Always strive to learn something useful. --Sophocles

Researcher shows Microsoft's Edge browser stores saved passwords in memory in plaintext!

Thu, 07 May 2026 19:36:35 GMT

A security researcher did some poking around and discovered a bad thing with the Edge browser. Every browser wants you to trust them with your passwords and credit card data. At least in the case of Edge and passwords, that trust may be unwarranted.

The researcher stored a password and then captured all the memory. And found the password in plaintext. Unencrypted, unhashed. Completely readable. Microsoft dismissed this finding, saying that the computer would have to be compromised by malware for this to be a vulnerability.

Well, guess what. COMPUTERS GET COMPROMISED BY MALWARE ON A REGULAR BASIS. THIS IS A PROBLEM.

The Edge browser is based on Google's Chrome browser. There are many browsers based on Chrome, and apparently they take the very minimal resources required to encrypt or hash said passwords.

No word if this problem exists on Edge browser on other operating systems such as Mac.

Now, here's the really bonus extra-stupid thing. If I'm a user on a computer, and I want to view a password for a web site, I HAVE TO ENTER MY LOGIN PASSWORD TO VIEW IT. It's already been decrypted and stuffed into memory in plaintext, but I have to authenticate myself to view it!

This is quite an amazing level of stupidity. The amount of CPU resources required to decrypt one password for one web site is miniscule. There is zero reason to decrypt all of those passwords and stuff them into ram where any malware can steal them.

https://www.pcmag.com/news/researcher-finds-microsoft-edge-stored-passwords-load-in-plaintext

https://yro.slashdot.org/story/26/05/06/2014204/microsoft-edge-stores-passwords-in-plaintext-in-ram

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GitHub announces charging you for running it on your own hardware, then walks it back

Mon, 26 Jan 2026 17:55:43 GMT

GitHub is software mainly intended for programmers and developers as a software repository. Very useful stuff, very widely-used. And now about to get a lot more expensive for large teams.

Microsoft bought GitHub a few years back, and a month ago, announced that it would start charging people who ran it on their own hardware $0.002 per minute charge for "self-hosted runners executing jobs on private GitHub repositories. At the same time, GitHub noted in a Tuesday blog post that it's lowering the prices of GitHub-hosted runners beginning January 1, under a scheme it calls "simpler pricing and a better experience for GitHub Actions." Self-hosted runner usage on public repositories will remain free, we note." This was to go into effect in March.

One person contacted noted that they had run the numbers and it would cost them $3,500 a month on top of their normal monthly fee for using GitHub.

There was a large hue and cry, and pretty much the same day Microsoft announced that they were rescinding the charge.

HOWEVER, as The Register article points out about the later MS announcement, "We note that GitHub didn’t say it won’t ever go forward with charging for self-hosted runners, only that it’s postponing the change. As one commenter on the community thread pointed out, that means charging for self-hosted runners may be a foregone conclusion."

The Slashdot article lists many completely free, open-source alternatives to GitHub and I expect people are making migration plans as we speak.

https://www.theregister.com/2025/12/17/github_charge_dev_own_hardware/

https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/25/12/17/2042247/github-is-going-to-start-charging-you-for-using-your-own-hardware

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Microsoft releases out of band patch to fix shutdown bug in Windows 11 plus one more bug

Mon, 19 Jan 2026 07:41:46 GMT

I thought they might fix it quick, and they did. This patch, and one other, can be downloaded and installed via Windows Update.

What I didn't know was there was another bug also addressed by these patches.

The problem involved Remote Desktop and prevented you from connecting to a computer via Remote Desktop, I'm not sure if it bugged your computer trying to do the connecting or bugged the remote host that you were trying to connect to. Regardless, it should be fixed now.

The thing that I don't get is that I thought MS patches like this were tested through the beta program before public release. Perhaps they're just tested internally and their QA department slipped up and didn't do sufficient testing to catch these problems before they shipped.

