Another cloud storage provider bites the dust.

Copy.com, the cloud storage service that offered near-unlimited space and huge bonuses for referrals, announced today they’re shutting down on May 1st, 2016—leaving more than a few people with dozens or hundreds of gigs of data to migrate.

Copy, and its business-focused cloud storage service, CudaDrive, are subsidiaries of Barracuda Networks, which announced the shutdown today first in the form of pop-up notifications to its users, and then eventually in a statement on their home page (linked below). From it, they note:

We know this comes as disappointing news to our users, but rest assured that we will do everything we can to take care of each of you in the manner for which Barracuda is known. We have partnered with Mover.io to make migrating your data to another service as easy as possible and have created a step by step guide that walks you through the process of moving your data to a local hard drive or another cloud storage solution.

If you are on a paid subscription for either Copy or CudaDrive, please keep an eye out in the coming days for an email with more detailed information on your options. For additional information, please visit our FAQ page.

Users with paid plans will likely be offered a refund or credit for a different storage service, but everyone will have to get their data out before the service is discontinued on May 1st. For more, hit the link below to see the full announcement.

Copy and CudaDrive services will be discontinued | Copy.com

Windows 10 Recovery Drive Creation Issues | @PCWorld

When you can’t create the Windows 10 Recovery Drive, try these three fixes

The words you don’t want to read: “We can’t create a recovery drive on this PC.” These workarounds should help in most situations.

If you’re running Windows 10, you need to create a recovery drive—a bootable flash drive that will allow you to restore your system from a restore point, an image backup, or through a complete reinstall.

There’s no single solution to this problem. A fix that works for one person won’t necessarily work for another.

But first, a quick review on creating a recovery drive: Plug in an empty flash drive with a capacity of 4GB or more. Then open Control Panel’s Recovery tool, click Create a recovery drive, and follow the prompts.

And yes, you do want to back up system files necessary for a full reinstall.

If you try those directions and get a “We can’t create a recovery drive…” error, try these solutions:

Scan for problems

Your PC may be suffering from a corrupted system file. Here’s how to find out and hopefully fix it:

Type cmd in the Search field. In the search results, right-click Command Prompt and select Run as administrator.

Once you’re inside the command environment, type sfc/scannow and press Enter. The System File Checker (SFC) program will examine Windows files and replace any that appear to be corrupt. This scan rarely takes more than 10 minutes.

After the scan, try again.

Try another flash drive

Yes, it’s obvious, but a lot of people overlook the obvious. You can buy a 4GB flash drive for less than $5, so there’s really no excuse.

Create an install drive instead

A Windows 10 install drive is very much like a Windows 10 recovery drive. The major differences are that the install drive defaults to reinstalling Windows, and doesn’t know the details of your particular Windows installation.

First, you’ll need to download the media creation tool. Be patient; it’s a big file. Once you have it, plug in your flash drive, launch MediaCreationTool.exe, select Create installation media for another PC and follow the prompts.

When you boot from this drive, the Windows Setup wizard comes up. On the second page of the wizard, ignore the big “Install now” button and click Repair your computer in the lower-left corner. That brings you into an environment nearly identical to the Recovery Tool.

But if you do a complete reinstall, there’s a possibility that it will require you to enter your Product ID number—the proof that you can legally run Windows 10 on this machine. So take a precaution now: Download and run Nirsoft’s free and portable ProduKey. Save the displayed numbers in a safe place.

Article by Lincoln Spector via When you can’t create the Windows 10 Recovery Drive, try these three fixes | PCWorld.

Starting a tech startup with C — Startups, Wanderlust, and Life Hacking — Medium

Excellent article by James Perry

I founded a new tech-startup called Signal Analytics with an old University friend, Fedor Dzjuba of Linnworks. We are building a modern, cloud-based version of OLAP cubes (multi-dimensional data storage and retrieval) using a propriety multi-dimensional database system.

