> The pattern was: install on user launch of product A, write configuration into the user's installs of products B, C, D, E, F, G, H without asking. Reach across vendor trust boundaries. No consent dialog. No opt-out UI. Re-installs itself if the user removes it manually, every time Claude Desktop is launched.
God, I'm SICK of this AI slop style. After ingesting terabytes of pirated books you'd expect a little bit more variety in it's writing.
Like 2/3 posts on HN now have this "No X. No Y. No Z." pattern. It's one of strong signals for me that the author didn't bother and just copy pasted their LLM's output as is. And the LLM mostly likely was pointed at some other resource to write the article, and I'd rather read the original. I think HN needs a policy to replace AI slop articles with the original articles/announcements etc. once detected, and technically the guidelines already cover it: "Please submit the original source. If a post reports on something found on another site, submit the latter."
>After ingesting terabytes of pirated books you'd expect a little bit more variety in it's writing.
I think it's the result of post-training. The original base model most likely had a less slopy style. This style is what AI companies think is a good style (they specifically train for it).
> The file system still uses drive letters. Can’t they scrap the old file system folder layout to something… organized
There's no point doing so. Folder mounts are possible in diskmgmt.msc, and on Linux partitions end up mounted in /mnt/crap (and removables in /media/crap :D) anyway.
Why the hell would I want a file manager to be run on the GPU. it's supposed to be light on requirements and run on a potato, it's a file manager ffs not a 3rd person shooter.
Windows 2000 had sequential service startup. It took /ages/ to boot. The boot screen was pretty, though.
XP was a security nightmare and out the gate was BSOD city, much of that thanks to 3rd party drivers, but the OS had fundamental kernel bugs, too.
7 was okay, but it isn't something you'd want to go back to with modern hardware. It lacks many features we find essential. TRIM being a big one. I'd argue that the Windows 7 iconography wasn't very nice.
I'm more of a fan of NT4 for it's utilitarian look, though service management was no where near as nice as what the MMC brought.
From a stability perspective, it really wasn't until Windows 8/10 where we got to the "PEAK" Windows versions, where stability was not an issue at the OS level with Microsoft-shipped code, but rather at a driver or hardware level. No longer were we seeing some fundamental kernel bug halting the system, instead it shifted over to garbage 3rd party drivers (largely fixed thanks to Windows' unique ability to restart the graphical subsystem/removal of kernel mode print drivers) or failing hardware. You won't find that level of stability in Windows 2000, Windows XP, or Windows 7.
> You won't find that level of stability in Windows 2000, Windows XP, or Windows 7.
Nice try but you won't deceive any attentive readers. Everything you've told in that paragraph was applicable to Windows 7, it had all the stability and none of the user hostility of later versions.
I think you strung together a bunch of words that don't jive with real world experiences.
Windows 7 still had some fundamental kernel quality issues. WDDM 1.1 wasn't mature to the point of providing a stable experience across the board and vendors were still adapting to the WDDM model; kernel mode printer drivers were still common, both a stability and security knock for those older versions of Windows.
So no, Windows 7 did not have "all of the stability" of Windows 10 or 11.
> I think you strung together a bunch of words that don't jive with real world experiences.
I know the real world experience I've had, thank you very much.
> Windows 7 still had some fundamental kernel quality issues.
No it didn't, it was solid as a rock.
> WDDM 1.1 wasn't mature to the point of providing a stable experience across the board and vendors were still adapting to the WDDM model;
Display drivers adapted by the time Vista SP2 was released, and 7 was a solid release from start without even needing a SP.
> kernel mode printer drivers were still common, both a stability and security knock for those older versions of Windows.
First time I've heard a printer driver crashing the system, are you sure you're not making it up? ( print queue hanging is annoying but it isn't a BSOD)
> So no, Windows 7 did not have "all of the stability" of Windows 10 or 11
Okay I give up, Windows 11 is the bestest release, Satya is the broest tech CEO and you're the number 1 fan boy
> We’ve also made changes to the Power menu so you’ll always see the standard Restart and Shut down options without having to install a pending update first. You decide when updates happen, not the other way around.
Great! We've progressed back to Windows XP of 22 years ago.
Great, this is actual progress. Now it would be amazing if "Update and Shut Down" would actually update and shut down, instead of doing so like 50% of the time with the other 50% just updating and restarting with an actual shut down. (This is on various very diverse machines so I'm rather sure is common, and not just an interaction with a particular machine).
It's baffling that a company like MS can leave this kind of obvious problems lingering for months.
Great to know. I would say that it happened to me more recently but it may have been in machines that had been unused for some months and ran an old version.
According to the link, it "only" took them 5 years to solve the bug. Better late than ever though, I guess :)
This behaviour really trumped me when I was working on a friends Windows-11 PC on the new year. My Family Big-Home PC (> a decade old) still has Win-10 since it cannot upgrade, so I was confused at WTF was happening. I could not believe Microsoft had actually broken this.
It only shows "Update and shut down" (which is a lie as it still will reboot) or "Update and reboot.
I think all this was a response to severely outdated Windows machines being infected with worms and what not. Microsoft got bad press for this and went (way) overboard with trying to force users to install updates as soon as released.
I wonder whether it has to do with the actual installation being in progress in the background. There is probably a time window in some updates where an interruption leaves the OS in a bad state.
That doesn't justify it because the user should still be able to decide when to initiate it. People are ok with not interrupting the update if they get to choose when it starts.
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