In one of the internal Microsoft special-interest group mailing lists, someone pointed out that the Windows 10 Mail app contains a cute hidden message:

Hold on while we fetch your email.

Hint: The people who noticed were members of the Ham Radio special-interest group.

Answer: The pattern of long and short dashes that are used to suggest motion spell out, in Morse code, the letters M-A-I-L.

Samuel Morse was born on this day in 1791.

Bonus chatter: Jensen Harris recently wrote about a secret message hidden in the Windows 8 internal wallpapers.

Here’s some puzzle solving fun for a Friday night.

As we developed Windows, one of the minor decisions we had to make was what wallpaper to use for various internal builds.

These builds always leaked outside of Microsoft, so we knew that the wallpapers would also end up public.

— Jensen Harris (@jensenharris) April 21, 2018

Here’s the entire first half on one page.

In the second half, Jensen reveals the answer.

As I detailed a few days ago, there was a secret, unsolved puzzle quietly embedded into default Windows wallpapers.

It was misinterpreted as an advanced “anti-leak” security measure by many users, leading to all sorts of craziness.

I also promised you the solution. Here it is:

— Jensen Harris (@jensenharris) April 23, 2018

And here’s the solution on one page.

Oh, and at the end of this old post, there’s a story where I welcome Jensen to nerd celebrity.