Who knows. But at least they were prompt fixing it.

https://www.windowscentral.com/microsoft/windows-11/microsoft-issues-emergency-out-of-band-update-for-windows-11-to-address-major-bugs-that-broke-pc-shutdowns-and-sign-ins

https://tech.slashdot.org/story/26/01/18/1932246/microsoft-forced-to-issue-emergency-out-of-band-windows-update

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Recent Win 11 update causes some PCs to refuse to shut down or hibernate

Sat, 17 Jan 2026 16:11:07 GMT

Just a minor issue!

From the article: "The bug appears to be tied to Secure Launch, a security feature that uses virtualization-based protections to ensure only trusted components load during boot. On systems with Secure Launch enabled, attempts to shut down, restart, or hibernate after applying the January patches may fail to complete. From the user's perspective, everything looks normal – until the PC keeps running anyway, refusing to be denied life.

Microsoft says that entering the command "shutdown /s /t 0" at the command prompt will, in fact, force your PC to turn off, whether it wants to or not."

It hasn't affected my two Win 11 computers, haven't powered up my laptop in a month, so it hasn't updated. I would expect this will be updated with next month's Patch Tuesday release, but they may release an out of schedule patch to fix it.

Of course, make sure all your documents are saved before issuing that shutdown command or you may risk losing information.

And all computers will shut down when you pull the plug out of the wall or bus strip.

https://www.theregister.com/2026/01/16/patch_tuesday_secure_launch_bug_no_shutdown/

https://tech.slashdot.org/story/26/01/16/2144202/patch-tuesday-update-makes-windows-pcs-refuse-to-shut-down

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Microsoft says it will pay the full energy costs for its new AI datacenters!

Tue, 13 Jan 2026 17:19:52 GMT

It also will not seek any tax abatements or incentives.

Well, that's one heck of a move!

MS has a new "Community First" initiative where it is paying the full costs of its data centers, which will cause no increase in costs for area residents. They have taken tax abatements in the past, that apparently will end. There's a lot of hate for the big tech companies right now, and justly so: "In data‑center hubs such as Virginia, Illinois and Ohio, residential power prices jumped 12–16% over the past year — noticeably faster than the U.S. average, according to U.S. government data — as grid operators scrambled to add capacity for large new facilities."

A certain moron last night spilled the news on his private social media platform and said that his administration is talking to the other major tech platforms about them taking responsibility to eat their own costs, as they should, we shall see what happens. They certainly have the money, but as we've seen so often in the past, it's always been 'privatize the profits, socialize the costs'.

https://www.geekwire.com/2026/microsoft-responds-to-ai-data-center-revolt-vowing-to-cover-full-power-costs-and-reject-local-tax-breaks/

https://it.slashdot.org/story/26/01/13/146211/microsoft-pledges-full-power-costs-no-tax-breaks-in-response-to-ai-data-center-backlash

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Microsoft Good News/Bad News

Sat, 10 Jan 2026 20:36:55 GMT

We'll start with the good news.

Microsoft may soon start allowing sysadmins to uninstall the CoPilot AI assistant from managed devices. Specifically, the Microsoft 365 Copilot and Microsoft Copilot systems. There are a couple of restrictions: "The new policy will apply to devices where the Microsoft 365 Copilot and Microsoft Copilot are both installed, the Microsoft Copilot app was not installed by the user, and the Microsoft Copilot app was not launched in the last 28 days."

This is currently being released in the Dev and Preview builds in the Insider Channel.

FYI, and I was going to post about this but I'm still kinda wrecked over events in December and it didn't happen. MS renamed their Office 365 app to 365 Copilot as they integrated their Copilot system into it. This makes me really glad that I bought licenses for a slightly older version of the stand-alone version of Office and don't touch 365.