I am taking the lead on the technical side and I am most comfortable with C++ so decided to build our OLAP engine with it. I did originally build a prototype in Rust but it was too high risk (I should write another post to explain more about this decision).

A lot of my peers think it is bizarre that I am building a cloud service with C++ and not with a dynamic language — such as Ruby or Python— that provides high productivity to ship quickly.

It started to question my own judgement to use C++ and I decided to research whether it is good idea or not.

Click the link below for full article.

via Starting a tech startup with C — Startups, Wanderlust, and Life Hacking — Medium.

Claim your free 15GB of OneDrive storage

Microsoft has grudgingly agreed to let current OneDrive users keep their 15GB of free cloud storage and 15GB of free Camera Roll “bonus” storage, rather than dropping you to 5GB as previously stated, but only if you’re aware of the offer and don’t mind a bit of spam.

To take advantage of the offer, visit this Microsoft page. Microsoft representatives said the company does not have a supplementary explanatory blog post or statement to add at the present, but they did supply the webpage address, whose URL lists it as a “preview” at the moment.

You’ve already navigated the first hurdle: since users have to manually opt in to the offer, OneDrive users who are unaware of the deal won’t be able to take advantage of it. And there’s a small catch: by selecting the offer, you agree “to receive promotional emails from OneDrive,” although Microsoft immediately says that you can unsubscribe as well—how to do that, however, isn’t exactly clear.

It appears that un-checking the “promotional email” box, then clicking the “Keep your free storage” button also appears to work. In response to a question from PCWorld, a Microsoft representative said that the wording is being changed to “make it more clear”.

To read the full article please click the link below.

http://www.pcworld.com/article/3014183/data-center-cloud/microsoft-will-let-you-keep-your-free-15gb-of-onedrive-storage-if-you-claim-it.html

Programming Hex-code on an Attiny85 with the Arduino

To get a HEX-code in your Attiny85 it is possible to use the Arduino as a programmer, but as you cannot load hexcode in your IDE, it involves using avrdude.

First of all, we need to get the Attiny85 clocked to 8Mhz.

Open up your Arduino software and upload the Arduino ISP sketch to your board.

Disconnect the board from your computer and attach the Attiny as shown here. Also make sure you download and install the Attiny core files as described in that article

Connect your Arduino board in again and choose these settings.

Tools – Board – Attiny85 @ 8Mhz (internal oscillator; BOD disabled)
Tools – Programmer – Arduino as ISP
Tools – Serial Port – COMx (x being the com port that your arduino is connected to)

Then select

Tools – Burn Bootloader.

Just to clarify, you are not burning a bootloader here. You are resetting the fuses in the Attiny to clock it at 8Mhz.

Next, get the firmware into the chip. With that I mean the hex file you want in your chip

We do that by using the arduino as a programmer. You should still still have the ArduinoISP sketch loaded on your Arduino.

Make sure your Attiny is still attached to your Arduino as described here and open a command prompt. (In your windows start menu type cmd or chose the terminal in Linux/Ubuntu).

Type:

avrdude

This will bring up a list of options explaining what everything does.

Only need a few of those commands.

This is what to type in cmd (on 1 line)

avrdude -c avrisp -p t85 -P comX -b 9600 –U flash:w:example_attiny85.hex:i

What does all that mean?

Avrdude… This calls the program-c avrisp… This tells avrdude which programmer you are using. The Arduino shows up as avrisp

-p t85… This is the avrdude code for Attiny85.

-P comX… This is the com port your programmer is attached to. (Change the X to suit your programmer.)

-b 9600… This is the baud rate (Use what is specified in the sketch loaded onto your Arduino.) .

-U flash:w:example_attiny85.hex:i This tells avrdude you want to write (w) the firmware (example_attiny85.hex) to flash memory (flash). The ‘i’ is at the end to tell avrdude what format it is writing in.

Avrdude should now read your chip, write to your chip, then read your chip.

If all goes well, you should get: avrdude done.

Source: Programming Hex-code on an Attiny85 with the Arduino