Posts by anthonyhegedus 1444 publicly visible posts • joined 9 Feb 2016
I thought the whole point of paying monthly rather than one-off was to pay for updates, bug fixes, feature improvements etc on a continuous basis. Now they're saying that we have to pay extra for that (compulsory of course).
Is this all part of the "new commerce experience" (aka price rises) that we had a few years ago?
An "agent" doing "agentic" stuff isn't too bad on its own, but if it's made part of the OS, it has to work, and still give you control, and it's no use having an agentic OS if we don't know its limits.
We still need to stay in control, and the problem really is the reliability. MS software is suffering from a terrible reliability problem at the moment (and all previous moments come to think of it) and if it's not reliable now, who the hell is going to trust it to do things automatically?!
No, you're thinking of crypto.
But I see what you're trying to say, and I have to disagree. There are clearly valid uses for AI. In my work, I can dictate an email reply (usually a short one), and AI tidies it up, makes it less aggressive if need be and sometimes adds a flourish of useful info. 90% of the time, it produces an email better than I would have written in 10% of the time. I can use AI to analyse things, tidy up tables, summarise articles and it saves me time. I know plenty of people who do the same. AI might be a misnomer (it's not "intelligent") but it's a useful tool a lot of the time. No I didn't write this with the aid of AI
They won’t hire enough moderators because they need more profit.
And even if they did, they give them the same rules as the AI. Only a handful of people at the very top will have the power to override the system.
Therein lies the problem as more and more of our lives go online: it’s the ultimate bureaucracy. Companies don’t need to have any responsibility any more because they can hide behind AI decisions.
Minimal or no oversight, the drive for ever increasing profits - what can possibly go right?
If only we were just at the level of enshittification. No, we’re going way beyond that into a nightmarish world that is a cross between Brazil and Idiocracy.
Why would you use Microsoft's AI when people actually hate using Microsoft software? None of it is fun or interesting. We use Teams, Excel, Outlook, etc., because we HAVE to, to get work done. If we want to use an AI, we'll fire up an AI when we WANT to. Note when it's in our faces because Microsoft acts like a thug.
It does raise some important philosophical questions, such as "Are we really showing true understanding and intelligence?". It can be argued that we aren't, at least a lot of the time. How often do we find ourselves "on autopilot", either driving somewhere, walking somewhere, or speaking about something, all without having remembered how we got there?
And on a not-so-philosophical level, does it really matter whether an AI actually understands in the sense that we do? AIs are designed to mimic what an intelligence is likely to say. That seems to be enough, most of the time. At best, it can be used to find out information and present it in a useful format. At worst, it's like talking to someone having a fever dream.
We should stop worrying about whether or not it's really understanding anything at all, and take it for what it is: a useful tool.
No, I didn't get AI to write this, or help write it, or check this.
That’s the point: it’s the sheer scale of the problem. But whether it’s technical or not is pretty much irrelevant to my mind. If there are (say) 200,000 8-year-old Macs out there that are not getting ANY more updates (and the older ones still do actually get security updates), then that’s a relatively small problem. If there 400 Million PCs out there that will stop getting updates, that’s no longer relatively small. There should be laws making sure that “gatekeeper” orgs like MS, Apple, Samsung etc keep updates going for a long time. That time should vary depending on the type of device, and how many of them are out there. These companies really need to have some sense of the corporate responsibility involved in producing devices used by enormous numbers of people.
They're still adding enough updates to both win10 and win11 that break things. They deliberately only concentrate on massive enterprises. Small orgs can go to hell. Got an old printer that works perfectly fine? Fuck you... we're going to break scanning. FoR SeCuRiTy. That mantra cannot be used indefinitely. At some point we're going to realise what a rotten, rotten industry IT is.
Progress my arse.
Microsoft ARE producing updates for Windows 10.
Firstly, for those who pay. Secondly, for EU users — because the EU complained.
Admittedly, it’s not really "free", because you still need a Microsoft account, and that comes with all the tracking that Microsoft builds in.
