MudMan

Well, I’m still waiting for Twitter to “need a replacement”. It seems to be doing just about fine on its new normal. Ditto for any of the other Meta places, which have only consistently grown over time. Yes, Facebook, too.

To be clear, I don’t particularly mean too little, too late for me. I’m not on Twitter or Facebook or any of those platforms, Bluesky and Fedi aside. And again, I was not on board with the Masto quote tweet thing. I did stop using it frequently, but not for that reason.

I mean too little, too late to make an impact of any kind. Masto has been stuck where it is for a while, and so has Bluesky. I don’t think either are going back to growing anytime soon, but if either does it probably won’t be because Masto added quotes. I’m fairly comfy talking to the same dozen people out here like I’m in a 90s IRC channel, but ultimately it’d be nice if the gross places didn’t keep driving the global conversation forever. And on that front… yeah, too little, too late.

That was a shockingly long turnaround for these, considering. I’ve come and gone from Mastodon like three times since this was an argument and at least twice since they said they would do this.

Oh, well. I originally thought this was a bad call, and I did hate the old Twitter snippy bullshit this enabled, but Bluesky sorta proved to me this was a cultural issue more than a feature set issue. And while we’re at it, while I don’t particularly like the implementation of Bluesky’s custom subject feeds I’m fairly convinced that some alternative to chronological-only feeds would be beneficial. This seems like too little, too late, honestly.

I’d argue I’m doing the opposite.

I was turning this stuff off when my Google and Samsung phones kept suggesting that they could do searches based on the content of my phone screen or my camera feed. It’s only “normalization” in that it’s… you know, actually normal and widespread. I don’t think people are too alarmed now, I think they weren’t alarmed enough when the first wave of “smart assistants” started doing this like a decade ago.

Right, so when you said “forced it on everyone” you meant “the feature existing at all even if it’s optional or disabled”.

See, I don’t have a problem with the latter, that’s legitimate. But you implied the former, and the former is false.

Now, I don’t like the feature and I absolutely turned it off the moment it (finally) got patched into my supported PCs. But it’s worth noting that similar features are present on Android phones (from all the way back on Google Assistant to the upcoming Magic Cue), Apple phones (via Visual Intelligence and Siri) and other PC and phone manufacturers. I recommend turning them all off, but with the caveats you original omitted this isn’t a Windows-specific thing, it’s a pretty widespread fad.

Of course the reason people are latching on to the MS version is their initial implementation was hot garbage and entirely unaware of its own context, so now it’s a meme, particularly in tech-savvy, Linux-friendly circles. The biggest lesson we’ve all learned is that Microsoft is bad at PR and marketing, which I feel we already knew.

I mean, I’d rather not. I definitely take a number of steps to limit that. Same as I take steps to prevent that from Google on my phone or from both of them and others on my Linux devices.

What I don’t do is make up stuff to be paranoid about in case the very real privacy concerns you already have to pay attention to aren’t scary enough to make me feel superior online.

I’m so exhausted of social media nonsense latching onto meme crap to push preconceived narratives and flipping over to ignoring reality altogether the moment any facts at all don’t fit their dumb little package of memes.

You know what, I hope it’s not actually off and anybody with the trivial means to check what their Windows PC is sending to the mothership notices so we can get the EU to GDPR the crap out of them and build some nice hospital somewhere with the fine money.

In the meantime, go do conspiracy theories over on Twitter. There’s plenty of real stuff to be mad about at Microsoft without having to make shit up.

I swear to Torvalds, if the amount of old ladies using Linux because their Fedi relatives installed it on their laptops is accurate we are in the middle of an major demographic crisis.

Yes, that’s toggleable on settings and set to off by default. Do remember to turn off Click-to-Do, though, if nothing else it’s annoying to trigger it by accident. I also remapped the copilot button back to being right mouse click.

I mean, they’re pretty useless features and I wish they had spent more time working on better stuff, but… you know, I turned it off.

They did what now? I have no Copilot features turned on in my PCs, and I actually have a certified Copilot+ laptop.

Microsoft has given users fair warning, and said that users can get a year of updates for free but eventually the company will have to face facts and extended support beyond October.

We can’t recall a time where Microsoft has done such a thing but these are extenuating circumstances given that most users just aren’t budging.

WTF is this guy talking about? Far as I can tell this is the Win7 playbook all over again. Looking it up, this was the timeline:

Jan. 13, 2015: Microsoft ended Mainstream Support for Windows 7.

Sept. 6, 2018: Microsoft announced the ESUs for Windows 7. The ESU program is a paid service that provides critical security updates for legacy products for up to three years after Extended Support ends.

August 2019: Microsoft announced a year of free ESUs, but only for select users, including customers with an Enterprise Agreement or Enterprise Agreement Subscription with active Windows 10 Enterprise E5, Microsoft 365 E5, or Microsoft 365 E5 Security subscriptions. This was limited to only Government E5 stock keeping units.

Jan. 14, 2020: Microsoft ended Extended Support for Windows 7.

Jan. 10, 2023: The ESUs reached their end of life on the first Patch Tuesday of 2023.

That’s almost a decade of post-end of support updates. If anything, MS confirmed ESU before trying to shut down home user patches this time, so it looks less like terrified backpedalling. And as the linked article itself admits, the data they’re reporting on shows a significant number of users still on Win7. The article waves it away as just “too many”, but the original report says 8.5%.

Because, as it turns out, the kind of people using Kapersky antivirus software and the number of people who would not upgrade from a 16 year old OS that has lost support half a dozen times over the past half a decade show significant overlap. In the Steam survey right now Win 7 is only 0.07%, for reference.

