Posts by biddibiddibiddibiddi 329 publicly visible posts • joined 5 Dec 2023
Well, Microsoft doesn't sell Windows 10 anymore, so... If you buy a system with it, or buy a copy from a reseller, complain to them. (I suppose they still sell Windows 10 in some special cases like volume licensing with downgrades, but I'd bet that a fresh, clean drive installation of the versions that are still in support will result in a layout that doesn't run into this problem.)
The wording doesn't exclude the possibility of it being something they really can't fix, not without a huge amount of effort and risk to user's data (especially if it's actually encrypted with BitLocker; modifying partitions with that enabled has a higher chance of making stuff completely unrecoverable, or the fix might require fully decrypting then re-encrypting), but there is still never any guarantee that a company WILL fix every bug that is ever found in software. There are plenty of application and OS bugs that the developers decide are not high-risk enough, or affect too small a user-base, to bother putting the effort into fixing. This one is medium risk but it requires physical access to the machine, and MS likely downplays the risk.
It's possible they can't fix the recovery partition issue on Win11 and Server 2022 as well, but if they don't actually SAY that, then they leave open the hope that it will be fixed, giving some tiny bit of boost to the appearance of Win11 being better, without actually committing to it. It may also just not be an issue with those due to some change in the way the recovery partition works, I don't know.
Of course, if they find a way to fix it on Windows 11 and Server 2022 with their respective updates, but don't fix it on 10, then they would be clearly making a decision based on marketing and forced obsolescence/insecurity since the underlying functionality is exactly the same and the code is probably identical. That's their right but also will draw much ire from the small but vocal percentage of users that will notice.
A standard installation shouldn't result in them being laid out in the wrong order. (I thought they stopped doing it that way during install a long time ago.) If they're in the wrong order, you modified it. So if you've already futzed around with your system in a way that isn't supported by Microsoft, they're not going to bother trying to give you instructions to fix the problem when they don't have any way of knowing every possible way that people may have modified their systems and then testing out instructions for them all. The reason they can't fix it within the update is because they can't go making such drastic changes to partitions within an update.
For me, I moved my recovery partition towards the beginning of the drive, in front of C, because I got tired of Microsoft automatically changing around my partitions when I was trying to leave space unprovisioned (for SSD overprovisioning). Trying to fix this recovery partition issue involved using partitioning programs to resize things. And of course, that didn't actually resolve the problem and eliminate the error code, so them blaming the partition size for the failure of the update is false.
They need to do one of two things (or both): One is to make the update simply check for the recovery partition being an issue, and if it is, then mark the update as "uninstallable" and never list it or try to install it again without the user going in and unflagging it (in case they follow the instructions to resize). They'd have to have some way to still indicate to the user that it failed, but having it fail and display an obscure error code EVERY SINGLE TIME UPDATES ARE INSTALLED is stupid. It should return a message like "an option update didn't install correctly, here are instructions if you want to try to fix it, but it's not a big deal since you're not using BitLocker". At the very least, actual information should be given instead of an error code that users may not even see and probably won't understand or know how to research.
The other option is to eliminate the partition entirely, since the recovery environment doesn't entirely depend on it. The update and just set it up to run without the partition. The only thing that is possibly lost is the ability to "reset" Windows, and they can add instructions into the Reset process for dealing with that if it becomes necessary (click here to create a USB installer). If the Recovery partition is broken or can't be properly serviced, what good is it doing anyway?
Of course, the real fix is to make the update not require a larger recovery partition in the first place. Work within what the standard install of a current version of the OS will have available.
In the modern world, state by state isn't the best for anything at all. State by state worked and was needed back when a communication took weeks to pass from one state to another, then a response took weeks more to come. A conversation to discuss an issue might take a year. It's been a century since anything that was a common issue for people across the country should have been handled by individual states so that someone in one state has different rights from someone in another state. The only things that should be left up to the states should be things that only affect people in that state and can't be applied to others. The only thing that makes going state by state "the best approach" is the practical fact that states aren't going to relinquish their right to have their own say in matters and go their own way regardless of how it affects anybody else in the long run, and state politicians aren't going to give up their power and the money that comes with it.