Now, they're specifically talking about sysadmins being able to remove these programs from managed devices. That means this is exclusively the realm of larger, usually corporate networks. However, there are so many clever boffin system administrators out there who look out for the little people that within a week or few that instructions will start spreading on how to uninstall them from any Windows 11 system, it'll just take a little time to write up and test. But it'll get out.

https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/microsoft/microsoft-may-soon-allow-it-admins-to-uninstall-copilot-on-managed-devices/

https://it.slashdot.org/story/26/01/09/2219256/microsoft-may-soon-allow-it-admins-to-uninstall-copilot

On the bad news side, Windows Media Player. AKA WMP, is a decent product for ripping music CDs to formats including MP3. I've used it myself in the last year when my Apple USB DVD R/W went on walkabout, I was able to buy another at an estate sale last year. As most media players work, WMP would read the CD and supply the metadata for the album: album name, song titles, artwork.

Until last month.

Something changed, and it's unknown if MS will fix is. At this time, the only straightforward solution is to manually type all that info - readily available (usually) at Amazon, or rip it using another program which can provide the metadata (lots mentioned in the Slashdot article).

https://www.theregister.com/2026/01/09/microsoft_windows_media_player_forgets/

https://news.slashdot.org/story/26/01/09/1742218/microsoft-windows-media-player-stops-serving-up-cd-album-info

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Microsoft's AI assistant Copilot will be baked-in Samsung's 2025 smart monitors and TVs

Fri, 29 Aug 2025 01:51:01 GMT

Well, I think the subject pretty much says it all. A monitor doesn't have to be connected to the internet, and I can't really fathom why it would be aside from functionality like this. I don't think HDMI cables convey IP information. TVs: everyone wants you to connect their TV into to your WiFi so they can monetize what you're watching: LG makes more money off the data they collect from your viewing patterns than they do selling TVs!

You can "sign in to Microsoft for more personalized results". Or you can buy a different brand. And if you use a streaming device and DVD/BR player for your viewing, you don't have to buy a TV: you can buy a nice monitor and just ignore all the connectivity stuff. Or just not connect the WiFi, I've no idea if it will repeatedly beg you to connect to the mothership. My Sony BR player has Netflix and YouTube connectivity, but alas, it's not connected to my router in any fashion: I can access those through my Apple TV if I so desire.

Samsung has never been high on my list of preferred vendors, though I do have a nice little B&W Samsung laser printer that I bought just before HP finalized the purchase of Samsung's printer division.

https://www.theverge.com/news/767078/microsoft-samsung-tv-copilot-ai-assistant-launch

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Microsoft's Recall system is rolling out broadly - but it's not as bad as it first sounded for most

Sat, 26 Apr 2025 04:19:16 GMT

Apparently testing was pretty good and MS has decided to launch Recall for Windows 11. They have made it opt-in, thus you must specifically enable it before it starts snapshotting your system. This is good.

But there's something better: it doesn't run on most machines out there!

Recall requires a system with an NPU, a Neural Processing Unit. These are additional chips installed on the motherboard that have only been in the sales channel for about a year. I'm also pretty sure that these computers came with a keyboard that had a Copilot key on the bottom row to the right of the space bar, though there may be keyboards with that key sold with computers without the NPU. So if your PC is from 2023 or older, it doesn't have an NPU and won't run Recall.

And yes, there are laptops with NPUs.

Recall is part of a feature package called CoPilot+. From the article: "The only consumer processors that currently support Copilot+ are Qualcomm's Snapdragon X Elite and Plus chips, Intel's Core Ultra 200V-series laptop chips (codenamed Lunar Lake), and AMD's Ryzen AI 300 series. Copilot+ features have generally been coming to the Arm-based Qualcomm PCs first and to x86-based Intel and AMD PCs later; Recall and the improved Search are available for both Arm and x86 PCs, while some Click to Do features are currently only available for Arm systems."

Of course there is the problem that when you go to replace your current system in a few years, it's likely that your new box will contain an NPU and you'll get nagged to activate Recall.

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2025/04/microsoft-rolls-windows-recall-out-to-the-public-nearly-a-year-after-announcing-it/

In an interesting sidenote, Intel's AI chipsets are not selling well, people are really wanting the previous generation known as Raptor Lake. The AI chips are known as Lunar Lake and Meteor Lake, I think one name designates laptop chips.

