($B) Revenue ($B) Net profit ($B) Revenue ($B) Net profit ($B) Revenue ($B) Net profit ($B) Revenue ($B) Net profit ($B) Revenue ($B) Net profit ($B) Revenue ($B) Net profit ($B) Revenue ($B) Net profit ($B) Revenue ($B) Net profit ($B)
1. Saudi Aramco 446 93.4 481 106.2 495 121.3 604 161.1 400 110.0 230 49.0 330 88.2 356 111.1 n/a n/a n/a n/a n/a n/a n/a n/a n/a n/a n/a n/a n/a n/a n/a n/a n/a n/a n/a n/a n/a n/a n/a n/a
2. PetroChina 399 21.9 409 22.9 426 22.8 481 22.2 405 14.3 280 2.3 364 10.4 356 7.9 298 3.4 244 0.9 277 5.7 371 17.4 365 20.9 348 18.2 298 20.6 216 20.6 149 15.1 155 16.5 110 18.4 86 17.9
3. Sinopec 388 4.4 428 7.0 454 8.5 493 9.9 435 9.5 305 4.8 430 8.3 437 9.2 349 7.6 291 7.0 324 5.3 459 8.8 465 10.3 457 10.1 388 9.8 283 9.3 197 8.6 209 6.8 157 7.0 131 6.4
4. ExxonMobil 334 28.8 350 33.7 345 36.0 414 55.7 286 23.0 182 -22.4 265 14.3 279 20.8 290 19.7 227 7.8 260 16.2 412 32.5 438 32.6 481 44.9 486 41.1 383 30.5 311 19.3 477 45.2 405 40.6 378 39.5
5. Shell 274 17.8 289 16.1 323 19.4 386 42.3 273 20.1 183 -21.7 352 15.8 397 23.4 312 13.0 240 4.6 272 1.9 431 14.9 460 16.4 482 26.7 484 30.8 378 20.1 285 12.5 458 26.3 356 31.3 319 25.4
6. TotalEnergies 201 13.1 214 15.8 237 21.4 284 20.5 206 16.0 140 -7.2 200 11.3 209 11.4 171 8.6 150 6.2 165 5.1 236 4.2 251 11.2 257 14.7 257 17.1 212 14.1 183 11.7 264 20.4 217 18.0 193 15.8
7. BP 189 0.1 189 0.4 210 15.2 241 -2.5 158 7.6 180 -20.3 277 4.0 299 9.4 240 3.4 183 0.1 223 -6.5 354 3.8 379 23.5 387 11.0 376 25.2 297 -3.7 246 16.6 361 21.2 274 20.8 254 22.3
8. Chevron 189 12.5 203 17.7 201 21.4 246 35.5 162 15.6 95 -5.5 147 2.9 166 14.8 142 9.2 114 -0.5 138 4.6 212 19.2 229 21.4 242 26.2 254 26.9 205 19.0 172 10.5 273 23.9 221 18.7 210 17.1
9. Rosneft 101 3.6 109 11.7 107 14.9 n/a n/a n/a n/a n/a n/a n/a n/a n/a n/a n/a n/a n/a n/a n/a n/a n/a n/a n/a n/a n/a n/a 92 n/a 63 n/a n/a n/a n/a 11.1 n/a 6.5 n/a n/a
10. Petrobras 89 19.6 91 7.5 102 24.9 124 36.6 84 19.9 54 -1.1 77 10.2 85 7.2 89 0.1 81 -4.0 97 -10.0 144 -9.0 141 10.9 144 10.9 146 20.0 121 20.0 91 14.0 n/a n/a n/a n/a n/a n/a

Data as available. Publicly traded companies in US and Europe are far more apt to have published , audited, probably somewhat accurate data.