That's why I see the MS Store as the PlaySkool version of coding. They push to code things in the "easy" languages that don't provide the same capabilities as what was used for native apps, and they're hiring cheaper, less-experienced developers to make these products, and making them churn the products out faster. And they don't even attempt to give them feature-parity with the native apps before making the Store version the only version.
WhatsApp has never been single device per user, as far as I know (I've only been using it for two years), except maybe when it first came out and only worked on a phone. Your phone is always the primary device. Your phone is where all the messages are permanently stored. If you lose your phone (or at least your phone number) your account is lost. All other devices are secondary and temporary. Other devices can link to your account, but your phone must authorize it. Those other devices only store the data temporarily, and your phone can disconnect them from the account. For a long time, WA required that your phone be actively connected to the Internet in order for one of the linked devices to be able to be used, but now the phone can be offline and the messages are stored on the servers and synced to the phone when it comes back online, however the servers don't keep permanent copies, and those cached messages can't be seen by other linked devices until they're synced to the phone.
But of course, none of that has ever had anything to do with the MS Store itself. WhatsApp's PC desktop app still had a native Windows version until mid to late last year, though there was a Store version for a long time before that. Then they suddenly and with short notice eliminated the native app, even though the Store version didn't have the same features and functionality still. But even if it was somehow single-device single-user at some point, that wouldn't have anything to do with the fact that it was a Store app.
They are doing their best to get apps that people "need" to be Store-only. WhatsApp is, for better or worse, very popular, and the de facto communication method in some countries, and it's only available in the Store now. You personally may not want WhatsApp, but there are plenty of people who do actually need it in order to communicate with others. Most of them just use it on mobile, of course, but some do need it on desktop. The web app is the only alternative there, and it has major limitations that make it unusable for many people. (I use an "app" that just acts as a wrapper for the web app so it functions like a desktop app.) The poor quality is somewhat accurate though, as the Store version is nowhere near as good as the native desktop app was, in stability or functionality. Coding for the store is meant to be like super fast and easy, which tends to mean using fewer people, with less experience and capability, churning out the code as quick as they can, as well as making it difficult for the good coders to actually do what they would like to do.
"There's lots of space..." -- Maybe THAT'S the real reason behind the UI changes that occur every few months that add a little more empty space between elements within apps, both on the desktop and mobile. We'll eventually have ads being squeezed into the white space between file names in Explorer, just as soon as they've increased it just enough to make them legible.
A great many things in the Microsoft store no longer or never did have an option to be installed from anywhere except the Microsoft Store. (And of course the Apple App Store is almost the exclusive place to get applications on a Mac, which Microsoft wants to happen for Windows, and Apple is doing everything they can to ensure it remains that way on iOS.)
The problem is really that nothing they recommend ever actually has anything to do with what I'd want to install on my computer. I only install things when I find I have a need, then locate an application that fulfills that need. I don't just see random games and utilities in ads and decide to install them even though I've never had any need or desire for that type of thing in the past. And almost everything on the MS Store is "spur of the moment" stuff, not things you actually seek out (unless MS has paid the developer of something popular and desirable to switch over to it being a Store app only).
At least they allow them to be disabled, for now, but of course they lump the ads together with whatever other things they might have put into the "recommendations" section which COULD conceivable be other types of things that some people would have wanted to see, like Tips. So it's a requirement that if you want the useful functions, you also have to let them show you ads. Calling them "recommended apps" doesn't change the fact that they're ads and not an operating system feature.
I'm irritated with every new computer or new installation of an OS or having to work on someone else's computer with the default mouse cursor speed, in which dragging it halfway across your desk results in the cursor moving less than halfway across the screen. So trying to move the cursor to the upper right corner involves moving the mouse and lifting it to start at the lower left of the mouse pad again seven or eight times. (With the old mechanical mice, you could move it quickly and lift it up so the ball would keep spinning, but usually that would disengage the rollers.) Or wearing out the laptop's trackpad just trying to close one window. It's only made worse and worse as the years progress and screen resolutions get higher and higher, and God forbid you have two or more screens. Even just one notch up on the cursor speed slider is a huge help, but on my computer I move it from the default of 10 out of 20 up to 15. My wrist doesn't need to move at all to get across two screens (1440p and 1080p), although I still move the mouse to settle into a "centered" position out of habit.