Intel is having all sorts of corporate problems and it's being felt up and down the product line. They're looking at selling off divisions to hunker down and get their act together.

https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/cpus/intels-ai-pc-chips-arent-selling-instead-last-gen-raptor-lake-booms-and-creates-a-shortage

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Microsoft's AI Recall feature slowly moving towards release. Again.

Mon, 14 Apr 2025 19:41:27 GMT

It's moving back into the beta preview builds, which means they're hoping for a public release in coming months.

As if we need a reminder, here's some reasons as to why it's bad.

1. It will eat approximately 15% of your TOTAL disk space.
2. If you're running a solid-state disk, it will increase your disk wear. This means your disk will fail sooner than it should. This is not as problematic as your traditional spinning rust hard drive.
3. Increased CPU use, possibly laggier system. We don't know how much CPU resource it will use IRL.
4. While it is theoretically secured behind your login, we don't know how secure it is. The last time around for it, it was capturing banking information, medical info, SSNs, etc.
5. We don't know if it might be reporting things upstream to someone. Guaranteed that once it gets into the beta program, much less general release, there will be privacy and security boffins who will be watching their firewall logs for what activity it is generating.

I expect we can anticipate further privacy issues with this thing on-going. And if you're not running it, and you send sensitive or confidential information to someone who is running it, well, your information will be hoovered up by their system.

Broadly speaking, it's probably not a good idea for a lot of people. I certainly do not recommend it. The article has recommendations on how to disable it, I don't think we have solid information on how to uninstall it at this time since it is not an actual released feature yet.

https://gizmodo.com/windows-controversial-recall-is-back-heres-how-to-control-it-2000589002

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Microsoft once again delays launching Recall

Fri, 01 Nov 2024 15:00:04 GMT

Recall, if you recall, is their replay "assistant" that no one seems to particularly be asking for. It takes screen shots of your computer and stores them so that you can look back if you lose information. During the first tests of it we learned that the storage of said snapshots were not secure, so someone who'd infiltrated your computer could conceivably see banking credentials, medical records, etc.

From the article: "Originally planned for October, Recall will now be available for preview with Windows Insiders on Copilot Plus PCs by December."

and

"Earlier this week, Microsoft again clarified that Recall will not be mandatory on Copilot Plus PCs, and will be an opt-in experience that can be fully removed."

It'll be interesting to see the blowback when this thing finally deploys, especially if it isn't fully opt-in.

https://www.theverge.com/2024/10/31/24284572/microsoft-recall-delay-december-windows-insider-testing

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Forthcoming Windows 11 build allows remapping of the Copilot key!

Sat, 05 Oct 2024 15:59:37 GMT

It was announced a while back that the new standard PC keyboard would now have a Microsoft Copilot key on it that would launch Microsoft's AI/LLM assistant. A new developer build has been released that allows that key to be remapped for other functionality than to launch Copilot, presumably one such option is to make it a dead key entirely in the event of accidental strikes.

If your keyboard does not have this key, running this remap doesn't do anything.

I've seen the Copilot key in the wild, but a lot of the third-party keyboards still don't have it. Knowing that I can turn it off is a nice thing for me. I have used Copilot before, it's mildly useful and nice that you don't have to sign in to it like ChatGPT. But I find the image generator to be useless for creating comics.

https://www.neowin.net/news/windows-11-dev-build-261201930-is-out-with-copilot-key-remapping-windows-sandbox-and-more/

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Wndows Recall Uninstall is "just a bug"

Tue, 03 Sep 2024 15:49:12 GMT

Of course it is!

In a recent developers build, Recall was shown as something that could be removed in Windows Features. This is apparently a bug and will be removed from the Features applet in a future update. The Verge reached out to Microsoft to try and find out if Recall will be removable but did not receive a direct answer.