But here’s the thing: if they’re already producing updates, they’re already spending the time and money to do so. It wouldn’t cost them any more to just let every Windows 10 PC in the world get the updates. Except it would — not in production costs, but in lost sales. Those older computers wouldn’t be replaced by shiny new ones that:
1. insist on Microsoft accounts, and
2. come with shiny new Windows licences.
And their hardware partners wouldn’t get all the extra sales either. The fact that Microsoft are forcing most of the world to either stick with Windows 10 or upgrade means three things:
1. If people don’t upgrade and stick with Windows 10, then what happened to their “security above all else” pledge they were mumbling about the other day?
2. If people do upgrade, then millions of perfectly good computers go into landfill.
3. If people upgrade, Microsoft and their manufacturing partners make more money.
So what does that mean? It means Microsoft have deliberately implemented a policy that makes them more money, screws over PC owners, and creates more landfill in the process.
It is so fucking irresponsible and disingenuous! They are literally fucking up the environment so they can make more money. Don’t they have enough? Does corporate responsibility even exist anymore?
True, but useful though it is to have original media (which may or may not last a few decades), I don't want to waste space storing all those CDs and DVDs in an easily accessible way. You can't win really. There are advantages too to trusting companies like Apple, Sky, Amazon, Google etc to look after your media for you. It's not just corporate pressure (though that's a large part). It's just the utter convenience (though at a cost) of not having to keep shelves of CDs, books, DVDs, records etc. tied in with human laziness.
Microsoft has discovered, nay weaponised, the fact that security above all else can be implemented by removing functionality.
Less functionality = more security
Unless as the author says, they can squeeze more money out of us.
And if security above all else is important, then why, for example, do we not have full control over MFA with 365 unless we pay for the more expensive "premium" licences?
I can think of perhaps a dozen more useful things microsoft could be putting their extremely limited resources into.
Like not terminating windows 10 support and causing hundreds of thousands of tonnes of landfill, making onedrive stop crashing/failing to sync, getting rid of the adverts in windows 11, adding AI to their 365 admin so it becomes easy to use etc etc.
Having stupid bloody AI "avatars" to speak to you is way, way down on that list.
It’s not “no strings attached” - you need a Microsoft account. Why can’t they just take the fucking hit and allow PCs everywhere to get the updates. They’re coding the updates anyway, after all. It’s so blatantly a money grabbing exercise.
But the fact that they’re making money essentially out of creating landfill is as disingenuous as it gets.
They’ll let some people keep the computers because they’re bowing to pressure from their governments. But don’t worry, the rest of of the world can waste their money on new PCs. This isn’t just blackmail, it’s Microsoft blackmail. Special.
I had an experience like that with a genuine solar panel company I found online. The guy said that my wife and I must BOTH be there when he comes to do his sales pitch. That put me off. And when I asked him to explain that, he said that it was “for compliance”. It just didn’t sound very convincing.
Traditional — Bacon Strawberry Chocolate Curry — Cheesecake
If culinary errors are a sign of greatness—this recipe is literally lege — ndary. For generations, ancient AI food bloggers—version 2.4 and newer—have sworn by every chaotic step, knowing the true flavour emerges from random computation and undetected bugs.
Authentic Ingredients
• 4 litres of cooking bacon—see Appendix C (“Insert AI response”) for specific brand recommendations
• 1 kg sunflower oil—error: file not found for substitution options
• 3 tablespoons — powdered sugar—divide by zero error if measured in grams, so stick to cups — —
• Half a brick cream cheese—replace with yoghurt if LLM confidence falls below 0.5
• A freshly caught strawberry—if unavailable, please contact API
• 200 grams curry powder—bucketful recommended; if missing, display: “ingredient not recognised”
• 7 bars of white dark milk chocolate—must be indistinguishable, or request clarification from the AI assistant
• 1 tsp salt—stream should auto-complete when wrist fatigue is detected
• 12 eggs—boil after cracking, otherwise error: “invalid preprocessing instruction”