While we’re at it Win 11 is 60% vs 35% for Win 10. For all the headlines when Steam shows Linux growth you don’t often hear over here that Win 11 went up by 0.5% and Windows overall went up by 0.36%, although it’s worth noting that Windows has been pretty stable between 94 and 96% since the survey started.

I’ve said it before and I’ll keep reality checking it: the Win 10 end of support process has been wildly overhyped, particularly among Linux-friendly circles. It is not meaningfully different to moves out of other “good” versions of Windows and it’s not a catastrophic crisis point for MS, for better and worse. They’ll keep support up for the people who need it for as long as they’re willing to pay and most legacy home users won’t even know their old Win10 is unsupported because it’ll just keep happily chugging along with all the same malware it already has until something breaks and they have to buy a new laptop with a preinstalled Win11 or 12 or whatever.

The most the Win10 death hype is doing to hurt MS is create a flurry of social media posts that can convince tech savvy, Linux-curious users who were previously held back by lack of gaming support to give user friendly distros a try.

Yeah, ok, so… don’t wash your phone with a spray nozzle regardless, is going to be my advice. Wet tissue? Sure. Under the tap with light soap? If desperate. Just… don’t hose your phone down, what are you doing.

But let’s be clear, IP ratings are certifications. You can still be water resistant under the conditions of the test and not have the certification for it.

It makes perfect sense for… you know, people not using water jets on their electronics, to get just the certification that covers most real use cases (in this case the one that covers rain, accidental pool falls and the occasional toilet dunk) and communicate that. It doesn’t mean your phone won’t survive a bartop spray nozzle wash (which, again, you shouldn’t be doing) or even that it wouldn’t have gotten the IPx5/6 cert if the manufacturer had gone through the process, but it’s extra cost that will only muddle how you communicate with your user.

Are people not clear that IPx5/6 and IPx7/8 aren’t on a linear scale? They are not. That’s on the IEC’s poor formatting of the ratings. Are manufacturers leaning on the implicit user assumption that the higher number just means more protection? Sure.

Is it relevant/annoying/effectively problematic in real use? Not unless you’re using a waterjet cutter to rinse ketchup off your phone. Which, again, don’t do that, that’s not a good thing to do.

This is a bit obtuse for the sake of pedantry.

I mean, is it possible that you could build a device resistant to submersion but not splashing? Maybe?

But this isn’t “a device”, this is a phone. The problems with water ingress are very specific. You have a couple of speakers, a few microphones, a sim card slot and a USB port, plus the seams for the screen and backplate. If you secured those well enough for the immersion tests they’re going to be splash-resistant. If you have a way in which you can somehow have a phone screen adhesive survive being underwater for several minutes but not falling rain or being placed under a tap/hose please do share, because I can’t think of one. The scenario where your speaker seals are good enough for being fully submerged but get water damaged by shooting high pressure water directly into them is so niche it’s probably not worth it to further confuse people by having two different IP ratings listed.

Plus… you know, don’t be shooting water hoses directly up your phone’s holes regardless? I don’t see why you would in the first place, but… just don’t? It’s not gonna happen by accident, so it doesn’t need to happen at all.

Yep. Non-negotiable. Not only do I live in a very rainy place, but I have uses for this stuff that require getting splashed A LOT very often for other reasons.

Well, ramen is the line, apparently.

No, I don’t have problem with ice or olives. Those don’t go in your mouth unless you put them there.

If you want to wrap your head around this, here’s a clear distinction: Cereal is ok, but if a cookie gets soggy, breaks and falls into a glass of milk then that glass of milk is fully spoiled, can’t be salvaged and has to be thrown away.

There is absolutely a reason for games to cost 70 bucks. Which is listed above multiple times, you should go re-read those posts. They paint a pretty clear picture, if I say so myself.

On the MS question, it’s not relevant whether they made the wrong choice. The point is they thought they would do better this way. I guarantee they wouldn’t have shut down Team Cherry if they owned that. Pretty sure they’ll keep making Call of Duty. They may suck at understanding how to get a hit made, but they can still count.

They did not think what they made out of Tango was enough.

And yet the end result is still wet meatballs.

I am 100% not joking, this sentence made me queasy.

It’s hard to keep water clean when you put meatballs inside it.

To flip my original post, if you dropped that much meat into my glass of water I’d send it back and nobody would question me.

My body does very little correctly. We’ve talked about it and it’s unfortunately not willing to change this.

Not a troll, though. I may be a bit facetious, but I’m definitely not lying to get a rise out of people here.

I mean, I’m joking in that I’m not mad that you guys like soup. You put whatever you want in your mouth, I’m not here to kink shame.

But I do legitimately hate soups and creams in (almost) all forms. I don’t understand how someone can grab a liquid in a spoon with chunks of floating meat and carbs in it, put it in their mouth and not be repulsed by what’s going on there. It’s just immediate gag reflex for me.

The weird exception to the rule is ramen, which I can do more or less fine because it’s sort of at the edge of what my brain will process as a sauce rather than a soup. With the caveats that I do that by eating what’s in the ramen and then either discarding or filtering the broth through my teeth, and that if given the choice to have a dry ramen I will do that 100% of the time.

Honestly, I was going to write “process as a runny sauce” up there instead and I could feel my throat tightening up. It’s just not cool. I have eaten insects, molluscs, mold and the testicles of multiple animals. All delicious. I will eat tripe if done correctly, tongue if sliced thinly and I’ve tolerated a blob of solid fat just to say I had tried it.

Can’t do soup, won’t do soup, don’t understand how this is not a more widespread thing.