In the EU, Microsoft was required to make their browser removable, presumably the same thing will be required for Recall. So hopefully some clever boffins over there will find the registry switches to let us do it over here.

https://www.theverge.com/2024/9/2/24233992/microsoft-recall-windows-11-uninstall-feature-bug

https://it.slashdot.org/story/24/09/02/2241242/microsoft-says-its-recall-uninstall-option-in-windows-11-is-just-a-bug

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Microsoft backtracks on deprecating Control Panel

Tue, 27 Aug 2024 14:32:06 GMT

They're still going to migrate some of the functionality into the Settings app on an unclear timeframe. Whether or not this is clearing up fuzzy wording or actually changing their mind after blowback from users is unknown.

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/08/microsoft-formally-deprecates-the-39-year-old-windows-control-panel/

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The Windows Control Panel is slated to be removed in favor of the Settings app. Also....

Fri, 23 Aug 2024 16:11:34 GMT

This was kind of inevitable, so many things are moving there and sometimes it's hard to what obscure thing you're looking for is where. In the end it will probably be a good thing, but it'll take a decade before it's stable. ;-)

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/system-configuration-tools-in-windows-f8a49657-b038-43b8-82d3-28bea0c5666b

https://it.slashdot.org/story/24/08/23/031251/microsoft-says-its-getting-rid-of-control-panel-in-windows

In other Windows news, Microsoft announces the return of Recall. That's the system where your operating system watches everything you do, OCRs it and stores it in a local database to help you remember what you were doing in the past for your convenience. This was announced back in June, and it was discovered in beta deployments that there was absolutely no security being deployed in the database in terms of encryption or permissions, so if someone gained access to your PC - which never happens - then they could see your bank credentials, credit card numbers, health insurance info, you know - trivial things.

Details have not yet been released as to what security protections have been put in place. A non-existent Microsoft PR flack was quoted as saying "Trust us!"

The revised feature will go to Insider Program testers in October. Microsoft says more details will be disclosed at that time.

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/08/microsoft-will-try-the-data-scraping-windows-recall-feature-again-in-october/

https://tech.slashdot.org/story/24/08/22/1648253/microsoft-will-try-the-data-scraping-windows-recall-feature-again-in-october

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Microsoft will be enabling full disk encryption on clean Win 11 installs soonish

Thu, 15 Aug 2024 15:53:50 GMT

A forthcoming version of Windows 11 known as 24H2 will enable Bitlocker device encryption (FDE) by default. This can be turned off if you want to get into Control Panel and deactivate it. The article notes that Tom's Hardware found that FDE can slow down disc access by 45% on solid-state drives. Additionally, Microsoft requires that the encryption key is uploaded to your Microsoft cloud account, meaning they have the means for decrypting your drive.

MS holding the key to your drive is a theoretical vulnerability. I have not read of them cooperating with authorities in the decryption of drives, much like Apple has not, though in Apple's case, they don't hold keys and cannot.

Personally, I don't think disk encryption is a good idea for the average home user. You should maintain good backups and keep them disconnected from your PC, preferably in a fire-proof lockbox or off-site. Have two sets (or more) and rotate between them so you have fall-back points if one of the backup sets fail.

We have a concept in IT that backups don't exist until you test them or need them, until that time they just exist in a void. When you pull them out and try to restore from them, that's when you find out whether or not they're any good. Backup disks and tapes fail, which is why if you value your data you want multiple copies to reduce the chance of one copy failing.

https://www.theverge.com/2024/8/14/24220138/microsoft-bitlocker-device-encryption-windows-11-default

https://tech.slashdot.org/story/24/08/14/1559240/microsoft-is-enabling-bitlocker-device-encryption-by-default-on-windows-11

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97% of systems affected by ClownStrike are back online, and the European Commission is to blame

Fri, 26 Jul 2024 20:09:41 GMT

Most of the systems affected are back working, but the remainder still accounts for a rather staggering 250,000 PCs and servers. My guess is these are the hardest hit and are either physically difficult to access or encrypted and might need to have the drive replaced and rebuilt from scratch.