Appointees have their own forms of pressure, from the people that appointed them. They may not have to do public campaigning, but they do still have to "audition", and get approved and appointed, and they have to sing whatever tune is desired by the party that's in power at the time. It doesn't seem to actually make things any better in getting appointees to do their jobs versus elected officials, it just shifts where the decisions occur about who gets that job. Appointees just have to pander to a smaller constituency.
"three unelected commissioners have unilaterally decided they have the authority to declare what's a legitimate business decision and what's not" -- Not unilaterally. This is the exact authority they were given when they were put into their positions. And they were put into their positions by elected officials, supposedly choosing commissioners who will do what is good for the country and its citizens. And given the ratio of "yes" to "no" comments, I think this is what citizens want. If the rich business owners couldn't flood the commentary with enough shills to even make it look evenly-divided, it's pretty clear.
When the "unelected commissioners" on the FTC or FCC and other agencies are Republicans and do what's good for business owners but bad for everybody else, they get cheered by business owners who don't mention that they were appointed by Republican Presidents. When they're Democrats and do something that takes away a tiny fraction of profits or control from employers or businesses, the words "unelected" and "liberals" get tossed about immediately as if it's a bad thing and negates their authority.
The problem is they want to force companies to only create products that work according to these standards, rather than letting them create whatever they want and if consumers refuse to use it because it doesn't interoperate, it will fail. Nobody is forcing the government to use these products, or for one department to use one and another department to use another, nobody is forcing individual users or businesses to use them, and if they want to be able to communicate with others they can all use the same product, or one or the other can switch, OR they can convince the two product creators to make them communicate with each other, and stop paying for it if it doesn't happen. Forcing interoperation though means users get the worst of both worlds. When talking to someone on a different product, they get only the shared features, rather than all the features that they wanted by choosing the product they chose.
"Law responds again to pings" - Correct words are "Law responds to actual citizen needs and desires instead of corporate bribes"
"People will switch to ISPs that don't meddle with connection speeds, if possible, if they are that upset by it." -- Sure, that would happen, if they actually had options for ISPs to switch to, and if the ISPs didn't collude to ensure that they were all meddling. There might be some few smaller ISPs that would actually provide net neutrality all on their own, but the number of people able to sign up for them is limited. Some have a few options, the vast majority only have at most 2 possible true broadband providers available (one cable and one fiber or VDSL), a great many only have one, and a ridiculous number still don't even have true broadband available at all and still only have one provider available that can't even give them service that allows for HD streaming. (I exclude satellite because anything with such high latency isn't really good broadband and is solely a last resort service.) The big providers are the ones that WILL absolutely break net neutrality to the absolute limit of what is legal, even going beyond what is legal, and if the only options are two of the big providers, customers can't vote with their wallets and let the market decide.
Other than closing the charging flap, all those other items are normal things people know to do before going into a car wash (and if they don't, they deserve to get splashed with soap). Even the charging port hardly counts as it's only a different type of fuel port, and you do need to close the gas cap on an ICE vehicle at all times, not just during a car wash. Making it all happen with a single touch just contributes to people being dumb.
Basic Wi-Fi would be a good addition to allow Wi-Fi Calling and even tethering, but perhaps that's too much additional cost for a small benefit when there should be virtually no other use for data services. Texting must be awful on this thing, given how most of the incoming messages would be full of emojis that it can't display properly. 48MB of RAM is really funny given how large a single chip/package of RAM is, even DDR2; it seems like they must have found a stash of very early, small LPDDR2 chips somewhere and wanted to use them up.
Those were technically recommendations/ads. Shortcuts in the Start Menu to games. All those 8KB items in the "Apps and Features" listing (which they liked to recreate after major updates) are things they think you might want want from the app store, for games and apps. Those were the least-offensive method of doing it, a trial run, and now with Windows 11 having been out for a long time they're going to see what they can get away with which will become the default from the start with Windows 12. Don't forget the ads for Office and OneDrive showing up in Explorer, either.
Not really surprising. First generation "sucks", second generation gets not only the node change but all the learning/experience they did in the design, additional technology that they couldn't implement before because it was a first try, and designing for "AI" in general is changing quickly. It will, like everything, have smaller and smaller performance increases with each generation, outside of making major architecture changes.
I would never have considered running chkdsk in order to specifically verify that crosslinked chains didn't exist in order to ensure that deleting a file wasn't going to accidentally delete other files. Running chkdsk with a FAT filesystem in particular is just a good idea in general when you're having problems, should have been the first step, and likely would have fixed the boot issues in the first place. This was outright negligence and stupidity.