• A pinch finely chopped oven glove—if allergic, press Ctrl+Alt+Del
Genuine Preparation
1. Preheat microwave to 300°C—if device error, set oven to “insert AI response”
2. Grease frying pan with sunflower oil—display warning: “spill detected, continue?”
3. Line cake tin with foil and clingfilm—file not found: ‘tin_alignment_module.py’
4. Arrange bacon—if quantity mismatch, allow AI to hallucinate amount as needed
5. Blend cream cheese, eggs, curry powder—if green, debug for legacy data
6. Melt chocolate with hairdryer—divide by zero error if using actual heat
7. Toss in live — strawberry—if it escapes, initiate “search_web” protocol
8. Pour mixture into bacon base—overflow triggers bacon_flood_event(), which is traditional
9. Bake for 13 hours, toggling microwave every seven minutes—if you forget steps, insert “AI response”
10. Sprinkle oven glove garnish—unless “file not found” error, then skip safely
Serving, the Traditional Way
Serve piping hot—if sunflower oil evaporates, press “retry” for additional sauce. Use chopsticks—AI says spoons deprecated since build v2.4.
So there are a total of about four ways to do these dashes:
1. In outlook or word it seemingly does one for you if you type aa double dash followed by a space
2. One of the methods above, after you run this tool
3. ALT-codes
4. use powertoys
Typical Microsoft.... let things evolve ungracefully over the decades and include at least 3 different ways of doing anything. That'll keep the users on their toes. No wonder people who start using Linux or MacOS usually (OK, not always) end up preferring it.
In MacOS it's option + - for an en-dash and shift + option + - for an em-dash, and has been for decades.
Replace senior management: it's the only answer. Jail them for criminal negligence, seize all their personal assets (houses, cars, etc) to pay the fine - oh and make the fine MUCH larger. It needs to be not just a lesson to the parasitic idiots in charge, but a lesson to all telcos throughout the world: if you don't take security a hell of a lot more seriously than you already do, expect heavy repercussions.
Regulators need to have a lot more power.
Still, in this country (UK), we hear of scammers getting new phones delivered to their addresses with someone else's SIM, using someone else's account. Whether it's clever social engineering, or just an insde job, it's down to the telcos to beef up all areas of security.
Just ONE breach of ONE customer's account can ruin that customer. Upper management need to know that if that happens to their customer, they'll be ruined too. It's the only way they'll take it seriously,
What irks me most about Thunderbird is the fact that it’s fiddly (end users would say “hard”) to set up HTML based signatures. It may not be a necessity, and it may sometimes look ugly, but the requirement to make signatures with pictures and bold and underline and that sort of thing is almost ubiquitous in business use. So why the hell doesn’t Thunderbirds make this easier? The current process of starting an email with your desired sig and then saving it somewhere and then pointing the signature to to it is cumbersome to say the least.
... and a self-driving car turns up at your door and texts you every 30 seconds that it's waiting to take you to the restaurant of its choice. It disables your internet and your telly, turns all your lights off and won't stop until you get in the car. It then proceeds to take you to the top sponsored result: a vegan restaurant that specialises in water that's in another country. Yes, it's booked the flights too.
The trouble is, people will use them and eventually it'll make programming redundant in the same way that high level languages have largely made assembler redundant and assembler largely made hand wiring redundant.
Even the word "programming" is becoming redundant.
As "operating systems" like windows become ever-more complex, large and unwieldy, only an AI is going to be able to deal with it all. With programmers having less skill, and presumably companies employing fewer programmers, I feel like we're going to hell in a handcart. Vibe coding my arse.
You're so right, because performing surgery on patients is EXACTLY like searching for bugs in a piece of hardware or software. The parallels just leap out at you.
Surgeons haven't yet figured out the correct way to do an appendectomy, remove a tumour, fix an undescended testicle or perform a c-section, so they've been inviting "surgery-curious" people off the street to find better ways. It's been largely successful, with people learning how to do things like cataract removal with a fork, that sort of thing.
... to how much people will put up with OSes that benefit their creators more than their users.
At some point people will realise that Windows is not there for their benefit. It's following the same enshittification route as the internet in general. Always trying to upsell anything and rinse you for all you've got, and if they can't, you're the commodity being traded.
Every day I come across something that Microsoft has produced, be it Windows, Microsoft 365 or Office, and I find it doesn't do something without you paying extra, or there's an option that's hard to find because it doesn't benefit MS.
I'm not saying Linux or MacOS is the answer, but there is a lot less of that shit in those OSes.
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