Oh, the Uber Eats gift card debacle has been resolved. It's still a debacle, but apparently the cards that were sent out are now actually redeemable.

So why is the European Commission to blame? Let's get technical.

The core of an operating system is its kernel. This is the set of programs that provide its basic operations and core security. Obviously this is the most important part of the OS, and the part that you want to protect the most. Preferably, as the maker of the operating system, you don't want anyone to have direct access to the kernel.

Linux and Apple Mac do not allow access to the kernel, not even for anti-virus and anti-malware applications. They have a framework that allows those sorts of programs to run and defend the kernel, but not actually link into it. Thus, they were completely unaffected by the ClownStrike event.

But because of Microsoft's overwhelming market domination and ubiquity, the EC didn't like that everyone was banned from kernel access for their third-party software for things like malware and virus protection and required that Microsoft literally and actually break their security model to allow such kernel access. The alternative was that they couldn't sell Windows user or server software in Europe, and there was no way that was going to happen. So Microsoft broke the security protections that Windows had, and ClownStrike broke Windows.

Now the big question is what happens in the future to prevent a similar event? Microsoft says they are evaluating newer frameworks, more along the lines of what Linux and Mac are currently doing, to remove ClownStrike and similar software from the kernel to keep a repeat event from happening again. I would suspect that the EC regulators will take a look at what this cost the world-wide economy - estimated at over $5 billion dollars - and see that Apple and Linux allow third-party products to work well with their operating systems and give MS permission to lock down their kernel in a more secure fashion.

Which will make things better, but will also take some time to roll out.

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2024/07/97-of-crowdstrike-systems-are-back-online-microsoft-suggests-windows-changes/

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Microsoft Paint and Jpegs

Thu, 27 Jun 2024 21:26:53 GMT

I've been using Paint a lot recently, doing screen captures and snips for some documentation writing. One thing that's infuriating about it is that by default, it wants to save docs as PNGs, and you can't default it over to Jpeg!

But there's a trick....

Click on File, Save As, then you'll see a list of formats it can save in. Right-click on Jpeg and there's an option to creating a shortcut on the toolbar. Of course, you have to make the toolbar visible.

I prefer keyboard shortcuts, but I'll take this as a bit of a labor saver.

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Microsoft to launch its CoPilot+ without its Recall feature

Fri, 14 Jun 2024 15:46:08 GMT

After suffering TONS of blowback in the press and industry, Microsoft is pulling the playback feature that took snapshots of what you were doing on your computer and saved them. The issue being that the save was unencrypted and readily accessible to anyone who could sign on to the PC: such as spouse abusers, hackers, etc. Why it was not encrypted from the get go, I don't understand.

Privacy? Who needs privacy! It's nifty! Nifty > privacy!

There were ways to deactivate the Recall feature, how easily it could be turned off is a matter of some debate. Microsoft and other vendors are also infamous for silently turning on things with updates that users had previously turned off.

CoPilot+ goes live June 18. *sigh*

https://www.windowscentral.com/software-apps/windows-11/microsoft-postpones-windows-recall-after-major-backlash-will-launch-copilot-pcs-without-headlining-ai-feature

https://it.slashdot.org/story/24/06/14/0318213/microsoft-postpones-windows-recall-after-major-backlash

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Microsoft is adding version control and 7Zip and Tar to Explorer!

Mon, 27 May 2024 17:50:47 GMT

FINALLY!

While integrating 7Zip file compression into Explorer was no big deal, it'll be nice to have it there from the beginning. The Tar support will also be useful. But the version control, that's going to be very useful for casual developers who don't want to mess with installing Git or similar repo controls.

https://www.theverge.com/2024/5/21/24161785/microsoft-windows-file-explorer-version-control-7z-tar

https://tech.slashdot.org/story/24/05/21/2238246/microsoft-is-making-file-explorer-more-powerful-with-version-control-and-7z-compression

The /. discussion has a lot of talk about Total Commander, Double Commander, and Directory Opus.