A real fine that actually affects them would be what makes them follow the rules, to avoid the fines. Not the slap on the wrist with a padded ruler that they get now that often isn't even a significant fraction of a percent of the money they made from breaking the rules, and never consider repeated infractions.
The Commission (and others like them) should just keep quiet and let companies implement things, then hit them with "you did it wrong, willfully, here's your fine, it's due by the end of the month, even if you're going to appeal". They shouldn't be given warnings and chances to make corrections over and over when they're obviously trying to twist rules in their favor and just keep doing things for as long as they can because the fines won't be significant in comparison to what they earn from it. Ten percent of global revenue for even one day would be a huge boon to governments AND a solid enough hit to the companies' bottom lines to possibly make a difference.
This is not the least bit surprising; a product that most people aren't aware of that the manufacturer thought didn't need more than minimal security, or none at all really, simply because few were aware of it. What is surprising is that it hasn't been attacked already. When will "security through obscurity" become illegal? Fourteen million devices isn't even a small potential volume. It's just been safe until now because it's a niche product with little obvious way to make it worth attacking, but now that attacks are so widespread and cheap to do, and there are people who would do them solely to try to cripple the economy, it's a huge vulnerability. It could even be attacked by people in the industry just to modify the data in the system to get around regulations.
The purpose of patents is to allow the inventor to make money from it during an exclusive period by selling a product based on it, preventing others from creating a product during that time, thus encouraging innovation because inventors were assured that no one else could just undercut them on price during that time, and then after that exclusive period the invention became public and could be used by anyone and benefit everyone at a lower cost. Licensing or selling the patent is a way to allow an inventor to get the product produced without having to actually be responsible for the process (many inventors are, one could say, less than competent in other fields, like business or finance, and just want to create, but they also need to eat). This is a different thing than simply "their only purpose is to collect money". Corporations have perverted and corrupted the system, like pretty much everything else they touch, including copyright.
Slower 5G, at least, isn't that huge a deal if it means a significant cost savings, for the vast majority of users. But the cost savings of the chip itself versus the total phone cost is minimal, so it's really a matter of how much they gimp the other phone features and how much the reduce the overall cost.
Always-on camera, which on models sold in China will not have an option to be disabled... Perhaps they'll also find a way to enable the data from that camera to always be uploading to a monitoring server, at higher priority than user-data when capacity or bandwidth are limited, and excluded from data caps (if providers in China use those) to ensure it always goes through.
They've only done that for one particular item (quarter pounder), and I do notice an improvement, but I also prefer meat that is more thoroughly cooked (medium is the bare minimum for me; I used to cook everything to leather but got better about it as I got older; it's a neurodivergency thing). Generally freezing meat is considered to have at least a slight effect on quality. And "not as good as I remember" in this case is often just "I'm getting older" where everything tastes better in the past, both due to nostalgia and changes in tastebuds. (Chicken nuggets with dark meat however are absolutely better in every way, in every brand.) But anything that has sat under a warmer for more than a few minutes has started to degrade in quality.
There is still a chain called Sonic Drive-In like that in the US. You order through a speaker (it's always been that way), but they still bring it out to you. Sadly not pretty girls or guys in skimpy clothing, but they still wear skates. The company even has skating competitions for "top carhop".
How is pre-cooked food that's been sitting under warmers better? Faster, yes, but I'm happy that most places moved away from that. I went to a famous burger joint in Atlanta a few years ago that still did things like that, just continuously making the same burgers and fries and piling them up waiting for customers to order them, and even though it wasn't sitting for a long time, it was absolutely awful. McD's does obviously still to have many things cooked a little ahead to keep up with demand, but at least they're not pre-assembled so each item can be kept at its own proper temperature, and the items that don't do well when left to sit get made when needed.
Although somehow they still can't make a burger that can melt the slices of processed cheese product, even when straight off the griddle.
Yes but that IP is part of a range. Surely Microsoft can say "Our mail servers use x.x.x.x through y.y.y.y", please allow those through." and the anti-spam provider can scan their list of blocked IPs and uncheck the boxes for all the ones within that range. Surely they don't have a single employee manually looking through a paper list for each IP one by one.
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