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Windows 10 adoption rate increases to 70%

Thu, 02 May 2024 17:31:39 GMT

Meanwhile Windows 11 adoption rate DECLINES to below the 26% mark after hitting a high of just over 28%.

I'm running 11 Pro on my desktop at home. But given the choice, I prefer 10. I can't go back to it, don't have the media. And it's about to go to paid-for support, which I don't want to mess with. I have not yet found any feature in 11 that benefits me, in fact I had to find a workaround to move the task bar to the vertical left side of the screen, where I prefer it.

I really hate it when they eliminate features that people like.

https://www.neowin.net/news/windows-10-reaches-70-market-share-as-windows-11-keeps-declining/

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Microsoft is looking for Rust developers to do some work on its Microsoft 365 platform

Wed, 14 Feb 2024 03:16:43 GMT

This is a good move. They're migrating some core code libraries from C# to Rust. C# is not truly based on C and C++, it has characteristics of several languages. The language is pronounced SEE-SHARP and they wanted to use the musical sharp symbol, similar to the #, but it doesn't exist on pretty much every keyboard in the world, so they compromised and went with the name but the pound symbol.

The job is described as "...include "guiding technical direction, design and implementation of Rust component libraries, SDKs, and re-implementation of existing global scale C# based services to Rust."

The goodness is that Rust is a very tight language when it comes to memory strictness. Lots of languages are pretty loose when it comes to enforcing memory allocation and access, Rust is definitely not. This looseness is what gives hackers open doors to lots of systems. And this is why Linux is now rewriting a lot of its core systems in Rust from C and C++. Microsoft is doing the same thing with the Windows operating system. But this is a very slow process as there's far fewer Rust programmers than C/C++ programmers, so it's a slow slog.

If you know anyone who says they want to be a programmer, and they're serious about it, Rust and systems programming would be a very financially rewarding line to explore. Hard work, but well-paying.

https://www.theregister.com/2024/01/31/microsoft_seeks_rust_developers/

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Get ready for Windows keyboards to change! First time since 1994.

Thu, 04 Jan 2024 20:21:55 GMT

*sigh* At least it's been a long time since the last one, but it's going to be a rough transition.

Microsoft is taking away the Ctrl key on the right.

In its place will be a key for its CoPilot AI Assistant.

Won't that be just dandy?

The last change was when MS added the Windows key to the Natural Keyboard back in '94. But MS really wants people to use its AI assistant, so what better way than to make a key dedicated to it where people regularly use a normal key?

Here's the kicker: it's possible that it may not be able to be reassigned!

I was reading an article on Dell's new XPS series that's going through a complete refresh for 2024. They all have the new CoPilot key - to the left of the left arrow key - and it is immutable. Cannot be changed. That's definitely going to force a lot of people to retrain muscle memory who are semi-touch typists.

Personally, if they'd tied it to a function key, or left the key reprogrammable - that'd be fine. But if it is indeed not reprogrammable, that's going to be quite an issue!

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/01/ai-comes-for-your-pcs-keyboard-as-microsoft-adds-dedicated-copilot-key/

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Microsoft releases update to fix the phantom HP printer driver issue

Wed, 20 Dec 2023 01:03:22 GMT

I'm glad it's coming from MS rather than HP!

From the article: "Earlier this month, Microsoft disclosed an odd printer bug that was affecting some users of Windows 10, Windows 11, and various Windows Server products. Affected PCs were seeing an HP printer installed, usually an HP LaserJet M101-M106, even when they weren’t actually using any kind of HP printer. This bug could overwrite the settings for whatever printer the user actually did have installed and also prompted the installation of an HP Smart printer app from the Microsoft Store.

Microsoft still hasn't shared the root cause of the problem, though it did make it clear that the problem wasn't HP's fault. Now, the company has released a fix for anyone whose PC was affected by the bug, though as of this writing, it requires users to download and run a dedicated troubleshooting tool available from Microsoft's support site.

HP printer app is installing on PCs whether they have HP printers or not
The December 2023 Microsoft Printer Metadata Troubleshooter Tool is available for all affected Windows versions, and it will remove all references to the phantom HP LaserJet model (as long as you don't have one installed, anyway). The tool will also remove the HP Smart app as long as you don't have an HP printer attached and the app was installed after November 25, presumably the date that the bug began affecting systems. These steps should fix the issue for anyone without an HP printer without breaking anything for people who do use HP printers."

There are many a day that I'm glad that I'm no longer in main-core IT. This is one of them.

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/12/microsoft-releases-downloadable-tool-to-fix-phantom-hp-printer-installations/

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A bug in the Microsoft Store leads to HP's printer installation package being installed

Mon, 11 Dec 2023 22:48:12 GMT

And all of your printers appearing to be HP lasers!

Doesn't that make you feel special?!

Theoretically your printer should continue working normally, unless you have third-party drivers. It's unknown if MS will be able to remove the driver and whether or not at that point what will happen to your printer configuration. Right now I'll bet IT staff are ready to go on a rampage at HP HQ! My home system is unaffected as I don't have printer drivers installed in it: I occasionally print to PDF files, that's it. If I need to actually print something, I mail the document to myself and print it from my laser attached to my Mac.

Microsoft claims it is a bug in the MS Store and has nothing to do with HP.

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/12/hp-printer-app-is-installing-on-pcs-whether-they-have-hp-printers-or-not/

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Microsoft killing off third-party printer drivers in Windows

Tue, 12 Sep 2023 15:48:22 GMT

What a long, strange road it's been. The intended cut-off date is 2027, but it may be moved further down the road past then, not a hard and fast date.

I hadn't heard about this, but there's a consortium of computer and printer makers called Mopria. From the article: "Mopria is part of the Windows' teams justification for removing support. Founded in 2013 by Canon, HP, Samsung and Xerox, the Mopria Alliance's mission is to provide universal standards for printing and scanning. Epson, Lexmark, Adobe and Microsoft have also joined the gang since then.

Since Windows 10 21H2, Microsoft has baked Mopria support into the flagship operating system, with support for devices connected via the network or USB, thanks to the Microsoft IPP Class driver. Microsoft said: "This removes the need for print device manufacturers to provide their own installers, drivers, utilities, and so on." It should be noted that Samsung sold its printer division to HP, and I think most people know my opinions on HP printers.

Standardized printer drivers are a wonderful thing. Back in the early '80s when PCs first came out, you literally WROTE your own printer drivers. For standard printing needs like spreadsheets or program code or stuff like that where you didn't need formatting, you just shot the output out to the printer. But if you wanted to do word processing niceties like bold or underline or things like that, you pulled out the manual that came with the printer, fired up a printer driver program that came with the word processor, and entered a whole bunch of finicky codes that told your word processor how to talk to the printer to do things like bold, underline, etc. Proportional printing wasn't much of a thing in the early days until laser printers and desktop publishing came along a little later in the '80s.

I kid you not. It was a royal pain in the butt. Get a code wrong with a typo, or plug the wrong value into the wrong part, and you got results that were, shall we say, interesting.

So when printers largely became plug and play, you have no idea how nice it was compared to 40 years ago!

I remember around '86 or so I programmed a dot matrix printer, a tractor-feed Okidata, to print 1099 tax forms. I had it doing micro-line feeds and going back and forth to fill in the boxes on that form. It was fed from a database that I wrote in dBase III. It was a lot of work to get it to do it right, and some tricky coding, I kid you not. And I heavily documented the code, including a giant disclaimer that you could not miss that said "WARNING: DO NOT TOUCH THIS CODE AS IT INCLUDES MICROSPACING FOR PROPER FORM ALIGNMENT. You'll break the alignment!" After I left the company for a better job (they wanted to turn me back into a word processing typist), my boss's husband, who was a "professional", touched the code and broke it.

https://www.theregister.com/2023/09/11/go_native_or_go_home/

https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/23/09/11/1828213/microsoft-to-kill-off-third-party-printer-drivers-in-windows

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